Wall Street and the American White Revolution

Saturday, March 5, 2011

America's White Revolution

Wall Street and America's White Revolution? Is America in the birth pains of revolution, of joining the struggle of people around the world for social and economic justice? What is the end game of the Tea Party goers and the unions struggling for their definition of social economic democracy? Will there inevitably be a clash between the unionists and workers on the Left and the Tea Party Constitutionalists on the Right? Or will they merge into the American White Revolution? Events are moving fast, from the Middle East to Wisconsin, Ohio, California and elsewhere. And now Wall Street is under attack, hub of global finance and imperialism. Ultimately the General Strike is in order to close America down, to bring her to her knees and seize the means of production and all institutions that deprive the people of their human rights. It is time to reclaim the wealth from the blood suckers of the poor. We know dissatisfaction brings change, real change. The unemployed, the wage slave workers and other marginalized people will inevitably reach the breaking point. As the ruling class strengthen their stranglehold on the necks and backs of the middle and lower class, the more possibility for revolution with the great possibility that other ethnic minorities will join the liberation struggle. Sam Anderson has called for more North American Africans and Indigenous people to join the battle at Wall Street, that ancient slave mart that is yet a slave mart. As in the Middle East and North Africa, things will hit the fan in America when youth take to the streets, suffering marginalization, high unemployment, homelessness and mental depression. The feeling of nothingness and dread shall propel them into forward motion of the radical kind. The workers, unemployed, students, artists, intellectuals, and religious communities shall see the need for unity and will merge their agendas for the greater good. When the people refuse to accept wage slavery and the concomitant world of make believe perpetuated by the media magicians and the Center Right Democratic and Republican parties in league with the military/corporate complex, the American White Revolution will begin. We should expect the reactionaries to mount the counter attack with state police power that may approach events in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere, outright mass murder under the color of law, mass incarcerations utilizing the terrorist laws under Homeland Security. The 700 people arrested this past weekend is a clear sign the police will need to get it right and decide what side they are on. Are they part of the problem or part of the solution. Just as the military in Egypt had to decide, the police of America must join the struggle or go down with the reactionaries. They cannot defend the state and the filthy capitalist swine. Their duty is to protect the people. The Right will attempt to defeat the masses to continue the regime of the American neo-slave system. But a people united cannot be defeated. Fanon taught that all de-colonization is successful. The reactionaries will be forced to put down their butcher knives in the face of people power. They will be forced to share the wealth, to open the coffers of the rich, the financial and corporate bandits and distribute the wealth stolen from the labor of the poor and middle class who have long suffered from the greedy blood suckers of the poor and working class. With a united people practicing eternal vigilance, the corporate and Wall Street bandits shall be forced to end their hoarding of the wealth they hoodwinked and bamboozled from the workers and poor; the wage slavery, the pyramid scheme loans of the housing industry, the wretched outdated white supremacy curriculum in the schools, the poor devitalized food of the petro-chemical industry and the pharmaceutical directed health care system, dominated by the insurance companies, even under President Obama's health plan that was a capitulation to the bandits. We smell a fresh breath of air blowing in the winds, yes, the east wind is blowing west. We think white people will be forced to stand from their stunted position, backs broken by the bloodsuckers of the poor, the working poor and middle class. North American Africans have long suffered a stunted life, full of poverty, ignorance and disease, even the middle class live in the world of make believe, traumatized by the hostile environment and addicted to conspicuous consumption. So we see the great possibility White America and North American Africans may see their way to Liberation Square, and if necessary, in the manner of the Egyptians, lay their blankets in front of tanks and take a nap, daring the tank driver to run them over, for their best poet told them not long ago: even a tank driver must serve somebody, must answer to somebody. --Marvin X 4/5/11 Revised 10/4/11

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Friday, March 4, 2011

Reply to Marvin X from Rudolph Lewis on the American White Revolution

Rudy:

Dream on dreamer. If you wake up, you're hear the voice of the ancestors, "The worse is yet to come . . . we ain't nowhere near daylight."

Toppling a dictator and replacing it with an exceedingly wealthy military elite does not a revolution make.

Loving you madly, Rudy

Marvin X:

Rudy, you must look into the deep structure of things, far beyond the surface. When the husband beats a pregnant wife, this doesn't mean the baby won't be born. There may be some damage to the fetus but that baby is coming out for we know how much violence the woman is able to withstand, including the act of delivery itself. So we only know we are seeing things people predicted around 2012, a universal phenomenon that is beyond the imagination, and yes, we ain't seen nothing yet. Wait until the boys and girls rise up in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere on the oil lands and lanes. Wait til gas is ten dollars a gallon and a lemon five dollars. Just wait til the midnight hour.

Rudy:

Marvin, you're right: I do not know about the "deep structure of things." I do have my failings. But I suppose if I am expert at anything it is the nature of white people in America. I do wonder whether the same God who made my people made them. And if he did, what was he thinking: they have been a pestilence on the face of the earth. We need to have serious talk with His divine ways.

Let me be a prophet for a moment. As soon as the working class whites settle this matter with the Wisconsin governor, however it ends, they will be back talking about the intrusion of "niggers" in Milwaukee and Madison. Tell me, how do you think Walker got into office. I'll tell you: on a racist tip. These whites falling back into the pack of the poor thought the governor was going to take the war only to the Negroes. And what did they discover belatedly, it's gonna be class warfare and the poor whites and the marginal middle class whites, they too will be a sacrifice to the Koch brothers and other such wealthy bullies.

But this lesson will be short-lived as I suggested. As soo as these working class whites can they will betray the blacks for a farthing. That's a centuries old pattern. let us learn our history.

Hold out no hope for the struggle of black and white together, at least not in this decade.

Loving you madly, Rudy

Marvin X:

We can see from the Middle East that Arab zenophobia of Black Africans has tainted their freedom struggle. Yet this has been a long simmering problem in the Arab world just as it has been intractable and pervasive in the White Supremacy world of the West, especially in America. Thus, it must be clearly understood that liberation without recovery from the addiction to white supremacy, including Arab racism and American racism, will be short lived. As DuBois said, the problem in America is the color line, but we can expand this globally. Farakhan once said wherever he went on the planet earth the black man was on the bottom. When Cynthia McKinney was jailed in Israel she found Africans filled the jail, and we know the racial demographics of American gulags.

Without a global detox and recovery from the addiction to white supremacy in all its forms, and it is cunning and vile, surfacing its head in all religions and economic systems, there shall be no real peace in the world. Racism must be attacked in the Masjed, Church, temple, and all social institutions before the New Man and Woman can stand tall in the sun, racism and gender discrimination are pervasive in the global village. The new consciousness shall not function with any residue of racism and sexism.

We must note the Type II White Supremacy Dr. Nathan Hare speaks about that is the Black addiction to white supremacy mythology. Thus all forms of white supremacy must be eradicated before the modern world will be truly and thoroughly liberated.

Rudy:

Marvin, I speak that which I know and that which I don't know I excuse myself. I wrestled with the situation of Libya for days, reading and listening to as much as I could find before I finally posted the Pan-African piece.

http://www.nathanielturner.com/libyagettingitrightpanafrican.htm

But usually I post several points of view rather than one in that I am so far away from the scenes of counter-revolution. The corporate media is of little help nor is PBS (now under attack by federal defunding). Liberals fear any clarity of things on the ground. The truth I know is somewhere in the mix.

