Book Review: We Will Return in the Whirlwind

Book Review: We Will Return

In the Whirlwind

Black Radical Organizations 1960 – 1975
By Muhammad Ahmad (Maxwell Stanford Jr.).
(Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, 2007. Pp.378, Notes, Appendix, $18.00)

This book is a participant – observer investigation into four of the main radical black organizations in America between 1960 – 1975: the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW); exploring their strengths, weaknesses and contradictions. Here is a close to complete analysis of the African American contribution to world revolution through the study of the aforementioned organizations, complete with discussion of their necessary predecessors and conclusions. Considering the time line of 1960 to 1975, this book presents the history of the African-American radical tradition in terms of the overlapping and interrelatedness of the said organizations with raising the consciousness of African Americans as well as all of humanity.

This book is a must read for those members of my age group (the hip hop generation) and below who would otherwise not have a chance to receive this wisdom at the feet of our elders who participate(d) and engage(d) in revolutionary struggle.

Particularly powerful is the qualitative method of inquiry, the blending of the dialectical material analysis with personal reflection, since Ahmed was a participant and not just a mere observer. This is the first time I have read an African theoretician apply dialectical method to African reality in such a clear manner. Of course the few limitations occur only because Ahmed's competency is limited to his experience; his attempt to write a historiography of the Black Panthers is problematic however, especially out here in Oakland.

There is a lack of continuity from RAM to BPP to the contemporary contribution to revolutionary consciousness. I say this because of the claim that Kwame Ture made on the origins of the BPP; both he and Ahmed tie them to Lowndes County but in different ways; also because Ahmed could have done more research and documentation on local origins of the BPP and thus reached clearer conclusions.

When looking at Ahmed's ideological foundations, mentors to his personal development, I can be thankful that he wrote this book and honored Mr. Boggs' requirement of informing the future to talk about generations of the revolutionary and radical tradition that they are part of and must advance from. Reading this book, I can see why many of my comrades do the work that they do, I can also see the impact RAM had on national efforts toward liberation.

Crucial is the manner in which Africans apply dialectical thinking to daily life. I maintain that dialectical historical materialism is older than Marx or Hegel. It is nothing more than a modern way to talk about Maat, the foundation of African thought. As we recall, dialectics is the art of argumentation, one of the seven liberal arts of the traditional mystery system that G. M. James talks about in Stolen Legacy. Sometimes the term logic is used interchangeably with and substituted for dialectics. Logic is nothing more than the rules of thinking, the ability to rationalize, to speak. The materialist aspect was a European contribution to this law of opposites in order to control and manipulate nature.

A couple of concerns I have with the book include the question of the invisibility of the NOI in his analysis. There is no doubt the heavy influence the NOI had organizationally on the black liberation movement. Also there was a lack of West coast primary sources, some of the narrative concerning California in particular, I thought was at best incomplete. The West coast was presented as lacking strong ideology and organizational skills, except when somehow tied to the national concerted effort which Ahmed admits was a constant problem due to serious reactionary forces, internal and external.

James Boggs was able to see a change in the American interpretation of Marxism (another contribution of African philosophy), advancing C.L.R. James analysis which led to their ideological split. Concerning the Boggs/ James connection, Ahmad refers to the Boggs' as mentors to RAM. In discussing the Boggs', Ahmed mentions how they split from James over ideology, specifically over the need to for American socialist theory to take into account the phenomena of cybernation in American factories at the time. For the Boggs' the need to develop theory from the practice of Detroit labor was imperative while according to Ahmed, C.L.R. James seems to gloss over this point in his analysis. I didn't want to say too much specifically about the organizations due to the way Ahmed weaves his story together, showing the contradictions he saw in each organization and how they're overall efforts contributed to the national cause of black liberation.

I wasn't clear on Dr. Muhammad's secondary discussion of the establishment of Black studies in national colleges and universities. As an alumni of the Pan Afrikan Student's Union, the ideological descendant of the original Black Student Union at the San Francisco State University, I was extremely critical on what Ahmed had to say on these matters, to cross reference it with my own experiences. Perhaps I was expecting too much from him. Perhaps, indeed, We Will Return in the Whirlwind is a brief introduction into a world of unrecorded and undocumented revolutionary ideas and actions.

In conclusion this is a must read for student organizations and grassroots community organizers. All too often we reinvent the wheel. This book is invaluable in terms of visualizing, conceiving and emulating an African standard.

He seemed to do a thorough job with SNCC and Ram. My critique mainly stems from the lack of discussion of the NOI in this time span; how he spoke about Malcolm X without mentioning the ideological development he acquired from his activity in the NOI; and with the organization of the BPP. Admittedly, I don't see the connection between DRUM and the BPP (unless Ahmed himself is the link via RAM).

Concerning the whole question of Marxism and Africa, at Mamadou Lumumba's (Ken Freeman) memorial Baba Lumumba (Ken's brother) mentioned how his brother struggled to reconcile Marxist Leninist thinking with African culture. I see this same tendency in Ahmed's writing. For me, dialectical historical materialism equates with Maat. Therefore, many of our black Marxists overemphasize Hegelian thinking in our struggle for total liberation. I think that understanding is a direct result of how the Hegelian paradigm in many ways perverted our movement; because the white academics make it look so advanced-- at least it did to Negroes in the early 20th century. Garvey was the main one to warn about getting too close to the Communists, that we should return to our African philosophy.

Consequently, this is where the question of the 'West coast contribution' enters the story . Yes, San Francisco 1968 was the epicenter of black studies, but what did it produce? For one thing it produced a new school of thought beyond the Marxist-Leninist paradigm. Even Nkrumah refined those ideas for the Afrikan situation. I'm merely pointing out that when an Afrikan refines European ideas (which came from self anyway), that Afrikan is making a contribution to Afrikan philosophy. Then the question becomes , who were some one of the first Afrikans to popularize and refine Marxist – Leninism for Afrikans? You gotta mention C.L.R. James down to Huey Newton.

--Ramal Lamar

Ramal Lamar is a graduate student in Logic and an associate of the Plato Negro Academy of Da Corner. He teachers Math at Berkeley Continuation High School.
http://www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com/

Two Poems for Marvin X Madpoet

Street Spirits

(For Marvin X)

under a red sky
you have roamed
the streets of San Francisco
rapping about homeless blues
in your poetry
in your life
in your spirit

under a red sky
i saw you
once selling the Poetry Flash
to rich tourists and wondered
whether you would become
the next Bob Kaufman

under a red sky
you have roamed the beaches
of the Golden State
praying here and there
remembering your sweet Sherley
confessing your sins and mistakes

under a red sky
you have remembered
that a poet is full
of great feelings
of love
for God
for self
for others
whether the poet
is homeless
or not

under a red sky
you have helped me
to embrace
the street spirits
and the rays
of a red sun
with your poetry
with your life
with your spirit.

--J. Vern Cromartie
© 2005

Another One for Marvin X

start out in Fowler
go to Fresno
and fall in love forever
with a deep chocolate woman
who loves you and your poetry

you know she loves you
forever like the waves
rolling in the dock of the bay

she loved you

this woman loved you
when she breathed
her last breath

sometimes you see her
in your sleep
and you wonder
about what could have been
about what should have been
about what was your flight
to love forever

the power of love
is holy

Jimi Hendix
knew this holiness
in his dreams
when he sang
deep into the night
about the
power of love

if you want to follow
on the mantle of Jeremiah
let the power of love
drench your soul
forever.

--J. Vern Cromartie
© 2006

Dr. J. Vern Cromartie is a poet and chair of the Sociology Department at
Contra Costa College. He is a former student of Marvin X when he taught
drama at Laney College. Dr. Cromartie recently delivered a research
paper on Marvin X's brief tenure at UC Berkeley. www.marvinxoneducation.blogspot.com
www.academyofdacorner.blogspot.com

The Parable of the Fire
Parable of the Fire
There was a pile of weeds in the backyard. They were an eyesore to the neighborhood. People complained until the man in the white house decided to burn them down. He lighted the pile of weeds and they began to burn. Then a wind came and started blowing the embers into the field nearby. The man saw he could have a problem if he didn't do something quickly, so he grabbed the water hose and began sprinkling water on the pile of weeds.

