Poems from a student to Marvin X

June 2011, & X @ 67
Posted on June 4, 2011 by anzinga







June 2011

Superman went home

followed by Geronimo Pratt

Tears and struggle

from Harlem to Tanzania

Souls set free from heavy bodies

X’s wisdom brightens the midnight sky

in Babylon as

we remember Sun Ra

in the laughter of the living

Lupe proves it ain’t all a fiasco

Gil Scott and Plato’s Cave

revolutionary lessons

never televised

but still in syndication

Students remember teachers



X @ 67 Baba turned 67

his children forgave him

he may eventually forgive himself

but bless the demons that chase him

keep him pouring out

look may he flow forth

we were born &

will no doubt die

thirsty

keep him pouring out

long may he flow forth

keep him pouring out

bless his mama

living brightly in his memory

may she forgive him for

ignoring her at least this once

we worthless negroes are blessed

because

he has never left us alone

in his journey from miscreant to itinerant poet

he grew towards Mt. Thai & he wrote maps

so we could follow as he turned away from feathers

remembered how to talk to cows

learned from falling down

the value of things he never owned

sharpening his pen to sword point

bargained his soul back from the devil

for poems in the name of his grandchildren

as his students watched

they learned to plant seeds

we know you were here

you have carved on souls

in a forest that plants trees as it burns

in life’s fire all is clean

all is new again

Sun Ra never died he ascended

as you have

standing there in the light

sun over your left shoulder

forever in your righted eyes

bless us as

we present flowers to the living

Understanding White Supremacy in the Present Era

Understanding White Supremacy in the Present Era

Forget that post-black, post racism poppycock. Forget the first black president mirage, the illusion that imperialism and raw, naked capitalism cannot have a black face, kinder, gentler, yet the same motherfuckin bullshit from yesterday, just covered over with a light black face, one acceptable to the white masters and deceptible to the black masses, so gullible emotionally they will go for fried ice cream and purchasing the Brooklyn Bridge in one sale.

Thank God Master Fard Muhammad was able to trick us out of tricknology by entering our homes selling red silk cloth, yes, that same red in the flag that was used to march us through the jungle of Africa to the shores where we passed through the door of no return and boarded the Good Ship Jesus to the hell hole called America.

We must fully understanding that White Supremacy is cunning and vile, a drug so subtle that the entire world has become under its addiction. And yet it is a full blown illusion, yet so intractable

that it ensnares men, women and children of every ethnic group around the planet. Call it cultural imperialism, the dissemination of values that brainwash entire nations that become mental if not physical slaves of the dominate culture.

But it is in the superstructure, the laws and mores of White Supremacy, i.e. lunacy, that the victims become so utterly entrapped that we cannot imagine there are at least two laws operating in the White Supremacy slave system: one for the masters and one for the slaves.

Our poor ghetto brothers and sisters would never fully understand there are two laws or the application of said laws, depending on whether one lives in the hood or in the suburbs. In the hood there are numerous check point charlies where one is stopped regularly for any infraction. In the police state of New York City, blacks are stopped at the whim of "community police" and randomly checked for drugs, guns, probation or parole violations.

Now we have lived in the suburbs so we know the difference. We lived in a town called Castro Valley for a time at the pleasure of my patron, a rich black brother who had a son out of control at the loss of his mother due to cancer. The youth had a car with no license, no insurance, no tags, but was stopped speeding on several occasions. He was not arrested, ticketed or did he have his car taken. The police simply called his father and told him to come get his son, and the boy went home.

As I was the only adult at the house, virtually a mansion in this exclusive area, the youth had a party, but when neighbors called the police, they arrived but only wanted to know if an adult was in the house. When they saw me, they said thank you and good night, even though the youth were indeed doing drugs and drinking alcohol. The officers said, Good night, sir!

In employment, we have black people going totally insane due to discrimination on the job, especially when they are doubly qualified but are passed over continuously for advancement.