I shy away from ideology. I know with a certainty that foreign wars do not serve the American poor, to paraphrase MLK. We have two in the Mid-East already and an undeclared class war going on here in America. I hope Obama is not fool enough to be suckered into another Mid-East war now recommended by the Republicans and other imperial nuts.

White Americans are a strange breed and have little restraint when it comes to their racial prejudices. We are in the Age of the Neo-Confederacy, that is, white Americans are ever ready to shoot themselves in the foot to spite their face. Liberation is faraway from the dawn. Counter-revolutionatries are on the march and winning.

Loving you madly, Rudy

Prosperity diAries: Day 18, Silence

Prosperity diAries: Day 18> Silence

The morning was gloomy filled with grayish clouds. It rained which was great it hadn’t rained in months.I let the rain drizzle on me and put my umbrella away. My sis and I went to the East Bay church of religious science. Rev. Elouise talked about giving yourself up to god. To some folks that means sitting up in church every Sunday, reciting holy text, rebuking anyone that is of another faith. For me it means honoring the god within me which goes beyond my doubts, worries, fears and expectations.

People always say “Aries your so patient” but really its the god in me. I believe in the power of prayer and divine intervention. Shoot, I would have givin up a long time ago if it wasn’t for the grace of god. After church, I felt the need to be in silence. No talking, no second opinion, no chatting about mundane things, no mindless talking to feel the air only silence.

I told Lil sis let's not talk for a couple of hours. As much as I love to talk even I have to shut up every now and then. Silence helps me to clear my head and be more in my body. I know folks that always gotta have some kind of noise in the background; radio, TV, gun shots or sirens. I remember in college one of my friends was like it is weird in upstate New York cause you don’t hear helicopters or ambulances like in the city.

We all have soundtracks to our lives that we hear on a regular basis and conversations that seem to keep repeating. When we turn down the volume and give words a rest many things arise. In silence we find the answers that we have been looking for, the clarity we need to move forward and insight if you listen.

In the words of the great Sufi poet Rumi

I took a vow of silence
And my tongue is tied
Yet still,
I’m the speaker without a speech
Tonight.

Enjoy the sweetness of silence. Peace yall

--Aries Jordan

Aries is author of Journey to Womanhood, poems, 2011, Black Bird Press.

Thievery Corporation - Amerimacka

Ode to the Lady Drunk on Self Righteousness

Ode to the Lady Drunk on Self Righteousness

Who is this lady who loves modern day lynchings? Who is this lady who is never humble enough to admit her guilt, her fault, her wrongdoing? Who can be perfect every single time? Not one person and certainly not a large institution and never a nation. This nation is deeply embedded with the error of self-righteous ways that she has masked in pursuit of her own wealth, disguised in idealistic terms such as Westward Expansion, Religious Freedom, Democracy, Capitalism, The American Dream, Industrialism, and Rugged Individualism. All of these pursuits have led to the destruction of so many groups and ideals that stood in the way of narrow minded Euro-Americans fulfilling their own dreams. Dreams that have not been consistent with the idealism in that “perfect” doctrine known as the Constitution of the United States of America.

America has never apologized for her treatment of African Americans during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and thereafter. This failure to apologize has caused her tremendous guilt and pain when looking into the face of African Americans; as a result, we can never really deal with one another on equal footing. As a result, she is still able to lynch innocent individuals with no remorse, with no guilt, and with no shame. No matter what the world conscious says, her arrogance, her self-righteousness will not allow her to say or to even consider, “Perhaps I have made a mistake.”

America there has been many mistakes. More than 30 years ago Martin Luther King reminded you of the words of the bible which says, that pride and arrogance goes before a great fall. You are falling and you can’t even see it. You have been warned and you are being warned, but you’re drunk with your own quest for power and wealth. It is time to see that your imbalance will never lead you to seek truth, justice and righteousness on behalf of all of humanity. Wake up, before you begin to be a remnant of the past, like the Incas, the Mayans, the Babylonians, the Romans and other great empires of the past that are only relics of history. Wake up Amerimacka before Injustice comes knocking on your door.

And for those who think this doesn’t apply to you, if you’re not fighting against injustice, your complicity is guilt enough to condemn you.

There's is yet work to do...peace and blessings to all of us, for we are Troy Davis!

Nefertitti

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCD99jMMuh0

Serendipity Books, R.I.P., Peter Howard

Serendipity Books, R.I.P.

By DAVID STREITFELD
New York Times

Who doesn’t love buying online? It offers a bigger selection for less money, ordered from the privacy of your home and delivered there too. But if e-commerce is great for consumers, it is more problematic for citizens. The sales tax that people pay in physical stores helps pay for the upkeep of their communities. The physical stores also provide employment; these workers can afford in turn to buy things and thus keep the economy afloat. Few such benefits flow from e-commerce.

The bookseller Peter B. Howard, shortly before his death.

California, with a colossal hole in its budget and 12 percent unemployment, is confronting this quandary as it tries to compel Amazon.com to collect sales tax. Amazon is so confident that bargain-hunting consumers will rally to its side that it is essentially ignoring the law. Maybe they will.

But as the battle between the state and the retailer was heating up late last week, news came that Serendipity Books in Berkeley was closing. Antiquarian stores like Serendipity were once plentiful. They specialized in winnowing the detritus of the past, plucking the important material for collectors, scholars and institutions. Serendipity was for decades one of the best such shops, and eventually one of the last. In the years to come, people will have a hard time appreciating there were such places, where anyone who wanted to could look and learn and buy, or maybe just while away a rainy afternoon. So let’s spend a moment giving Serendipity its due.

The store was founded by Peter B. Howard in the early 1960s with the notion that the best bookshop in the world would have one copy of everything. It sometimes seemed as if Serendipity fulfilled this dream. Potential customers were confronted with a warren of rooms, some two stories high, with good books stuffed absolutely everywhere, including in shopping bags blocking the narrow aisles. Although there was clearly an underlying order, its nature was hard to discern; there were no signs. People would wander in a daze, sometimes asking, “Do you sell books here?” They thought it was a library or perhaps a museum.

The lack of direction was on purpose and in earnest. Mr. Howard wanted people to search for books and find not just what they were looking for but the book next to it, which they might want more if they only realized it existed. “The bookstore is an infinite array of material and knowledge of which you know nothing,” he said. “If you’re focused, you go to the library.”

Or, these days, you go online. Serendipity largely ignored the Web
as a publicity and selling device and the Internet returned the favor.

Mr. Howard might have created a wonder-filled shop, but on Yelp the reviews were few and grudging. One reviewer complained that prices were too high. Another said the store offered too little when it was buying your old books. Neither seemed to appreciate that the store could exist only because there was a merchant in the middle of these transactions trying to make a living, and that there was a benefit to the community that it was this way.

Mr. Howard bought and sold collections as well as individual books, including the world’s greatest assortment of lost race fiction (a peculiar American fixation in the early years of the 20th century; Tarzan was its most famous exemplar); a 5,000-item gathering of material about baseball dating from 1819; proletarian literature from the 1930s; classic film scripts from all eras; geoscience and paleontology published between 1550 and 1850; pioneering collections of fiction and nonfiction about the oil industry and the Vietnam War. The store featured Carl Sandburg’s guitar and Jack London’s spears. The poetry sections were a trove of obscure versifiers, unrivaled by any store in the country. There were vast holdings of Canadiana, books in Russian from the early Soviet period, every book in seemingly every edition by John Steinbeck, from $20,000 inscribed copies of The Grapes of Wrath to paperback reprints. Mr. Howard believed in volume and breadth.