He put water on the top of the pile and the flames seemed to subside. He continued pouring water on the top of the pile until he thought the fire was out, since he didn't see anymore flames. He went inside and went to sleep. While he was asleep the smoldering fire underneath began to burn again until the flames could be seen by neighbors who called the fire department. They rushed to the scene. When the man heard the fire trucks he got up and ran outside to see the pile of weeds flaming high with embers going up into the night sky.

The firemen put out the fire and told the man to get out of the way so they could finish the job he had half done. He did as told and the firemen extinguished the fire, including the smoldering weeds on the bottom.The firemen told him to never forget the fire underneath that can smolder for days and flame up periodically, depending on the wind. Just because you put water on the top, don't think the fire is out. Remember the smoldering flames underneath that must be suppressed.2/19/10

The condition of the American economic and financial crisis is analogous to the Parable of the Fire. The fire took place in the back yard of the White House. The President was the man trying to put the fire out. He applied the socalled conservative voodoo trickle down theory to the fire, starting at the top as the President did with his bailout of the banks, insurance companies and corporations. While the trickle down theory did assuage the meltdown, the crucial factor was not at the top but the fire smoldering underneath.

But being so smart he outsmarted himself, the President proclaimed a victory over the crisis, even though the fire underneath was yet burning with unemployment, mortgage debt, homelessness and growing anger among the people since many were also starving for they were without money for basic survival.

The President even continued sleeping without addressing the issue at hand, jobs, jobs, jobs, rather he focused on health insurance that even if passed would be unaffordable since people are unemployed. Like the man putting out the fire, his energy was misplaced though well meaning.
The neighbors who called the fire department are all those who were for him initially and even those who were against him.

The fire is causing a symbiotic unity among the people that will likely cause his removal from the White House. Yes, dissatisfaction brings about a change, real change. It appears the President will be evicted from the White House after his first term. The winds are gathering to sweep him from office. The winds of war are yet blowing in the East, costing him trillions of dollars.

There are even little fires in the fields nearby caused by the embers blowing in the wind. The global financial system is yet burning. Greece is on fire and other nations are no out of danger. There is the fire of the drug war on the President's border.

Seven thousand murders in the last few years. Even inside the border there is fire in the cities, with thousands murdered in the inner cities, yet we hear nothing from the sleeping President.
He promises to address the problem of education, housing and employment with the avowed enemies of his country before addressing the smoldering fire of discontent in his backyard. We wonder does he hear the cries of the people or is the siren of the fire truck so deafening that it drowns out the voices of those suffering on the bottom of the pile of weeds.
--Marvin X
2/20/10

Black Male Suicide

Black Male Suicide
Why are so many young men killing themselves?
By: Henrie Treadwell Posted: September 15, 2008

Not long ago, suicide and African Americans were almost never mentioned in the same breath. Despite confronting challenges from slavery to Jim Crow to structural racism, blacks rarely took their own lives. It was a positive health disparity. Until now.
There is alarming evidence that the suicide rate for young African-American men is escalating, and just as much evidence of how ill-equipped America's health-care system is to handle it.
From 1980 to 1995, the suicide rate for black adolescents rose from 5.6 per 100,000 of the population to 13 per 100,000, according to recent research by Clare Xanthos, a health services research specialist. For young black men, these changes represent a doubling of the suicide rate, making it the third leading cause of death among that demographic.
If the trend continues, it could ripple through black communities, increasing the number of children who grow up fatherless, further burdening African-American women who will have fewer partners to help them raise families. Clearly, it is a complex problem that is directly related to the life experiences of young African-American men. While the suicide rate for young black men has risen, the suicide rate for black women remains among the lowest of any demographic.

So why are young black men killing themselves?
Young black males live in some of the most-difficult circumstances in our society; the data show that black men go to jail, drop out of school and are victims of crime at rates far higher than their white counterparts. Moreover, young black males are more likely to live in more challenging family environments. Sixty-eight percent of all black households are single-parent households—pointing to an absence of male role models for young boys.

The combination of family stress, violence in their communities and the discrimination they face is taking a toll. Some mental health specialists argue that the rates may even be higher. Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, says that "death-by-cop" incidents should be counted as suicides. He believes that some despondent young men intentionally break the law so someone else will kill them.
"How many young men who put themselves in situations where it's very likely that they're going to get shot to death are actually committing suicide?" Poussaint asked in a recent interview on National Public Radio. "There is such a thing as what we call victim-precipitated homicide, which is suicide. The most classic example would be suicide by cop."
This rising suicide tide can impact black middle-class teenagers in white suburbs, as well as those in inner-city neighborhoods. In fact, Xanthos argues that black youths living in white communities often face the trauma of not relating to their white neighbors and also feeling estranged from blacks from poorer, urban settings. Certainly, the suicide of James Dungy, the 18-year-old son of Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy, underscored that suicide can strike the rich and poor.
What's clear is that black communities, health-care professionals and public-health officials must mobilize to meet the challenges presented by this problem.
The stigma on mental illness in the black communities is so great that obvious signs are frequently ignored, even by close family members and friends. The first step must come from parents and friends recognizing the behavior patterns that indicate a problem, and then working to get help. And public-health programs, such as Medicaid, must make it easier for young black men to get the counseling and treatment they need.
Even at that point, other problems develop including the lack of black therapists, counselors and psychiatrists to help these patients. Just 4 percent of the nation's psychiatrists, 3 percent of the psychologists and 7 percent of social workers, are black.
The problems weighing on many black youths are created by racism along with the other tensions that they face in everyday life. In these instances, an African-American counselor or physician may be more likely to reach a solution.

Xanthos also issues a call for "bicultural'' training for young black males, teaching survival skills to black men about how to live in a white society. Such training would better prepare black youths for integration into schools and workplaces that are predominantly white, while also preparing them to confront and overcome the discrimination they are likely to face in American society.

Henrie M. Treadwell, Ph.D. is associate director of development at the National Center for Primary Care of Morehouse School of Medicine. He is also director of Community Voices, a non-profit working to improve health services and health-care access, for all Americans.
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Dr. Nation Replies on His Fictive Theory

Dr. Nathan Hare Replies to Dr. Rodney Coates:



Rodney,

I see, looking back on the Inbox that you addressed me (“Nate”) in what looks like your reply to Marvin X. Anyway, “Where Do Old Revolutionaries Go?” is a moving poem. Profound and eloquent. I like it, but I just want to say something on behalf of the old revolutionaries, many of whom cannot be heard, lest somebody might take a notion to play us cheap:

We’re still here, and ready for the revolution, still dangerous, pressed to the wall, crying, dying, but fighting back; lean and mean (unlike Michelle Obama and the late Elijah Muhammad said of our “fat, satisfied and greasy” youth).

We’re counting on the young revolutionaries to get up and try to catch up with us, because the struggle continues.Nathan,

P.S. On part 2

I think it’s sad that the memory of the young revolutionary is so short they can neither see ahead nor back to the old revolutionary’s sorry past. I have said repeatedly in recent years that part of our problem as a people, speaking of the young and the old, is we have been looking so far back for so long that now our memory is longer than our understanding. But there has always been a problem of the generations.

A black weekly newspaper here asked me and my wife a week or so ago to do something on the importance of Black History Month. We chose to put together “A Conversation with the Father of Black History.” Conversing with Carter G. Woodson.

I was surprised in a brief rereading of Woodson to discover or to rediscover how forward looking he had been, in more than one way, despite my enduring impatience with history and Woodson’s having been lambasted for conformity in a biography by his assistant.

Somebody just called here by chance and said for their own reasons they’ll fax us on Tuesday a scanning of the newspaper containing the conversation, which covered the whole of the front page (hence too big for my scanner) and most of page 2 as well. A highly unusual occurrence for that or any weekly.

Fanon might say it’s useless to compare the generations anyway, when as Camus suggested, every generation must discover or create its own destiny, remembered or not, Many are those who have been remembered posthumously, in death while ignored in life, and vice versa.

But in the long run the history that is made, if not written, will live even if it is forgotten. I remember something Huey Newton once said: “if you can move one grain of sand, the world will never be the same again.” Texting from the battleground of an unfinished revolution.

