Invite Marvin X for Black History Month. He's living Black History!

Invite Marvin X for Black History Month.
He's living Black History!

He’s the new Malcolm X! Nobody’s going to talk about his book, HOW TO RECOVER FROM THE ADDICTION TO WHITE SUPREMACY, out loud, but they’ll hush hush about it.—Jerri Lange, author, Jerri, A Black Woman’s Life in the Media


He is a Master Teacher in many fields of thought—religion and psychology, sociology and anthropology, history and politics, literature and the humanities. He is a needed Counselor, for he knows himself, on the deepest of personal levels and he reveals that self to us, that we might be his beneficiaries…. If you want to reshape (clean up, raise) your consciousness, this is a book to savor, to read again and again—to pass onto a friend or lover.
—Rudolph Lewis, Editor, ChickenBones: A Journal
….Malcolm X ain’t got nothing on Marvin X. Still Marvin has been ignored and silenced like Malcolm would be ignored and silenced if he had lived on into the Now. Marvin’s one of the most extraordinary, exciting black intellectuals living today—writing, publishing, performing with Sun Ra’s Musicians (Live in Philly at Warm Daddies, available on DVD from BPP), reciting, filming, producing conferences (Kings and Queens of Black Consciousness, 2001,San Francisco Black Radical Book Fair, 2004); he’s ever engaging, challenging the respectable and the comfortable. He like Malcolm, dares to say things fearlessly, in the open (in earshot of the white man) that so many Negroes feel, think and speak on the corner, in the barbershops and urban streets of black America….
—Rudolph Lewis, Editor, ChickenBones: A Journal



…People who know Marvin X already know him as a peripatetic, outspoken, irreverent, poetic “crazy nigger,” whose pen is continually and forever out-of-control. As a professional psychologist, I hasten to invoke the disclaimer that that is in no way a diagnosis or clinical impression of mine. I have never actually subjected this brother to serious psychoanalytical scrutiny and have no wish to place him on the couch, if only because I know of no existing psycho-diagnostic instrumentality of pathology of normalcy that could properly evaluate Marvin completely.
—Dr. Nathan Hare, Black Think Tank, San Francisco

Marvin X has been a witness to history. He shows that an excellent minority writer can raise issues that the mainstream publishers and book reviewers find hard to grapple with…. He, Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver and others were also casualties of the chemical attack on African Americans in the form of Crack and alcohol waged by corporations and a government that placed questionable foreign policy goals above the health of its citizens…. Many of those who inspired the cultural revolution of the 1960s remain stuck there. This volume shows that Marvin X has moved on.
—Ishmael Reed, novelist, poet, essayist, publisher, Oakland


Iraq…how did we get there and how do we get back? The consciousness-altering book of poems that tells the tale, in no uncertain terms and yet always via poetry, is the astonishing Land of My Daughters: Poems 1995-2005 by Marvin X. Marvin X is the USA’s Rumi, and his nation is not “where our fathers died” but where our daughters live. The death of patriarchal war culture is his everyday reality. X’s poems vibrate, whip, love in the most meta- and physical ways imaginable and un-. He’s got the humor of Pietri, the politics of Baraka, and the spiritual Muslim grounding that is totally new in English—the ecstasy of Hafiz, the wisdom of Saadi. It’s not unusual for him to have a sequence of shortish lines followed by a culminating line that stretches a quarter page—it is the dance of the dervishes, the rhythms of a Qasida.
—Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club, New York City

Marvin X Writes Eight Books in 2010

The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Parables/fables, Volume I

If you want to learn about inspiration and motivation, don't spend all that money going to workshops and seminars, just go stand at 14th and Broadway and watch Marvin X at work. He's Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland.--Ishmael Reed

Hustler’s Guide to the Game Called Life, (Wisdom of Plato Negro, Volume II)

Mythology of Pussy and Dick, toward Healthy Psychosocial Sexuality, 416 pages.

This book is the most wanted title in the Marvin X collection. Youth in the hood fight over it and steal it from each other. Girls say it empowers them, and the boys say it helps them step up their game. Mothers and fathers are demanding their sons and daughters read this. Paradise Jah Love says they fight over it as if it's black gold!

I Am Oscar Grant, essays on Oakland, $19.95. Critical essays on the travesty of American justice in the cold blooded murder of Oscar Grant by a beast in blue uniform.

Pull Yo Pants Up fada Black Prez and Yoself, essays on Obama Drama, $19.95.

Marvin X is on the mark again with his accurate observation of the Obama era. The black community was so excited with Obama being the first Black Prez that they forgot he was a politician-not a messiah. Marvin X brings the community back to the reality of what Obama stands for-at the moment! He has not given up on Da Prez, he simply wants people to see what he stands for and what he still has an opportunity to do for our communities. Make sure you put Pull Yo Pants Up Fada Black Prez & Yo Self on your to-buy list It will be the best book you will read in 2010!--Carolyn Mixon

Marvin X, Guest Editor, Poetry Issue, Journal of Pan African Studies, 480 pages

In honor of the Journal of Black Poetry, Marvin X collects poetry from throughout the Pan African world. This massive issue is a classic of radical Pan African literature in the 21st century. Amiri Baraka says, "He has always been in the forefront of Pan African writing. Indeed, he is one of the innovators and founders of the new revolutionary school of African writing."

Notes on the Wisdom of Action or How to Jump Out of the Box. In this collection he calls upon the people to become proactive rather than reactionary, to initiate the movement out the box of oppression by any means necessary, although Marvin X believes in the power of spiritual consciousness to create infinite possibilities toward liberation.

