Monday, September 22, 2014

The War on Black Men by Junious Ricardo Stanton

“… Let me put forth what I think is one of the European’s ultimate weapons- it is the legitimization of his worldview- past and present- in the eyes of the non-white peoples of the world through a vehicle erroneously referred to as ‘world history’. White world history as it has been taught to us, has given us a view of the world that is not lonely anti-black in every conceivable way but has virtually eliminated the positive image of Black people as a functional part of the world’s people.” Haki R Madhubuti Enemies the Clash of Races Third World Press page 1.

If you are a critical thinker you are undoubtedly wondering why all of a sudden there is such a focus and fuss on NFL players who were caught beating their girlfriends, wives or children? Is this a new phenomenon? The answer is no, this is not a new phenomenon nor is it new under the watch of current NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Since Goodell took over as NFL Commissioner in 2006 there have been fifty-six (56) incidents of sexual abuse. For a full list of all NFL player arrests for whatever reason go tohttp://www.usatoday.com/sports/nfl/arrests/. So if fifty-six NFL players have been arrested since 2006 under Goodell, why all of a sudden is he leading a charge to clean up the NFL?

Any kind of abuse is abhorrent but why all of a sudden is NFL player domestic abuse an issue? White feminists have been complaining for years about domestic abuse and the NFL has never said a mumbling word in their support. Why now? I suspect it is because this campaign is another way to demonize African-Americans, it is specially designed to make Black males appear to be the stereotypical brute long used to rationalize the murder and violence against us.

Keep in mind the recent events in Ferguson Missouri put the race issue back in the national media spotlight as yet another unarmed Black male was shot and killed by a white police officer. The situation in Ferguson, like so many around the nation, centers on a white police officer shooting a defenseless unarmed Black male and getting away Scott free.

The Ferguson police department didn’t even want to release the name of the police officer was who shot Michael Brown let alone arrest him or charge him, which infuriated the Black community. Under immense pressure and duress the Ferguson Chief of Police finally named the officer, Darren Wilson a six year veteran. Darren Wilson’s pictures soon circulated on the Internet and the Ferguson police department came under heavy criticism for not suspending or filing charges against the officer. But their main concern was “for the safety of Officer Wilson.”

Shortly thereafter a video was released showing a man who fit Michael Brown’s description causing a scene in a convenience store. The Ferguson police alleged Brown robbed the store and hinted that was the reason he was approached by officer Wilson. They even did the Zimmerman trick claiming Wilson was assaulted and injured by Brown prior to him shooting Brown.

As the Ferguson police stonewalled disciplining and charging Wilson, tensions rose and there was sporadic violence and looting in Ferguson. The police responded by showing up in heavily armored vehicles in riot gear with assault rifles in tow. The governor even called out the National Guard. A Black Missouri State Police Captain Ron Johnson was sent to Ferguson to restore calm and confidence but the almost all white Ferguson police department (they only have three Black police in a town that is almost eighty percent Black) maintained a heavy handed presence and attitude. As conditions worsened, the Missouri Governor issued a state of emergency, imposed a curfew and instituted martial law. In effect the town of Ferguson was put on lock down while a murdering police officer went free! Tensions rose and subsided as community leaders attempted to restore calm and meet with the “powers that be” to broker “justice”.

The family of Michael Brown hired an attorney and an expert to conduct an independent autopsy which revealed Brown was shot at least six times including twice in the head. Details of the autopsy further infuriated the Black community. Why was it necessary for Wilson to fire six rounds into Michael Brown who was unarmed and in a position of surrender, why did he shoot him two times in the head?!

Simultaneously support for Officer Wilson was spurred by the Klu Klux Klan. By the end of August, Wilson’s supporters raised well over $150,000 for his “defense fund”. The facts and the extensive news coverage of Ferguson have made the racial divide wider and the dividing lines between Black and White harder and more rigid. The notion of a “post racial America” as Ferguson has shown is a cruel hoax and a sham. Only the most gullible and comatose Black people believe we live in a “post racial” society whatever that means.

