How to think about Manning's Malcolm

Rethinking Malcolm means first learning how to think: What was Marable thinking? And how?

by Abdul Alkalimat / June 2011

The new book by Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, will help us get to a deeper understanding of Malcolm X and the times we’re living in now. This will not be a direct result of what Marable has done, but rather what needs to be done because of what he has done. We can advance our thinking through deep and thorough criticism of this book.1 We are facing a challenge to our perspective, our philosophy and our politics for Black liberation. We respect Manning Marable and ourselves by taking him seriously and raising our critique to the highest level.

Many will oppose and even resent this review, but I write for the brothers and sisters who will dare to struggle, to take the hard core stance we need for victory.
First came the book days after Marable’s death, and then an avalanche of praise and polemic vaulting Marable into the esteemed ranks of ruling class darling public intellectuals.

I collected and sent to the H-AFRO-AM e-list nearly 100 reviews and commentaries on this Marable book. (http://tinyurl.com/100reviews) They range from “magnificent,” “magisterial,” and “a magnum opus of a life’s work based on 20 years of research,” to “sloppy,” “unprofessional,” and “speculative based on logical fallacy.” Why such extremely opposite views of this book?

Of course we have been here before, with a book trying to redefine a major historical figure under the pretext of making him or her more human. This is usually done with innuendo, hearsay, and gossip supported by state surveillance reports, all amounting to nothing that can be supported with responsibly sourced data, meaning what would stand academic peer review.

The main trend uniting these books is their focus on redirecting the force of revolutionary nationalism toward reform, toward the kind of social democracy that finds its home in the capitalist Democratic Party or toward the personal (sexual identity) being as important as the political. Such work has been done on, among others, Nat Turner (Styron 1976), Paul Robeson (Duberman, 1989), Martin Luther King (Garrow 1987 and Dyson 2000) and Malcolm X (Perry 1991, Lee 1992).

As a generational deviation, this trend is exposed in the book Betrayal by Houston Baker (2008). Marable’s book is somewhat different from this trend, but nevertheless fits the genre.
It is necessary to critique this book for at least three reasons. First: Marable speaks from within the movement with the legitimacy of being a Black Studies professor at an Ivy League school. This reverses the “street cred” marshaled by Spike Lee for his 1992 film Malcolm X. Many have learned from Marable and, given his recent death, are not open to deep and
-------------
1 This is an Anti-Duhring moment for the Black liberation and social revolution forces, as it’s a matter of fundamental issues. Eugen Duhring was a leading German academic who published more than 10 books from the 1860s to the 1880s. He promoted a version of socialism while attacking Karl Marx. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-D%C3%BChring) Marable is a leading academic who has published many texts, while following social democracy toward a reformist path and not the Marxist-Leninist tradition for social revolution. Past his book on Malcolm X, we need a review of Marable’s entire body of work.

-------------------

revealing criticism. But this cannot serve our movement. Silence never trumps critique. As on Malcolm, so on Marable on Malcolm.

Second: The rulers are making the Marable argument their own, as are the reigning Black public intellectuals, namely Henry Louis Gates, Mike Dyson, Cornel West, Peniel Joseph, Nell Painter, etc. It is unprecedented for a book on a leading revolutionary nationalist to be positively reviewed in the main English language capitalist media in the world – New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Guardian (UK), Financial Times (UK), and so on. Reviews are in all the major European languages as well. They hyped the book into the New York Times hardback non-fiction bestseller list for five weeks: April 24, #3 on the list; May 1, #6; May 8, #13; May 15, -#16; and May 22, #34.

But third and most important of all is the fact that the issues are fundamental and involve both what we think and how we think. This is my main concern. Elijah Muhammad wrote several books on “How to Eat to Live.” Now we need to focus on “How to think to Live!” And by live, I mean to affirm our radical Black tradition, to critique and resist all forms of oppression and exploitation, and to chart a path of social justice toward social transformation.

We need to consider perspective, philosophy, and politics in critiquing Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. Our concern is to probe past the specific inaccuracies, innuendos, and judgmental conclusions to get at the basics of how to think to live.

Perspective

First, the question of perspective: Whose eyes do we use to see? Whom do we intend to hear us? One of the great paradigm shifts of Black Studies is to reclaim and reorient the relationship between Black intellectuals and their community. We began to speak to and with each other without necessarily seeking the approval of white authority. We sought peer review from each other and the brothers and sisters off campus. We wanted to understand each other and map our agreements and disagreements, find the intertextuality of our traditions (meaning Black Liberation Theology, Womanism, Nationalism, PanAfricanism, and Socialism), and base our understanding on the dogmas and debate of these traditions.