Nathan


Dr. Hare to Dr. Rodney Coates
Rodney, I don’t disagree with that, if I understand it. I’m afraid I missed those other “fronts,” coming into this conversation as I did at the “fictive” point. It would hardly behoove me to denigrate all persons in the university – if I read you correctly – anymore than I would all who remain on this larger plantation called America, in any modicum of peace and tranquility. I have often sought a hollow comfort in something I once heard Arthur Miller say on the radio, when asked why he wasn’t teaching at a university, and he replied that “a revolutionary cannot teach.” But the comfort not only was hollow, it was empty and somehow sad. I was just telling one of my former students, who wrote the other night that I had been her favorite professor at Howard -- as happily so many do – and I went on to tell her about the emotional devastation leaving Howard had been for me, that I had thought I would be at Howard forever, and how if I could have stayed there till now I would have taught just about everybody worthwhile and the world wouldn’t have been quite the same again. It was at the highest administrative levels, always with pressure from outside political, corporate and police instigation, that I confronted the balance of my academic oppression. Colleagues I could abide, even when we differed politically. Indeed in every instance when I was brought up for a hearing by administrators before committees they handpicked the committees (colleagues in some fashion), who might have been expected to support the administration, instead supported and voted for me; but the administrators fired me anyway. The same thing when I was trying to get back into universities all over this country, focusing on black studies from 1981 to 1988, whenever I would get past the politics of persons on the hiring committees (which admittedly could sometimes be a trip), always some high level administrator would step into block my hiring; and that was the case all over this land. In any event, whatever I have done outside the university setting could have been done so much better within it, for more than reason, if only I could have stayed for a while. Right now I must spend my days devoted to the task of self-employment in a dwindling and outrageous health insurance market (on which a black people’s psychologist’s clients invariably depend for all practical purposes), especially given my history at universities, which follows and weighs in on me in many subtle and complex ways, so that I hardly have time to do anything else, even if I had somebody to stand on the left and the right of me.

So the struggle continues, and ironically it looks like something may be brewing out there, and predictably, and I just hope I’m still around to see it when the morning comes. But I’ll tell everybody inside and outside the university, like Joe Louis’s old trainer, Jack Blackburn, said to Joe Louis in the corner when he was losing to Billy Conn and would go out the next round and knock him out: “You got to knock him out to win, and I can’t keep coming back up these steps if you don’t take the man out.” What are you waiting on, Rodney… Marvin…et.al… ad infinitum, ibid., op cit…passim…etc…? Nathan Hare, A.B., M.A., 3/5ths MSJ, Ph.D., Ph.D.

From: Coates, Rodney D.

TO: Dr. Nathan Hare

Nate: We be’s talking on several fronts..and it is on several fronts that we continually must make it…there is never only one solution, style, or method of approach..but we must continually use all means necessary to effect our liberation……and yes…I have worked from within and also from without the university….we can ill afford to not make use of all of our resources…in fact the problem…as I see it is that we have declared our bases…and have failed to link these bases to an effective strategy to maximize our resources…revolution dictates that there are always infiltrators that work within the system…..while there are those within the community..and there are even those outside of the community…being held within institutions directly aimed to destroy them…(Mumia, et al)…the problem has always been that we only view the reality within those limited spheres..and not adequately see how to link past the boundaries of those spaces…thus …few have done what Cox… Du Bois or Clark or even Derrick Bell …have done within the academe..to use these resources to train, entertain, and maintain scholars both within and outside of the academe..few have done what Malcolm X…Nate and Julia…Marvin X..Lil Joe..and Marva Collins have done outside of the academe..to link those trapped in the walls of the ghetto..in the belly of the beast…to help the family survive…and few have done what Mumia…Stanley Tookie Williams.. and other institutionalized brothers and sisters that have shined the light, directed the path, and have demonstrated that manhood…true manhood is not dictated by ones fate, or ones hate, or ones place but one’s reality that they define, and mandate… ..we be what we be…we work from where we work..to make this a better place to be…real…

From an institutionalized brother…
The song that lies silent in the heart of a mother sings upon the lips of her child.. Kahlil Gibran
Rodney D. Coates Professor

Marvin X Reply to Dr. Hare

Doc, you are right, ain't no university cared two cents for me, sure didn't pay me two cents. Well, your great Howard University did allow me to speak for several days on the MOP--well, they did treat me to lunch in the faculty lounge--but like you say, maybe they did this because the walls are indeed tumbling down. Yes, I do need to think about that university concept. I was moved the other day when there were three of us poets (Charles Blackwell, Q.R. Hand and myself) standing at 14th and Broadway and Charles said what if each of us poets took a corner. I said, yes, we could bring about a change in concsciousness. Think what would happen if other scholars took to the street corners like Donald Warden, Richard Thorne, Mamadou Lumumba, and others did in the early 60s in Oakland and San Francisco's Fillmore--what a revolution happened! Not to mention what happened in Harlem on the corner of 125th and Seventh Aveneue, with Dr. Ben, Dr. Clarke, Malcolm X and others.

What are these black scholars waiting for--again, you said it, maybe for the university walls to fall down. Hell, in a minute the Wallls of Jerico may fall, give another earthquake or two. I love that blackout the precious students put on at the gates of UC Berkeley. Peace and long life,

Marvin

From: Nathan Hare
To: Marvin X
Hey, Dr.M, Plato Negro, since I don’t know that much about poetry you could be cursing me out here, but move to the top of the class for giving me serious thought. Or is fictive thought not serious? I’m afraid “fictive” is truly going to carry more weight now than “factive,” because they’ve turned “factive” into a pharmaceutical drug, which takes it off the streets. Speaking of which, why do you call your street academy the “University of Poetry?” You know neither one of us never got along with no university. And that’s a fact, or is it a fict? When is a fact not a fict, Professor? Both of them are four letter words. Besides, I suspect that Plato never got along with any university either, but settled for an “academy.” ( Li’l Joe could probably run down some real good history on the oppressive rise of the “university”). Anyway, I can see your University of Poetry Academy, the Poetry School of Poetry Schools sprouting up all over the hood (something like the Academy of the Arts University, the Art School of Arts Schools downtown and around San Francisco already) bypassing a whole lot of white tape and tricknocracy that is certain to confront any claim to a “university,” let alone a University Negro. And nobody wants a Negro University anymore (now called “Black” or “historically black”, i.e.,“HBCU”). Got to have a Spanish or a romance language ring, like “Plato Negro,” or “Africana.” Or maybe it should be the University of Poetries Academy, the Poetry School of Poetries Schools, which could include negroes and poetries beyond the white man’s grasp, and blacks and people of color, high tech coloreds, and Africans, or at least Africanas and all the afrocentrics and egocentrics and eccentrics; so as to get ahead of the white man’s fictive arts and tricknocracy, including his poetocracy, and avoid the “university” wall the Day of Action says just might be tumbling down. Soon there will be black days of action coming ‘round the mountain. So run and tell that. Nathan Hare http://www.blackthinktank.com/ 415-929-0204

Brown’s records are “under lock and key” at the University of Southern California

A task force was created in 2007 to investigate the disappearance or destruction of documents related to Brown’s time as mayor of Oakland.

In Oakland, a computer hard drive was found at City Hall and some inconsequential documents were located in a dumpster, but nothing much of substance was ever recovered.

The Return of Gov. Moonbeam

California is already well known as La la land, Wild Wild West, last frontier, end of the white man's world, after all, once on the west coast Asia awaits us, the non-white world. So Cali is indeed the last frontier, and strange things do indeed happen here, e.g., actors become governors, prisons are the universities of the poor, and now the prospect of a straight nut as governor awaits us. Jerry Brown, now Attorney General of California, has shed any semblance of liberal and some time ago, after becoming mayor of Oakland, embraced the right wing agenda of the police state. And now with himself as the chief law enforcer, wants to advance to the governorship, or more properly return to the governorship, or shall we say mothership!

While mayor of Oakland, he perfected his right wing agenda. He tricked liberals and radicals and won the mayor's race, then swiftly discarded the left wing persona for the devil's mask. The police occupation of Oakland increased, along with drug selling and homicides, throw in gentrification or ethnic cleansing. He told whites if they bought property in the old black neighborhood of West Oakland, they would be closer to San Francisco than San Francisco, since the last BART stop is West Oakland and within less than ten minutes one is in San Francisco's financial district.

Brown created the atmosphere so Chauncey Bailey, editor of the Oakland Post Newspaper, could be murdered downtown Oakland in broad daylight. As he departed the mayor's office for Sacramento, his email records were deleted, financial as well. One of his scams was the Fox Theatre and his school of the "white" arts.

