The Black Arts Movement at Yoshi's, San Francisco

The Black Arts Movement at Yoshi's, San Francisco

Last night at Yoshi's in the Fillmore, Amiri Baraka and Roscoe Mitchell performed a concert partially devoted to the life and times of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Baraka photo Kamau Amen Ra


Baraka is godfather of the Black Arts Movement or BAM, and Roscoe Mitchell of the Chicago Arts Ensemble is a BAM Master as well. They were joined by poet Marvin X who opened both sets with a poem. Marvin X's Black Arts West Theatre, 1966, was a block or two down from Yoshi's at Turk and Fillmore. With playwright Ed Bullins, essayist Eldridge Cleaver (Soul on Ice) and Ethna X, companion of Marvin X, they established the political/cultural Center called Black House.

The Black House on Broderick Street was the center for radical culture in the Bay Area, 1967. Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Askia Toure, Emory Douglas, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Lil Bobby Hutton, Sarah Webster Fabio, Avotcja, Samuel Napier, Ellendar Barnes, Dezzie Woods Jones, Bennie Ivy, Norman Brown, Walter Riley, Rosco Proctor, and numerous arts and politicos congregated at Black House. The Chicago Arts Ensemble had performed. Roscoe remembers the Black House, especially the food. Ethna X (Hurriyah) and Amina Baraka created the food.




photo Gene Hazzard



Tonight was the rare coming together of BAM artists from three regions, although BAM was bi-coastal. Baraka from Newark, New Jersey, Roscoe from Chicago and Marvin X from the San Francisco Bay. Marvin X also worked at the New Lafayette Theatre in Harlem and with Sun Ra. Sun Ra created music for two musicals of Marvin's Take Care of Business (aka Flowers for the Trashman) and Resurrection of the Dead.

After Marvin's opening poem, Roscoe began with percussion work. He tinkered with bells and other sounds, preparing the way for Baraka, but this opening was himself at his greatest. Calmly he went about his musical work.

A musician who accompanies a poet must be humble to the word, he cannot become self-consumed so that we do not hear the word. Such a musician is thus highly conscious of the word as he is of himself. But the focus is on the word and he respects the word and wants to enhance the word, accent the word.

Roscoe is the man for the job. The first set he was reserved, it was a kind of rehearsal, though there is a natural harmony between the poet and musician, most especially with Amiri Baraka, who highly appreciates music and musicians. This is the BAM tradition.

At Black Arts West Theatre on Fillmore, we used to let the musicians be free. They asked to be free. During our productions they might roam the stage, the audience and go outside on the street to join the sounds of the street traffic and cars, often doing a call and response with car horns: Dewey Redman, Donald Rafael Garrett, Monte Waters, Earl Davis, BJ, Oliver Johnson, were some of the Black Arts West musicians.

Baraka joined Mitchell with tales and poems of his childhood in Newark, what a weird child he was, reading Japanese poetry and coming up with Lowku, the Negro version of Haiku Ku because we don't have time to count syllables. Baraka is the court jester, the comedian, the joker who is more than serious, for he is too bright to be taken lightly, the opposite of the people in one of poems, white racists, who are too ignut to understand what's happening to them, too ignut to be white even.

Baraka began his tribute to MLK with the wedding of MLK and Coretta Scott. He weaved his narrative by chronicling major events of MLK and the Civil Rights Movement. It was a history lesson every child should know, the dates, the events, the names of warriors, martyrs and devils Rosa Parks, Bull Conners, Black Power, Freedom Riders, Student Sit-ins, Black Power, Non-violence.

Baraka, 77 this year, transformed from poet to actor, playwright, singer, doing all the parts of blacks and whites. He sang all the freedom songs throughout his narrative, revealing his knowledge of black Christian culture, for it was the foundation of the Civil Rights Movement, after all, non-violence is a Christian concept, born of Jesus Christ, although at one point Baraka mentioned that Christians need do a body count as a result of their religion.

It was interesting to hear and see Baraka tell the story of MLK from his perspective, a participant/observer, analyst, organizer, living historian, walking history himself. He told the time MKL knocked on his door in Newark, during the Poor People's campaign, Martin had a stubble beard with no tie on. The King said to the king, Le Roi, you don't look like such a bad fellow!

Baraka does not attempt revisionist history, but tells it like it was, even free of strident ideology, propaganda, just the story. All the time Roscoe is dancing from horn to horn, never upstaging but accenting always, a call and response in the African and BAM tradition, which are one.

Only after Baraka ended the King narrative with his assassination did Roscoe take off on his horns, and this was especially during the second set. He took us to a lyrical land of sound and beauty, letting us know he is one of the true Masters of creative sound.