You needed to know what you were doing to take advantage of Serendipity, which used to be the way the world worked. Finding the books was only the beginning. After you stumbled on things you wanted to take home – perhaps through persistence, perhaps by serendipity – you would be making a mistake to take your choices to the bookkeeper in her alcove, the closest the store had to a checkout till. Instead, the smart customer would take them up to Mr. Howard, pausing first to see if the Giants had won their most recent game.

The fortunes of the team often affected how much he would charge for books. This quirk was so pronounced it was immortalized in print. In Samuel Gottlieb’s “Overbooked in Arizona,” the tale of a book collector gone mad, the protagonist is driving from Phoenix to Berkeley to buy books at Serendipity when the Giants lose a game they had been winning. He cuts across the median and heads back home, knowing the trip is now in vain.

If your chosen books were already priced, Mr. Howard almost always lowered the sum demanded for each unless he didn’t like you. If they were unpriced, four out of five would be less than you hoped while one would be much more. But you had to take all of them if you wanted a similar deal next time. The books would be written up by hand on an invoice, a tedious process but on Saturdays Mr. Howard nourished all comers with pastries and coffee. When the books finally changed hands, money did not necessarily follow. Like a good bar, which in some ways it resembled, Serendipity allowed customers to run a tab and pay more or less when they wanted. As I write this, I owe $388.

Suppose you took a book home and belatedly decided, for whatever reason, you did not want it? All Serendipity catalogs were emblazoned with the remark, “Any book may be returned for any reason.” I returned a book. Once. As Mr. Howard complained about my bad faith, I referred to the guarantee. Mr. Howard’s wife, Alison, who was listening, responded sweetly: “We said we’d accept back any book. We didn’t say we’d do it happily.”

Downloading ebooks was nothing like this. Serendipity was a refuge and an education.

And sometimes a pain. Mr. Howard could be a difficult man. “He always had an instant answer he would throw in your face in the manner of some biblical prophet,” the bookseller David Mason wrote. Yet he was also wildly generous, a quality never more on display than in his famous biannual parties when the store would be swept clean and a fabulous all-day feast put on, with suckling pigs and fine wine. It was a way of rooting himself in the community. Customers would walk in with an interesting tale and interesting books, and Mr. Howard would buy them. “Because I own the building, I can have a lot of books, and because I have a lot of books in a visible place, things can happen,” he said.

Mr. Howard was too irascible to train a successor but when he developed pancreatic cancer two years ago, he began trying to sell the store. The price would have been about the seven-figure sum that it takes to buy a nice house in Berkeley, a pittance really. There were no takers. Who wants a half-million books in the Internet Age?

The bookseller was 72 when he died on March 31, Opening Day, while watching his beloved Giants. He checked out in the bottom of the sixth, when the score was still 0-0 and before the Giants could lose. The store hung on a couple more months as the Howard family considered its options. Late last week, Nancy Kosenka, Mr. Howard’s longtime deputy, posted on her Facebook page that Saturday would be it. Sales were brisk. Late in the afternoon, a first-time customer walked in, scanned the shelves in bewilderment and inevitably asked, “Do you sell books here?” Not anymore.

----

Peter Howard, R.I.P., encouraged the Bancroft Library to acquire the archives of Marvin X. He also was agent for the archives of Eldridge Cleaver and Ishmael Reed.

Congo Square West

Congo Square West

Ancient drum beats
rock Berkeley Flea Market
crossroads of Africans in the Bay
Legba land
drummers at the gate
like Peter
Ptah
rhythms from a land forgotten
land reclaimed
somehow remembered
the ancient dance of Shango
Ogun
Yemanja
fused with blues and holy ghost shout
these are not true Africans, you say
they cannot speak the mother tongue
dance the ritual moves of ten thousand years in Yorubaland
but sincere and pure they beat their congas, batas, djembes
healing what and where they can in the broken brain cells
wives drop off drummers
girls
women join the circle
dancing to the wind
remembering what they can of sacred moves, leaps, twists, turns
the men from Pelican Bay take their turn
don't be surprised at these holy men
who move and shake and raise arms in praise to some most high god of long ago
but they believe
and they move in holy ghost rhythms
the sweat runs down their foreheads
they do the james brown on the concrete
leaping, sliding jumping
there are those on the sidelines chanting in tongues unknown
known only to the insane
yet the healing is in motion
one day at a time.
--Marvin X

How Did I Get Here and How Do I Get Back Home?

How Did I Get Here, and How Do I Get Back Home?












Marvin X and Master Sun Ra, his mentor.

How Did I Get Here and How Do I Get Back Home?

I listen to the Kora
I wander into the self lost soul lost
how did I get here
yes, in this land of Babylon
stranger in a strange land
I am naked in the street
take me to the hospital
I am sick
it is the music that I hear
not the ancient music of my soul
call it sold music sold out music
demonic sounds of nothingness and dread
nursery rhymes for sleepy time tea children

Oh, Ancestors, deliver me from this unholy condition
lift me up to my Father's House
let the chains of the dungeon fly from my legs
let me fly home
send the space ship to the rescue
Sun Ra
spread your sacred wings around me
devour me in your love
Oh, Sun Ra we call upon your Wisdom
let us escape the box
let the Creator take us in his grace

We are better than this, wiser than this, more holy than this
the Holy Ghost fills us with His Holy Spirit
we talk in tongues
we fly into space
we are not in this place
we are in a world where our bodies dance into the sun
fly into the moon
we spread our wings and fly to Jupiter, Mars, to the Sun
Space is the Place
Space is the Place
--Marvin X
9/1/11

Wall Photos (94)

Wall Photos (94)

A Funny Thing Happened at Berkeley High's All Class Reunion Gathering

Berkeley High's Reunion


This past Saturday, Berkeley High held an all-class reunion at San Pablo Park. Ironically, although Berkeley High has been known as an integrated school, this all class reunion was 99% North American African. I had the pleasure of the 1%, a drunk white man who somehow found me among the two thousand North American Africans and decided to sit at my feet. And then proceeded to light a cigarette. I asked him to kindly get out of my Motherfuckin' face, which his girlfriend persuaded him to do, after all, it was clear they had wondered into the park, not knowing it was a Black gathering.

FYI, the gathering was a great gathering of Berkeley Black Unity, without incident and totally peaceful, with blues music and vendors selling food and Black Art. Old school mates embraced and enjoyed the sunny day.

Briefly, I stood talking with Dr. Robert McKnight, Chair of African American Studies at Berkeley High. He requested his remarks remain off the record, but I will say Black Studies at Berkeley High is in crisis and the District is doing everything it can to eliminate it, although it is perhaps the first high school Black Studies Department in America. Dr. McKnight gave out his business card that said the following on the back:
We Ain't Going Out Like That
Join the Struggle
"Keep the Legacy Alive"
Kiswahili 1
African American Literature
African American Psychology
African American Journalism
Psycho/sociology of Black Male/female relations
Gospel Choir/Black Student Union
African Dance
African American Economics
African American History

The reality is that Black Studies is under attack across America. It is part of the general attack on Black people, although we think Black Studies is suffering because it has become disconnected from community, thus ignoring its mission to serve the community. Of course, in crisis it returns to community for support to "keep the legacy alive."