Soulful Musings on Unity of North American Africans, 150 pages

Marvin X explores the possibilities for unity among North American Africans.

Available from Black Bird Press, 1222 Dwight Way, Berkeley CA 94702. jmarvinx@yahoo.com.

Obama, the War Monger

Obama the War Monger

The following report by Glen Ford
is something we should have known, i.e., that Obama would out do the white man to prove himself. Black police and correctional officers are known to be twice as vicious in their treatment of blacks to prove themselves to their colleagues. So it is not shocking to see President Obama get top honors for the biggest military spender in US history.

Although we supported him initially, as Dr. Cornel West says, we must protect him, respect him but check him. We respect him for saying during his campaign that he would expand the war into Pakistan and he kept his word, even though it may be the nail in his coffin since the Pakistani loyalty to their US partner is dubious at best. The world knows they split their loyalty between the US and the Taliban, for the population, the military, intelligence services and the religious community are clearly divided if not in outright opposition to the US presence in their land.

Glen Ford points out how spineless the Democrats are in submitting to Obama's war economy. Hardly a peep out of them, and of course the heartless Republicans support the military at all costs. Stay tuned for more Obama Drama.
--Marvin X
1/11/11


Obama War Budget Breaks All Records-- But When Will Black America Break with Him?

by Glen Ford, Executive Editor, Black Agenda Report

The Republican House majority hadn't even taken their seats yet, but their presence wasn't necessary to pass the biggest military budget since World War II. Not only can't Obama blame his wars on George Bush, but the First Black President has dramatically outdone his predecessor in expenditures on the machinery of death.

On Capitol Hill, resistance to U.S. militarism has all but collapsed -- and the Republican majority in the U.S. House has not even arrived, yet. With no opposition whatsoever in the Senate, and only 48 nay votes in the House, the Congress last week passed the biggest military budget since the end of World War Two. Only 42 Democrats, including just 12 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, dared to defy their warmongering president and compliant House leadership.

From the moment that Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination, we at Black Agenda Report have been predicting that he would become the most pro-war president in modern American history. Forget about the Obama's phony rhetoric; the proof is in the numbers.

The military budget firmly cements Barack Obama's place as the biggest pro-war president in two generations. Today, the United States, although it is the world's only superpower, spends almost as much as all of the rest of the world's militaries, combined. The U.S. defense authorization for 2011 is $725 billion. China, with the second most expensive military machine on the planet, spends less than $80 billion a year.

If Barack Obama lasts for eight years in office, he is on track to spend $5 trillion dollars on the Pentagon, significantly more than George Bush, who in turn spent a lot more than Ronald Reagan. But, as they say on the TV commercials, that's not all.

The defense budget doesn't include expenditures for Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, nuclear weapons work at the Department of Energy, military aid to other countries through the Department of State, NASA space programs that are really military projects, the military retirement fund run out of the Department of Treasury, and the interest payments on past military expenditures that were financed by debt. Inclusion of those hidden costs of war would bring military-related spending to well over $1 trillion dollars a year -- and rising all the time.

The Black misleadership class in general demands that African Americans sacrifice their own economic survival interests to Barack Obama's political interests.

In real dollars, the U.S. is spending far more on the military than at any time during the Cold War, when there was another superpower in competition, and more than President Lyndon Johnson spent at the height of the Vietnam War. Dr. Martin Luther King broke with LBJ over that war, in part because he knew, in King's words, "that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube."

Under the First Black President, that military suction tube is far bigger and more destructive than in Dr. King's day, while the economic crisis is arguably much worse, threatening the very viability of Black America as a national community.

Yet only 12 Black members of Congress can bring themselves to vote against Obama's wars, and the Black misleadership class in general demands that African Americans sacrifice their own economic survival interests to Barack Obama's political interests.

Obama is not merely a continuation of the Bush administration's war policies, he has accelerated the descent into a war economy.

That is nothing for any Black person to be proud about.

Nation Time in the Sudan, What About North American African Nation Time?

Nation Time in Sudan, What About North American African Nation Time?


On the even of the vote in the Southern Sudan for independence, North American Africans should reconsider Nation Time for the 40 million neo-slaves in the belly of the beast, tortured victims of domestic colonialism who never exercised the right of self-determination but had their American pseudo citizenship forced upon them by the 14th Amendment. Even today they are not hardly treated as full citizens for a Voting Rights Act must be continually renewed to confirm their wretched status, no matter the neo-colonial Negro in the White House.

As we rejoice at the coming independence of the Southern Sudan from Muslim Arab racism, surely we can imagine the possibility of self determination for ourselves in a nation of our own, yes, here in America for the 400 years of free and nearly free labor, the most inhumane treatment ever afforded human beings. Reparations must surely include more than a wage slave job, a white woman and a Cadillac . Surely land is the priority, thus there can be no reparations and independence without the partitioning of the American geography for those of us who are totally alienated from this society, those marginalized from the economic prosperity and traumatized from the hostile environment we must navigate in our daily round.

We seriously doubt the depths of our trauma, grief and the especially the feelings for vengeance
is known. But it is made clear to me with each passing day there are those who feel totally alienated and marginalized from this society, who have no faith whatsoever in its promise of a better tomorrow and wish to do great harm to massa before they transition, i.e., "pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back...."