Even in education our children are told they cannot learn, thus they drop out or are pushed out because after being dumbed down, they lower the test scores and the resultant funding of the school district. Yet, we have the recent case of a young man in a dental assistant program who repeatedly received the highest test scores but was repeatedly overlooked when cash prizes were given out for the highest test score. This is the type of blatant discrimination we must endure of a daily basis in this so called Obamian Post-Black/racism era.

During my imprisonment for refusing to fight in Vietnam, I had a job in the yard office of looking up prisoners when they had a visit, so I had access to their files containing their offence and sentencing. I saw that a black bank robber got seven years on the average and a white bank robber three years. Need I say more? If you don't get it you ain't gonna get it, so why persist and prolong this conversation.

Sometimes it doesn't matter where we live, the result can be the same if we are black, witness the treatment given Harvard Professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates when he failed the tone test. In the hood the tone test is when encountering the police, depending on one's tone of voice, one can be arrested, released or killed. Imagine the innumerable blacks who failed the test. And black parents are guilty of not teaching their children, especially their sons, the tone test.

But alas, the tone test transcends the police, when encountering another black, we must exercise caution with our tone of voice, otherwise we may suffer the same fate as with the police. Depending on your tone of voice, another black may want to take you out, but ironically, no matter how disrespectful a white man may be, he ain't thinking about taking out no white man.

This is a case of what Dr. Nathan Hare calls Type II White Supremacy, the self hate variety, the misplaced aggression type. Another example of this behavior is when the community becomes enraged when the police kill us but when us kill us there is no similar response, no rallies, no march, no protest, only silent night.

The prescription is for us to recover from Type II White Supremacy, the self hate variety, so that we can have power over Type I, or rather, it shall have no power over us, once we detox and recover from Type II. See my book How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy, A Pan African Twelve Step Model, Black Bird Press, 2007. The entire book is available to download for free: http://www.firstpoetschurch.blogspot.com/

Geronimo Pratt and High Blood Pressure

High Blood Pressure and North American Africans

Although we don’t know all the facts, high blood pressure is suspected in the death of our dear revolutionary comrade Geronimo Pratt, who died in our Motherland Africa, on Thursday. We loved our brother for his revolutionary legacy that included spending 27 years behind bars, partly because a faction of the Black Panther Party would not come forward to testify that he was in Oakland at the time he supposedly murdered a white woman on a Los Angeles tennis court.

The FBI also had wiretaps to prove he was at a BPP meeting in Oakland, but they refused to submit their evidence since it was not in their Cointelpro handbook (Counter Intelligence Program to disrupt the Black Liberation Movement, especially any leader, large or small, capable of inspiring the masses with the ideology of revolution). For sure, they took out Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Others they jailed or forced into exile or into drugs and insanity.

Geronimo Pratt (Imagine Obama and the Imperialists used the code name Geronimo to assassinate Osama bin Laden) was finally released from prison after 27 years, after claiming innocence throughout his incarceration.

The last time we saw him at a public event in San Francisco, he confessed he was not taking his high blood pressure medication. (Again, I am stopping to take mine as I write!).Geronimo is a classic example of behavior practiced by a large number of North American Africans, no matter what class or caste, educated or uneducated.

We know that even those North American Africans with full health insurance do not take full advantage of it. Whether it is due to our long history of Medical Apartheid (see the book by the same title—and we are advised not to read this book alone) that has made us righteously fearful of the medical establishment, known to be another enemy of our people, due to forced experiments throughout slavery and after, including the Tuskegee experiment on black people who were subjected to syphilis, or the simple fact we live in a hostile environment that breeds high blood pressure from stress that many of us are in denial about, or simply ignorant about, thus we check out prematurely or sometimes it is a form of suicide to escape the stress. The hostile environment on the job, in the home, in the streets, is simply too damn much. We treated like a nigguh on the job, at the club, church, home, yes, by wife, husband, children, so we want out. Thus, we neglect our health, our medication, are appointments at the doctor.

I am guilty of missing appointments, after appointments, after appointments. Sometimes I take my high blood pressure medication and sometimes I don’t.