What does this have to do with the NFL and domestic violence you ask? Everything. Keep in mind there have been fifty six incidents of domestic violence, abuse and assault under Goodell’s eight year watch; the most famous cases involve African-American players. So now all Black men are being demonized and vilified because of the actions of a few. There are less than two thousand NFL players total, 1,696 to be exact. The Ferguson police department’s attempt to smear Michael Brown didn’t work so now the mass media has to smear all black men to justify and rationalize the ongoing pattern of police officers like Darren Wilson shooting and murdering us.

Remember how they tried to portray Trayvon Martin as a thug and Zimmerman (a man who obviously has issues) as the good white man who was viciously attacked by Martin, the narrative was that Zimmerman feared for his life so he had to shoot Trayvon. This is the same thing they tried to do with Darren Wilson but it turned out to be just as flimsy and fake as Zimmerman’s excuse. So the Florida authorities rigged the whole trial so Zimmerman would walk, just like they will probably do for Wilson in Missouri.

So now they are painting all Black men, from the round the way Brothers to NFL icons as inherently violent; so pathological that white men of all stripes and persuasions are justified shooting us down like dogs.

Blacks make up seventy (70) per cent of NFL players, during the season these Black men are extremely visible on Sunday, Thursday and Monday on the televised games. NFL players are icons in this culture so if a diabolic powerful group of white men wanted to really demonize Black males, they could successfully do it by pointing out the pathologies of a small percentage of Black males albeit extremely high profile Black males.

This is an insidious psychological operation (a mind game, image perception manipulation) to further the very open and overt war on Black males. This war has been going on in this country since colonial times. Black men are being demonized on every level from the block boys to highly paid professional athletes.

You say all the media is doing is reporting the news. Not really; there were fifty six domestic abuse cases from 2006 to now. Do you remember all this brouhaha being made of them? Why now? It’s not about them wanting to clean up the NFL. They could have swept these incidents under the rug or minimized them like they did the others. They need to vilify Black males. WHite men beat their wives and children all the time, do you see them paraded and vilified in the media? There is an obvious double standard.

Look at how the Donald Sterling issue was handled. Here was a lecherous old Jewish white man who owned the Los Angles Clippers NBA franchise who uttered racial slurs about Blacks and said the Jews in Israel treat the Blacks there like dogs. Sterling’s statements were recorded by his “girlfriend” and sent to TMZ a cable gossip channel. As a result the NBA swiftly moved to “punish” Sterling by taking away his franchise. It’s not that the NBA owners abhor racism; they just didn’t want the world to know they are racists. Fact: Donald Sterling originally paid thirteen million for the franchise. Fact: in 2014 the LA Clippers were worth five hundred seventy five million according to Forbes http://www.forbes.com/teams/los-angeles-clippers/. The NBA Commissioner and the other NBA owners forced the sale of the team and it was sold for two billion dollars to ex Microsoft Executive Steve Ballmer. Two billion dollars, how is that a punishment? Donald Sterling was examined by two doctors and he was ruled mentally incompetent by a judge, his estranged wife was given trusteeship of the franchise and she made out like a bandit! Aw poor Donald is mentally ill so he couldn’t be blamed or held accountable for his racist rant and he walks off with one and a half times more than the franchise is currently worth and way, way more than he first bought it for, how’s that for punishment? How’s that for justice?

Meanwhile Black men (young brothers and NFL players) are being vilified and criminalized as part of an overarching program to make all of us look bad. But no one talks about the role racial and psychological oppression/conditioning play in the maladaptive and pathological choices and behaviors we exhibit or how we are demonized and vilified every day in the media.

“The perpetual domination of African Americans by White Americans psychically requires the White American criminalization of the African male, i.e. the White American perception of the African male as inherently criminal. In the context of White American domination there is no innocent Black male, just Black male criminals who have not been detected, apprehended or convicted. Their mere presence inspires in White Americans, fears of being assaulted, raped, robbed or some other indefinable dread of being criminally victimized.” Amos N. Wilson Black on Black Violence The Psychodynamics of Black Self-Annihilations In Service of White Domination AfriKan World Infosystems page8.