We noticed in our Mental Health Peer Groups to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy that the Black females were the most alienated and traumatized by this society. She seems the most willing to execute justice for damage done to herself, her man and children, but most especially her sons. Now we know there are fathers who are in grief and trauma as well, the the female seems to suffer the most pervasive marginalization and thus the most pressing need to retaliate for the damages to her being.

We recalled at the rally in Oakland after the Oscar Grant, Jr. murder sentence was announced the degree of rage and grief expressed by all segments of the North American African population, from youth to elders, males and females. Their attitude was to hell with America!
Yes, there were those who wished to burn it down!

Surely we can take Oakland as a microcosm of the North American African Nation, the deep frustration, the economic deprivation, the perennial unemployment, worse now with the global economic meltdown.

What do our leaders actually believe will suffice in the short and long term? They shall not be able to remain the gate keepers forever. We recall how they were disposed of in the 60s once the cry for Black Power was announced. Yes, they were denounced and a new crop of radicals came to the forefront of the liberation movement.

Assassinations of leaders, co-option, infiltration, agent provocateurs, opportunists and internal contradictions aborted the movement of liberation, especially the call for Nation Time. After the 1972 Gary Convention, elected politicians replaced the radical political leadership, taking us down the road of reaction and neo-colonialism that has persisted until today.

It seems that no amount of elected politicians can deliver the transaction to elevate our status above wretchedness, for even if we are the 16th richest nation in the world in terms of annual income, we are basically consumers rather than producers, thus most of our wealth leaves the hood to enrich White America and other ethnic groups. Despite the annual pitiful Kwanza ritual where we recite the Seven Principles, there is no practice of substance we can write home about.

Our national consciousness seems to have retreated, especially with the selection of our first Black President by the Wall Street robber barons who emptied the treasury in the process of his donning the presidential garb. At least three trillion went to the global bankers during the sub prime crisis. Obama instituted that old black magic or voodoo economics from the first Bush era by replenishing the Wall Street global financiers, corporations and other bandits while the robbed suffer joblessness, homelessness and the mental trauma of realizing they have been thoroughly hoodwinked and bamboozled.

As the elation of his election to the White House has not brought any benefit or relief to the suffering in the hood, surely there are those wretched of the earth who are now ready to configure an alternative, another path to escape our nothingness and dread.

So we come again to the idea of Nation Time. We see the Southern Sudanese about to realize their long held dream of independence. Why is such a dream so utterly fantastic and impossible for us? The world is full of infinite possibilities, especially if we are in unity, if we plan, take, hold, build and exercise eternal vigilance, staying ever on the alert and never disarm as we did after the Civil War when we were an army of 200,000 strong, but gave up our guns which resulted in the virtual slavery of short-lived Reconstruction and long lived Jim Crow period thereafter unto the present hour of Neo Jim Crow.

We must study carefully the National Liberation movement of North American Africans and others globally. We must examine the contradictions in the Nation of Islam, the Black Panther Party, the Republic of New Africa, the UNIA, the Moorish Science of Noble Drew Ali, the 19th Century Black Nationalist thinkers and come to a new vision and plan for a national configuration transcending Americana. Surely we know we must have a Plan B since it is a sad rat that has one hole. As I've said, we can plant our feet on solid ground, but still have an exit plan just in case it becomes clear to us our situation in this political climate is unsustainable, to say nothing of our economic status. This ground may suddenly turn into quicksand by the nature of unpredictable events on the world stage and especially internal events.

For sure, the devils are planning nothing good for us. We ought to take the dead black birds as an omen. We know the death of those black birds and white fish is nothing but a highly technological experiment in warfare, so we must be prepared for the worse that should include an exit plan that should include the partitioning of this land for our Nation Time.

We sense the great possibility that ethnic rivalries shall one day cause the Balkinization of these United States, therefore be forewarned to configure your portion of the American pie. America will try to stall the day of judgment when justice must be delivered, just as the Jews are doing in occupied Palestine, but we know the day shall come when Palestine shall be liberated, no matter what. And likewise, the day shall come when North American Africans shall enjoy a full and complete freedom on some of this earth we can call our own. If we settle for a mess of pottage, surely the ancestors shall curse us to the end of the world for the cowards we be.

In the Crazy House Called America

Monday, January 10, 2011

In the Crazy House Called America

In the Crazy House Called America


The murder of my child will not make your child safe.--James Baldwin



It is supreme irony that a child born on one of the most destructive days in American history, 9/11, would be murdered at nine years old, Christina Taylor Green, the child who suffered along with Congresswoman Gabriel Gifforts in the mass shooting in Arizona over the weekend.

What is the connection between 9/11 and the Arizona massacre? On 9/11 a group of young men from Saudi Arabia felt compelled to execute revenge on America for its oppressive role in the Middle East. In Arizona a mentally ill young man also believed the American political establishment was an oppressive institution so he felt compelled in his deranged mental state to execute justice on Congresswoman Gabriel Gifforts.

The roots of the right wing political thinking in the assassin's mind seems to originate in the post Civil War amendments to the the US Constitution, namely the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments that allegedly gave freedom from slavery to North American Africans. We must understand there is a substantial percentage of white Americans who have never come to terms with the freedom from slavery of North American Africans. In fact, if they could have their way, they would immediately re-inslave North American Africans. The incarceration of large numbers of North American Africans no doubt satisfies the racial fantasies of delusional white Americans who now have their worse nightmare with Obama in the White House. Imagine this: a nigger in the white house!