Marable says this of his collaboration with his Viking editor: “Kevin and I communicated almost daily, discussing various versions of chapters, in the effort to build a narrative to reach the broadest possible audience.” (Marable 2011 p. 492; unless noted all page numbers are from this book)

This explains why he regards the Organization of African American Unity (OAAU) as “controversial” (p. 2) and not merely what it was, an attempt to bring the united front strategy of the Organization of African Unity to the Black liberation movement. Who considered it controversial? He refers to alleged “anti-semitic slurs” (p. 246) without putting this in the context of a necessary struggle against Zionism and the relative power of Black and Jews in New York City. He regards the surveillance of the state as legitimate rather than as flawed disinformation spread to discredit and disorient. No serious Black liberation perspective would allow this.

On the one hand, Marable contributes interesting summations of Harlem (p. 51-64) and Islam (p. 79-86), but he is noteworthy for not engaging any of the major writers who have done serious research which has resulted in viewpoints different from his own. A good example of this is Bill Sales’ work on the OAAU, listed in the bibliography but not engaged in the text. Nor does Marable engage the primary references used by Sales, notably the main state surveillance of the OAAU. And the same goes for James Cone and his definitive comparison of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Both Sales and Cone were members of the Malcolm X Work Group, a collective of intellectual activists working collaboratively on research about Malcolm X and holding important symposia in 1987, 1988, and 1989. (http://www.brothermalcolm.net/2003/aamx/index.html)

Perhaps the most cold-blooded negation is his statement that Malcolm has to be resurrected for Black people, where most certainly he should have said most white people. Black people have never forgotten Malcolm X, and certainly the state and white intellectuals haven’t either. He was more of an icon in the Black radical tradition than even Martin Luther King, Jr. The primary reference for this can be found in the website BrotherMalcolm.net, where there are lists of schools, parks, cultural events, academic lectures and many other things named after Malcolm in communities all over the world. Included are the proceedings of the historic 1990 international conference on Malcolm X, “Radical Tradition and Legacy of Struggle.” (http://www.brothermalcolm.net/sections/malcolm/index.html)

Perhaps the most egregious omission in this regard is the failure to mention Preston Wilcox. Not only had Preston been a professor at Columbia University, but he was the founder of the Malcolm X Lovers Network. As a community-based archivist, for decades he sent out mailings of the news clippings and ephemera he collected at the community level, flyers of events, petitions, documentation of naming ceremonies, debates and lectures, conferences, etc. He was a long time resident of Harlem and left his papers to the Schomberg Center. (http://www.nypl.org/archives/4078) To ignore Preston Wilcox is to show no respect for the Black community and its community-based intellectuals who have always kept the memory of Malcolm alive.

The perspective of Marable’s book is not the Black studies approach of respecting our own tradition. Instead it gives credence to such as the Bruce Perry book on Malcolm (1991), which was written as a police agent’s attack filled with lies and innuendo. What was Marable thinking? Or not thinking?

Philosophy

Now let us take up issues of philosophy. Here I want to focus on two questions: what is real? And how does reality change? In other words, this is an investigation as to whether Marable uses a dialectical materialist philosophy in this book. How was Marable thinking?

First, what is dialectical materialism? Materialism is a philosophical position that affirms the existence of the material world outside of and independent of our consciousness, hence we must be in the world and engage it in order to come to any understanding of it. This means that when you want to speak about the world you have to provide material evidence so that others can evaluate whether and how your words correspond with material reality. Dialectics is about the nature of reality, that everything is in motion, and this motion reflects the conflicting tensions between contradictions.

Most things have many contradictions, but in general there is always a principle contradiction that dominates the identity of that reality. External contradictions are the conditions for change, but internal contradictions are the basis for change. So to understand something we have to include both the external and the internal contradictions as part of our analysis. This is a philosophical approach that is essential for understanding the complexity of the world, human society, and of course important historical figures.

In sum, we can say that philosophy is not (and should not be portrayed as) a mystery but something that all of us can master. This is clearly a different approach to philosophy than the archaic approaches usually associated with philosophy as an academic discipline. For our purposes here, there are two fundamental philosophical questions:

1. How do we know something? This gets at our grasp of material reality. We all think we know some things so how do we know what we think we know?
2. And, so what? How does our understanding capture the nature of reality such that we understand the motion of how things change, how change comes about?

In this regard, Marable sets a high standard for this book:
My primary purpose in this book is to go beyond the legend: to recount what actually occurred in Malcolm’s life. I also present the facts that Malcolm himself could not know, such as the extent of illegal FBI and New York Police Department Surveillance and acts of disruptions against him, the truth about those among his supporters who betrayed him politically and personally, and the identification of those responsible for Malcolm’s assassination. (p. 12)

First, when you apply the revolutionary mandate “no investigation, no right to speak,” the book comes up short for a lack of evidence. Why not provide the source and let the reader be the judge? Here are some examples of statements with no evidence presented in the 63 pages of footnotes:
1. Page 12 – “55 year old audio tapes” are cited as having been reviewed by Marable but no additional information is given like number of tapes, dates, etc. Good scholarship requires documentation of evidence so it can be checked by others.
2. Page 22 – “Amy Jacques Garvey…may have been involved in Eason’s assassination,” a statement based on the conjecture in a secondary source
3. Page 36 – “He may have also believed that his mother’s love affair [was] a betrayal of his father.” Here Marable is practicing psychoanalysis without any data to back this conclusion.
4. Page 123 – He states of the Nation of Islam (NOI) membership, “until 1961, it would expand more than tenfold, to…seventy-five thousand members.” Again no source (NOI? FBI?) so why should we consider this a fact?
5. Page 137 – “James Warden…son of a labor organizer who may once have been a member of the Communist Party.” He interviewed Warden on three occasions, so why no indication of the source of this? Exactly what was said? James Warden, now Abdullah
Abdur Razzaq, stated during the Malcolm X Museum forum on the book, held at the Schomburg Center on May 2011, that he was totally misquoted in the book, and he has the transcripts of his interview to prove it. Wassup?