The global psychological, psychic and physical war against Black people rages on, and it impacts all of us no matter where we are on the rung of the social ladder, including star athletes. No matter how much money we make if we are psychologically damaged and traumatized, unless we recognize we are ill and seek real healing, our illness will remain and the war against us takes its toll generation after generation.

From Watts to Fergurson: The Rise of SWAT Team in American Policing

The Rise of the SWAT Team in American Policing

SEPT. 7, 2014

Retro Report

By CLYDE HABERMAN

Posse comitatus is not a phrase that trips lightly off every tongue. It is typically translated from Latin as “force of the county.” Anyone who has ever watched an old Western movie will instantly recognize the first word as referring to men deputized by the sheriff to chase down some varmints who went thataway. (Rappers and their tag-alongs later gave “posse” a different context.) The full phrase is more obscure, but the concept that it embraces is enshrined in American law. The Posse Comitatus Act, passed in 1878 at the end of Reconstruction and amended but slightly over the decades, prohibits the nation’s armed forces from being used as a police force within the United States. Soldiers, the reasoning goes, exist to fight wars. Chasing local wrongdoers is a job for cops.

But many police departments today are so heavily armed with Pentagon-supplied hand-me-downs — tools of war like M-16 rifles, armored trucks, grenade launchers and more — that the principle underlying the Posse Comitatus Act can seem as if it, too, has gone thataway. Questions about whether police forces are overly militarized have been around for years. They are now being asked with new urgency because of the recent turmoil in Ferguson, Mo., where unarmed demonstrators protesting the fatal police shooting of a teenager faced off for a while against mightily armed officers in battle dress and gas masks. What the world saw were lawmen looking more like combat troops in the Mideast than peacekeepers in the Midwest.

The militarized nature of modern American policing infuses this first installment of Retro Report, a weekly video documentary series that examines major news stories from the past and explores what has happened since. The focus this week is on SWAT teams, whose numbers have soared across the country, in rugged cities and in sleepy towns. They are the principal beneficiaries of the heavy-duty military equipment that the federal government has supplied since the early 1990s, in a transfer program that has gained steam in recent years with the withdrawal of American ground forces, first from Iraq and soon from Afghanistan.

The video traces the rise of SWAT units from their earliest days in 1960s Los Angeles. There, Daryl F. Gates, who would later become chief of that city’s police force, championed a sturdily armed squad of trained officers as an essential tool of law enforcement after the deadly Watts riots of 1965. Mr. Gates fancied the name Special Weapons Attack Team. “Attack” made some elected officials wince, though. What emerged instead was Special Weapons and Tactics — same acronym but sounding somewhat less aggressive.

Los Angeles’s SWAT team tested its mettle in 1969 against a local Black Panther militia and again in 1974 during a fierce firefight with theSymbionese Liberation Army, a bizarre but dangerous band of radicals best known for having kidnapped the media heiress Patricia Hearst. Its bona fides thus established, SWAT units spread across the national landscape, romanticized in song and on television.

To these units’ defenders, the need could not be more fundamental: The world is dangerous. Some drug lords have weaponry that would be the envy of small armies; the police cannot possibly take them on with mere handguns. Terrorism lurks as an ever-present threat. And sudden menace demanding a well-armed police response can arise even in the most tranquil places. Indeed, the roster of place names identified principally with gun horrors has grown long: Newtown, Columbine, Aurora, Virginia Tech. On and on.

Not surprisingly, critics of militarized policing have a different take.