To add insult to injury to the citizens of Oakland, Mayor Ron Dellums called upon Attorney General Jerry Brown to investigate the investigation of the assassination of Chauncey Bailey, when Jerry Brown himself should be investigated for his role in setting the atmosphere for the murder of Chauncey, just as Farrakhan admitted he fanned the flames for the murder of Malcolm X.

Jerry Brown allegedly said, "I'm going to get that nigger from snooping around City Hall and the police department." Chauncey was then a reporter for the Oakland Tribune, but was fired for a most trivial reason, but no doubt with the blessing of then Mayor Brown.

But in fact, the last story Chauncey worked on was corruption at City Hall and the Oakland Police Department's role in shaking down drug dealers, planting false evidence, money laundering and homicide under the color of law.

Actually, the entire political establishment is connected to the assassination of Chauncey, Brown, Don Perata, the now declared candidate for next mayor, and others. The OPD gave the alleged assassins a license to cause total mayhem in the community. Alas, an OPD officer was the chief advisor and mentor of the Black Muslim Bakery brothers, who are now fall guys for the OPD in the murder of Chauncey.

This same officer was put in charge of the crime scene and headed the raid on the Bakery in less the 24 hours after his murder. He claimed the case solved when he got a confession (since recanted) and the murder weapon. No other homicide in Oakland was "solved" so quickly. The officer was briefly taken off duty but returned just before the old chief of police retired so he wouldn't incriminate the chief. You know the drill, "I'll give you your job back if you don't rat on me."

Jerry Brown's hands are as bloody as the OPD in this matter. A woman at Burger King last night said Jerry Brown should be put under the jail for what he did as mayor of Oakland. And sadly, for Mayor Ron Dellums to ask JB to investigate the investigation of CB, when JB should himself be investigated, is the height of the ridiculous and approaches the theatre of the Absurd and theatre of the Deranged.

And now Governor Moonbeam wants to return to the governor's mansion, but this time as right wing Democrat. And the supreme tragedy is that he faces little opposition, even after pushing for the indictment of the San Francisco Eight for forty year old crimes, which most of them successfully defended themselves in spite of Moonbeam's indictment. By the way, we've heard nothing of the Attorney General's investigation of the CB assassination.

Since he faces no opposition from his party, we suspect his views are in harmony with the electorate, now brain dead from the economic meltdown.

Well, good-bye Terminator with your Crack-neck wife, and enter the Dragon, Dr. Moonbeam. Surely the Great Quake is soon to come. Watch the animals, when they head for the hills, let us join them and head for the hills before the tsunami consumes us and we drown.
--Marvin X

http://www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com/
2/6/10

Marvin X as Silent Warrior

marvin x a silent warrior

mavin x a silent warrior ?
you talkin bout mavrin x
a silent warrior!
he stands in front of rite aid drug store preaching and teaching youth
and all who will listen
almost everyday
everyone knows him coast to coast
he lectures all over
he's written several books
how then do you say he's a silent warrior
i saw his play one day in the life
my sister who goes to s.f state says he's always there
spreading and tellin it just like it is
the truth the whole truth and nothin but the truth
so help him god
what hasn't marvin done in pursuit of the truth
yea i said it
and i'll say it again
marvin x is a silent warrior
we don't hear him we can't even see him
yet he's right there in our face
teaching and preaching to our whole race
the human race
you are human aren't you
like so many other silent warriors
malcolm x marcus garvy angela davis, harriett tubman, martin l king jr ,bobby seal, elijah muhammad, ida b wells, ella collins
huey newton, bobby seale, angela davis, queen mother moore, mae mallory, betty shabazz and the list go on
we didn't hear them either just like marvin x
they were invisible
we didn't change we didn't pick up the torch and continue
we kill each other at the drop of a hat when we pass each other on the street
we wont even speak
we seem to have so much contempt for one another
the hate is written all over our face
that's why they are silent warriors
we refuse to see and we refuse to hear
therefore marvin x is a silent warrior
when will we see when will we hear
and more importantly when will we do for self
for one another as our warriors taught us?
--alfajiri
2/2/10

Black Out at UC Berkeley

News Updates:
UC Berkeley Students Protest UCSD Racist Acts
By Riya Bhattacharjee
Monday March 01, 2010

Contributed photo
Black students at UC Berkeley protest racist acts at UCSD Monday.

Contributed photo

UC Berkeley students during a silent protest Monday, after which they marched to the university's administrative offices at California Hall.UC Berkeley became the scene of yet another protest Monday when a group of students and supporters staged a “Blackout 2010” blockade of Sather Gate. The group—comprised mainly of black students on campus—wore black clothing, with black scarves around their mouth, to silently protest racist acts at UC San Diego, including an off-campus event mocking Black History Month.

The situation escalated when a noose was found hanging in UCSD’s Geisel Library two weeks later. An e-mail message from Blackout’s organizers said the Feb. 14 “Compton Cookout” themed party encouraged “female participants to be ‘ghetto chicks’ with gold teeth, cheap clothes and ‘short, nappy hair ...’ and ‘a limited vocabulary,’ while consuming ‘chicken and watermelon.’” It pointed out that state Bill AB 412 makes placing a noose on school property a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison and a fine of up to $5,000.

“It is deplorable that while our students, faculty and staff work to heal the campus, a few misguided individuals tried to divide it,” UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox said in a statement Feb. 26. “We are feeling real pain, and we will take real action. The safety of our students, faculty, and staff is my primary concern.”

Fox said that an individual had come forward and admitted responsibility for the latest incident due to pressure from the UCSD community. “This underscores the fact that our university is banding together,” her statement said. “We will not tolerate hate on our campus, and all criminal acts will be punished.”

UC President Mark Yudof met with students in Sacramento today and pledged to focus on system-wide strategies to prevent further acts of intolerance. The Berkeley campus protesters stood or sat silently back-to-back, arms linked, blocking a major part of Sather Gate, the main entrance to campus, from 11: 30 a.m. to 2 p.m., after which they marched to California Hall, where Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and other administrators have their offices.

“We are brothers and sisters in a nonviolent, silent demonstration, standing in solidarity with the UCSD students who have been affected by blatant acts of ignorance and hatred,” a flyer from protest organizers said. UC Berkeley senior Lajuanda M. Asemota, who helped organize the “Blackout,” said the protest also wanted “to call attention to all the things happening on the Berkeley campus despite the administration’s promises about racial diversity.”

The protest, which remained non-violent, had about 200 students at its peak. Pedestrians were able to pass through the narrow side arches of Sather Gate, although a female protester was reportedly pushed by a student trying to squeeze through. In front of California Hall, the group read out a letter addressed to Birgeneau which expressed disappointment with a message he sent to the student body on Feb. 24.

In his letter, Birgeneau condemned the racist acts at UCSD and outlined the steps UC Berkeley has taken to promote equity and inclusion among faculty, staff and students “We are distressed by the recent event involving UC San Diego students that mocked the commemoration of Black History Month,” Birgeneau’s letter said. “We have zero tolerance for deliberate acts that discriminate or demean others based on race, gender, national original, sexual orientation, or any other personal characteristic, and know that all UC campuses share that view.”

Birgeneau said that a team comprising of students and staff was working with the Vice Chancellor to organize a Climate Forum later this semester. “They expressed their outrage regarding the UCSD event and are working to discourage and prevent such incidents at Berkeley,” his letter said. “An excellent step in this direction was the early response by the CalGreeks community deploring and distancing themselves from the actions at UCSD.”

The letter to Birgeneau from the Berkeley protesters said that his message “failed to explicitly address the ‘deliberate acts that discriminate[d] and demean[ed] others based on race...” at UCSD.” “We are disgusted that the administration is merely ‘distressed’” by the offenses,” the students’ letter said. The letter went on to outline what they said were racist incidents on the UCB campus, including:

• “A hate crime committed by the men’s crew team in which members encircled, assaulted, and poured beer on a black female student while calling her “n***er” repeatedly. UCPD was called, and did nothing.”

• “An incident in science class in which the professor turned out the lights for a classroom presentation and a student yelled, “Where did all the black people go?” The professor made no rebuke.”

• “An on-campus PETA demonstration comparing enslaved Africans, lynched Black Americans, and Tuskegee experiment subjects to chickens, pigs, and cows. Canines were brought to a peaceful protest to “calm” the situation.”