6. Page 147 – Referring to his wife Betty: “Malcolm rarely, if ever, displayed affection toward her.” But then on page 180 Marable writes: “Malcolm conveyed his love for her.” Which is it? And without evidence, how can we believe the amateurish psychoanalysis he presents?
7. Pages 174-175 – “a fire broke out in Louis’s home…most NOI members believed (Ella) Collins was responsible.” Again, no evidence.
8. Page 247 – Elijah Muhammed “interpreted the [Autobiography] as evidence of Malcolm’s vanity but [decided] at least temporarily, to cater to this.” Here Marable’s father-son Freudian analysis about Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X remains speculative without even a footnote that exposes the intellectual framework for such an idea. This idea is at least more responsibly argued in Wolfenstein (1981).
9. Page 256 – Regarding Malcolm’s analysis of the 1963 March on Washington, Marable writes that his “version of events was a gross distortion of the facts – yet it contained enough truth to capture an audience of unhappy black militants.” (Note the lower case b.) Does Marable think his assessment is so self-evident that it needs no support? Who is he writing to?
10. Page 266 – Regarding the notion that Malcolm was romantically involved with a woman whom Elijah Muhammad got pregnant: “no one else – not even James 67X – has made such a claim.” So why such a big deal out of this sexual controversy on at least five different places in the book?
11. Page 268 – “nearly every individual he trusted would betray that trust.” Again, such a global statement without proof can only sow the seeds of distrust in the movement and go against those living who were close to Malcolm.
12. Page 284 – “There is evidence that Malcolm may have met with the leaders of the Communist Party’s Harlem branch…” Now, while this is perfectly possible, why no documentation of the evidence? And what about Bill Epton? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Epton)
13. Page 294 – “…it is likely that no more than two hundred members in good standing quit the sect: less than 5 percent of all mosque congregants.” Why use the pejorative word “sect” for the NOI? And, again, what is the source of these numbers?
14. Page 423 – “Sharon 6X may have joined [Malcolm] in his hotel room.” Again, a damning statement with no evidence whatsoever.
15. Page 469 – “The organization’s archival heritage…were [sic] largely destroyed, and a new memory, branded by orthodoxy, was imposed.” What is the source for this? There are several organizations who claim to have the archives, so why does Marable think they are gone? And who imposed what new memory? While many may believe this, a serious work of scholarship would provide some kind of proof.

So the basic trend of these 15 points tells us that this is a poor job of empirical scholarship. Moreover, only about 20% of the 63 pages of footnotes come from primary sources. The rest of the footnotes come from published work based on others peoples’
research. And Marable hardly ever engages the serious scholarship of others, and fails to give any credit to his first project director who guided the day-to-day research effort, Cheryl Greene – not even a mention in the acknowledgments.

Marable states in the acknowledgments, “Elizabeth Mazucci was largely responsible for building the Malcolm X chronology…” In fact, the first chronology on his Columbia University website was lifted entirely from our BrotherMalcolm.net site without any attribution. I had to protest to Marable, and when I got no response from him I wrote to the Columbia administration. The page was taken down, but no one gave me the courtesy of a response.

Marable then reposted the chronology with a new format and a couple of new dates added, but still with no acknowledgement of sources. Marable and I were among the five founders of the Black Radical Congress, but this was hardly the move of a comrade, or a brother, or an honest scholar.

The overarching philosophical error in this book is suggested by the title, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. There are two incorrect aspects to this fundamental idealist error. First, Marable discounts Malcolm’s own autobiography, writing, “In many ways, the book is more Haley’s than its author’s: because Malcolm died in February 1965, he had no opportunity to revise major elements of what would become known as his political testament.” (p. 9)

I was at the 1992 Knoxville, Tennessee auction of the papers from the Haley estate and reviewed the documents such as the final copy edited by Malcolm, and the missing chapters. After but a quick scan I don’t believe there is any basis for this authorial challenge, which seems like just another attack on Malcolm X. (http://www.brothermalcolm.net/sections/haley/haleyestatemx.html)

The Autobiography was not a life invented by Alex Haley. The documents in question were purchased by Detroit attorney Greg Reed, and we await their release for a closer examination. (http://www.thetruthtoledo.com/story/2011/052511/reed.htm) Reed also has obtained a trove of documents recovered from the papers of a former member of the NOI in Detroit that will increase the archives we have. (http://www.chicagodefender.com/article-8667-early-nation-of-islam-documents-found-in-detroit.html)

Second, Marable suggests that Malcolm opportunistically invented and re-invented himself as a form of self-promotion, “to package himself to maximum effect.” (p. 10) He thinks the process was based on intentional agency by Malcolm X himself. Does consciousness determine being, or does being determine consciousness? Marable takes the first approach, while I suggest a materialist perspective that follows this observation by Karl Marx: “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs.htm) We must look to the concrete circumstances of Malcolm’s life and how the interplay of external and internal forces played out in his dialectical transformations.