Some are troubled by what a retired District of Columbia police sergeant, Bill Donnelly, once belittled as “commando-chic regalia.” With all that armored gear and firepower, Mr. Donnelly wrote to The Washington Post in 1997, “one tends to throw caution to the wind.” Another skeptic is Peter B. Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University interviewed by Retro Report. Professor Kraska has studied this issue for decades. Originally, he said, SWAT deployment was supposed to be reserved for truly perilous situations — hostage-takings, high-powered shootouts and the like. Now, these teams execute routine warrants in “no-knock” drug raids, bursting into homes with a show of force that often far exceeds the threat to them. The number of such raids has exploded from a few thousand a year in the early 1980s to tens of thousands today. Other critics, like the American Civil Liberties Union, note a stark racial disparity, with blacks and Latinos more likely than whites to be targets.

In the process, relationships between many police departments and the public they serve are intrinsically altered. Officer Friendly has been replaced by someone looking more like G.I. Joe.

The blurring of distinctions between police and the military has troubled people like Lawrence J. Korb, a longtime analyst of national security policies, who was an assistant defense secretary in President Ronald Reagan’s first term. Mr. Korb was not happy when the Reagan administration, in the early 1980s, loosened some restrictions in the Posse Comitatus Act to enable the armed forces to get more involved in the domestic “war on drugs.” His objection was encapsulated in a 1997 interview with The Dallas Morning News. “The military is much more likely to use force of arms because that’s what they’re trained to do,” he said. “The military, to put it bluntly, is trained to vaporize, not Mirandize.”

Over the last two decades, SWAT units have become ever more heavily armed. Under the so-called 1033 Program, named for a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act, the federal government has transferred vast amounts of military equipment — machine guns and ammunition, helicopters, night-vision gear, armored cars — to local police departments. The process accelerated after the Sept. 11 attacks, under both President George W. Bush and President Obama. Inevitably, some people, including police chiefs, have asked if all this amounts to a solution in search of a problem. Take the transfer of MRAPs, the military term for mine-resistant ambush-protected armored vehicles. How many minefields are there on America’s Main Streets?

Also inevitably, mistakes are made. A wrenching example is captured in the Retro Report video, involving a 19-month-old boy who was critically injured in May when a SWAT team in Georgia fired a stun grenade into a house that was the target of a drug raid. The officers were searching for their suspect in the wrong place. Their grenade landed in the infant’s crib.

There is yet another inevitability. After all that happened in Ferguson, a backlash against militarized policing has gained force. In late August, Mr. Obama ordered a review of the equipment-transfer program. Senators said they would hold their own hearings this month. It is much too soon, though, to tell if this longstanding law enforcement strategy is truly about to go thataway.

Sunday, September 21, 2014

Black Bird Press News & Review: Video: Marvin X and the Black Arts Movement Poets Choir and Arkestra at Malcolm X Jazz Festival

Marvin X is a member of the Washington DC Jazz Network--invited to Chicago conference on Sun Ra

Advocate for Preserving America's Classical Music, "JAZZ",

it's African American Legacy, Roots and Heritage!

MAIN PAGE

MARVIN X

A Member of the Washington DC Jazz Network

Marvin X was born May 29, 1944, Fowler CA, nine miles south of Fresno in the central valley of California. In Fresno his parents published the Fresno Voice, a black newspaper.

Marvin attended Oakland’s Merritt College where he encountered fellow students how became Black Panther Party co-founders Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. They taught him black nationalism. Marvin’s first play Flowers for the Trashman was produced by the Drama department at San Francisco State University, 1965. Marvin X dropped out to established his own Black Arts West Theatre in the Fillmore, 1966, along with playwright Ed Bullins. Months later Marvin would co-found Black House with Eldridge Cleaver, 1967.

Marvin introduced Eldridge Cleaver to Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Eldridge immediately joined the Black Panther Party. Huey Newton said, “Marvin X was my teacher, many of our comrades came from his Black Arts Theatre: Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Emory Douglas and Samuel Napier.”

One of the movers and shakers of the Black Arts Movement (BAM) Marvin X has published 30 books, including essays, poetry, and his autobiography Somethin’ Proper. Important books include Fly to Allah, poems, Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality, essays on consciousness, and How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy, a manual based on the 12 step Recovery model.