We can thus imagine the mental state of many white people is at the precipice, about to propel them into the chasm of their pathological mental state. The Republicans and their Tea Party sycophants have declared the mantra no, no, no, no nigger, no nigger, no nigger as we head into the 2012 elections. We must therefore expect the very worse things to happen on the way to 2012. The Arizona mass murder is but the beginning of sorrows.

What we are witnessing is the mass failure of minds that have always been fragile in the American racial nightmare that originated in the most abject white supremacy rationalizations that, Baldwin noted, long ago reached the pathological.

The Right Wing obviously care nothing about solving the unemployment crisis, the foreclosure mess, the deficit , the wars abroad, health insurance, immigration or any other mess except pursuing their dream of expanding white supremacy domination over the world, starting with re-instituting a whites only socio-political order inside America. They perceive the Left as their mortal enemy with North American Africans and other minorities expendable in the process of reclaiming American for whites only, a task so impossible by the very nature of the new demographics wherein the whiles shall ultimately be the minority in the very near future.

But rather than adjust their thinking to the new reality, they persist in advancing their mythological notions based on the most abominable ignorance, arrogance and severe mental derangement.

Our prescription is for White Americans to rush themselves to a Center to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy, wherein they shall remain for long term care. During their process of detoxification and recovery, they must be prevented from engaging in the political process, economic endeavors, educational pursuits, military adventures or religious involvement.
Yes, we want to them to simply chill for the benefit of themselves and others, namely the peace loving people of the world.

Dr. Nathan Hare

The North American Africans who are co-dependents of the mentally ill White Americans (Boss, we sick?), must also be apprehended and subjected to the same recovery program, although Dr. Nathan Hare says they suffer Type II White Supremacy: "...If Hegel was correct in his notion that the oppressor cannot free the slave, that the slave must force the oppressor's hand, then it is Type II White Supremacy Addiction which if not more resistant to cure, must occupy our primary focus. Type II White Supremacy may be seen as a kind of "niggeritis" or "Negrofication," growing out of an over-identification with the master, who is white. As in any disorder, severity of symptoms may vary from mild to moderate or severe.

Dr. Frantz Fanon

As Frantz Fanon put it when he spoke for the brother with jungle fever in Black Skin, White Mask, 'I wish to be regarded as white. If I can be loved by the white woman who is loved by the white man, then I am white like the white man; I am a full human being.' " (from How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy, Dr. M (Marvin X),Black Bird Press, 2008, foreword by Dr. Nathan Hare, afterword by Ptah Allah El.)

The solution to any problem is first recognition of it. America is one giant mental hospital with no doctors present capable of solving the myriad mental health issues originating is the notion of white supremacy. There is no hope until people come out of De Nile, denial!

--Marvin X

1/10/11

See Marvin X, In the Crazy House Called America, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, 2002.

Middle East: Beware the ides of '11 - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Middle East: Beware the ides of '11 - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

On Reading the Constitution

On Reading the Constitution
They promised to read the Constitution, so they did, the heartless Republicans, joined by the spineless Democrats, though they skipped the original version for the revised, yes, like skipping the original Bible for the King James wickedpedia version. They skipped that 3/5ths of a man original that dehumanized the only humans in America. Yes, James Baldwin said, "We're the only thing that happened here!"

As per a Hollywood movie script on diversity, Civil Rites Negro, Georgia Congressman John Lewis was allowed to read the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, except for involuntary servitude for the incarcerated. Now imagine this: the founding fathers (slave owners) were smart enough to know the day would come when North American Africans would fall victim to slave catchers (police) to the extent a great portion of them would again become subjects of involuntary servitude due to incarceration. For sure, the South is rejoicing to have Africans back in chains doing hard labor in fields, roads and streets.

Thus, does it matter whether one is a slave outside or inside the Constitution?The point is that "we got those niggers back in chains, hallelujah!" And so many products on the market today are prison made. Corporations enjoy slave labor that is cheaper than outsourcing to China and India.

Because I could type, the short time I was in prison for refusing to go to Vietnam, my job was in the Yard Office as a clerk, but other brothers came back to the dorms each daily exhausted from hard labor.

The 14th Amendment made us citizens without a consensus from us. We were not allowed or did not demand self determination as a free people but submitted to a pseudo US citizenship in name only. We have suffered ever since from this fake citizenship without any substance whatsoever, no economic parity, educational, health or political equality.

After 400 years of free labor we were released with no reparations and no treatment for our post-traumatic slave syndrome, down to the present moment we yet suffer trauma and unresolved grief for enduring the behavior modification or psychological and physical torture of American democracy.

Obviously the 15th Amendment affording us the right to vote is yet enforced since the Voting Rights Act must be renewed periodically to include North American Africans. And the millions of incarcerated who endured involuntary servitude are excluded from voting upon release.

Don't let me search out the words of Frederick Douglass on the meaning of the Constitution to a slave.
--Marvin X
1/7/11

Dr. Nigger on the Streets of Oakland

Dr. Nigger on the Streets of Oakland


When Oakland folks stop by Marvin X's Academy of da Corner at 14th and Broadway, crossroads of the East Bay, he let's them peruse Journal of Pan African Studies, Poetry issue--he was guest editor. The poems people like, they proceed to read aloud. To date, the most oft-read poem is Dr. Nigger by Philadelphia poet/physician Dr. Neal Hall, author of Nigger for Life, 2009.