• “A hate crime in which the African-American Theme House Co-Op was vandalized with swastikas.”

• “An article in the [campus student newspaper] Daily Cal which stated that Blacks are seven times more likely to kill than whites” “Though these incidents seem isolated, they are in fact symptomatic of a deeper issue that plagues the University of California as a whole—a continued marginalization of the Black student body,” the letter said.

The letter criticized the low population of black students on campus—3.49 percent of 35,843 students—since the passage of Proposition 209 and the failure of the UC administration to recruit and retain Black students or appoint Black faculty members. Signed “3.49 percent,” the letter concluded by saying that the protesters hoped that the “few hours of discomfort” they had caused would “be indicative of the anguish experienced daily by Black UC students.”

“The UC Berkeley Black community stands here silent,” the letter said. “Silent because we fear for the future. Silent because the past is prologue. Silent because there is nothing left to say. Our silence, then, is your opportunity to act.” Asemota said UC Berkeley Executive Vice Chancellor George Breslauer and Vice Chancellor Harry Le Grande came out to talk with the group after they finished reading out the letter. “Breslauer said he was really sorry about the things outlined in the letter and that stuff like that continued to happen on campus,” she said. “He said that the campus administration would come forward with a resolution.” http://www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com/

Open Letter to Obama on Black Music

OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA(THE-RE-MIX)

“What About We People Who Are Darker Than Blue?”

By Norman (Otis) Richmond

As this is being written President Barack Hussein Obama is yet toissue a proclamation for Black Music Month which is in its 30th yearof observance. Toronto’s Mayor David Miller however, issued aproclamation for Black Music Month on May 11th, 2009.
President Obama did issue of a statement in support of what he isreferring to as African American Appreciation Month on June 2nd.President Obama has taken in one felt swoop an international music andnationalized it. African American music is international music.Recall, it was The Black Music Association created be Kenny Gamble, EdWright and others that brought together Stevie Wonder & Bob Marley inthe Wailers in concert to demonstrate this fact.
Sir Duke Ellington pointed out nearly a century ago that we as apeople must call our music “Negro’ (Black) music so others could notclaim it.
Black music is one of the many gifts that Africa and Africans havegiven to the world.
President Obama gave a brilliant speech at El – Azhar University inCairo, The 44th president has proven that he is one of the mostintelligent if not the most intelligent head of state in the historyof the USA.
The president’s speech was like a vintage Earth, Wind & Fireperformance. However, it was just that -- a performance. MumiaAbu-Jamal pointed out “But in truth Obama had them at “Salaam-Alaikum”the universal Muslim greeting meaning “Peace beyond to you. Peace it’ssad to say is hardly a reality when ones own government is at war withits own people.”
While the president was touring the Middle East he failed to recognizethe 30th anniversary of Black Music Month. More than one person hasraised the issue that, “Maybe he didn’t know?” I find thisunbelievable. He recently hosted Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind & Fire andSweet Honey in the Rock at the White House. He even invited Odetta tosing at his Inauguration; however, she joined the ancestors before thehistorical event.
How can a man who spent most of his adult life in Chicago claim to be“deaf, dumb & blind” of Black Music Month? Chicago is the home ofMahalia Jackson, Martin Luther King’s musical lieutenant, CurtisMayfield, Jerry Butler Mavis and Pop Staples, Ernest Dawkins, R.Kelly,Common & Kanye West.
The June issue of Ebony Magazine, which I brought in the middle ofMay, is dedicated to Black Music Month. This issue has Jade PinkettSmith on the cover and features a photo of President Obama, and thefirst lady Michelle Obama with Queen Elizabeth II at BuckinghamPalace.
After being called out by The Caribbean World News Network, PresidentObama did rightly proclaimed June National Caribbean American HeritageMonth. President Obama issued this statement on June 2nd.
According to the June 6th issue of the New York Times he signed aproclamation establishing the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission. Thecommission is supposed to organize activities to mark the 100thanniversary, in 20011, of President Reagan’s birth. What about wepeople who are darker than blue – President Obama?
If a Ronald Regan Centennial Commission is in order what about a BlackMusic Month Commission with people like Randy Weston, Dee DeeBridgewater, Cassandra Smith, Amiri Baraka and Queen Latifah? RaynardJackson of Philadelphia has opined, “It’s a no brainer to do a townhall meeting with singers, producers, and songwriters during BlackMusic Month.
The music of African people has been an international force since theFisk Jubilee Singers, gospel group from Nashville, Tennessee conqueredEurope in 1873. Since that period jazz, calypso, reggae r'n'b, hip-hopand African beats have come to be the most popular and influential artforms in the world. Bob Marley, Louis Armstrong and Miriam Makeba areknown all over this the small planet we call earth.
The great saxophonist Archie Shepp once said, “What Malcolm X saidJohn Coltrane played”. This was the expression of Africans in NorthAmerican. The same thing occurred in the Caribbean and in Africa.
In the Caribbean Walter Rodney (Guyana) and Bob Marley (Jamaica) werethe concrete expressions of this phenomenon in the 1970s and early1980s. On the mother continent Thomas Sankara (Burkina Faso) and FelaAnikulapo Kuti (Nigeria) are examples of music and politicscomplimenting one another in the 1990s.
Despite its influence on the planet it was only 30 years ago that theBlack Music Association (BMA) persuaded the U.S. government torecognize Black Music Month. In June 1979, around the time theSugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" was being released; Kenny Gambleled a delegation to the White House to discuss with President JimmyCarter the state of Black music.
At the meeting, Carter asked trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and drummer MaxRoach if they would perform "Salt Peanuts", to which Gillespie repliedthat he'd only do so if the President (who made a fortune as a peanutfarmer) provided the vocals.
Since that great and dreadful day when Carter butchered the song, Junehas been designated Black Music Month.
It must be mentioned that in 1979 the world was witnessing arevolutionary breeze as Maurice Bishop and the New Jewel Movementseized state power in Grenada, Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas sweptthe counter revolutionary forces out of power in Nicaragua like abroom and the Shah of Iran was dethroned after being installed inpower by the CIA in 1953.
The soundtrack to all of this was (Gene) McFadden and JohnWhitehead’s, “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” which was released in 1979.Recall, “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” was played at the 2008 DemocraticNational Convention on the night Illinois Senator Barack Obamaaccepted the Democratic Party nomination for President of the UnitedStates.
Since 1984, thanks to the efforts of the BMA/TC, Toronto Mayors JuneRowlands, Barbara Hall and Mel Lastman, respectively, has recognizedJune as Black Music Month. On the 25th anniversary of Black MusicMonth, Mayor David Miller presented the proclamation at City Hall. Thelate Milton Blake, Jay Douglas, Michie Mee, Norman (Otis) Richmond(Jalali) and others participated in this event.
When broadcaster and community activist the late Milton Blake andNorman (Otis) Richmond created the Black Music Association's TorontoChapter in 1984, it was our intention to plug African-Canadian musicmakers into the international music market.
At that moment the only African Canadian that was internationallyknown was Oscar Peterson. Since that time Eric Mercury, HarrisonKennedy (as a member of the Chairmen of the Board), Deborah Cox,Devine Brown, Glenn Lewis and Kardinal Offishall have conquered theworld--musically.
By not recognizing Black Music Month in 2009 you have taken a stepbackward Mr. President. As our Comrade /Leader Maurice Bishop told us30 years ago, "Forward Ever. Backwards Never”.
One of the greatest Africans to ever grace the planet Ghana’s KwameNkrumah said the same thing 20 years before Comrade Bishop.

By What Right?

By what right do we sport and play while our guns and bombs destroy the world--since America is the number one arms merchant today? By what right do we consume 25% of the world's energy while most of the world has no electricity, clean drinking water and works all day for a dollar? By what right do we enjoy ourselves sipping cafe latte while the people of Africa, Asia and the Americas live lives of sadness and grief at our expense, since we are the reason they live sad lives after centuries of exploitation, slavery and neo-colonialism?

Yesterday a former Special Ops killer told me he was guilty of doing things in countries that have every right to bomb America into the stone age, countries we now call terrorist havens, while we are the real terrorists, the world's greatest!

By what right do we live in peace, drive gas guzzling Hummers and Escalades, attend Super Bowl, music concerts, while people we destroy have no money to eat or bury their dead loved ones we call collateral damage?

