Left to Right, Nisa Ra, mother of Muhammida; Mrs. Amina Baraka and Muhammida El Muhajir
Born in Berkeley CA, Muhammida El Muhajir, spent
her earliest years in the Bay Area schooling in Oakland and San Francisco
before moving to the East Coast.
After receiving a full track scholarship to Howard University
(B.S.,
Microbiology), she began traveling the world in
the tradition of the family name El Muhajirs (the pilgrims). She was selected
as an International Fellow at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of
Technology (MEST) in Accra, Ghana where she provided business development
for Ghanaian
and Nigerian tech startups and young entrepreneurs. “Working with MEST has
given
me an opportunity to work in Africa with some of the continent’s most
brilliant
minds while also being connected to Silicon Valley (where Meltwater corporate
is based) and the global tech community.”
When asked about working and living in Africa, she recently told
Ebony.com, "Ghana may not have
electricity 24/7 but I can go to the high
class stores and hotels and not be followed around. It is refreshing to
live in
a society where race does not dictate every aspect of my
life."
I have been traveling to Africa since I was 15
so it's not new to me. I am very much at home here, as I am in any of the
countries I have frequently visited and worked as an event producer, including Brazil, Japan and France.
Muhammida’s international
endeavors also include her work as
a filmmaker producing the ground breaking documentary, “Hip
Hop: the New World Order” which explores the global impact of hip
hop music and culture.
She has presented at The United
Nations, Oxford University and
UC Berkeley. Her works have been incorporated into the curriculum at
The New
School, The University of Sheffield (UK) and Harvard University.
Links: meltwater.org
hiphopisglobal.com
beautyradical.com
Producer
of Keyshia Cole Day in Oakland, Frank Ogawa Plaza, she enjoys a moment
with her father whom she hired to write and recite a poem to bring
Keyshia on stage.
Muhammida with Ghanian poets and rappers: Block, EL, Muhammida, Reggie
Muhammida and Mary J. Blige on a project to stop human trafficking of young women
Those who criticize my pamphlet Mythology of Pussy and Dick, should ask themselves if their "politically correct" language would have saved the psychopathic murderer of two adults and six children, including his own son and five children by his former partner and her new husband. Maybe if he had read my little pamphlet he would have learned in no uncertain terms that he did not own his partner, that she was not his chattel property, especially after she married another man and had five children by him. Obviously, somebody needed to inform Mr. Conley his former partner had the right to her own life, no matter his patriarchal mythology that reached the pathological. Somebody needed to tell him, "You don't own the pussy, buddy, get over it. Move on down the line. Don't get stuck on stupid. She has the human right to give her pussy to whomever she pleases. Obviously she was pleased to give it to her new husband, Mr. Jackson.
Mr. Conley is not the first or the last man who thinks his woman is his chattel or personal property, the result of patriarchal socialization. The jails and prisons are full of cave men who suffer from the addiction to the patriarchal mythology. For sure, no Miller Lite language will break through their thick skulls. They need a raw message, especially from someone such as myself who once upon a time thought like them! Let our prayers go out to the adults and children who suffered the death blows of Mr. Conley.--Marvin X, 9/10/15
FYI, if you know someone who could use my 18-page pamphlet, hit me at jmarvinx@yahoo.com. I will send you a free online version. mx
Man Kills Ex-Wife, Her New Husband and Five Children in Their Home
By Nigel Boys
During a welfare check of a family on the 2200 block of Falling Oaks
in Houston, Texas, police discovered the scene of a mass murder,
allegedly committed by the occupant of the house’s former husband,
49-year-old David Ray Conley III.
The Daily Mail
reports that Conley had recently moved out of the family home. Conley
told the police that when he returned, the locks had been changed. He
found an open window on Saturday night through which he entered and
allegedly proceeded to restrain and kill the eight occupants he found.
Conley’s ex-wife, 40-year-old Valerie Jackson and her 50-year-old
husband Dwayne Jackson were later identified as two of the victims,
along with their five children, Jonah, 6, Trinity, 7, Caleb, 9, Dwayne
Jr., 10 and 11-year-old Honesty. The former convict’s 13-year-old son,
Nathaniel, was also found killed.