Dr. Nigger

Dr. Nigger

Can you cure me without
touching me with nigga hands

Can you save my life
without changing my life

Can you dance soft-shoe while
humming those negro tunes
when my white life codes blue

Can you reach inside yourself
beyond the shit we put in you…
past painful moments we put in you…
past despair and hopelessness
we’ve put in you and
find that old black magic in you
to save my life without changing
all the shit we put in you

Dr. Nigger

Can you breathe in me
air free of nigga
from a nigger not free
to breathe in free air

Can you stay on the colored side
of the color line and reach across
without touching me with nigga hands
to restart my blue heart without
changing my cold heart

Can you reach past the life
we’ve taken from you to
save my life and not
let white life pass me by

Dr. Nigger

save my life
without taking my life

Cure me without
touching me with nigga hands

Dance soft-shoe while
humming negro tunes
while you save my life
without changing my life
when my white life codes blue

Neal Hall, M.D., Copyright 2009

“…a warrior of the mind … a warrior of the spirit,
an activist, a poet.”

- Cornel West, Ph.D.

Neal Hall, M.D., graduate of Cornell and Harvard, ophthalmologist and poet, has published a critically acclaimed anthology of verse, Nigger For Life, reflecting his painful, later life discovery, that in “unspoken America,” race is the one thing on which he is “first” judged, by which he is “first” measured, “first”, against which his life and accomplishments are metered diminished value, dignity, equality and justice. All of which have everything to do with accessing choice, opportunity, power and freedom in America.

It’s no ordinary muse that has Dr. Hall becoming as much a part of his poetry as his poetry has become a part of him. Rather it’s a deep sense of betrayal combined with a passion for life that shows through. He can’t help but bare his intelligence, his wit and his dreams. His anthology is as confronting as it is illuminating, as disarming as it is thought provoking

Two notable and well respected minds best describe why Nigger For Life is important and timely: Cornel West, Ph.D., (Princeton University) said of the book “…his poetry has the capacity to change ordinary people’s philosophy on social and racial issues”. Beth Richie, Ph.D. (University of Illinois at Chicago) stated the “ … images and issues addressed in Nigger For Life are tremendously important to our [African American] people and the academic field of African American Studies”

Nigger For Life’s candid, gut wrenching clarity gives it it’s tremendous power and impact to provoke both thought and honest dialog regarding race, racism, equality and freedom, not just in America, but throughout the world. The book’s unique ability to open minds, touch hearts and change philosophies of ordinary people is immeasurable.

The body of poetry is extraordinary … meaningful beyond black and white, worthy of – down through the ages – analytical and academic study for their compelling, empowering commentary. Nigger for Life should be read, studied and included amongst the great poetry volumes written.
Nigger For Life can be obtained at: www.surgeonpoet.com

Email: info@NiggerForLifeBook.com

Online Interview at: www.caribbeanbookblog.wordpress.com.

Conversations LIVE! Radio http://conversationslive.blogspot.com

Journal of Pan African Studies is Online

The Journal of Pan African Studies works to become a beacon of light in the sphere of African world community studies and research, grounded in an interdisciplinary open access scholarly peer-reviewed construct, simultaneously cognizant of the multilingualism of our audience, and the importance of universal access in cyberspace; regardless of geography, economic, social or cultural diversity. ::More Information ::Editorial Board ::Contact The JPAS ::Instructions for submitting a manuscript