By what right do we charge our children with rape while we teach them how as we go about the earth raping, robbing,plundering and exploiting the labor and national wealth of the poor. In the US military, 33% of female soldiers suffer sexual assault by their comrades in arms. We may wonder how a female soldier with a weapon can get raped? But an old rapist told me, "I wish I would see a bitch with a gun jogging through the jungle." Apparently US soldiers feel the same.
We know the patriarchal religions teach domination of women and rape is ultimate result. It doesn't matter if it occurs in the military, college campus, on a date or in the marriage bed.

By what right do we imprison two million persons for drug related offenses, who suffer mental illness as well as drug addiction at the time of their arrest, 80% would be released if they had proper legal representation. Furthermore, the US government is the number one drug supplier as we saw with the Crack epidemic and the heroin traffic in Afghanistan today.

By what right do we deny nuclear weapons to non-white nations while the only nation to use the atom bomb was white America? Why are not Zionist Israel denied their nuclear arsenal--oh, because they're God chosen people! Not my God, maybe the God of devils. Either everyone should have nukes or nobody, including America.

By what right do we give insurgents, i.e., terrorists, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere, schooling, housing and employment if they lay down their arms, while you have no solution to violence in the hood other than police occupation and prison, meanwhile families are utterly destroyed and communities destabilized.

The only right is the arrogance of white supremacy, from which the adrenalin rush is too high to stop and white privilege has become habitual and full blown. Like getting a nut, you want more, until finally, you must be taken away for detoxification and prevented from leaving the white supremacy recovery center because you are a danger to yourselves and others. Nelson Mandela said you are the main threat to world peace, America! Your privileges must be taken away, including visits to the outside world, until you fully recover, although you may be constitutionally unable, therefore you must remain long term.
--Marvin X
2/28/10

Notes on the Elders Council

by Marvin X

These notes are based on the teachings of the Honorable John Douimbia (RIP), founder of the Black Men's Conference, Oakland, CA, 1980. I served as chief planner of the BMC. John gave me one-on-one manhood training. On the morning of the conference, over one thousand black men gathered at the Oakland Auditorium to hear from John, myself, Dr. Nathan Hare, Dr. Wade Nobles, Dr. Oba T-Shaka, Dr. Yusef Bey, et al. Women organized an event that evening for the men, organizers included Betty King (RIP) and Dezy Woods-Jones.

This draft has never been implemented, although Bay Area elders were seated at the Tupac Shakur Youth Conference at McClymonds high school, circa 2000. Those elders seated included Geronimo Pratt, Tarika Lewis, Willie Tate, Tureeda Mikell, Aishah Kokomon, Suzzette Celeste, Frank Kellum, David Johnson, Emory Douglas, myself, et al.

(1) What is the function of a Council of Elders?

The Council of Elders should be the final authority in the African community. It should be the final authority in moral, domestic, personal, criminal justice and economic matters. It should provide counseling and guidance to troubled men and women. For example, O.J. Simpson could have gone to the Elders Council for guidance on his domestic problems--Tiger Woods as well.

Brothers in the hood should be able to take their problems before the EC for conflict resolution, rather than resorting to violence and destroying entire families over a twenty-dollar dope debt.
The EC would pay the debt to prevent homicide. Incest and other child abuse cases would be matters for the EC. Political prisoners and inmates could be released to the custody of the EC.

(2) How should the EC be composed?

If no other way, it must be drafted by respectable elders in the community. They must be men and women of wisdom and honor. They need not be holy Joe's, but cannot be of outright, flagrant unholiness and negativity. They should be of revolutionary consciousness as opposed to conservative--they ought to have radical thoughts that can guide us through the millennium, not keep us in the past. The last thing we need is a group of tired, reactionary, boot-licking Negroes in authority, persons who want to deliver the EC to the black bourgeoisie running dogs for pharaoh. Elders should not be able to be bought, sell out or traded.

(3) How does the EC receive power?

The EC receives power from the people who agree to submit issues before the EC for resolution. There should be a community consensus that the EC is the point of authority to resolve issues that need not involve the so-called elected governmental agencies which have proven incapable of resolving human rights abuses, economic justice, political empowerment, disparities in health, education, mental health, drug abuse, homicide, suicide, domestic and partner violence, emotional and verbal violence, child abuse, spiritual decadence and myopia (especially with respect to men--the churches are mostly full of women).

(4) How would the EC administer its decisions?

Persons might receive a citation to appear before the EC. They might peacefully submit to arrest and detention in a community center before their case is adjudicated. The decisions of the EC would be enforced by Guardians of the Community, men and women trained to enforce the dictates of the EC.

(5) Should the EC be a religious or spiritual body?

No. Religion should not dominate the EC. The EC exists for the community as a whole, not for any religion or group of religions. Extremely religious persons should be barred from the EC.
Persons concerned with religious matters should remain in their churches, mosques, temples--yes, keep praying. Of course, the EC should have a spiritual dimension as part of its holistic approach to problem solving.

(6) What should be the relationship of the EC to the established government and its agencies?

It should be a cooperative but independent relationship. If there are problems the EC cannot handle, then we should turn matters over to the criminal justice system, or mental health agencies. What we want is the first option to control our community, rather than have outside forces intervene. We feel the EC can eradicate the sale of drugs in our community without involving the criminal justice system. We will do this by simply uniting the males and making their presence known. We will also do this by presenting alternative economic opportunities to youth, such as entrepreneurship and micro credit. We know that if youth can sell drugs, they can sell anything. Why not books, watches, shoes, clothing, arts, DVDs, CDs, food, etc. Rather than pay the criminal justice system fifty thousand dollars per man per year for incarceration, why not give the brothers and sisters a voucher for the same amount to purchase legal goods to sell?

The goods would be housed in a secured community warehouse and issued as per need. If youth persist in criminal activity such as selling drugs and pimping, they would be banished from the community, if necessary, for life.

(7) Should there be a Council of Women Affairs?

Women should be an equal part of the EC, but also have a department of Women's Affairs to handle issues only women should settle, the same for men and youth. As per women, we know cases of elderly abuse by daughters--sons as well. Why should elders live 70 and 80 years to be terrified by their children, especially when the elders are caring for the grandchildren due to the drug addiction of parents?

(8) Should there be a youth council?

Yes. It would deal with youth matters. We had the case of a youth who was prevented from entering a certain department at San Francisco State University--she couldn't get assistance from the Black Student Union, Black Studies Department or any other help. A Council of Youth would represent the student in a matter of this nature, which the student believe was racial discrimination. You might have simple adolescent or sexual identity problems that peer counseling or ultimately manhood training could resolve, or problems with parents who might be drug or sexual abusers--such issues might be immediately taken to the EC.

These are my views, all points open for discussion. I welcome all comments.
Sincerely,
Marvin X
revised
2/27/10
www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com
jmarvinx@yahoo.com

Give Africa back

to its traditional rulers!

Give Africa back to its traditional rulers.!The post colonial leaders in Africa have been a disgusting assortment of military coconut-heads, Swiss bank socialists, quack revolutionaries, crocodile liberators, briefcase bandits, kamikaze looters, vampire elites, and crackpot democrats. They only know how to do 3 things very well:

1. Loot the treasury.

2. Brutalize and squelch all dissent and opposition to their misrule,

3. Perpetuate themselves in office.

Ask them to develop their countries and they will develop their pockets. Ask them to seek "foreign investment" and they will invest their loot in a foreign country.Name me just 10 African leaders who do not fit this bill.Give Africa back to its traditional rulers. In traditional Africa, chiefs and kings are chosen; they do not choose and impose themselves or stupid alien ideologies on their people. Further, chiefs and kings are held accountable at all times for their actions and are removed if they do not govern according to will of the people.

Go back and re-read the history of the Oyo Empire, (Benin Empire), which was governed with an elaborate system of checks and balances in the 17th Century -- well before the U.S. became a nation. The modern leadership is a despicable disgrace to black Africa. They are a far cry from the traditional leadership Africa has known for centuries.And get this, Lil Joe. Africa has not just a traditional political culture and heritage based upon consensus but also an economic heritage of free village markets, free enterprise and free trade. Challenge this.

Marxism was never part of indigenous African economic heritage. Get that straight.I am fed up with quack revolutionaries and crackpot intellectuals who seek to impose alien ideologies and systems on the African people. There is nothing wrong with Africa's own indigenous institutions; nor does Africa have to reject them in order to develop.