There is no evidence that Malcolm deliberately reinvented himself. Rather, as with anyone who matures, the stages of Malcolm’s life can be understood as resulting from the dialectic of his consciousness and his concrete experiences. His ideas about himself and the world were negated by his experience, compelling him forward, even against his will at times.

He was a youth believing in and wanting to be part of society, but the negation of dominant society by his father and his mother, and then the negations of Malcolm by his teachers and his foster home experience all made him reject mainstream aspirations and pulled him into the street and being an outlaw. As an outlaw, the state negated him and put him in the joint, where he continued being a satanic character.

In opposition to this negation, his family and fellow prisoners then provided support and a path into a new form of consciousness and being. He cleaned up and began to recapture consciousness, to follow the path of his father and family. As Malcolm Little he was in small Midwestern towns (Omaha, Milwaukee, East Lansing). As Detroit Red, he was in large East Coast cities (Boston, New York, Washington DC). What was a constant was his eagerness to learn and achieve, first as an affirmation of society, then when negated as a negative force in society.

Once Malcolm X joined the NOI, led by his family members, he combined the lessons of both earlier stages of his life and built its membership up by going among the gangsters, the negated and most oppressed, and raising them into the lifestyle that his parents taught him and Elijah Muhammad reaffirmed—all of them moral, disciplined, and proud people.

And at least three more forces changed Malcolm X. First, he was appointed by the NOI to become National Minister and travel the county at the same time that the national freedom movement was reaching its peak in terms of consciousness and mobilization. He read and engaged with activists. While he changed many, he was also changed. Second, the police attacked and killed members of the NOI (especially in Los Angeles – see http://www.flickr.com/photos/24756454@N00/296103239/) and Malcolm was ready for action that far exceeded what the NOI was prepared to do. Third, the world situation was ablaze with armed struggle for national liberation, from Vietnam to Africa, Cuba and Latin America. He followed these movements very closely. His three great Detroit speeches from 1963, 1964 and 1965 make this very clear. (http://www.brothermalcolm.net/aug04index.html)

His final break with the NOI was conditioned by these external factors and two more factors internal to the NOI. One was Elijah Muhammad violating his own moral teachings regarding adultery. Two was Malcolm’s direct violation of the central leadership’s order of silence on the Kennedy assassination. Elijah Muhammed negated himself; Malcolm, having internalized the external political forces acting on him, negated the order of silence.

Malcolm’s new status free from the confines of the NOI was reinforced by his continued movement into Sunni Islam via his Hajj and his continued movement into world revolution by extensive trips abroad in Europe and Africa. My argument is that Malcolm’s life is not a self-invention process intended through Malcolm’s agency, but a global process that summed up the journey so many were to make from the oppressed, through the street, to Black self-determination, to revolutionary. This is the dialectical materialism of social change in the late 20th century, and on that basis people held and hold Malcolm in the highest regard and lived and are living the life he epitomized.

Politics

Now we come to politics, and the strategy and tactics advocated by Malcolm X. Strategy is the long term view of how to seize power and transform society, making clear what forces in society can be counted on and what forces one will have to fight. Strategy also focuses on the goals of a struggle. Tactics are the methods used in the day-to-day struggle in which a lot of flexibility and innovation is needed in the tit-for-tat encounters with the enemy and in mobilizing the masses of people. Tactics are subordinate to strategy, and can’t be equated or one confuses the zigzag of the struggle with the goal and basic plan for mobilization, organization, and victory.

On a global level, Marable gives us a clue of how he invents his own Malcolm X. He states:,“The United Nations World Conference Against Racism, held in Durban, South Africa in 2001, was in many ways a fulfillment of Malcolm’s international vision.” (p. 485) This is ridiculous. Malcolm X would have condemned the Durban meeting just as he did the 1963 March on Washington. Apparently the writer of the epilogue of Marable’s book forgot what the writer of chapter four had written: “Black American leaders, Malcolm now urged, must ‘hold a Bandung Conference in Harlem.’” (p. 120) Durban was a conference in which the imperialists were trying to assert their hegemony over anti-racism and decolonization. Bandung was a Third World gathering to plan unity and resistance in opposition to the imperialists. (Compare Wikipedia’s descriptions of each meeting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Conference_against_Racism_2001 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian%E2%80%93African_Conference.)