But let’s move from condition to prescription. Firstly, we know that we must remove the stress from our lives. I try to live in the No Stress Zone. I try not to worry about nothing.
Do the birds and bees worry about tomorrow? One day at a time. Few of us can deal with a 24 hour period of time, so why do we worry about what happened yesterday and what shall happen tomorrow? Some of us, and sometimes I am guilty as well, worry about matters when the solution has arrived! The problem has been solved, yet we worry!

Now something is very, very wrong with this picture. Somebody needs their head examined. Somebody needs a healing! But let’s be real, what is the solution to our conundrum? A woman at a program to feed the homeless said they have instituted blood pressure screening at the feedings. This is a nice step.

But it seems to me the only lasting solution would be for our people to possess a hand carried device, similar to a watch or cell phone, or perhaps as part of the cell phone since they are so smart we can pay our bills with them, surely they can be instructed to test blood pressure on North American Africans, so we can monitor our blood pressure 24/7.

We suffer too much stress for random or periodic monitoring. It must be 24/7. It was just revealed that even our children are suffering high blood pressure as well, so the problem is pandemic, intergenerational, thus it must be addressed with a solution that will encompass the entire community. If you see another way, a better way, please let me know.

We were so blessed to have Minister of Defense Geronimo in our midst, and we shall miss him dearly. But let us learn from him and honor him by doing the right thing, continue the struggle for national liberation and check our blood pressure. Peace and love.
--Marvin X
6/7/11

Africa for the Africans

By Glen Ford
June 02, 2011 - BlackAgendaReport.com.

As far as the United States and Europe are concerned, Africans have nothing to say about what happens in Africa. South African President Jacob Zuma made a second trip to Libya this week, on behalf of the African Uni0n, seeking a diplomatic end to NATO’s war against Mouammar Gaddafi’s government. Just as with a previous African Uni0n peace keeping mission, back in early April, Col. Gaddafi agreed to the peace plan. And just as before, the so-called rebels and their American and European bosses refused even to consider a cease fire. As has been obvious from the beginning of this “humanitarian” farce, the Great White Fathers of Europe and the “Wall Street mascot” from the United States, as Obama has been called, will be satisfied with nothing less than regime change in Libya – and to Hell with what Africans think!

The Euro-Americans will soon prove just as contemptuous of their erstwhile North African Arab allies, based in Benghazi, who claim to be leading a “revolution” against Gaddafi. But these rebels lost their legitimacy the second they decided to become the ground troops for a neocolonial invasion of North Africa. Revolutionaries fight the Power. The gang from Benghazi are mere pawns of imperialism and have no credibility whatsoever as revolutionaries. This is an imperialist war, fought for imperial objectives. The rebels have chosen to become imperialism’s mascots, waiting like pitiful little Gunga Dins for the British and French to arrive with attack helicopters to burn and kill their countrymen.

NATO orders their Libyan minions around like children. NATO recently “issued instructions” that the rebels not move beyond certain points in the desert, so as not to enter the killing fields that the rich white fathers – plus Obama – are preparing to incinerate Libyan government soldiers. Naturally, the rebels will do exactly as they are told, since this is not their revolution. Rather, Libya is the front line of the European and American counter-revolution. The chain of command reaches to Paris, London and Washington. Benghazi has reverted to the colonial outpost that it was when the Italians ruled – only now, in the 21st century, all of the Europeans plus the Americans get to lord over the Libyans, who grin and skin while thanking the colonizers for coming back to save Africa from the Africans.

And so it makes perfect sense that a peace proposal from the president of South Africa, Black Africa's most powerful and wealthy country, acting on behalf of the organization that includes every nation on the continent, counts for less than nothing in the imperial scheme of things. The West encourages South African President Jacob Zuma to help bring chaotic Black countries into line, but Zuma and the African Uni0n are not authorized to interfere with imperial wars on the continent. That's “white folks business.”

When the Western attack helicopters arrive, the Benghazi-based rebels will cheer, as if they won something. The Gunga Dins should carefully study those helicopters and their awesome firepower, because those guns will one day likely be turned against them. The U.S. and Europe have no intention of allowing Libyans to rule Libya. And after all, why should the imperialists hand over all that oil to a bunch of local flunkies who couldn't even fight their own war.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.