We know the radical black scholars were long ago removed from most black studies programs, especially in higher education. The tenured Negroes were brought it and have remained to this day with a Miller Lite version of Black Studies, if not a totally escapist version that stresses Pan Africanism above local or the national needs of North American Africans. After all, the radicals were removed because they focused on local and national needs, putting Black Studies in harmony with community, not white academia that never desired black inclusion or black educational upliftment. Would this not mean the liberation of community or nation time?

We hope Mr. McKnight can save black studies at Berkeley High, although he admitted he is tired, exhausted from fighting the administration at every turn. He may get the community support needed if his program can indeed relate to the critical needs facing our people at this hour.
--Marvin X

We take Credit Cards: Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality

Black Bird Press
Now Again in Print: Marvin X Classic!
Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality, essays on consciousness, Black Bird Press, 1222 Dwight Way, Berkeley CA, 2007, reprinted 2011.



Order now: $19.95, plus $5.00 for s/h.
For credit card orders: call 510-575-2225

This is an encyclopedia of knowledge. He's a griot if there ever was one!
--Mumia Abu Jamal, Live from Death Row

Marvin X has done extraordinary mind and soul work in bringing our attention to the importance of spirituality, as opposed to religion, in our daily living. Someone�maybe Kierkegaard or maybe it was George Fox who�said that there was no such thing as "Christianity." There can only be Christians. It is not institutions but rather individuals who make the meaningful differences in our world. It is not Islam but Muslims. Not Buddhism but Buddhists. Marvin X has made a courageous difference. In this book he shares the wondrous vision of his spiritual explorations. His eloquent language and rhetoric are varied�sophisticated but also earthy, sometimes both at once.

Highly informed he speaks to many societal levels and to both genders�to the intellectual as well as to the man/woman on the street or the unfortunate in prison�to the mind as well as the heart. His topics range from global politics and economics to those between men and women in their household. Common sense dominates his thought. He shuns political correctness for the truth of life. 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.

All of which are represented in his Radical Spirituality�a balm for those who anguish in these troubling times of disinformation. As a shaman himself, he calls too for a Radical Mythology to override the traditional mythologies of racial supremacy that foster war and injustice. 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

Marvin X is available for readings, lectures and performance. jmarvinx@yahoo.com
www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com

Keyshia Cole Rocks Oakland

photo Princess O. Davis


Keyshia Cole Day in Oakland

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Marvin X reads poem dedicated to Keyshia Cole. The poet was accompanied
by Aries and Toya Jordan. As he ended his reading, Keyshia came on stage and the crowd went wild. Keyshia gave a wonderful micro-concert that revealed her awesome talent. Her remarks showed her love of community and she promised this is just the beginning of her giving something back. We need more conscious artists to advance the cultural revolution among North American Africans.

Click on people's faces in the photo to tag them.

Keyshia Cole's event organizer was Muhammida el Muhajir,
daughter of Marvin X.

photo Princess O. Davis

Click on people's faces in the photo to tag them.

Muhammida El Muhajir
Hip Hop, the New World Order

British Hip Hop Interviews Hip Hop Producer, Muhammida El Muhajir Written by Esh

Thursday, 17 March 2011

Muhammida El Muhajir was the first person to make a documentary about global Hip Hop. I was lucky enough to get hold of her and find out about her amazing experiences around the world. Introduce yourself… Muhammida: My name is Muhammida El Muhajir and I’m a producer and the director of the documentary Hip Hop: The New World Order. Why did you make the movie? Muhammida: I was initially inspired to make the film, primarily because here in America we don’t get a lot of information on things that are happening outside of our country, unless it’s… tragedy, you know, we don’t really hear about what young people in other countries are doing. You can find out but you really have to do a lot of research. Whereas I feel in the international countries they all are aware of what’s happening in America, with American youth and our pop culture, and I just knew that Hip Hop was having a really tremendous impact on young people here in our country, and I imagined it was having similar impacts in other countries as well, but we just didn’t get a lot of the information. Being here, you’d be at nightclubs and you’d see these Japanese kids, all decked out with timbs and gold teeth, so what’s happening over there that they are so into it. Also here in the States, for the most part, Hip Hop was looked at pretty negatively, you know, it’s very violent, it talks about women, all things that are very true, but I don’t think people were looking at the positive influences it was having. How did you go about deciding which countries and artists to put in the film? Muhammida: As far as the countries, I thought about places that it was interesting, that Hip Hop was there, or places where it was really popular. So, those were the countries that I went to: I went to Japan, Cuba, France, UK, Germany, Holland, South Africa and Brazil. So, again just being on this side of the water I didn’t have a lot of information about which artists were really big. Usually I would have one or two contacts and once I got to the country I’d find out who’s who and what’s what and be led to the right people like some kind of crazy Hip Hop domino effect. You made some good contacts then? Muhammida: Most of the artists that I interviewed and started some sort of relationship with, they for the most part are like the forefathers of Hip Hop in their respective countries. So it just so happened that those people are the people who set the foundation for Hip Hop in many of their countries. So we talk about Japan, DJ Muro, Zeebra, K Dub Shine, all those guys who are still very influential in the Hip Hop scene there, but were there at the beginning. That goes for pretty much each country. The documentary was a totally independent project so it’s been about 10 years - I’ll stop and I’ll go off on some other project and come back to it. But now it’s like a historical reference. I think that there are a lot of other documentaries that have come out since that time, but I don’t think anything really touches on all those people and all those countries and really shows it - it was a guerilla style project so very intimate - you, me, my little camera and these guys at their homes or in their studios or in their car so you get a kind of birds eye view of these guys talking about their experience, and just seeing them, eating balls of super noodles or whatever it is. It was an interesting glimpse into their lives. I interviewed the director of The Furious Force of Rhymes, Joshua Atesh Litle, who was the 2nd person to do a global Hip Hop documentary… Muhammida: Actually I think I was the first person to do it. Mine came out in various stages, but before I started on my project I have never really seen or heard something similar, maybe something about Hip Hop in Cuba or little things… but I think what people have done has been amazing and just to see the growth and the interest in international Hip Hop, I am really excited about that. So you’re still a fan of international Hip Hop? Muhammida: Yes. I haven’t had an opportunity to see your movie in full yet… Muhammida: Part of that problem is, as I said, it was a totally independent project so it has not been distributed yet, so I’m working on that for next year. Again, I put it on the back burner, but now it is a historical reference piece and when people are studying the art and the culture of Hip Hop, it can be a very useful reference, in addition to a lot of the other projects that you mentioned and have highlighted. What year did you begin with the film? Muhammida: I went to Japan in 1998, that was the first country I went to. It wasn’t like an ongoing project where I shot continuously. I was working full time, so maybe I’d take a holiday and go to another country. It was my own money, I’d raise money… so it was shot over a period of about three years. Hip Hop has a political angle, did you put that in your film too? Muhammida: What I put in my film was, I really tried to show how in each country people are using this art form. For what forms of expression is Hip Hop being used as a vehicle? So all the things that people here hate about Hip Hop are really the things that make it uniquely American. Those are all the things that are part of American culture and society that people are hating… It’s really not the Hip Hop. Hip Hop is a gun that you could use to kill, to do violence, or it could be used to protect your family… it’s not Hip Hop itself that’s violent or negative or misogynistic, it’s really the American experience. Here, we are one of the most violent countries in the whole world. So that experience is going to be reflected in our Hip Hop. I think that other countries where materialism and consumerism and all those issues are not a factor - their Hip Hop does not reflect that. No other place in the world is like it is here in America. I dig that people were using it as a political platform. Artists like Racionas MCs in Brazil - when (former Brasilian president) Lula ran, he tapped into their power and popularity, and that’s a huge force, that can be used for positivity and really it’s become a youth movement. I titled my film Hip Hop: The New World Order because I saw it as this new force and this new movement. If it was used in the proper way it could really make a lot of social change. So being in New York, the Hip Hop capital, do you get a lot of attention for the film? Muhammida: Well definitely in the past, people are looking for it. I get calls every week or so from Universities or somewhere that’s looking to purchase it or screen it and I’ve screened in the past and got lots of press internationally. The people are definitely waiting for it to come… The title, Hip Hop: The New World Order, has some interesting parallels with the music right now… Muhammida: Speaking about conspiracy theories and things like that, people here are looking at this commercial sort of Hip Hop in America as a way to forward some of those capitalism platforms and promote all the things that being in a capitalist country, benefits the system, the consumerism, the ‘me me me’ attitude. Just a lot of those things that are characteristics of this society and help it propel forward whether it’s positive or negative. Then you hear stories about this artist or that artist who are part of the Masons, all those things, on YouTube, so you never know… Part of this New World Order is that we gonna have this common government and common financial and political system, and I thought it was kind of a play on that with Hip Hop because traveling around the world, you see that through Hip Hop, kids are having this commonality of language, of style, of dress. Because I was down with Hip Hop, I was immediately connected to other people - despite language barriers or anything else we had that in common and that immediately bonded us. Tell me about your personal experiences of Hip Hop before you made the movie… Muhammida: I grew up with Hip Hop. I am about the same age, maybe a couple of years younger than what we consider modern day Hip Hop. I am a fan, an observer, an analyst I would say, all those things. I worked in the music industry, I worked in the film industry, I was a casting director. I’ve been involved in Hip Hop and in music in a lot of different levels working with artists and record labels so I’ve had a very close relationship with the music and the culture. Which artists would you recommend right now? Muhammida: I have always loved artists who have been able to really combine social commentary with the art and do it a very cool way so it’s not totally preachy, but you can jam to it to. So I always loved Dead Prez for that, they’ve really been at the forefront of that. I love Mos Def, and some of the new guys out here like Lupe, and I’m still following some of the international artists, mainly the ones that are featured in my film, Anónimo Consejo in Cuba, Oxmo Puccino, he just put out a live album… I mentioned the relationship I had with some of the artists. Oxmo Puccino was in New York and I filmed him just at a café somewhere in New York, it was just crazy. And with Zeebra riding around in his jeep in the streets of Toyko. I love to see the growth that those artists have had… Roots Manuva in London. People who are really innovators in the music and the culture, worldwide - Blak Twang in the UK. A few months ago I ran into DJ Vadim on the streets of New York. These are people who are like the major power players in international Hip Hop, and I was really grateful to have them all as part of the project. Even some of the American artists like Questlove who was in Tokyo when I shot him. Method Man, who really gave a humorous perspective on international Hip Hop with his experiences travelling abroad… Dead Prez were also in the film and I shot them in South Africa, they were pretty much the first US artists to go to South Africa and do a concert. Some really historic things happening in Hip Hop are incorporated into the piece. I cant wait to see it! By: Esh | IBMCs on Facebook Trailer on youtube:

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Mobile Uploads (64)

Keyshia Cole in Oakland, Thursday, Frank Ogawa Plaza

Click on people's faces in the photo to tag them.

Keyshia Cole

Oh, Sister Keyshia

Oakland loves you

Like you love Oakland

We honor and respect you

Your creativity, your humanity

The wisdom of your life

Lessons of love between you and your mom and family

All sisters and brothers need to know and master

The unconditional love that is you

The faith and determination

We love your inspiration

We need your love lessons right now in Oakland

We need you to let your little light shine

So we can see through the dark moments that consume us

When love is gone and bitterness makes us drunk

Hateful and spiteful, jealous and envious

Oh, Sister Keyshia

Sing us a happy song

How you got ova

In spite of all the blocks in your path

All the rats and vermin, the roaches and flies

Couldn’t turn you round

Just made you stronger

Made you the beautiful woman we love.

--Marvin X

8/25/11.

Paul Cobb On Chauncey Bailey, Mayor Ron Dellums & Oakland

Notes on Teaching Youth

Notes on Teaching Youth

By

Marvin X



Be humble at all times, your future is in your hands, no matter what else, you will not be here always, a new generation is upon us that must be taught our traditions, all the technology of the global village, high finance, the essentials of capitalism no matter if we call ourselves Communist, Socialist, Pan African, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu.

There must be some economic system whereby men and women can engage in commerce, sell, barter, consign. We don’t give a damn what you call it; just organize a way to deliver goods and services to the people.

We only know this: no one should starve in the village, nor be homeless, or illiterate, or in ill health without a medical plan.

Your children shall need your counsel and advice always, so be there for them, first setting example, we know words are cheap. Let the children see us doing the right thing for ourselves, and then they will know what to do, more than likely they are doing the right thing already, just might need a little common sense advice.

In teaching youth, we should consider their level, not our superior educations, whether academic or self taught in the model of Merritt College students Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Ernie Allen, Marvin X, et al.

Was not the purpose of those rallies on the steps of the old Merritt College on Grove St. /Martin Luther King, Jr. to “break it down to the masses”? And so we must break down abstract terminology such as freedom, slavery, racism, capitalism, socialism, Pan Africanism, white supremacy.

Give definitions, break words into syllables. Do not assume a twenty-five year old male or female has any knowledge of the above subject matter. Do not assume they can read. Do not assume they have traveled ten miles out of their turf. Do not assume youth living in Newark have visited New York. Do not assume youth in Oakland have visited San Francisco. I took a twenty-five year old female to San Francisco recently, who grew up in Berkeley/Oakland. When we came up from the BART or rapid transit system, she said, “Wow, look at these big buildings. Wow, they are so tall. Wow, look at all these people on the street. Look at these big banks on every corner. And they treated me so nice at the bank, not like Oakland and Berkeley. I didn’t know this world existed. I have to come over here more often."

Mayor Jerry Brown, now California Attorney General, used to say Oakland was closer to San Francisco than San Francisco, in his racist attempt to gentrify West Oakland. But how often do West Oakland youth get on the BART for a visit to San Francisco, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, a romantic city based on tourism, yet how many youth are plugged into the multi-billion dollar tourist industry, mainly they are at the wharf as dummies, robots and hip hop dancers. Thank God for that.

But how shall we teach them economic self sufficiency? Get a job and be pimped for life? Become a wage slave and teach your children to go to college so they can also become a cog in the wheel of capitalism and slavery (C. Eric Williams, who himself became a victim of capitalism and slavery as prime minister of Trinidad, see Marvin X, The Black Power Revolt In Trinidad, Journal of Black Poetry, circa 1972).

Micro Credit Loans for Youth

This is a process of loaning small amounts of money, say one hundred to three hundred dollars to youth so they can “come up” in a legal endeavor, not selling drugs, pimping, murder, but some project to deliver what the people need, such as food, clothing, shelter.

Visit the cities of America and we shall see what needs are addressed on the street, not to speak of inside businesses.