Malcolm X never believed an honest discussion could be held with imperialists. He would have predicted what actually happened in Durban: the US imperialists blocked any open debate in order to defend their client state, Israel.

On Malcolm X’s political thinking, Marable writes: “ Despite his radical rhetoric, as ‘The Ballot or the Bullet’ makes clear, the mature Malcolm believed that African Americans could use the electoral system and voting rights to achieve meaningful change.” (p. 484) Here Marable refuses to embrace the dialectical thinking of Malcolm X. First, Malcolm’s thinking was grounded in the radical Black tradition. See what Frederick Douglass wrote 100 years earlier in an article titled “The Ballot and the Bullet”:
If speech alone could have abolished slavery, the work would have been done long ago. What we want is an anti-slavery government, in harmony with our anti-slavery speech, one which will give effect to our words, and translate them into acts. For this, the ballot is needed, and if this will not be heard and heeded, then the bullet. We have had cant enough, and are sick of it. When anti-slavery laws are wanted, anti-slavery men should vote for them; and when a slave is to be snatched from the hand of a kidnapper, physical force is needed, and he who gives it proves himself a more useful anti-slavery man than he who refuses to give it, and contents himself by talking of a “sword of the spirit.” (1859, reprinted in Douglass 1950, p. 457-458)

The ballot or bullet theme in Black radicalism is in fact a fundamental tenet of American politics. It was part of the ideological rationale for the American anti-colonial war of liberation from England. It was stated in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, 235 years ago. Read the full text (http://tinyurl.com/decl-of-ind) if you want to understand the tradition on which Malcolm X stands—a radical American tradition.

Malcolm’s “Ballot or the Bullet” speech was part of his Spring 1964 offensive. It is important to be clear on the historical context in which he was giving political leadership. Forces that preceded and surrounded him undoubtedly impacted his thinking:
1. The increasingly militant struggles in the South, especially those led by Medgar Evers after the brutal murder of Emmett Till in 1955.
2. Robert Williams and his Monroe, North Carolina armed self-defense strategy as summed up in his book Negroes with Guns (1962). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Williams)
3. The armed group Deacons for Defense and Justice formed in Louisiana in 1964 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deacons_for_Defense_and_Justice)
4. The Revolutionary Action Movement, a group led by Max Stanford, who went on to influence the development of the Black Panther Party. This was the only other organization that Malcolm X joined. (Stanford 1986)

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. Vice President and then President L. B Johnson consolidated his own leadership by staying the course and supporting major civil rights legislation, so the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law on July 2, 1964. During the summer of 1964 SNCC led the civil rights organizations that had formed into a coalition called COFO in 1962 for a major offensive in Mississippi. This was the Mississippi Summer Project. Hundreds of activists poured into the state and confronted the heart of racist state power.

The House passed the bill in February 1965, but a Senate filibuster held it up. The Senate filibuster ended on June 19. Three movement activists (Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner) were martyred by assassination in Philadelphia, Mississippi on June 21. Out of the Mississippi Summer Project came a political party, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). (It was the MFDP that brought Fannie Lou Hamer to Harlem in 1964 where she appeared on a platform with Malcolm X.)

From the local precinct level to a delegation going to the national convention, the MFDP fought the racist party organization that excluded Black people. The main civil rights leaders tried to get the MFDP to accept being seated at the convention without voice or vote. The MFDP, with SNCC, rejected this as a sellout. In the meantime, the bullets kept flying:
1963 June Assassination of Medgar Evers 1964 Jul Rebellion in Rochester, New York Aug Rebellion in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1965 Feb 21 Assassination of Malcolm X Aug Rebellion in Watts, Los Angeles 1966 Jun Black Power slogan emerges in militant march in Mississippi Jul Rebellions in Cleveland, Ohio, and Omaha, Nebraska Oct Black Panther Party is organized in Oakland, California 1967 Jun Rebellion in Detroit Jul Rebellions in Newark and Plainfield, New Jersey Oct Assassination of Che Guevara 1968 Apr Assassinations of Black Panther Bobby Hutton and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rebellions in Chicago and more than 100 other cities Jun League of Revolutionary Black Workers is organized in Detroit 1969 Dec Assassination of Black Panther Fred Hampton

In 1965-66, the struggle was developing. The defeat of the Watts rebellion led to the ideological advance of the Black Power slogan, and the new revolutionary organization called the Black Panther Party, followed two years later by workers throwing up a new revolutionary force on the factory floor called the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. The US armed forces put down major urban rebellions, and assassination of Black radical leaders continued.
The 1964 presidential campaign brought forward the ultra-right in the form of Barry Goldwater. By 1966 Black Power emerged as a key ideological slogan. Electoral victories led to the first major Black Mayors of Cleveland, Ohio and Gary, Indiana. By 1968, things got even more extreme when Alabama governor George Wallace, the nation’s leading segregationist politician, ran for president and won the Indiana primary! Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968 and 1972, but was run out of office in disgrace in 1974. A struggle for power was taking place.