Comment by Marvin X

It is indeed sad to see Africans disrespected in this era, but Nkruma told us neo-colonialism is colonialism playing possum. To transcend neo-colonalism one must smash imperialism hook, line and sinker. And we must see Obama without rose colored glasses, as Glen Ford suggests, the Wall Street mascot, a little puppy dog, i.e., running dog, who tries to run free but the leash yanks him back under the full control of his master (s).

Only a total break from the West by the non-white world will suffice, and even then we must be vigilant of the Afro-Asian-Indigenous world because we all have our national agendas, some open, some hidden. We all move first and last in our interests. Elijah said trust no one, but even his best student, Malcolm X, missed the lesson, alas, he trusted Elijah and was totally demoralized at Elijah's supposed lack of morals.

One thing the lowest Crack head learns is that he cannot trust his own mind, for he realizes most profoundly even his own mind is capable of playing tricks on him. He hears knocks on the door when no one is there. He hears the leaves on the tree and believes he hears people in conversation about him. He hears his friends in another room talking and is convinced they are plotting to kill him. Trust no one, not even your own self! The Bible tells us to win a war one needs many advisors.

Elijah told us the white man is the devil, but we're so smart to think it's only a certain class of them. Christ Rock said he's a rich nigguh but the lowest white man don't wanna be Christ Rock! Europe and Euro-Americans suffer a sickness so pervasive it is constitutional, and even the Big Book in recovery says those in this condition are unable to recover, even after detoxification and a long term program. Thus, the more white people change, the more they stay the same.

You may say we're the same, we're so addicted to white supremacy type II (Dr. Nathan Hare) that we refuse to believe our neighbor next door is harboring a kidnapped child and fathering children by her. We are astounded to believe such.
And yet, another neighbor has a group home that is similar, and he's African, but has a baby farm. Such was discovered in Nigeria recently.

Only a tsunami, an earthquake off the Richter scale will suffice to alter the world's spiritual paradigm of nothingness and dread, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. We must transcend the Sisyphean myth-ritual of eternal damnation, mentally unable to reach the mountain top that Martin Luther King, Jr. claimed he achieved. If he made it, why not every man?

No matter the behavior of Europeans and Euro-Americans, the universe is clearly moving in the direction to make matters right. The spirit of justice and righteousness is in the air, the water, the land, the trees. Man shall either get in harmony or suffer the consequences. We see the mighty Mississippi River rising to consume all in her path. We see the devastating power of tornadoes in the midwest. Shall we all go down because of arrogance, greed, niggardliness, slothful thinking, evil intentions, or simply claiming ignorance that shall be unacceptable and inexcusible in the just universe that is at our door step.
--Marvin X
6/5/11

Goodbye, Gil Scott at Harlem's Riverside Church

Anna Webber/GettyScott-

Heron performs during the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival 2010.

Corey Sipkin/News

Abiodun Oyewole of The Last Poets leaves Gil Scott-Heron's memorial at Riverside Church Thursday.

Family, celebrities pay tribute to Gil Scott-Heron at music legend's memorial; Kanye West performs

BY Michael J. Feeney
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, June 2nd 2011, 8:51 PM


Corey Sipkin/News

Kanye West leaves the service from a side door after his surprise performance.

Gil Scott-Heron's daughter proclaimed the revolution will be televised during a moving memorial service Thursday for her musical father that included a surprise performance by rapper Kanye West.

Scott-Heron, a celebrated poet and musician, was remembered by about 300 close friends and family scattered throughout Harlem's historic Riverside Church Thursday. He was 62 when he died last Friday.

"It was honoring and celebrating him," said his daughter, Gia, 31, after the service. "When we came in, what we wanted to do was honor daddy."

And she certainly did.

She performed an original poem, called "Time" and sang Bette Midler's "The Rose."

"But because he was before his time, and because time is unfair...We weren't even aware, that his time was up!" she said in her poem. "But time can never diminish the bonds of unconditional love! So though your demise is publicized, this new revolution will be televised."