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According
to criminal records, Conley served nine months in jail after he was
arrested for domestic assault in 2013 at the same residence where the
murders occured. Doctors at the home near Veterans Memorial and
Fallbrook Drive said that all eight victims on Saturday died at the
scene after suffering gunshot wounds to the head, according to KHOU-TV.
KHOU-TV reports that deputies arrived at the scene of the murder
after receiving information that a man inside the home was wanted on a
warrant for aggravated assault on a family member, according to Harris
County Sheriff spokesman Thomas Gilliland. He added that while the
deputies were waiting for a High Risk Operations Unit (HROU) to arrive,
they noticed the body of a juvenile through a window, causing four
officers to force their way into the home.
After an hour-long stand-off with police inside the house, Conley was
arrested after negotiating his surrender with members of the Harris
County Sheriff’s Office, HROU, and the Hostage Negotiation Team.
Conley was charged with capital murder and is being held in the
Harris County Jail. No attorney is currently listed for his defense,
according to the Daily Mail. He was denied bond by a judge on Sunday
afternoon at a probable cause hearing where his arrest affidavit was
read out in court. Conley was not present at the hearing.
The most recent criminal record for Conley is for an assault charge
that occurred last month; however, his criminal history dates back to at
least 1988, according to court records. He was arrested last month for
allegedly assaulting the woman he was living with at the home where the
bodies were found.
The case is still pending in which court documents allege that Conley
pushed the woman’s head against a refrigerator multiple times when she
tried to stop him from disciplining her son with a belt.
He was sentenced to five years in prison for retaliation in 2000
after he was accused of threatening to kill his girlfriend at the time,
her baby and himself. Conley allegedly put a knife to her throat. He
reportedly retaliated against her after she had filed an assault charge
against him for cutting her with a knife and punching her in the face.
Prosecutors claim that Conley told investigators that he restrained
eight people on Saturday with metal handcuffs, before shooting them in
the back of the head.
“We’re here today on a very sad day,” said Chief deputy Tim Cannon at
a press conference held by the sheriff’s office on Sunday afternoon.
“We’re here with our brothers in arms standing behind us because we’re
all hurting,” he said adding that the incident is a tragedy with which
the community is all too familiar.
It’s a difficult day for us at the sheriff’s office,” Cannon
continued. “Once again, a tragedy has struck… our city. Our hearts go
out to those… affected by this tragedy.”
“Cops were walking around with their handguns out, telling people to
remain in their houses,” said 19-year-old Alan Cartagena, adding that he
was attending a barbecue at a home a couple houses away from the
tragedy.
Deputies started going around the neighborhood knocking on doors
around 11 p.m., Cartagena continued. “They were also telling them to
evacuate. It was extremely scary,” he said, adding that he had heard one
gunshot, but wasn’t sure if there were more.
Black Solidarity Statement with Palestine - Summer 2015
Black Arts Movement Poet Marvin X at rally for Gaza, Seattle WA
The past year has been one of high-profile growth for Black-Palestinian solidarity. Out of the terror directed against us—from numerous attacks on Black life to Israel’s brutal war on Gaza and chokehold on the West Bank—we have witnessed the emergence of strengthened resilience and joint struggle between our movements. Palestinians on Twitter were among the first to provide international support for protesters in Ferguson, while St. Louis-based Palestinians gave support on the ground. A delegation of Palestinian students visited Black organizers in St. Louis, Atlanta, Detroit and more last November, just months before the Dream Defenders took representatives of Black Lives Matter, Ferguson, and other racial justice groups to Palestine. Throughout the year, Palestinians sent Black protesters multiple letters of solidarity. We offer this statement to continue the conversation between our movements:On the one-year anniversary of 2014's Gaza massacre, in the 48th year of Israeli occupation, the 67th year of Palestinians’ ongoing Nakba (the Arabic word for Israel's ethnic cleansing)--and in the fourth century of Black oppression in the present-day United States--we, the undersigned Black activists, artists, scholars, writers, and political prisoners offer this letter of reaffirmed solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and commitment to the liberation of Palestine’s land and people.
We can neither forgive nor forget last summer’s violence. We remain outraged at the brutality Israel unleashed through its siege by land, sea and air, in the most recent of three military offensives against Gaza in six years. We remain sickened by Israel’s targeting of homes, schools, UN shelters, mosques, ambulances, and hospitals. We remain heartbroken and repulsed by the number of children Israel killed in an operation it called “defensive.” We reject Israel’s framing of itself as a victim. Anyone who takes an honest look at the destruction to life and property in Gaza can see Israel committed a one-sided slaughter. With 100,000 people still homeless in Gaza, the massacre's effects continue to devastate Gaza today and will for years to come.