CURRENT ISSUE Volume 4 • Number 2 • 2010 This special issue of The Journal of Pan African Studies is edited by guest editor Marvin X and dedicated to Dingane aka Jose Goncalves, the publisher and editor of the Journal of Black Poetry, which has published some 500 poets. Groundation ● JPAS: Dedicated to Dingane, Jose Goncalves by Marvin X [ view PDF ] ● The Poets by Marvin X [ view PDF ] ● Letters to the Editor [ view PDF ] ● Dingane Joe Goncalves, The Journal of Black Poetry & Small Non-Commercial Black Journals by Rudolph Lewis [ view PDF ] [ view PDF ] In My Negritude ● Shaggy Flores, Ras Griot, Phavia Kujichagulia, Chinwe Enemchukwu, L. E. Scott, Rodney D. Coates, J. Vern Cromartie, Dike Okoro, Neal E. Hall, Marvin X, Mohja Kahf, Ayodele Nzingha, Askia M. Toure, Michael Simanga, Amiri Baraka, Kalamu ya Salaam, Kola Boof, Louis Reyes, Rivera, Aries Jordan, Ptah Allah El, and Hettie V. Williams [ view PDF ] ● Teaching Diaspora Literature: Muslim American Literature as an Emerging Field by Mohja Kahf [ view PDF ] ● Mother Earth Responds by Askia Toure reviewed by Kamaria Muntu [ view PDF ] ●Tainted Soul by T. Ptah Mitchell reviewed by Zulu King [ view PDF ] The Whirlwind ● Tracey Owens Patton, devorah major, Anthony Mays, Bruce George, Jeanette Drake, Itibari M. Zulu, Renaldo Manuel Ricketts, Nandi Comer, Al Young, Ghasem Batamuntu, Mona Lisa Saloy, Eugene B. Redmond, Fritz Pointer, Gwendolyn Mitchell, Felix Orisewike Sylvanus, Rudolph Lewis, Kamaria Muntu, Ed Bullins, Mabel Mnensa, Kwan Booth, and Tureeda Mikell [ view PDF ] ● Poetic Mission: A Dialogue on the Role of the Poet and Poetry by Rudolph Lewis (dialogue team: Marvin X, Jerry Ward, Mary Weems, and C. Leigh McInnis) [ view PDF ] ● The Poetic Mission: Art II: Reviewing a Life, A Calling by Haki R. Madhubuti [ view PDF ] Amour of Ancestors ● Everett Hoagland, Charles Blackwell, Jacqueline Kibacha, John Reynolds III, Darlene Scott, Jimmy Smith Jr., Sam Hamud, Opal Palmer Adisa, Amy ‘Aimstar’ Andrieux, Lamont b. Steptoe, Avotcja Jiltonilro, Anthony Spires, Benecia Blue, Neil Callender, Tanure Ojaide, Pious Okoro, Tony Medina, Dr. Ja A. Jahannes, Brother Yao, Zayad Muhammad, Nykimbe Broussard, Kilola Maishya, Niyah X, Adrienne N. Wartts, Greg Carr, Darlene Roy, Tantra Zawadi, Ishmael Reed, Quincy Scott Jones, Bob McNeil, Ariel Pierson, Marie Rice, Yvonne Hilton, Bolade Akintolayo, Latasha Diggs, Felton Eaddy, and B. Sharise Moore [ view PDF ] Reviews, News, Views ● Medical Mythology by Ramal Lamar [ view PDF ] ● Qaddafy’s Apology for Arab Slavery: A Dialogue Between Poets by Rudolph Lewis, Sam Hamud, and Kola Boof [ view PDF ] ● Prize and Award: Chinua Achebe and Haki R. Madhubuti [ view PDF ] ● Two Poets in Oakland: Ishmael Reed and Marvin X by Ishmael Reed and Marvin X [ view PDF ] ● A Pan African Dialogue on Cuba: From Black Bird Press by Dead Prez, Carlos Moore, Pedro de la Hoz, and North American African Activist, Intellectuals and Artist [ view PDF ] ● Black Arts West Celebrates Amiri Baraka at 75 a photos essay by Kamau Amen-Ra [ view PDF ] ● Amiri Baraka Entertains SF: ‘Lowku’ versus Haiku Revives Fillmore Spirit by Lee Hubbard and Marvin X [ view PDF ] For a print version of Journal of Pan African Studies, Poetry issue, contact Black Bird Press, 1222 Dwight Way, Berkeley CA 94702, 475 pages, $49.95. Your donation supports Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland.

Neo Feudalism or Wage Slavery

Neo Feudalism or Wage Slavery

Ideally, capitalism desires cheap labor and resources in order to increase profits or capital to the maximum. The primary motive is profit, regarding labor as expendable or replaceable since there is an infinite supply of slaves or workers. And it assumed there will be a infinite amount of natural resources to exploit, ultimately at the point of the gun, i.e., obtainable by warfare.

We can use the African slave trade as a recent example of how capitalists kidnapped Africans and through behavior modification or brainwashing enforced by terror, the whip and gun, made them labor from can't see to can't see til eternity without paying them one dime. African land was in turn raped of all natural resources available, gold, diamonds, ivory, and other precious minerals and metals.

The industrial revolution made a minor change from chattel slavery to wage slavery that has persisted to today, of course for some workers wage slavery existed simultaneously with chattel slavery. The end of Reconstruction returned freed Africans to virtual chattel slavery when they became sharecroppers for racist white landowners, after the Africans were tricked out of their promised 40 acres and a mule. Landless yet forced to work the land without little compensation for their labor ultimately drove them Up South in the great migration of the latter 19th century.
Once there, the status of Africans was upgraded only slightly to the status of wage slaves, but never on par with the white workers, and this wage disparity has persisted to today. White labor is more important than black labor, and of course male labor more precious than female labor.

The unions gave workers a degree of improvement in their wages although the capitalist bosses fought tooth and nail to keep wages low, ultimately conspiring with union bosses to trick workers of their new found gains in job security, health insurance and retirement benefits.

The present economic melt down is the grand opportunity for capitalists to again approach chattel slavery in their wage war with workers. Outsourcing enabled the capitalists to destroy American workers, black and white, male and female. If American workers are prepared to enjoy the wage slavery of workers in outsourced countries, then there may be a few jobs for them. We recently heard that India is prepared to outsource jobs to America, at Indian wage slave levels, of course. An American MBA would therefore receive the same salary of his Indian counterpart, $14,000.00 per year rather than the American salary of $140,000.00.

American corporations desire the same wages from American workers if they can get it, if not, they simply out source. Capitalism does not discriminate when it comes to exploitation of labor, i.e., it cares no more about the white worker than the black worker, except in the dumb white worker's racist mind the black has always been in competition with him, this was the great fear of emancipation among white workers.

Today outsourcing is the cause of shrinking jobs in America, but again dumb white workers are blaming immigrant labor, blacks or even China. In the case of China, white workers do not understand American capitalists are in partnerships with Chinese corporations to rip off American jobs.

We have thus reached a point in time wherein the stage is being set for a workers revolution, if only the workers will get it clear in their minds what's really going on, how they are being hoodwinked and bamboozled by the greedy capitalists who have been rewarded for robbery by use of the global financial system through the perennial pyramid scheme banking network guided by the banker's bank The Federal Reserve, in cahoots with Wall Street and the military/corporate/university/prison complex.

Also understand the vital role of the petrochemical and pharmaceutical bandits who poison us with devitalized foods leading us from the dinner table to the hospital to the graveyard wherein we are laid to rest in poverty after a life of wage slavery in the hostile environment of job, home and the general society wherein we were overcome by consumerism or the world of make believe.