Malcolm X laid the basis for understanding these events: the Senate filibuster and racist state power; the murders and the unity between the Klan and the government; and the emergence of Black Power in both electoral and more militant forms as well. This was indeed the ballot and the bullet, 20th century edition.

The analysis that Malcolm laid out in his Spring 1964 speeches amounts to a theory of the US racist capitalist state that is based on finding a strategy to fight against it. First, the power of the US ruling class as based on southern fascism, versus a Black united front. Then, armed self defense for Black liberation as self determination versus that racist state power.
Marable advances an argument that separates Malcolm from his legacy, a legacy that was in fact us, the Black liberation movement. But no activist in that movement who was in motion at the time will believe his argument. It flies in the face of our experience.

Why this book, at this time?

We have reviewed Manning Marable’s book on Malcolm X as far as perspective, philosophy, and politics. But we still have an outstanding question – why this book, at this time? President George W. Bush was a right-wing standard bearer. We took to the streets to fight his policies. The resistance to the imperialist war on Iraq and then Afghanistan produced a major antiwar movement with heightened consciousness that developed faster and with a sharper focus than the movement against the Vietnam War. But now we have the Obama moment. Barack Obama is a Black face on US imperialism. While he has escalated Bush’s war, and extended it into Libya, we have no antiwar movement challenging Obama’s legitimacy. The ruling class is using a Black man to advance the cause of neoliberalism. They are concerned more about banks “too big to fail” than unemployment and the suffering of the masses of people.

Maybe I should say Obama is our man doing their work. We voted for him but he lacks the guts to fight for us against the rulers and generals who govern. He seeks to compromise with right-wing Republicans and Democrats captured by the fascist Tea Party that holds 10% of the seats in Congress.

Rather than give us the Malcolm X of the Detroit Speeches, the Malcolm X we love and respect, Marable tries to cut him down to size with unsubstantiated arguments under the guise of trying to humanize Malcolm X. In summary, Marable gives us a perspective that is outside of the Black Studies tradition in his attempt to sell books to a wide American book-buying public.

Marable gives us a philosophy that is mechanical and not dialectical, idealist and not materialist. And he attempts to turn Malcolm X into a social reformer rather than the revolutionary that he actually was. In short, Marable fabricates a Malcolm X who would not take militant and revolutionary action against the global war, poverty, and degradations of today. That’s why we have to speak up: to respect our legacy and affirm our future.

Bibliography

Baker, Houston. Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.
Clarke, John Henrik, ed. William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond. Boston: Beacon Press, 1968.
Cone, James. H. Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991
Douglass, Frederick. The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglas, Volume 2. Philip S. Foner, ed. New York, International Publisher, 1950.
Duberman, Martin Bauml. Paul Robeson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
Dyson, Michael Eric. I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Free Press, 2000.
Engels, Frederick. - Translated by Emile Burns. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1947. Available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/
Garrow, David J. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. New York: William Morrow & Company, 1986.
Lee, Spike. Malcolm X [movie], 1992.
Marable, Manning. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. New York: Viking, 2011.
Muhammad, Elijah. How to Eat to Live, Volume 1. Chicago, Muhammad Mosque of Islam No. 2, 1967. Available at http://www.seventhfam.com/temple/books/eattolive_one/eat1index.htm
Muhammad, Elijah. How to Eat to Live, Volume 2. Chicago, Muhammad Mosque of Islam No. 2, 1972. Available at http://www.seventhfam.com/temple/books/eattolive_two/eat2index.htm
Perry, Bruce. Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America. Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press, 1991.
Sales, William W. From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Boston: South End Press, 1994.
Stanford, Maxwell C. “Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM): A Case Study of an Urban Revolutionary Movement in Western Capitalist Society.” Master’s thesis. Atlanta University, 1986. Available at http://www.ulib.csuohio.edu/research/portals/blackpower/stanford.pdf
Styron, William. The Confessions of Nat Turner: A Novel. New York: Random House, 1967.
Williams, Robert F. Negroes with Guns. New York, Marzani & Munsell, 1962.
Wolfenstein, E. Victor. The Victims of Democracy : Malcolm X and the Black Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.

Yes, I'm A Narrow Minded Black Nationalist

Where is the North American African Nation?

Pan Africanism is great as per internationalism. The African Union of the Diaspora is fine as per internationalism, but where is the apparatus of the Nation of North American Africans? Where is your sovereignty, self determination. How can one even accept Pan Africanism without nationalism. Yet, every African in Africa is a national. There is no nation called Pan Africa, unless you mean Brooklyn, New York!

Michael Jackson, rest his soul, told us to remember the time! Remember Nation Time? Remember when North American Africans were serious about establishing a sovereign nation here in the wilderness of North America? Remember the Nation of Islam, the Republic of New Africa. Were these idle dreams of romantic idealists with rose colored glasses?

But what is Pan Africanism but another dream, certainly more difficult to achieve than the first, especially for North American Africans who would enter the Pan African nation as stateless persons. How can you seriously represent yourself in a collection of nations while you are victims of the slave system called the United States of America.