Israel’s injustice and cruelty toward Palestinians is not limited to Gaza and its problem is not with any particular Palestinian party. The oppression of Palestinians extends throughout the occupied territories, within Israel’s 1948 borders, and into neighboring countries. The Israeli Occupation Forces continue to kill protesters—including children—conduct night raids on civilians, hold hundreds of people under indefinite detention, and demolish homes while expanding illegal Jewish-only settlements. Israeli politicians, including Benjamin Netanyahu, incite against Palestinian citizens within Israel’s recognized borders, where over 50 laws discriminate against non-Jewish people.
Our support extends to those living under occupation and siege, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the 5 million Palestinian refugees exiled in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. The refugees’ right to return to their homeland in present-day Israel is the most important aspect of justice for Palestinians.
Palestinian liberation represents an inherent threat to the Zionist state of Israel, a colonial state built on ethnic cleansing, land theft, and the denial of Palestinian humanity and sovereignty. While we acknowledge that the apartheid configuration in Israel/Palestine is distinct from what took place in the United States and South Africa, we continue to see connections between the situation of Palestinians and Black people.
Israel’s widespread use of detention and imprisonment against Palestinians evokes the mass incarceration of Black people in the US, including the political imprisonment of our own revolutionaries. Soldiers, police, and courts justify lethal force against us and our children who pose no imminent threat. And while the US and Israel would continue to oppress us without collaborating with each other, we have witnessed police and soldiers from the two countries train side by side.
US and Israeli officials and media criminalize our existence, portray violence against us as “isolated incidents,” and call our resistance “illegitimate” or “terrorism.” These narratives ignore decades and centuries of anti-Palestinian and anti-Black violence that have always been at the core of Israel and the US. We recognize the racism that characterizes Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is also directed against others in the region, including intolerance, police brutality, and violence against Israel’s African population. Israeli officials call asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea "infiltrators" and detain them in the desert, while the state has sterilized Ethiopian Israelis without their knowledge or consent. These issues call for unified action against anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and Zionism.
We know Israel’s violence toward Palestinians would be impossible without the US defending Israel on the world stage and funding its violence with over $3 billion annually. We call on the US government to end economic and diplomatic aid to Israel. We wholeheartedly endorse Palestinian civil society’s 2005 call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel and call on Black and US institutions and organizations to do the same. We urge people of conscience to recognize the struggle for Palestinian liberation as a key issue of our time.
As the BDS movement grows, we offer G4S, the world’s largest private security company, as a target for further joint struggle. G4S harms thousands of Palestinian political prisoners illegally held in Israel and hundreds of Black and brown youth held in its privatized juvenile prisons in the US. The corporation profits from incarceration and deportation from the US and Palestine, to the UK, South Africa, and Australia. We reject notions of “security” that make any of our groups unsafe and insist no one is free until all of us are.
We offer this statement first and foremost to Palestinians, whose suffering does not go unnoticed and whose resistance and resilience under racism and colonialism inspires us. It is to Palestinians, as well as the Israeli and US governments, that we declare our commitment to working through cultural, economic, and political means to ensure Palestinian liberation at the same time as we work towards our own. We encourage activists to use this statement to advance solidarity with Palestine and we also pressure our own Black political figures to finally take action on this issue. As we continue these transnational conversations and interactions, we aim to sharpen our practice of joint struggle against capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and the various racisms embedded in and around our societies.
Towards liberation,
After Friday Prayers
After salat
salaam-alaikum
al humdulilah
we shall meet in the streets
to shout no more pharaoh
no more presidents for life
no more American aide for guns and tear gas
no more uncle abdullah
no more
no more reactionary theology
no honor killings
suppression of women's dignity
no more
after Friday prayers
in Tunisia
Cairo
Yemen
Sudan
Jordan
Saudi Arabia
Persian Gulf
no more
after Fatihah/Ikhlas
we shall meet the guns of Pharaoh Mubarak
we shall meet the tear gas
even death even
we shall meet
and go to paradise
for freedom
we have no fear of Pharaoh's guns/tear gas
no fear no more
we are mostly young and invincible
we have the model
we shall meet in the streets
to live again
to breathe
to love
to take control of our lives
to feed our families
to fly in the sun of freedom and liberty.