Marvin received his MA in English/Creative writing from San Francisco State University, 1975. He has taught at San Francisco State University, Fresno State University, UC Berkeley and San Diego, Mills College, Merritt and Laney Colleges in Oakland, University of Nevada, Reno. He lectures coast to coast at such colleges and universities as University of Arkansas, University of Houston, Morehouse and Spelman, Atlanta, University of Virginia, Howard University, Univ. of Penn, Temple Univ., Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, UMASS, Boston.

His latest book is the Wisdom of Plato Negro, parables/fables, Black Bird Press, Berkeley. He currently teaches at his Academy of da Corner, 14^th and Broadway, downtown Oakland. Ishmael Reed says, “Marvin X is Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland."

For speaking, readings and performance, contact Marvin X @ jmarvinx@yahoo.com,

510-200-4164. www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com

BAM Master Poet Marvin X and the BAM Poets Choir & Arkestra are now available for booking.

The group performed at the University of California, Merced, Feb./Mar. 2014

Oakland's Malcolm X Jazz/Art Fest, May 17, 2014.

For booking: 510-200-4164

Poet/Bandleader Marvin X, sax man David Murray and trumpet man Earl Davis

Marrvin X Goin to Chicago to discuss Sun Ra

David Boykin

Marvin X and Sun Ra

Marvin X has agreed to participate in a conference on his friend and mentor, Sun Ra. He was invited to be a panelist by Chicago musician David Boykin: Greetings Brother Marvin X - I'm a saxophonist in Chicago interested in bringing you to Chciago to participate in a panel discussion during a conference on Sun Ra and possibly arranging some other speaking engagements and possibly performing together in May of 2015, around sun Ra's Birthday May 22. Please let me know if you are available and interested. I will continue to keep you informed as the planning of the conference proceeds. Peace. David

Friday, September 19, 2014

Black Bird Press News & Review: Update: Angela Davis/Marvin X Conversation on Local, National and Global Events

Black Bird Press News & Review: Update: Angela Davis/Marvin X Conversation on Local, National and Global Events

please go to above link

Parable of the Green Revolution and Climate Change Rally in New York City & Oakland

☆YOU'RE INVITED!☆

Take Action Sunday in Oakland

Host: Charles D.

Where: Lake Merritt Park Amphitheater

When: Sunday at 2:00 p.m.

What: Rally in support of the NYC People's Climate March! Climate change is real, our home is burning, we must act! Along with hundreds of other events world-wide we will rally for action on climate change. We will have speakers, children's activities and representatives from multiple environmental organizations to educate us on what is happening and what we must do to stop it!

Can you join us in Oakland on Sunday?

Click below for more details and to RSVP:

YES, I'LL BE THERE!

Sorry, I can't make it, but I'm interested in getting more updates.

Parable of the Green Revolution by Marvin X

from The Wisdom of Plato Negro, parables/fables, Marvin X, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, $19.95

Can man stop the ash cloud over Europe? A man was asked about the future of books. He answered, the question is not about the future of books but the future of man!--Plato Negro

The Green Revolution is not what you think, rather it is Nature in revolt against man, and man can do little when Nature is against him. He can try but the only solution is to correct himself otherwise Nature is going to consume him, yes, eat him alive, flooding the land by raising the sea level, drying up the water that will soon be more valuable than oil, polluting the food with bacteria making it inedible.
We see man trying to make changes in nature but not in himself, for he has no intention to give freedom and justice to the poor, but has come with an entirely new method of domination and exploitation called globalism that cares nothing about the welfare of nations, only profit. If people suffer, too bad, we must let free market forces play out, except when the exploitation is so blatant he will make minor adjustments as with the sub prime mortgage crisis. The government says it will help a few but most of the people, especially the poor who were the worse victims shall be homeless—once again, they have been robbed of their American dream.
But Nature shall not stop her fury until the white supremacy rulers and their running dogs have been removed from power, no matter what it takes—they have no weapons against nature, the sun, the moon and stars, the oceans, rivers and mountains, even the trees, animals and fish are against the Globalists.