The corporations and banks are again flowing with cash after getting reimbursed from their losses in the global sub prime loan scheme/scam. The bosses are receiving mega salaries with mega bonuses, meanwhile the American workers suffer salary decreases, pervasive job insecurity, loss of benefits such as health insurance and retirement.

When will they protest, when will they demand economic justice? Never as long as the media magicians perpetuate the world of make believe and lull them to sleep watching video games, sport and play, i.e., pussy and dick stories and music videos on giant televisions. Let us not leave out fairy tale religiosity at the Ten Per Cent Club called church, the ultimate opiate of the people although they are being drugged from cradle to grave.

The era of jobs for life is over. Corporations desire contract workers at every level to escape the cost of permanent wage slaves. The largely unqualified black worker pool is expendable and eligible for incarceration if it attempts to rebel against its social-economic insecurity through criminality and/or revolution.

Once in the criminal justice system, the unemployed and unemployable black workers suddenly become a commodity, a valuable product of the prison/corporate complex. Rather than provide the blacks with skills to obtain jobs with living wages, they are made wards of the state at the cost of fifty to sixty thousand dollars per inmate per year, providing necessary jobs for white workers, even though many blacks are also employed at the department of corrections.

The capitalists could provide jobs with a living wage to the two million plus inmates, more than it costs to send them to Harvard, Yale and Stanford, but they rather employ slave catchers called police to round them up, often after they have dropped out or pushed out of public schools that Dr. Julia Hare calls holding cells for the departments of correction. Why should Johnny and Johnny Mae be inspired by a curriculum based on white supremacy mythology?

With a great percentage of black men on probation, parole or incarcerated, the destabilization of community is complete, thus neighborhoods ripe for gentrification. And even upon release from incarceration, they are only presented with mostly minimum wage jobs. In the South, many blacks must hold down three minimum wage jobs to make it. The fear of economic insecurity makes them submissive to racist bosses who will fire them at the first instance of organizing for improvements in salary and working conditions, and especially for spreading any semblance of radical consciousness on the job, or in the community for that matter. Even Up South in the north, the blacks work in fear, afraid to purchase literature during their lunch break for fear the boss will discover they have black consciousness.

As the economy continues in meltdown, we see few opportunities for the national advancement of North American Africans. With wages shrinking, jobs disappearing, incarceration increasing, the social-psychology of the hood is reaching the breaking point. Black mental health is deteriorating rapidly. People are trying to figure a way out of the morass.

I recently offered a woman my book How to Jump Out of the Box. She saw the title and said that's what she needs, and her friend too who was with her. Then she saw a quote by Buddha and hesitated to get the book but caught herself, "Oh, I guess it don't matter who said what, if I can get out the box." I nodded.

But how shall we get out of the box? Where do we go from here? What shall we tell our youth searching for a job when there are none? What shall we tell those smart enough to attend college, yet their future is bleak as well, unless they configure a solution in face of the continued desire for virtual slavery by the greater society.


Economic independence is the only solution, not sitting around waiting for the rustication of capitalism that shall not occur without radical structural change in a system that perpetuates greed rather than social concern. Trillions are lost in the foreign wars that benefit none but the military related corporations headed by former generals. And the supreme irony is that America can promise terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere education, jobs and housing if they will only lay down their guns and pledge allegiance to the puppet regimes the US is backing in her so-called war against terrorism, while who can be a greater world terrorist than the USA itself. She is the number one arms merchant of the world, thus she is the greatest purveyor of global violence. According to Nelson Mandela America is the reason there is no peace in the world.

Meanwhile cities are going broke, states as well, not to mention the looming national deficit, including the outstanding loan due China that is growing weary of the American dollar and is trading in her own currency and switching to Euros, for the Chinese are wise enough to know the American king is no more, half naked and soon to be butt naked in the sun.

Imagine Capitalists owing Communists trillions of dollars. How could this be? We've been taught the Communists were imbeciles and Capitalists were the smart guys. But we know the capitalists practice socialism among themselves and push their rotten capitalism on the deaf, dumb and blind masses, the wage slaves who shall never inherit the earth until they bury the capitalists in their own vomit. We doubt they will suddenly decide to share the wealth, so it must be seized from them by mass unity and ultimately this may include violence. Liberty or death! If you seek a better life for yourselves and your children, you must join the revolution. Fanon said revolution is not only the solution to your economic health but your mental health as well. Mao told us the reactionaries shall never put down their butcher knives, they shall never turn into Buddha heads! Sonia Sanchez says resist, resist, resist!
--Marvin X
1/5/11

Marvin X's Five Hunid Dollar Book

Marvin X's Five Hunid Dollar Book!!!


Marvin X, Oakland's Plato Negro, according to fellow Oakland writer Ishmael Reed, shocked the literary world last year, 2010, when he released The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Parables/fables of Marvin X at the retail price of one hunid dollars.

People thought he'd lost his mind, but he laughed all the way to the bank. The limited edition sold out. Even now, Marvin doesn't have a personal copy. One brother bought seven copies to give away to friends. Many persons purchased the book on layaway.

Marvin X disdains book stores so his books are not available in stores, mainly at his Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland. The site outside of Rite Aid is his classroom/clinic where he does peer counseling based on his book How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy, A Pan African/13 Step Model. At the Academy he mentors and advises youth and adults. He calls the site a sacred space and no stress zone where people can gather to discuss the myriad problems affecting their lives, especially trauma, unresolved grief and male/female relations.