On the street youth sell T shirts, incense, oils, jeans and other urban gear. They sell books, especially in New York. And there are Latin youth selling fruit, vegetables, DVDs and CDs, black youth do this also to a high degree, to the point police do not harass them since they are doing something for self and not causing mayhem.

Absent Fathers



No matter the age of your children, connect with them, they need you, whether they say so or not, no matter if your children are 20, 30, 40, 50, they need you, your guidance, wisdom, love and attention. Sons need you, daughters need you. Tell them what a man must do to be a man. Ask their forgiveness for your unmanly or unwomanly actions. And clean up your act. Do better. Make a visible recovery from your wretchedness. Let your children see that you love them and that your love is unconditional, no matter what they do, success or failure, you are with them to the very end of time.

Black on Black Crime



Black on black crime is symptomatic and problematic of the perilous condition under which we live on a daily basis in the hell holes of America. We shall continue killing each other until we come to know who we are as Divine beings in Human form, that our bodies are the temple of the Divine, our bodies and minds, thus we should delete all negative thought such as hatred, jealousy, envy, and other negative thoughts that prevent us from enjoying the Divine plane of life.

On the matter of murder, my wise adviser told me, “When you kill your brother, you kill yourself. Two of you are dead. The killer is a dead man walking. As the Bible says, As Thou Hast Done, So Shall It Be Done to Thee.

Don’t be hypocritical, youth and adults. I know so many youth and adults who have lost loved ones to violence. No one is rioting over their loved ones, no one is protesting their lost. No one cares. The relatives and friends suffer in silence. They cannot discuss their grief with anyone, no one wants to know of their lost.

There are few mental health and grief counselors in the hood. The Oakland Grief Centers the City set up are a good example of what must be done to alleviate the trauma of life in the Wilderness of North America. What can we expect? More importantly, what can we do to advance our agenda for the masses, the wretched of the earth? No struggle, no progress, power concedes nothing without a demand, it never has and never will—our great ancestor Frederick Douglas told us this in the 19th Century.

There must be a higher level of organizing than rioting through the streets. If and when they come down on the people, do you have food, water, generators in reserve? Do you realize one flush of your toilet consumes five gallons of water? Do you have five gallons of water to drink, let alone in your toilet? Have you heard drought and famine are coming? Are you prepared? They taught us in Boy Scouts to be prepared.

Of Scholars and Teachers



Oh, my God, in the spirit of David Walker, let the poor righteous teachers do their duty to children and youth. We honor them and pray they shall remain on their posts, teaching the uncivilized youth who truly seek wisdom and knowledge. One need only converse with them in a moment of quiet, such as jail, prison or a depressed moment in the hood, away from peers and parents, on the street as I have encountered so many times on the streets of Oakland, especially at 14th and Broadway, my outdoor classroom, aka, Academy of da Corner, and the main scene of rioting over the New Year’s Day murder of Oscar Grant by the BART police.

Teachers and scholars must teach a new way. A radical approach is needed at this time, surely we all agree on this? We must at least have food, clothing and shelter, basic needs. All else is talk, hype, sham, don’t believe the hype!

Shall our children and youth be homeless, abandoned, school dropouts, prison bound, or shall we speak to them with parental authority, warning them of death on the streets, in unsafe sexual encounters, hanging out with drinking and gambling buddies. And please consider the tone test when encountering the police. They can kill you, jail you or release you, depending on your tone of voice. You must pass the tone test with another brother and sister as well. Everybody is on edge, stressed, so watch your tone of voice, watch how you look at people, don't stare. Many people come on the street in a mind-altered state, thus they often imagine you have said something you didn't actually say, or they assume you were staring at them when you weren't. So be cool on the street. Teach youth how to act to survive in the urban jungle. There is no other lesson.

Take Advantage of Obama Drama


Youth should take full advantage of this critical moment of change in the history of America and the world. In the next few months, take advantage of economic and educational opportunities the government will offer as a way out of the depression caused by greed and other cancers of the addiction to white supremacy, especially during Obama's reelection campaign. He will spend a billion dollars to get reelected or reselected, so figure out how much of that billion you can get hustling Obama gear, T-shits, caps, buttons, photos, etc. Don't sit around like a frog on a lily pad. You can copy color pictures of Obama for 35 cents, get picture frames from the dollar store, then sell them for $5.00-10.00 or more. Life is a thinking man's game, so think! You can do it, your ancestors did!

--El Muhajir/Marvin X

1 - A Day in the Life - Marvin X and Discussion

Drugs, Art and Revolution, a discussion of Marvin X's classic docudrama of his addiction and recovery from Crack, including the scene of his last meeting with Black Panther Huey P. Newton
in a West Oakland Crack House. This discussion at Sista's Place in Brooklyn, NY, 1997, included Omawale Clay, Sam Anderson, Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, Amina Baraka, Elombe Brathe and Marvin X.

Sista's Place produced the New York performance of his play that Ishamel Reed called "The most powerful drama I've seen."

Cut me some slack, A fictional interview with President Obama

Part Two:A Fictional Interview with President Barack Obama by Marvin X

MX: Mr. President, thanks for allowing me to interview you again.
Prez: The pleasure is all mine, Marv. I truly enjoyed our last talk, although, in your style, you raked me over the coals. I'm not going to let you get away with it this time.
MX: Aw, Prez, you can't have thin skin in the game you're in.
Prez: You think I don't know that by now? I'll be lucky to get out of this situation with any skin, thin or otherwise.

MX: Why you say that, Prez?

Prez, Marv, I'm gonna drop a bomb on you. I'm going to give you an exclusive.

MX: Drop it like it's hot.

Prez, I've had just about enough of this bullshit, fake aas job in the White House.
I've said more than once I don't give a damn if I'm a one term Prez.

MX:Prez, you not going to run for a second term?

Prez, Hell to the naw, fuck these peckerwoods and nigguhs too. I don't like being pressured from above and below. I see you can't win in this game, so I'm checking out before I get in too deep.

MX: I can't believe what you're saying.

Prez, I thought about it long and hard, talked it over with Michelle and my girls. They said, Dad, do what you gotta do, we with you all the way, whatever you decide.
Even my mother-in-law said, Boy, use the mind God gave you. I told you these white folks is sick.

MX: So are you going back to Rev. Wright's church?

Prez, Marv, first let me ease out the door of that funky White House. Then let me come up for air. Hell, you know I hated to denounce my preacher, but I had to play the game. You nigguhs act like you didn't understand I was gaming the white man, but I was. You know ain't no way a nigguh could stay in Rev. Wright's church for twenty years and not get addicted to black consciousness, but Rev. Wright understands what I had to do to get over on these peckerwoods. They been lying and gaming us for 400 years.
MX: Sho you right.

Prex, A nigguh better learn some game up in this motherfuckin bullshit called America. And the first lesson a real nigguh need to learn is how to lie to the white man's face just like he been doing us the last 400 years. Lie with a smile.

MX: Prez, you talking like Marvin X?

Prez, Let the truth be told. I tried to play the game but it ain't worth it. Why should I spend a billion dollars for my job when millions of people have no job and little chance of getting one anytime soon. A billion dollars for one job? Just doesn't make sense, I rather be unemployed just like them. Let me go back to community organizing, something I like to do and can see the results. I ain't caught nothing but hell with the political bullshit, hell from both sides. If the pecks ain't downing me, I got to deal with nigguhs like you, Marv, fucking with me night and day, you and Cornel and his sidekick, that bitch Tavis. You nigguhs need to cut me some slack, damn. And naw I ain't invitin you nigguhs to the White House for beer.