Her father leaves behind a 40-year musical legacy that included such songs as "We Almost Lost Detroit" and "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," which was recorded at a club on W. 125th St. and Lenox Ave.

The world-renowned spoken word artist is also credited with inspiring a slew of hip-hop artists, such as West, and some have dubbed him the "Godfather of Rap."

West, wearing all black and sporting a pair of dark sunglasses, closed out the tribute by performing his song "Lost in the World" - which features a portion of Scott-Heron's "Comment # 1.

Also in attendance was Abiodun Oyewole of The Last Poets, the 1970s Harlem group that inspired Scott-Heron and also helped set the stage for hip-hop.

Speakers included his first wife, Brenda Sykes, who reminisced about NBA Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar introducing her to Scott-Heron, the birth of their daughter and Scott-Heron's close relationship with Stevie Wonder.

Wonder, she said, always wanted to dance on stage, but never trusted anyone to keep him from bumping into something. But Wonder trusted Scott-Heron, said his wife of 10 years.

"Gil led Stevie in a conga line," said Sykes, adding that the pair toured together and joined forces to help create the federal holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The program for the memorial listed Wonder as an honorary pallbearer, but the superstar musician was not in attendance.

Scott-Heron will be buried at Kensico Cemetery in Westchester County.

His book publisher and longtime friend Jamie Byng called the service "beautiful.

"Gil would have really loved it," he said. "I thought it was a really beautiful service. It was a celebration and also a tribute - and a mourning. I enjoyed it...We all wanted to hear his voice."

Black Panther Geronimo Pratt Transitions to Ancestors

Black Panther Leader Geronimo Pratt Dies In Tanzania

Associated Press on June 3, 2011


LOS ANGELES — Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt, a former Black Panther Party leader who spent 27 years in prison on a murder conviction that was later overturned, has died. He was 63.

Pratt died at his home in a small village in Tanzania, where he had lived for at least half a decade, lawyer Stuart Hanlon, who helped Pratt win his freedom, told The Associated Press from San Francisco on Thursday.

Pratt was a former high ranking member of the Black Panther Party. He was targeted by the FBI program COINTELPRO, which aimed to “neutralize Pratt as an effective BPP functionary.”

In 1970 Pratt was arrested and charged with murder and kidnapping. Pratt’s conviction was vacated on June 10, 1997, on the grounds that the prosecution had concealed evidence that might have exonerated the defendant. Pratt continued to work on behalf of men and women believed to be wrongfully incarcerated until his death, including participation in rallies in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal, whom he had met when both were active as Black Panthers. Geronimo was living in Tanzania at the time of his death.

Hanlon said he learned of Pratt’s death through the former activist’s family members. He did not know what caused Pratt’s death, but said he had suffered from high blood pressure.

Hanlon said Pratt refused to carry any resentment about his treatment by the legal system.

“He had no anger, he had no bitterness, he had no desire for revenge. He wanted to resume his life and have children,” he said. “He would never look back.”

The Los Angeles Times, which first reported Pratt’s death, quoted a family member as saying he died Thursday.

Pratt was convicted in 1972 of being one of two men who robbed and fatally shot schoolteacher Caroline Olsen on a Santa Monica tennis court in December 1968. No one else was arrested.

Pratt claimed he was in Oakland for Black Panther meetings the day of the murder, and that FBI agents and police hid and possibly destroyed wiretap evidence that would prove it.

His lawyers, who included high-profile defense attorney Johnnie Cochran, blamed his arrest on a politically charged campaign by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI against the Black Panthers and other perceived enemies of the U.S. government.

Pratt’s belated reversal of fortune came with the disclosure that a key prosecution witness hid the fact he was an ex-felon and a police informant.

Superior Court Judge Everett Dickey granted him a new trial in June 1997, saying the credibility of prosecution witness Julius Butler — who testified that Pratt had confessed to him — could have been undermined if the jury had known of his relationship with law enforcement. He was freed later that month.