The Japanese, Koreans and other Asians did not have to reject their culture in order to develop. Only educated zombies think Africa has to. The continent is littered with the putrid carcasses of failed imported systems. Now we are being told to go Chinese! Such stupidity.Africa's salvation lies in returning to and building upon its own indigenous institutions. Africa's salvation does NOT lie in the corridors of the World Bank, the inner sanctum of the Chinese politburo. Nor does Africa's salvation lie in the steamy sex antics of cockroaches on Jupiter!

George Ayittey,Washington, DC

The People of No

No, no, no! That is all you say. Everything about you is no. Your lips say no, your eyes, your heart, your mind, your arms, your legs, your feet. You are a no person. I run from you. You say no to God. I am afraid of your no touch. I cannot expand my mind around no people. You will kill my spiritual development. No no no no!

When you say yes to life you open the world of infinite possibilities. I understand no part of no, only infinite possibilities. No does not exist in my world, only yes. Yes to love. Yes to success, yes to hope, yes to truth, yes to prosperity, yet to divinity, yes to resurrection, yes to ascension, yes to eternity. I am the language of yes. If you cannot say yes, get away from me. I run from you, want nothing to do with you. There is no hope for you until you open your mouth to yes.

Cast away the yes fear. Let it go, let God. Yes. No matter what, yes. No matter how long, yes.

No matter how hard, yes. Let there be peace in the house, yes. Let there be love between you and me, yes. Let there be revolution in the land, over the world, yes. We will try harder, yes, we won't give up, yes. We shall triumph, yes. Yes is the language of God. Yes is the language of Divinity, Spirituality.

All the prophets ssaid yes. Adam said yes, Abraham said yes. Moses said yes. Solomon said yes.

Job said yes. Jeremiah, Isaiah said yes. The lover in Song of Solomon said yes. David said yes.

John and Jesus sasid yes. Muhammad said yes. Elijah and Malcolm, Martin and Garvey, Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth said yes. Fannie Lou and Rosa Parks, Betty Shabazz and Coretta Scott ssaid yes.

Mama and daddy said yes. Grandma and grandpa said yes. All the ancestors said yes. Forevermore, let go of no and say yes. Dance to yes. Shout to yes!

--Marvin X

from Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, 2007

www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com

Beyond Religion, Toward Spirituality
Essays on Consciousness
By Marvin X

Review by Rudolph Lewis, editor, chickenbones, a journal
www.nathanielturner.com

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. His moods are both reverent and irreverent: at times he consoles, other times cajoles with biting mockery. At times amusing but always deadly serious.

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. It's a dangerous book, for it reveals the inner workings of capitalist and imperialist governments around the world. It's a book that stands with and on behalf of the poor, the dispossessed, the despised, and downtrodden.

Marvin X has found a way out of our spiritual morass, our material quagmire. We are blessed to still have him among us. 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
Contents
Preface, Joy and Happiness, Work
Reconciliation, Health, Elders
Women, Men, Youth
Children, Sex, Solitude
Blessings, Music, Writing
Africa, Love, Partner Violence
Prison, Street Violence, Pimpin
Rap, Jerusalem, Teacher, Myth
Militant, Language, Nature,
Global Violence, Sectarianism
Technology, Ancestors, Death
History, Future, Polygamy
Polyandry, Prostitution, Nukes
Religion, Sufi, Prayer, Radical God
Ritual, Drugs, Family, Marriage
Education, Gay/Lesbian, HIV/AIDS
Art, Traumatic Stress, Poverty
Black Bourgeoisie, Media, Panther
Peace, Politics, Immigration, Land
Holy Joes, Sovereignty, Democracy
Fascism, Amnesty, Capitalism, Americas
Berkeley, Condi, Chinaman's Chance
Paris Burning, Sudan, London Bridges
Welcome to Mexi-Cali, Pan Africa
Evil, Tookie Williams, Fathers and Daughters
Why I Talk With Cows, Jesus, Pharaoh's Egypt
Death Angel, When Jazz Ain't Jazz, BAM at Howard U.
Lucy Is Coming, One Mind, Afterword

Teaching Diaspora Literature:

Muslim American Literature as an Emerging Field

Marvin X is too extreme for many, but I like strong voices even if I don’t agree with everything they say.--Mohja Kahf

by Mohja Kahf

Mohja Kahf (Comparative Literature, University of Arkansas) is the author of Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque (1999), E-mails fromScheherazad (poetry, 2003), and The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (novel, 2006).

Is there such a thing as Muslim American literature (MAL)? I argue that there is: It begins with
the Muslims of the Black Arts Movement (1965–75). The Autobiography of Malcolm X is one of
its iconic texts; it includes American Sufi writing, secular ethnic novels, writing by immigrant and
second-generation Muslims, and religious American Muslim literature.

Many of the works I would put into this category can and do also get read in other categories, such as African American, Arab American, and South Asian literature, “Third World” women’s writing, diasporicMuslim literature in English, and so forth.

While the place of these works in other categories cannot be denied, something is gained in reading them together as part of an American Muslim cultural landscape. Like Jewish American literature by the 1930s, Muslim American literature is in a formative stage. It will be interesting to see how it develops (and who will be its Philip Roth!)

I suggest the following typology of MAL only as a foothold, a means of bringing a tentative order
to the many texts, one that should be challenged, and maybe ultimately dropped altogether.

My first grouping, the “Prophets of Dissent,” suggests that Muslim works in the Black Arts
Movement (BAM) are the first set of writings in American literature to voice a cultural position
identifiable as Muslim. Contemporary Muslim writing that takes the achievements of the BAM as an important literary influence also belongs here, and is characterized similarly by its “outsider”status, moral critique of mainstream American values, and often prophetic, visionary tone.

In contrast, the writers of what I call “the Multi-Ethnic Multitudes” tend to enjoy “insider” status in American letters, often entering through MFA programs and the literary establishment, getting published through trade and university book industries, garnering reviews in the mainstream press. They do not share an overall aesthetic but are individual writers of various ethnicities and a wide range of secularisms and spiritualities, and indeed I question my placing them all in one group, and do so temporarily only for the sake of convenience.

On the other hand, my third group, the “New American Transcendentalists,” appears to cohere,
in aesthetic terms, as writers who share a broad Sufi cultural foundation undergirding their
literary work. Their writings often show familiarity with the Sufi poets of several classical Muslim literatures (e.g., in Turkish, Farsi, Arabic, Urdu), as well as with American Transcendentalists of the nineteenth century, and that which tends toward the spiritual and the ecstatic in modern American poetry.

Finally, the “New Pilgrims” is my term for a loose grouping of writers for whom Islam is not merely a mode of dissent, cultural background, or spiritual foundation for their writing, but its aim and explicit topic. Of the four groups, the New Pilgrims are the ones who write in an overtly religious mode and motivation, like Ann Bradstreet, Cotton Mather, and the Puritans of early American history. This does not prevent them from being capable of producing great literature, any more than it prevented the great Puritan writers.

Here is an example of just a few writers in each category, by no means a comprehensive list:

Prophets of Dissent

From the Black Arts Movement:

• Marvin X, whose Fly to Allah (1969) is possibly the first book of poems published in English
by a Muslim American author.

• Sonia Sanchez, whose A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women (1974) is the work of
her Muslim period.

• Amiri Baraka, whose A Black Mass (2002) renders the Nation of Islam’s Yacoub genesis
theology into drama. As with Sanchez, the author was Muslim only briefly but the influence
of the Islamic period stretches over a significant part of his overall production.

Later Prophets of Dissent include:

• Calligraphy of Thought, the Bay area poetry venue for young “Generation M” Muslim
American spoken word artists who today continue in the visionary and dissenting mode of
the BAM.

• Suheir Hammad, Palestinian New Yorker, diva of Def Poetry Jam (on Broadway and HBO),
whose tribute to June Jordan in her first book of poetry, Born Palestinian, Born Black
(1996), establishes her line of descent from the BAM, at least as one (major) influence on
her work.

• El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X) is an iconic figure for this mode of Muslim American
writing and, indeed, for many writers in all four categories.

Multi-Ethnic Multitudes

• Kashmiri American poet Agha Shahid Ali, an influential figure in the mainstream American
poetry scene, with a literary prize named after him at the University of Utah, brought the
ghazal into fashion in English so that it is now taught among other forms in MFA programs.