MX: Prez, you said from the beginning it wasn't about you, but us, so us is on your ass and gonna stay on your ass til you do the right thing, if that's humanly possible.

Prez: Hell, I been doing all I can do. I got you health insurance, didn't I?

MX, Prez, how a nigguh gonna pay for health insurance with no job?

Prez: Marv, I did what I can. You know all the jobs and money are gone overseas. What the hell can I do? All this was in place before I came into the White House. The jobs are gone to China, India, Brazil, and there's nothing I can do about it? The Indians say they'll come to America and hire our workers but at the same wages paid in India. You know them Coolies are crazy. Ain't no American MBA gonna work for $14,000 per year when they used to $140,000 per year.

MX: Prez, I know you can configure something to get our people and the masses of Americans back to work doing something.

Prez: Hell, seem like there ought to be a few job openings, after all, I sent a million illegals back across the border.

MX: Prez, you know ain't no nigguh doing what the Mexicans do, and work hard at it, and be on time.

Prez: I did what I can do. I can't do everything, I'm not a miracle worker.

MX: But you said change we can believe.

Prez: Yes, change you can believe, but what is belief? I know what I know and I know I'm getting the hell out the White House. I've had enough of those No People. Let them fight between themselves like blind fools, Democrats and Republicans, two sides of the same intractable coin of white supremacy. Didn't you write about it?

MX: Yes, you mean my book How to Recover to the Addiction to White Supremacy?

Prez: I read it. Very insightful. But you know white people ain't ready to recover from white supremacy.

MX: Of course not, too many white privileges. Like Chris Rock said, "I'm a rich nigguh, but don't no white man wanna be Chris Rock. So you have no solution to the job crisis in America?

Prez: Marv, you know the solution is to redistribute the wealth, and who's ready to share the wealth, not the guys I know on Wall Street, people in the military/corporate complex and international finance. They say they will destroy the world before they give up white supremacy. I tried to compromise with them, but you were right when you wrote about them and described them as the No People.

MX: Well, Prez, if you change your mind, let me know.

Prez: Marv, I'm the first Black President. I am satisfied to go down in history as that. Ain't that a hell of a thang? The first nigguh president.

MX: Yeah, nobody can take that away from you, whether you accomplished anything else, guess it don't matter.

Prez: Not to me, fuck it. Let me go home to Chicago. To hell with those hard headed, recalcitrant, incorrigible, die hard, Republican devils and their tea party sycophants. At least I did one thing.


MX:What's that?

Prez: I got that Osama bin Laden bitch.

MX: I thought he died five years ago of a liver condition.

Prez: Marv, my Seals got that motherfucker. Don't believe all that conspiracy bullshit.

MX: Where's the body, Prez.

Prez: We had to dispose of the body. Those Muslims would turn his grave into a shrine for terrorism, you know that.

MX: What about Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia.

Prez: Marv, I'm trying to deal with those issues right now, but we'll still be over there killing for the next hundred years, hell, how long we been in Korea, Japan and Germany. Hey, I gotta get back to work (laughs). We'll talk again soon, I promise.

MX: Thank you, Mr. Prez.

--Marvin X
15 August 2011

How to Stop the Killing in the Pan African Hood

How To Stop The Killing in the Pan African Hood
By Marvin X

"The reactionaries will never put down their butcher knives,
they will never turn into Buddha heads."—Mao

We are talking about a condition in the hearts of men, an evil sore festering and stinking like rotten meat, to use that Langston Hughes metaphor. It is a spiritual disease more prevalent than HIV, for it consumes whole countries, not only Pan Africa, but it may be said to originate in Europe because lying and murder is the great theme of this culture, and Africa and Africans throughout the Diaspora are victimized and suffer this malady equally with their colonial Mother. See how Europe butchered the butcher's sons in Iraq, or is this the democratic way of life she is bringing to the sand nigguhs?

The problem is how to throw off the vestiges of colonialism to become the New Man and New Woman. Of course, we must first recognize how sick colonialism has made us throughout Pan Africa. Somehow we must bow down and ask forgiveness of our Higher Power, the ancestors, the living and the yet unborn. There must be a cleansing ritual performed until the mud and slime of Western culture is purged from our minds, bodies and souls.

The Western gods must be destroyed, crushed to the earth and stomped into eternity, for they have blessed us with ignorance, superstition, greed, lust and pure evil, allowing us to become worse than beasts in the field, committing the worse atrocities, yea, even worse than all the teaching of our colonial masters.

No doubt Africa is paying for the great sin of sending her sons and daughters into slavery. Has Africa asked forgiveness of herself, yet she wails for apology from the slave master's children. Has she given reparations to her descendants lost in the wilderness of North America? Has she ever sent a symbolic ship or plane to bring them home? So Pan Africa lives a slow death because she allows corrupt, boastful, arrogant leaders to control her nations, her leaders shelter each other, covering their multiple sins, protecting themselves from people's justice who would rightfully hang them like Mussolini and his wife.

Like jack in the box, Pan Africa must jump out of her iniquities, she must call forth the divine energy within the bowels of her soul and step into the New Day of light, breath and health. She cannot allow her children to devour her from coast to coast, sea to sea, from America to Africa, but children only mock the behavior of adults, so we cannot blame them, children are children, so adults must step to the front of the line, no matter how busy they are doing nothing, for they are surely doing nothing if the village is in chaos, security being the top priority of civilization.

Everyone must become the central command, every man and woman must be about the business of teaching new values, new ways of thinking and acting that are not harmful to the human soul and the human condition. The world is so full of wisdom it escapes us because our quest is for the trivial, the low things of life, not the things in the upper room, but those in the basement, in the gutter of our minds and hearts, that is where we dwell, that is our focus and this is why we suffer. Kobe gives his wife a four million dollar rock, but will it placate her soul, will material things correct a spiritual problem of faith and trust?

The West has a sordid history buying people as Pan Africa can attest, but everyone is not for sale, those of integrity will jump ship, will eat the whip and the gun, for persecution is worse than slaughter, the Qur'an teaches.

No, physical weapons cannot solve the problem. Look at Israel, she has the all the modern weapons but she cannot defeat the spirit of a people determined to be free. So Pan Africa's children can and must be armed with a new consciousness. Even Fidel Castro has said the new weapon is consciousness! Like Johnny Appleseed, we must go about spreading consciousness, teaching unconditional love and forgiveness, sharing knowledge and wealth with the poor and ignorant, the brokenhearted and oppressed. I am not trying to be sentimental, but we can and must flip the script as they say in the hood.

Again, like Jack, we must jump out the box of mental and physical oppression by taking a new look at reality, by stopping a moment to wonder at the pleasure in the sun, the trees, the sea and mountains, the glory of being alive each moment to share human love, being grateful we have a moment on this earth to whisper truth to children that they may rise and be a pleasure to the ancestors watching everywhere. Yes, we must transcend block man and block woman, the block within ourselves even, and reach forth into the realm of new possibilities, not allowing evil and her brothers and sisters to control the air and sun that comes each day blessing us with another moment to walk in the light, escaping the darkness of ignorance, greed and lust and violence.