--Marvin X
1/27/11
To Egypt With Love
Dedicated to my son, Abdul (Darrel P. Jackmon, RIP)
He studied at the American University in Egypt
fell in love in Egypt
some Ghanian ambassador's daughter
told him don't give no woman keys to your apartment
he never did
not even the ambassador's daughter, he told me
he loved Egypt
spoke the language
graduated UC Berkeley in Arabic and Middle Eastern Literature
said the Africans were slaves throughout the Middle East
Arabs took their passports
making them slaves
racism was pervasive
unsustainable
yet understandable
they are not the aboriginal Arabs
not the Arabs of Sabah
Queen of Sabah's land
who ruled from Canaan to Jerusalem to the Persian Gulf
Queen of Sabah
who fascinated King Solomon
My son loved Arabic, Persian
Fulbright fellowship to University of Damascus
Syrian intelligence interrogated him daily
why was he hanging around those filthy Palestinians
Why did he swim at the American embassy
Dad, they tried to recruit me for the C.I.A
Mormons controlled the US Embassy
wanted me to be a Mormon
Toward the end my son became a Mormon
lived with Eldridge Cleaver
himself a Mormon, for a time
said Eldridge got strange phone calls
from strange people
we know Eldridge was dr. strangelove
The Ghanaian woman came to see my son in Cali
I do not know what happened
but she went home
In the end he loved a Portuguese woman
he loved Brazil
said he wanted to live in Bahia
dance Condomble
a man of the world
at his funeral came his friends
no black man no black woman
Asians whites
after all
he was a man of the world
what could he say to a nigguh in the ghetto
his travels to Africa, Egypt, Jerusalem, Brazil,Japan, what could he say to a ghetto nigguh
In Japan, he said they teach the women to say three things:
yes, thank you and I'm sorry
Japanese woman he got pregnant said no to his black baby
so she could go home in peace
family told her don't bring no black baby home.
Abdul loved the Middle East
loved Persian
poetry
the rhythms of the language
poets who dervish.
Egypt may fall today tomorrow
my son will be pleased
Pharaoh Mubarak is no more
the regime is history
what a story to tell my son
who walked into a train
in his midnight madness
Dr. Hare said he was like Malcolm and Martin
he was 38, they were 39
he self destructed
suicide and homicide is the same
different sides of the same coin.
Let Egypt arise for the sons and daughters who have suffered
a long suffering that has come to an end.
Mubarak a page in history
a pitiful note in the eternal song of a people.
--Marvin X
1/31/11
Two Poems for the People of Syria
Oh, Mohja
how much water can run from rivers to sea
how much blood can soak the earth
the guns of tyrants know no end
a people awakened are bigger than bullets
there is no sleep in their eyes
no more stunted backs and fear of broken limbs
even men, women and children are humble with sacrifice
the old the young play their roles
with smiles they endure torture chambers
with laughs they submit to rape and mutilations
there is no victory for oppressors
whose days are numbered
as the clock ticks as the sun rises
let the people continue til victory
surely they smell it on their hands
taste it on lips
believe it in their hearts
know it in their minds
no more backwardness no fear
let there be resistance til victory.
--Marvin X/El Muhajir
Syrian poet/professor Dr. Mohja Kahf
Oh Marvin, how much blood can soak the earth?
The angels asked, “will you create a species who will shed blood
and overrun the earth with evil?”
And it turns out “rivers of blood” is no metaphor:
see the stones of narrow alleys in Duma
shiny with blood hissing from humans? Dark
and dazzling, it keeps pouring and pumping
from the inexhaustible soft flesh of Syrians,
and neither regime cluster bombs from the air,
nor rebel car bombs on the ground,
ask them their names before they die.
They are mowed down like wheat harvested by machine,
and every stalk has seven ears, and every ear a hundred grains.
They bleed like irrigation canals into the earth.
Even one little girl in Idlib with a carotid artery cut
becomes a river of blood. Who knew she could be a river
running all the way over the ocean, to you,
draining me of my heart? And God said to the angels,
PALESTINE by Marvin X (Imam Maalik El Muhajir)