You want to connect with other independent people while you exist in a dependent status, neo-colonial subjects of the US, persons who have never exercised self-determination and most certainly not sovereignty. You can't even conceive of such! You have no idea what freedom is!

Sun Ra taught if you don't do the right thing, the Creator got it fixed so you can't go forward or backward until you do so. Pan Africanism is an ideal, but the realization of the idea must be grounded on nationalism. Pan Africanism is the logical next step after nationalism. Think globally, but act locally, nationally.

Call me a narrow minded nationalist, I don't give a damn. I am not trying to win a popularity contest. I don't care if you ever invite me to speak at your gatherings. I am quite satisfied writing. In fact, I'm having the best time of my life. So I'm going to call it as I see it, since we won't be around forever, and who wants to be? As my elders made plain to me the other day, it doesn't get any better with time!

I just want to see some sanity in this matter of North American Africans in time and space. Too many of us want to nick pick and cherry pick freedom, a job, a woman, money, materialism, international relations. Yet how can you have international relations when you have no national relations. You can't go around the corner with two North American Africans, yet you want to be a Pan African. My parents taught me charity begins at home and spreads abroad.

When will we come out of space and land on solid ground? Dr. Nathan Hare calls it other-worldism. Some of us are ready to follow another Jim Jones to some jungle to drink poison Kool Aid. We want to claim allegiance to Africa, the Moon, Russia, China, anywhere but casting down our buckets where we are and seizing the time, the space, the land that we have every right to a fair share, yes, the human and divine right to own a piece of America, four or five states, where we can live in peace, free of the eternal hostile environment of the White Supremacy American slave system.

Yet we tarry in Jerusalem, standing on the corner with our dicks in our hand and hearts racing, thinking the whore is coming back. She ain't coming back, brothers, so stop being the trick. Our generation is on the way out, so what shall we leave our children. American politics is a grand delusion--Elijah told you no politican of this world can save you--yet you persist. Even I fell under the momentary illusion Obama could and would make a difference. If anything, the noose has gotten tighter under his watch. He's outdone Bush with wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and elsewhere. He's promised terrorists education, employment and housing if they lay down their arms. Why can't he do the same for brothers and sisters in the hood? I am astounded at the cost of housing our children in juvenile halls, $200,000 per year. Hell, send them to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, so they can learn how to be big time criminals, so they can join the Wall Street blood suckers of the poor. My daddy told me, "Boy, if you gonna be something be the best!"

But no, North American Africans will vote en mass to re-elect Obama to four more years of black face white supremacy and we will be quite satisfied. North American Africans aided African liberation, but where is our nation, our piece of the pie. You want to sit at the table of Pan Africanism but you bring nothing. You represent no one except yourself. You have not organized a plebecite or vote of the people. You have not prepared your people for independence. Our thinkers and intellectuals are quite satisfied being tenured Negroes at white supremacy colleges and universities, yet claim they are Pan Africanists. The white man surely laughs at his Negroes.

He knows they are damn fools. Even my friend Dr. Cornel West was asked by an interviewer how he could talk all this radicalism within the halls of Princeton, a bastion of white supremacy mis-education.

It is no wonder Elijah had to pick a man like Malcolm X, from the grass roots. We will linger on in this nothingness and dread until a crop of brothers and sisters come to the front of the line who are well grounded in revolutionary nationalism and Pan Africanism, with the priority on nationalism. Pan Africansim is simply a matter of foreign affairs. Nation Time!

We will need to summon ineluctable energy to bring about the Nation of North American Africans. We will need to discard sloth, laziness, niggardliness and myopia. We will need to detox and recover from our full blown addiction to white supremacy, wage slavery, bleaching cream and Korean hair.

Stop worrying about interracialism. If a black sister wants to be with a white man, let her alone. She got to have white consciousness to desire a white man, so why worry about her. As Elijah said of the UN Undersecretary Ralph Bunche (the Negro who helped establish the nation of Isreal, while he was without a nation for his people), "Ralph Bunche is a Negro we don't need." So those black brothers with white women are black men with white hearts, so let them go in peace. We have enough brothers and sisters to form a nation. We have enough wealth, North American Africans are the 16th richest nation in the world, except we're victims of tricknology that has us addicted to conspicuous consumption or full blown materialism, the addiction to the white man's world of make believe. Jump out of the box, North American Africans. You can do it, just like Jack! Nation Time!

--Marvin X

6/6/11

Albertina Sisulu, Leader of Apartheid Fight, Transitions

Albertina Sisulu, Who Helped Lead Apartheid Fight, Dies at 92

By BARRY BEARAK
Published: June 5, 2011
New York Times
JOHANNESBURG — Albertina Sisulu, considered by many to be the mother of South Africa’s liberation struggle, a woman who was hounded and jailed by the apartheid government but who lived to see her children assume leadership roles in a democratic nation, died here on Thursday. She was 92.

Siphiwe Sibeko/Associated Press
Albertina Sisulu with Nelson Mandela in 2005.