Black men, go into the hood and take the guns from your sons, yes the sons you abandoned, neglected and rejected, the sons who look like you although you deny this, the sons who walk with sad hearts, hardened because they long for you, for your love and guidance, for your wisdom and strength, after all, Mama did all she could to raise her manchild in the promised land.
* * * * *


A Response to "Killing in the Pan Africa Hood"
By Rudolph Lewis


Marvin, there is great wisdom that should be heeded in your essay "How To Stop The Killing in the Pan African Hood." I am aware that a new set of values (though possessed by our enslaved ancestors but now abandoned under the "new world order") and a new perspective of our place in the world, of our past and future are earnestly needed in these dire times.

The most important of these new perspectives is couched in your paragraph that reads as follows:
Has Africa asked forgiveness of herself, yet she wails for apology from the slave masters' children. Has she given reparations to her descendants lost in the wilderness of North America? Has she ever sent a symbolic ship or plane to bring them home? So Pan Africa lives a slow death because she allows corrupt, boastful, arrogant leaders to control her nations, her leaders shelter each other, covering their multiple sins, protecting themselves from people's justice who would rightfully hang them like Mussolini and his wife.

In short, you suggest our critical sword should have a double edge—that is, the slave trade involved African nations and European nations collaborating for the purposes of wealth and power. They got rid of their "niggertrash." Many of those descendants of the tribal kings and chiefs who sold millions of slaves still play significant roles in the politics of today's African nations. And they will sell us again and their people again in the 21st century, if the World Bank and other internationalist (globalist), corporatist agencies offer the right price. (Check out Paul Kingsnorth's essay on South Africa and the ANCA Shattered Dream.)

In the contest for wealth and power, "black" and "white," however, are not real distinctions but illusions, a means for escapism or sidetracking those who wish to do the "good." I know "evil" has become a popular theme in the discussion of international politics and the resistance to corporate imperialism, especially from the bully pulpit of the presidency. So-called righteous men love to stand behind such symbolic bulwarks. I hope we do not become agents of such trite rhetoric—it indeed will lead us astray. It is necessary that we keep on the straight and narrow and keep both edges of our sword whetted sharp.

At no time must we sink back into mythologizing the world for the sake of political convenience, to hear merely the rhythm of our own voices. Beneath most Pan-African rhetoric (from the 19th century to the present), there is this underlying notion of Africa as paradise into which Satan (the white man) introduced evil. I recommend strongly that all Pan-Africanists and sympathizers and all other petty-bourgeois, pseudo-revolutionaries read the Malian Yambo Olouloguem's novel Bound to Violence. Or any non-romantic account of Africa before European trade began. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart will provide some evidence even in the "wholeness" of tribal life, all was not well. Even though there was a sense of justice, and right and wrong. There were some practices or acts that were just horrid, unnecessary, and "evil."
If true be told, there was more evil in Africa than one could shake a stick at. The process of empire building in Africa by Africans themselves and the perennial struggles for power and the retention of power included the wholesale slaughter of tribes (genocide), butchery, debauchery of every sort (religious, political and social), cannibalism, incest, and so on—all these acts of evil existed before modern Europe stepped onto the soil of Africa or worked out its first deal for a cargo of slaves. The emperors, kings and queens, and chiefs—to whom we have become so inured (and want to imitate by dress, manners, and religion)—did not achieve those aristocratic titles by their sweetness and benevolence but by the same means we are familiar with today in those who strive to rule and conquer. That is, they did it the old-fashioned way—by violence, exploitation, and oppression..

The aberrations we see in Africa and at home are not new. This violence for wealth and power is just as old as the first time one brother killed another for his wife or his ass. This contest for dominance has always been bloody and this violence and evil were not invented by Europe or whites. We must do away with this myth—the white man alone as incarnate Devil. Otherwise, in a perverse way, we make Africans less than human—we make them into externally corrupted angels.

There is no sanctity in having a black skin or in Africanity. This type of mythologizing gives our leaders too much credit and too much room for collaboration with corporate power and a means of duping the masses of the poor and the black working classes. It is no longer sustainable that we ask or recommend that the masses of "Pan-Africa" to live vicariously by distant observation and/or proximity to power and wealth. That an elite should live in comfort and security while the great masses attend them hand and foot with all their hearts and souls is no longer acceptable if we truly have egalitarian goals for our society. .
That kind of barbaric nobility is no longer proper in a civilized world in which democracy and human rights have been given revitalized meanings in which every man is a king and queen, or at least be acknowledged with that kind of respect, integrity, and dignity.

Our critical sword should not only land on the heads of the great aberrations of society—the likes of a Idi Amin, a Mobutu, a Bokassa, or a Sgt. Doe or a Charles Taylor, but also those respectable heads of state like Mbeki, Obasanjo, and the other African leaders who smilingly welcomed Bush to Africa and are ever-ready to make their deals with globalization. Such African leaders with such narrow interests sold our ancestors into the Americas.

And not only those African leaders there, but also here at home, we should do some swinging at our black elected and appointed officials (city councilmen, legislators, cabinet secretaries), yes and also corporate and ecclesiastical functionaries, and other notable heads, such as the leaders of civil rights organizations like the NACCP, whose board is ruled by corporate executives or such flunkies and running dogs. They too must be made to pay for their sins of neglect and moral blindness.
If we lapse into the anti-white, anti-American, anti-Western rhetoric, we will sorely miss the point and provide more fuel for these black elites to further misdirect the energies of the masses of Pan-Africa along lines of escapism and support for the status quo.

If we are to make real changes within our communities some of our petty bourgeois aspirations must be abandoned. We can no longer naively defend black middle-class sellout politicians and preachers. We must recognize a real change in the face, rhetorical aspirations, and the present corporate ties that our leaders have established. It is fine to cite Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, as some Pan-Africanist Marxists tend to do. That is well indeed. I am far from a white apologist—a corner in which some may want to paint me. But I do not want to be a black apologist, either -- I was not taught that way.

The NAACP is headquartered here in Baltimore and they just had a conference and they had nothing to say about the 40% unemployment rate here among black males (18-35); the high murder rate (about 300 a year, mostly young black males); a 50% drop-out rate from high school; neighborhoods in which only 25% of adults have a high school diploma. Brothers and sisters are paraded to jails like our ancestors to Goree Island!!! Whatever the justification for their apprehension is inadequate and should cause some shame to those who run this city and those who support the powers to be—which here in a majority black city, means a black middle class and those who work government jobs or receive money from corporate elites.

Damn, brother, we have grown ass men on the corner selling single cigarettes for 35 cents a piece. What kind of enterprise is that? And it is not just a few. Is that any way to gain a livelihood? And our shit-head leaders are worrying about whether Bush or democratic presidential candidates come to their meeting. Ain't that a matter to be indignant and upset about? But it seems we are so spiritually sick we take it as a norm the misery and the downtrodden state of the poor (black and white). That the oppressed are overlooked and allowed to continue to sink into the abyss is a grand betrayal by our leaders. Murder and mayhem is not just coming from the bottom dregs of society. We have a general slavery and devastation in which silence and passivity is imposed by poverty, the gun, and prisons? With these reservations, I support heartily the sentiments contained in your plea for earnest black work, black renewal, and black progress.

Marvin X has taught English, African American literature, journalism, creative writing, drama, technical writing at various colleges and universities, including: University of California, Berkeley and San Diego, San Francisco State University, University of Nevada, Reno and elsewhere. Or write to Black Bird Press, 1222 Dwight Way, Berkeley CA 94702.

Marvin X is available for speaking/readings, email: jmarvinx@yahoo.com