Friday, June 18, 2010
Pull Yo Pants Up fada Black Prez and Yoself!
Friday, June 18, 2010
PULL YO PANTS UP
FADA BLACK PREZ
AND YOSELF!
ESSAYS ON OBAMA DRAMA
MARVIN X
Black Bird Press, Berkeley
August 2010
50 pages
$14.95.
Contents
Introduction
Excuse Me, Mr. President
Obama, A One Act Play
Jobs for Terrorists Abroad, None for the Hood
Response to State of
The Primary
Hillery and Obama, Neck to Neck
Obama's Last Ghost
Transformational or Transactional?
Wins Nomination
Sermon on the
As Predicted
As-Salaam-Afakkum
Weary of Intellectualism
Obama As Joseph
The War that ain’t War
Parable of Oil and White Supremacy
Pull Yo Pants Up fa da Black Prez
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Comments on Take this Hammer
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Straight Outta Hunters Point
Comments on Take This Hammer
Comment on film
During the time of the film, 1963, I was a youth worker in Hunters Point, the hilly neighborhood visited in the film. This area of San Francisco has been long coveted by the whites who have finally managed to occupy the area that has the best view and weather in San Francisco. Through gentrification that began around the time of the film,( the term Negro removal was used in those days), whites have finally begun to occupy the community that is extremely zhenophobic, i.e., if you ain't from here, don't come here.
But Hunters Point is a valiant community with the highest rate of black property ownership in the city. Of course all the problems still exist, if not more, drugs, gangs and homicide are epidemic. But it is a militant community. The only rebellion in SF during the 60s happened in Hunters Point.
Many of those housing projects have been and are being torn down and replaced with market rate housing, a few reserved for low income residents. For sure, at the time of Baldwin's visit, there were very few, if any, whites in the area.
The current crisis in the neighborhood is with the old Naval shipyard land that is toxic but in the process of being developed. Radiation dust is periodically blown up into the hilly area by the winds. The area is a cancer cluster with high rates of asthma. There have been community protests for years, recently the Nation of Islam minister addressed the SF Board of Supervisors and called them whores for, yes, putting profits above the health of the people. They are determined to begin developing the land without a thorough clean up of toxic waste. The politicians have flip/floped between support of the community and support of developers.
As per redevelopment in San Francisco, former Mayor Alioto apologized to the North American African community for destroying its economic and cultural life, especially the Fillmore area. Of course there were blacks who collaborated with the destruction.
For an updated film on Hunters Point, see Straight Outta Hunters Point by Kevin Epps.
--Marvin X
www.parablesandfablesofmarvinx.blogspot.com
----- Original Message ----
From: Abdul Alkalimat
To: H-AFRO-AM@H-NET.MSU.EDU
Sent: Wed, June 16, 2010 4:44:53 AM
Subject: Re: Take this Hammer - a James Baldwin documentary
From: Rhone Fraser
I saw this film, thank Earl for sending it, and Alex for making it
possible. I was struck by so many truths Baldwin stated in this film, some of which are in notes on the film I took here, which I would love to discuss on H-Net:
One of the young people interviewed said the only jobs available were those that help you tear down your own home. This speaks to the kind of economy in urban areas that cater to only the economic interests wealthy
philanthropists instead of community centers or schools.
Baldwin said you can't do anything about the moral and psychological effects of living in the ghetto. This reminds me of St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton's observation in *Black Metropolis* of Richard Wright's similar critique of Bronzeville in Chicago:"For him [Wright], all of the segregated Negro communities were intellectually sterile ghettos into which Negroes had been driven by social forces beyond their control, and which incorporated, in exaggerated form, what Wright considered some of the worst facets of American life: conspicuous consumption, pursuit of the products of a mass culture, devotion to frivolous trivialities, and a plethora of escapist religion. Richard Wright made no pretense of being detached or even tolerant about the way of life in Bronzeville" (x, Black Metropolis) Both Wright and Baldwin see that ghetto as institution that is meant to demoralize Blacks in the service of white supremacy; and both became expatriates as some
time in their lives to protest such an institution. James Baldwin expressed his critique of the ghetto in which he grew up in film, three years after Richard Wright's exiled death. Their critiques of the ghetto and gentrification are still so relevant today.
Baldwin also said 'The society makes the assumption that it is more
important to make profit than it is to make citizens...Children learn it is more important to make profit than it is to be aman. And that's the way society really operates." This is true of every new hi-rise that goes up; a high rise put up by people interested in making money, instead of lobbying to divert more funding FROM military occupations to public schools and arts programs.
When he and his host (I wish we knew his name) looked at the gutted Catholic church in downtown San Francisco, I appreciated Baldwin's calling that gutted church a metaphor for the utility of the Catholic church in the lives of black youth in that time and place. It is still an apt metaphor today, along with his critiques of gentrification when noticing the Catholic church's tacit approval of U.S. military occupation and arms exports across the world.
This was an enlightening video; I had so much more to share about this, but these were most pressing comments I had; thank you for sharing. -RF.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
James Baldwin in San Francisco-[-Take This Hammer
At the end of April last year, SF State posted James Baldwin's Take
This Hammer online ( https://diva.sfsu.edu/bundles/187041 ).