The audience gave the brothers much applause and appreciation. Ninety per cent of those present were whites. A brother whispered to me in the lobby, "Man, I never heard or seen anything like this in my life!"



Baraka could have used some help reading all the parts. Indeed, after the last set, he asked me rhetorically, Marvin why didn't you help me do this?
--Marvin X
1/18/11

Baraka and Marvin at Yoshi's
photo Julian Carroll







Catch Marvin X and poets in the Journal of Pan African Studies, Poetry Issue, edited by Marvin X, during Black History Month: Saturday, February 19, 3-6pm, Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th and Franklin, downtown Oakland.

I wanted to read a poem on the theme of love dedicated to Dr. King

I wanted to read a poem on the theme of love dedicated to Dr. King


I wanted to read a poem on the theme of love dedicated to Dr. King
but I listened to the news all night talking about a new event in Haiti

We thought Haiti was in bad shape
poverty ignorance disease
after defeating the Spanish English French
including Napoleon
don't ever do that
beat the white man
you will suffer forever
in the deepest corner of hell
like Haiti
a freedom never realized
a suffering never seen
we thought Haiti was in bad shape
hurricanes earthquakes cholera
no government
no trees
no water
no housing
no president
we thought Haiti was in bad shape
no reconstruction a year after quake
we thought Haiti was in bad shape
rigged elections
but then came the worse of all possible things
worse than poverty ignorance disease
hurricanes quakes
cholera
worse than no trees water food
we thought Haiti was in bad shape
then the plane landed
evil will prevail he had said
a police escort
evil will prevail he had taught
a hero's welcome

wasn't Aristide, priest of the poor
democratically elected, removed on orders of you know who
by you know who
flow away by you know who
I wasn't Aristide
we thought Haiti was in bad shape
then the prince of evil landed
worse than his Papa
We thought Haiti was in bad shape
then Baby Doc came home.

--Marvin X
1/17/11

From Savagery to Civility

From Savagery to Civility

Unity, Criticism, Unity! We must be able to criticize each other constructively, to engage in debate and dialogue. This is how civilize people conduct their affairs. Now savages want to kill, no debate, no dialogue, no comment. Man, I wanna smoke dat nigguh!
--from Soulful Musings on Unity, Marvin X
12/10/10

It is imbecilic to think a nation steeped in the blood of global violence and permanent war can attain civility at home, for as Baldwin noted, "The murder of my child will not make your child safe."

It is indeed ironic and most tragic that the nine year old girl born on 9/11 was the model of civil engagement and gave her life to the process. As she tried to exercise civility, her sick brother reflected the blow back from the deranged mentality that lurks in the deep structure of most American minds, rooted in the mythology of white supremacy that insures domination by use of the gun.

How can America be the number one arms merchant of the world yet pretend civility? No, you are a savage who must be corralled and disarmed as must happen to the citizens in the cowboys-gone-wild state of Arizona and throughout the American states where guns are the number one past time, the cultural residue of kidnappers, rapers, robbers, land grabbers and moral hypocrites.

The call to civility shall ring hollow for the sick savages in America shall only sink deeper into the chasm of mental darkness. The alleged mass killer in Tucson, Arizona symbolizes the general pathological state of Americans who imagine they can expend an annual trillion dollar military budget to kill, yet maintain peace at home. What goes around comes around, they say in the hood. Yes, the chickens come home to roost.

Just as there is little mental health treatment for the soldiers returning from savagery in Iraq,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere, there is obviously little mental health treatment for the mass killer in Tucson who wandered the streets of the city with severe mental health issues that were obvious to all.

We can listen to Right and Left wing radio and decipher the same pathology that the mass killer actualized. The Left is simply spineless while the Right is heartless, but we can do nothing when lacking heart or spine!

Where is the voice on the Left calling for an end to permanent wars? Where are the protests, demonstrations, mass marches? The Left hardly said a peep as the military budget was passed for the coming killing season. The American Left and Right are simply different sides of the same coin of white supremacy.

And the silent Blacks and other ethnic groups suffer Type II White Supremacy as Dr. Nathan Hare teaches us. Their over identification with white supremacy has addicted them to singing Silent Night and Onward Christian Soldiers. They are like those monkeys who know nothing, see nothing and do nothing.

The only hope is the children, like nine year old Christine, who indeed represented the generation that may achieve the civility of political engagement and clean up the mess of the elders. Christine was in league with my grandson, now three, who told me at two years old: "Grandpa, you can't save the world, but I can!"
--Marvin X
1/13/11

Marvin X facilitates Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland. His Academy of da Corner Reader's Theatre will perform poetry from the Journal of Pan African Studies, Poetry Issue, Saturday, February 19, 3-6pm, at the Joyce Gordon Gallery, 14th and Franklin, Oakland.

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