• Naomi Shihab Nye, Palestinian American, likewise a “crossover” poet whose work enjoys
prominence in American letters, takes on Muslim content in a significant amount of her
work.

• Sam Hamod, an Arab midwesterner who was publishing poetry in journals at the same time
as Marvin X.

• Nahid Rachlin’s fiction has been published since well before the recent wave of literature by
others who, like her, are Iranian immigrants.

• Mustafa Mutabaruka, an African American Muslim, debut novel Seed (2002).

• Samina Ali, midwesterner of Indian parentage, debut novel Madras on Rainy Days (2004),
was featured on the June 2004 cover of Poets & Writers.

• Khaled Hosseini, debut novel The Kite Runner (2003).

• Michael Muhammad Knight, a Muslim of New York Irish Catholic background, whose punk
rock novel The Taqwacores (2004) delves deeply into Muslim identity issues.

• There are a number of journals where Muslim American literature of various ethnicities can
be found today, among them Chowrangi, a Pakistani American magazine out of New
Jersey, and Mizna, an Arab American poetry magazine out of Minneapolis.
New American Transcendentalists

• Daniel (Abd al-Hayy) Moore is an excellent example of this mode of Muslim American
writing. California-born, he published as a Beat poet in the early sixties, became a Sufi
Muslim, renounced poetry for a decade, then renounced his renouncement and began
publishing again, prolifically and with a rare talent. His Ramadan Sonnets (City Lights,
1986) is a marriage of content and form that exemplifies the “Muslim/American” simultaneity
of Muslim American art.

• The Rumi phenomenon: apparently the most read poet in America is a Muslim. He merits
mention for that, although technically I am not including literature in translation. Then again,
why not? As with so many other of my limits, this is arbitrary and only awaits someone to
make a case against it.
• Journals publishing poetry in this mode include The American Muslim, Sufi, Qalbi, and
others.

New American Pilgrims

• Pamela Taylor writes Muslim American science fiction. Iman Yusuf writes “Islamic
romance.” This group of writers is not limited to genre writers, however. Dasham Brookins
writes and performs poetry and maintains a website, MuslimPoet.com, where poets such as
Samantha Sanchez post. Umm Zakiyya (pseud.) has written a novel, If I Should Speak
(2001), about a young Muslim American and her roommates in college.

Writers in this group also come from many ethnicities but, unlike those in my second category, come together around a more or less coherent, more or less conservative Muslim identity.
Websites tend to ban erotica and blasphemy, for example. The Islamic Writers Alliance, a
group formed by Muslim American women, has just put out its first anthology. Major
published authors have yet to emerge in this grouping, but there is no reason to think they
will not eventually do so.

My criteria for Muslim American literature are a flexible combination of three factors:
Muslim authorship. Including this factor, however vague or tenuous, prevents widening the
scope to the point of meaninglessness, rather than simply including any work about Muslims by
an author with no biographical connection to the slightest sliver of Muslim identity (such as
Robert Ferrigno with his recent dystopian novel about a fanatical Muslim takeover of America).
It is a cultural, not religious, notion of Muslim that is relevant. A “lapsed Muslim” author, as one
poet on my roster called himself, is still a Muslim author for my purposes. I am not interested in
levels of commitment or practice, but in literary Muslimness.

Language and aesthetic of the writing.

In a few cases, there is a deliberate espousal of an aesthetic that has Islamic roots, such as the Afrocentric Islamic aesthetic of the Muslim authors in the Black Arts Movement.

Relevance of themes or content.

If the Muslim identity of the author is vague or not explicitly professed, which is often the case with authors in the “Multi-Ethnic Multitudes,” but the content itself is relevant to Muslim American experience, I take that as a signal that the text is choosing to enter the conversation of Muslim American literature and ought to be included.

In defining boundaries for research that could become impossibly diffuse, I choose to look
mainly at fiction and poetry, with autobiography and memoir writings selectively included. I have not included writings in languages other than English, although there are Muslims in America who write in Arabic, Urdu, and other languages. I have looked at the twentieth century onward, and there is archival digging to be done in earlier periods: the Spanish colonial era may yield Muslim writing, and we already know that some enslaved Muslims in the nineteenth century have left narratives. More research is needed. If one expands the field from “literature” to“Muslim American culture,” one can also include Motown, rap, and hip-hop lyrics by Muslim
artists, screenplays such as the Muslim American classic The Message by the late Syrian
American producer Mustapha Aqqad, books written for children, sermons, essays, and other
genres.

There are pleasures and patterns that emerge from reading this profusion of disparate texts
under the rubric of Muslim American cultural narrative. It is time! I hope, as this field emerges,
that others will do work in areas I have left aside in this brief initial exploration.

Snow Job In Oakland:

Mayor Ron Dellums State of the City Speech

Mayor Ron Dellums gave his State of the City speech tonight at City Hall. My two-year old grandson Jahmeel wanted to pee on the steps of City Hall but I redirected him to a corner where he could relieve himself. He was assisting me passing out my poster poem Black History is World History. A woman walked up with her daughter to ask what was going on at City Hall since she saw all the television vans outside. She asked was it a black history event? I said it's either a black history or white history event! After getting her poster, she went on her way. Jahmeer was photographed by journalist Reginal James.

After my grandson Jahmeel gave posters to Oakland Post Publisher Paul Cobb and Gay Cobb, Geoffrey Pete and Joyce Gordon, Supervisor Keith Carson, we lingered awhile then went inside to catch the Mayor on the giant screen in an anteroom.

We came in to hear the Mayor giving a glowing picture of progress in Oakland. Crime is down 10%, 38% since the new year. Ex-offenders have a voice in the Mayor's office, Isaac Taggert, who used to be a brother but is now too busy to speak with brothers he used to hang with. We saw him bringing in refreshments for the event. Another person my grandson gave a poster to was former city councilman Wilson Riles, Jr. When he saw my Haiti, Oh, Haiti poster, he gave me a quick history lesson on Dessalines, Toussaint and Henri Christophe, leaders of the revolution in Haiti. He said they flipped and flopped at various times and that we might hear some of the same tonight. It was snowing in Oakland, but it all seemed to get caught in the white natural of Mayor Dellums. When my grandson saw people clapping on the giant screen, he clapped, but nobody else was clapping in the anteroom.

We see the USA is providing schooling, housing and jobs for insurgents in Irag, Afghanistan and Yemen. We didn't hear a similar program in the Mayor's speech. Rather than police, why doesn't he pay former inmates to secure their neighborhoods, by paying them a living wage. Give gang bangers a living wage. Call for amnestry from all petty criminals in jails and prisons. True, he took off the box for city employment that asks have you ever been arrested. This is good. But how many other employers have done so? No doubt the City will be laying off workers, although Dellums said Oakland actually hired workers while other Bay Area governments and cities were laying off workers. The snow is falling in Oakland. Let's have a snow ball fight!

I hate to play the devil's advocate, but my job as a poet/critic is not to give any ground to pharaoh and his magicians. I'm for radical change and I see little of that in Oakland, from the past two black administrations down to Dellums. Dellums talks a good game but it sounds like the same old song. The truth is that Oakland is in dire straits and the modicum of change the Mayor has brought about is merely kibbles and bits, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. More police, police as mentors, police as saviors, police as all in all, as in police state. The new police chief Bates walked in with his entourage. Oakland received the biggest grant for police in the nation, according to the Mayor.

In truth, slavery has returned to Oakland, or the slave codes. Youth are told they cannot gather in groups on the corners or in front of businesses in downtown Oakland. There are "youth police" to urge them on in violation of their constutitional right of freedom of assembly. At the building on 14th and Broadway where a giant Walgreen's is about to open, there were seats where people could sit awaiting the bus. These seats were bulldozed but not before a security guard was stationed on post to stop people from sitting while waiting for the bus.

There are no places in businesses for people to use the rest room, including customers. It is Jim Crow second class citizenship in black face.

The snow job continued as my grandson begged for water, so I left the room looking at Dellums on the giant screen. I hear he'll run for a second term. His chief rival will be Don Pareta, a gangster politican retired from Sacramento. So the choice is twiddle dee or twiddle dum. Amiri Baraka of Newark, New Jersey, says go with the black, no matter his negrocities.
--Marvin X
2/22/10