> KQED's film unit follows poet and activist James Baldwin in the spring of 1963, as he's driven around San Francisco to meet with members of the local African-American community. He is escorted by Youth For Service's Executive Director Orville Luster and intent on discovering: "The real situation of negroes in the city, as opposed to the image San Francisco would like to present." He declares: "There is no moral distance ... between the facts of life in San Francisco and the facts of life in Birmingham. Someone's got to tell it like it is. And that's where it's at." Includes frank exchanges with local people on the street, meetings with community leaders and extended point-of-view sequences shot from a moving vehicle, featuring the Bayview and Western Addition neighborhoods. Baldwin reflects on the racial inequality that African-Americans are forced to confront and at one point tries to lift the morale of a young man by expressing his conviction that: "There will be a negro president of this country but it will not be the country that we are sitting in now." The TV Archive would like to thank Darryl Cox for championing the merits of this film and for his determination that it be preserved and remastered for posterity.
A number of people immediately asked for a copy, but there were
copyright issues so downloads were not allowed.
Two weeks ago Alex Cherian, the film archivist, posted the following
note on the page:
"Please contact me directly with requests to access 'Take This Hammer'
on DVD, at acherian@sfsu.edu"
Friday, June 11, 2010
The CIA and Christopher "Dudus" Coke
By Casey Gane-McCalla June 3, 2010 2:06 pm
With the recent violence in Jamaica and the controversy over alleged drug lord, Christopher “Dudus” Coke, many people are talking about the infamous Jamaican Shower Posse and the neighborhood of Tivoli Gardens, where they have their base. What is being is being ignored largely by the media, is the role that the American government and the CIA had in training, arming and giving power to the Shower Posse.
It is interesting that the USA is indicting Christopher “Dudus” Coke, the current leader of the Shower Posse for drug and gun trafficking, given that the CIA was accused of smuggling guns into Jamaica and facilitating the cocaine trade from Jamaica to America in the 70s and 80s. In many ways Dudus was only carrying on a tradition of political corruption, drug running, guns and violence that was started with the help of the CIA.
Christopher “Dudus” Coke’s father was was Lester Coke, also known as Jim Brown, one of the founders of the Shower Posse and a fellow champion and protector of the impoverished Tivoli Gardens neighborhood in Kingston. Coke was a political enforcer and bodyguard to Edward Seaga, the leader of the Jamaican Labour Party.
Seaga’s opponent Michael Manley had begun to adopt “socialist” stances and began openly criticizing American foreign policies and meeting with U.S. enemy, Fidel Castro, in the 1970s. Given the cold war the US was having with Russia, the CIA did not want Jamaica to be friendly with communists.
According to Gary Webb’s book,”The Dark Alliance,” Norman Descoteaux, the CIA station chief in Jamaica began a destabilization program of the Manley government in late 70s. Part of that plan was assassinations, money for the Jamaican Labour Party, labor unrest, bribery and shipping weapons to Manley’s opponents, like Lester “Jim Brown” Coke.
Author, Daurius Figueira writes in his book, “Cocaine And Heroin Trafficking In The Caribbean,” “In fact, it meant that illicit drug runners linked to the JLP were integrated into a CIA linked illicit drugs guns and criminal trafficking pipeline.”
Former CIA agent, Philip Agee, said “the CIA was using the JLP as its instrument in the campaign against the Michael Manley government, I’d say most of the violence was coming from the JLP, and behind them was the CIA in terms of getting weapons in and getting money in.”
One of Lester Coke’s associates, Cecil Connor, would claim that he was trained by the CIA to fight political wars for the JLP through killing and spying. Connor would stuff ballot boxes and intimidate voters to help the JLP win elections. Connor would go on from being a political thug to being part of the international Jamaican based cocaine ring known as the Shower Posse. He wound up testifying against Lester Coke and his cohort Vivian Blake, only to return to his native St. Kitts to become a drug kingpin who almost held the country hostage.
Christopher “Dudus” Coke’s father, Lester Coke has also been accused of working with the CIA. Timothy White speculates, in his biography of Bob Marley, “Catch A Fire,” that Jim Brown was part of a team of armed gunman that attempted to assassinate Bob Marley led by JLP enforcer Carl “Byah” Mitchell. Authors Laurie Gunst and Vivien Goldman also make the same assertions in their books, “Born Fi Dead” and “The Book Of Exodus.” Marley’s manager Don Taylor claims that one of Marley’s attackers was captured and admitted that the CIA had agreed to pay him in cocaine and guns to kill Marley.
Lester Coke would later be burned to death in a Jamaican jail cell, while awaiting extradition the the United States. Many people have claimed that he was killed so he wouldn’t reveal his secrets dealing with the CIA, JLP and criminal activity.
In its efforts to destabilize the Jamaican government in the 1970s, the CIA created a group of drug dealing, gun running, political criminals. Through the cocaine trade, these criminals would eventually become more powerful than the politicians they were connected to. The CIA destabilization program did not only destabilize Jamaica in the 70s, but it destabilized Jamaica for the next 40 years.
Given the secrecy of both CIA and Jamaican society, it is unclear exactly what was the CIA’s role in creating the Shower Posse. Did they give them guns? Were they given cocaine? Were they trained how to smuggle drugs? Did the CIA use the Shower Posse to try and kill Bob Marley? These are all questions that the CIA should answer.
If what is alleged about the CIA is true, then they are partially responsible for the cycle of gun trafficking, gun smuggling and violence that plagues Jamaica today. If the US can extradite the son of one of the CIA’s political enforcers for trafficking guns and cocaine, shouldn’t the CIA be investigated for training Jamaicans on how to conduct political warfare, arming them, giving them cocaine and helping them traffic it? Given the revelation that the CIA allowed Nicaraguan drug dealers to sell cocaine in the US to fund their revolution against their communist government, it is not that far fetched to believe that they would arm Jamaicans to with guns and give them cocaine to fight communists in Jamaica.
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