The focus of the Green revolution should not be on Nature but on those who have polluted the earth with the blood and bones of the righteous people. They must be apprehended and brought to justice. Their greed and desire for cheap labor and cheap resources will bring about their doom and no amount of correcting the forces of Nature will suffice because Nature has done nothing but showered her blessings upon man, so why should we think nature needs to be cleaned up—no, it is man that must be cleaned or eliminated from the planet.
Mother Nature is angry and no amount of pacification will work because you are the problem, not Mother Nature. Again, you have no intention to clean up yourself, but to persist in your wickedness, spreading it throughout the earth. You have now turned the poor children of Iraq into prostitutes by killing their mothers and fathers, just as you have done in the ghettoes of America, wherein babies eleven, twelve and thirteen are whoring because many of them are abused, abandoned and homeless.
In Iraq, the young girls are discarding the Muslim dress for jeans with sparkles so they can get money for food, just as the ghetto girls are doing, whoring for food and to pay their cell phone bill and buy hair weave.

No, Mother Nature does not need correction; she knows how to heal herself without your assistance, for she has been around for billions of years while you have just arrived from the caves of Europe.

You need to forget about Mother Nature because she is coming after you and all those who behave like you, all who want to be robbers, pimps, thugs, gangstas and killers. See if you can fight Mother Nature when her earthquakes hit, hurricanes and tsunamis on the way.

You must bow down and submit to Mother Nature, asking her forgiveness for destroying her people, robbing them and keeping them deaf, dumb, and blind. Otherwise, you and your cosmetic attempt to appease her will be to no avail. In the end, you shall be wiped from the face of the earth. Mother Nature has revealed this truth to me. I speak in the name of fish, cows, birds, bees, ants, rivers, creeks, oceans, hills, mountains, sun, moon and stars. I speak in the name of corn, wheat, rice and all the crops Mother Nature has provided man for his pleasure.

I speak in the name of the poor who have been robbed of their labor and natural resources so devils can live in heaven while the poor suffer in hell. No, you need not bother cleaning up anything but yourself, for it is highly doubtful you have the heart to do that, let alone tackle Mother Nature. Mother is well able to heal herself. Let’s see if you can heal your wickedness and injustice to her people.
--Marvin X

Dear Friends and supporters of Marvin X,

Here’s an update for you from the ‘Marvin X Books Project’ team:

1 new Announcement:

Congratulations Marvin X for receiving the 1st Annual Pillar Award for your Eldership and tireless work and pioneering spirit in the Black Arts and Black Power movement, thank you for introducing Eldridge Cleaver to Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, thank you for sharing your journey and testimonies, thank you for teaching us how to fight institutionalized racism and white supremacy with your strong example of self-determination through Black Bird Press, thank you moving forward to educate the masses through theater and poetry even after you got 'White Listed' from professorship in the UC System because you taught THE TRUTH, thank you for rising from the jaws of Cointelpro like a Phoenix to continue the struggle!!! We Stand Strong on your Legacy. Bless you Baba Marvin X. Ase,

-Toussaint Haki Stewart with the Elder Zone. Pan African Family Festival, Oakland, Labor Day, 2014

Marvin X to be honored at Los Angeles Black Book Expo

September 13, 2014

"Congratulations! Marvin X, you have been nominated to receive the LABBX Spoken Worlds Pavilion Humanitarian Award of the Year, for unlimited service to the community of Poetry and Spoken Word, educating and enlightening seekers of Truth. For your poignant and insightful works benefiting humanity and for your tireless search for Truth, Justice and Clarity of Thought."--Denise Lyles-Cook, Director,

LABBX Spoken Worlds Pavilion

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Monday, September 22, 2014

SWAT: Mission Creep

Sunday, September 21, 2014

Friday, September 19, 2014