The author's Black Bird Press is too poor to mass produce his books, so he prints limited editions, sometimes less than a hundred before he goes to another title. According to the Last Poets, Marvin writes a book a month. While on a national book tour in 2009, he wrote a memoir of his friend Eldridge Cleaver in three weeks, posting each chapter daily on his and other blogs.

Last year, 2010, Marvin X became one of the most prolific authors in the world, completing eight titles, including guest editing the poetry issue of the Journal of Pan African Studies, an online journal of the Pan African Diaspora. People can download the journal for free (www.jpanfricanstudies.com).

Since he received no payment for editing the magazine, the Journal editors gave Black Bird Press permission to print a hard copy version. The print version is 475 pages, $49.95.

Yesterday, the print version hit the streets. When people saw the print edition, they exclaimed,
"Ok, Marvin, how much is it, $500.00?" Two people in a row asked the same five hunid dollar question. Now $500.00 sounds better than $50.00, so let me think about, the poet said to himself.

Before he changes his mind and ups the price, we advise loyal readers of his books to rush down to the Academy of da Corner at 14th and Broadway and get your autographed copy. Poetry lovers and persons seeking African consciousness will not be disappointed at the JPAS collection of poetry from around the world.

Bay Area Poets Read from
the Journal of Pan African Studies, Poetry Issue

Bay Area poets are represented in the journal: Ishmael Reed, Al Young, Opal Palmer Adisa, devorah major, Ayodele Nzingha, Phavia Kujichagulia, Kwan Booth, Ptah Allah El,Ghasem Batamuntu, Tureeda Mikell, Kilola Maisha, Nykimbe Broussard, Fritz Pointer, J. Vern Cromartie, Renaldo Ricketts, Niya X, Avotcja, Ramal Lamar and Marvin X.













Celebrating Release of the Poetry Issue, Journal of Pan African Studies





Celebrating Release of the Poetry Issue, Journal of Pan African Studies






A reading from the journal is being planned. For more information check Marvin X's blog: www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com or email him: jmarvinx@yahoo.com.

confessions of a wife beater

WHITE SUPREMACY-2 BY MARVIN X

Marvin X Tribute sponsored The Oakland Post, show #1

Marvin X Jet #2.mp4

Obama Must Give A General Amnesty to Prisoners

Obama Must Give General Amnesty to all Prisoners


There has been a long call to free all prisoners unjustly held in American prisons and jails. Ninety per cent were mind altered at the time of their arrest, at least 50% were likely dual diagnosed, i.e., suffer drug abuse and mental illness. The majority are in for petty crimes and if they'd had proper legal representation would serve little or no time at all.

Not only are their crimes petty but should be seen as economic crimes due to poverty and lack of opportunity in a system that is advancing to what must be called neo-feudalism or wage slavery with little permanent employment, no health insurance, no unionism, thus they work at the whim of bosses who earn mega salaries and generous bonuses.

Once incarcerated, they suffer sexual and physical abuse, otherwise known as torture of the worse kind, and this includes inmates of mental wards, juvenile homes, jails and prisons. Those prisoners of conscious are often the most isolated for fear they will infect the population with radical ideology. The death row inmates are usually black and poor again, again, would not be on death row with proper legal representation.

The economic and social cost is astronomical, between fifty and sixty thousand dollars per inmate per year, more than it would cost to send them to Harvard, Yale and Stanford. But incarceration is big business in the era of de-industrialisation or the withering world of work, especially jobs with a living wage. Yet these neo-slaves, i.e., under the US Constitution involuntary servitude is legal, are a valuable commodity in the economic order. Prisons and jails are big business, in many communities the only business. They are now privatized and part of the military/corporate/university complex of institutions that perpetuate the capitalist system of free market exploitation. The incarcerated are of such value that the most powerful union in the state of California is the Correctional Officers Union that obviously has a vital stake in keeping the prison population high so they can maintain their lifestyle of conspicuous consumption. The Union will fight to the death to prevent a general amnesty.

In cahoots with the correctional officers are police departments who must arrest a quota of persons to maintain their jobs and justify their budgets. In some cities the police departments consume the major portion of city funds, to the neglect of schools, libraries and employment projects that would decrease arrests, court costs and incarceration. Many times the police are guilty of planting false evidence, false arrests, engaging in prostitution, drug dealing and money laundering. This behavior by law enforcement is a common feature below the border in Mexico, but is rapidly becoming a feature across the border in the US.

In some cases the police are in conspiracy with developers to destabilize neighborhoods that soon fall to gentrification. All the above applies to Oakland, California. It is a community under siege by police and gangs connected with the police. We suspect half the black on black homicide is police conspired.

A general amnesty must become a top priority of communities, especially with so many men falling victim to the slave catching police. This leads to family disintegration by increasing single family households. It is causing personality deformations in boys and girls who suffer prolong identity crisis since they lack positive male models. A young man attending a drug recovery meeting said, "Man, you might think some of my friends are gay, but they ain't gay, they just never heard a man's voice!"

We must reclaim are people from the dungeons , hellholes and Gulags in America. We cannot continue allowing them to be commodities in the capitalist system, similar to pork, corn, wheat and oil, to be traded on the stock exchange as neo-slaves.

If the last act of Saddam Hussein was a general amnesty, surely President Obama can do the same. It may get him some much needed brownie points for his 2012 election bid. But he must do so because it is the right thing to do. To not do so is economically and socially unsustainable.
--Marvin X
1/4/11