Cochran, best known representing such clients as O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson, called the day Pratt’s freedom was secured “the happiest day of my life practicing law.”

Prosecutors announced two years after the conviction was overturned that they would abandon efforts to retry him.

“I feel relieved that the L.A. DA’s office has finally come to their senses in this respect,” Pratt said at the time. “But, I am not relieved in that they did not come clean all the way in exposing their complicity with this frame-up, this 27-year trauma.”

He settled a false imprisonment and civil rights lawsuit against the FBI and city of Los Angeles for $4.5 million in 2000.

Comment by Marvin X

We mourn the transition of Geronimo Pratt. He was a warrior of the highest degree for Black Liberation. He was a longtime associate of Eldridge Cleaver who communicated with him during his 27 years of confinement. Geronimo has a child by Cleaver's daughter, Joju. Perhaps the last time he was in the Bay Area he spoke of his high blood pressure, saying he was guilty of not dealing with it. I'm taking my pills as I write.

FYI, the FBI continued spying on Geronimo during his confinement, using a Black Panther visitor as an informant. The person confessed to him upon his release and he forgave the person as he did those involved in the assassination of Black Panther leaders Alprentis Bunchy Carter and John Huggins, including US leader,Maulana Karenga. His spirit of reconciliation must be emulated by those in the Black Liberation Movement today.

G, we love you and shall miss you, but we know your position with the ancestors is secure. As-Salaam-Alaikum.
6/3/11

$50 Million Suit Over Malcolm X Bio

$50M SUIT OVER MALCOLM X BIO

NEWARK, NJ - On what would have been the 86th birthday of Malcolm X, criminal defense attorney and former Plainfield, NJ Mayor Mark Fury filed a $50 Million lawsuit against Columbia University, Viking Press and the estate of Manning Marable regarding Marable’s posthumously published biography, “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention.”

Fury is representing former Nation of Islam Minister Linward X Cathcart in the lawsuit filed in Newark federal court.

In his book, Marable suggests Cathcart “may have been involved in the murder” or worse, physically supervised the assassination of Malcolm X on the night of February 21, 1965 in the Audubon Ballroom in New York City.

The author also wrote that “Malcolm appears to have begun an illicit sexual affair with an eighteen year-old” secretary, and that both Mr. Cathcart and Malcolm X were involved with that same woman, right up to the night of Malcolm’s assassination. Mr. Cathcart vehemently denies these allegations.

Mr. Cathcart was seated in the auditorium the night Malcolm X was killed. “Mr. Cathcart was the only person searched at the door of the Audubon that night. He was permitted a seat down front because of his close relationship with Malcolm. He came, as did several hundred others, to hear what Malcolm had to say about his separation from the Nation of Islam and his plans for the Organization of African American Unity (OAAU).

“Within 24 hours of the shooting, Mr. Cathcart was among the first to be interviewed by the FBI. They found no evidence of his involvement. From that time to the present, no one has offered any basis for the scurrilous claims in Manning Marable’s book,” attorney Mark Fury said.

According to the 500-plus page volume, (which sat on Marable’s shelf for 30 years before being rushed to press after the author was diagnosed with a terminal lung disease in 2010) Mr. Cathcart and Malcolm X shared the previously mentioned girlfriend that Mr. Cathcart actually did not formally meet until after the death of Malcolm X.

Manning Marable suggests that Malcolm X was both a homosexual and a whore-monger; that his wife Betty Shabazz slept with other men during their marriage with the knowledge and consent of Malcolm X, and that his alleged mistress “may have” spent the night with him in a hotel on the night before his death.

“This egregious twisting of facts, the licentious use of innuendo and the proliferation of outright lies is beneath the dignity of the late professor and the institution that helped him research and finance this project for more than 30 years”, said Fury. “There is no basis for any of these statements or conclusions. This book is a libelous, slanderous attack on several of the most important figures in American history (the writer also raises serious questions about the motives and credibility of the co-author of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” Alex Haley). Everyone should feel cheated and attacked, not just Malcolm enthusiasts or even just African Americans. This is an attack on all of us,” Fury said.