Mrs. Sisulu’s passing extinguishes another light of a generation that fought one of the great moral battles of the 20th century. Since her death, virtually every one of this nation’s leaders have come to her home to offer condolences. Only Nelson Mandela has been conspicuously absent. He is increasingly frail, and members of the Sisulu family visited him instead.

A humble but forceful woman, Mrs. Sisulu was the widow of Walter Sisulu, one of Mr. Mandela’s earliest political mentors, who died in 2003. She kept her dignity through decades of government harassment. Mr. Sisulu was imprisoned for 26 years, and she herself was repeatedly jailed, held incommunicado and “banned,” a restriction limiting where she could go and how many people she could see.

“But try as they might, they could not break her spirit, they could not make her bitter, they could not defeat her love,” Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said in one of the many tributes offered after her death.

Nontsikelelo Thethiwe was born into a poor farming family in the Transkei, a former British protectorate that is now part of Eastern Cape Province. When she enrolled in a school run by missionaries, she was given a list of Christian names to chose from and selected Albertina.

Her father died when she was 11, and poverty might have kept her from finishing her education had she not won a scholarship to a Roman Catholic secondary school. After graduation, she accepted the advice of an admired priest and moved to Johannesburg to study nursing, a career that offered a small salary as she apprenticed.

In 1941, she was training at the Non-European General Hospital when she met Mr. Sisulu, a political activist with the African National Congress. Their courtship would be her political awakening. They married three years later. Nelson Mandela was best man at the ceremony.

In his autobiography, Mr. Mandela describes Albertina as a “wise and wonderful presence.” At the Sisulus’ wedding reception, he wrote, an A.N.C. stalwart warned the bride, “Albertina, you have married a married man: Walter married politics before he met you.”

She, in turn, was marrying the liberation movement. The Sisulus’ home in the Orlando area of Soweto became a central meeting place for the robust discussions that shaped the direction of the A.N.C. She combined her work as a visiting nurse with the distribution of political pamphlets.
On Aug. 9, 1956, Mrs. Sisulu was a leader of a historic march by 20,000 women against the nation’s pass laws, which restricted the movements of blacks. One slogan from the protest was, “You strike a woman, you strike a rock.” Aug. 9 is now celebrated in South Africa as Women’s Day.

Walter Sisulu would go on to head the A.N.C., and later, along with Mr. Mandela and others, create an armed wing of the organization. The Sisulus’ relationship has been celebrated in South Africa as a great love story, but during the first 20 years of their marriage, he was so often in jail or on the run that the couple barely spent 9 years together.

Once, in 1963, when the police failed to locate her husband, they seized Mrs. Sisulu instead, arresting her while she was treating patients. She was placed in solitary confinement under a notorious law that allowed detention for 90 days without charges.

“There was nothing to read, nothing to do, nothing to occupy my mind—nothing except to think of what was happening to my children at home,” she recalled in a 2002 biography written by her daughter-in-law, Elinor Sisulu.

The couple had five children and raised three more who belonged to Mr. Sisulu’s deceased sister. Unknown to Mrs. Sisulu, after she was jailed, her 17-year-old son Max was arrested and held under the same law.

In 1964, Mr. Sisulu was sentenced to life imprisonment, serving most of his time, like Mr. Mandela, on Robben Island. Mrs. Sisulu was banned for 10 years. Her children either went into exile or entered boarding school.

As the decades passed, MaSisulu, as she was affectionately called, was frequently arrested, locked up for infractions as slight as attending the funeral of a friend. Her children faced similar harassment.

“I did not mind going to jail myself, and I had to learn to cope without Walter,” Mrs. Sisulu once said. “But when my children went to jail, I felt that the Boers were breaking me at the knees.”

Nevertheless, her political activities continued. In 1983, she became one of the founders of the United Democratic Front, a powerful antiapartheid coalition that brought together religious, labor and student groups.

In July 1989, she led a delegation on an overseas mission, arguing for sanctions against the apartheid government. She met with President George H. W. Bush and former President Jimmy Carter. She dined with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

The days of racist oppression were drawing to a close. That October, Mr. Sisulu was set free; Mr. Mandela would be released four months later.

In 1994, with multiracial democracy finally having replaced white domination, Mrs. Sisulu was elected to Parliament. She served for four years, retiring from politics though remaining active in social causes.

The Sisulu family, for so long badgered and humiliated, is now a political dynasty. Her daughter Lindiwe Sisulu is the nation’s defense minister. Her son Max is speaker of the National Assembly. Another daughter, Beryl Sisulu, is South Africa’s ambassador to Norway. She is also survived by her son Zwelakhe Sisulu and daughter Nkuli Sisulu.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 6, 2011


Because of an editing error, an earlier version misstated Mrs. Sisulu's relationship to three children she and her husband raised. They were the children of Mr. Sisulu's deceased sister, not Mrs. Sisulu's sister.

Jasper Texas Poem and Apology for Slavery Proclamation

TREK ON THE JASPER TRAIL

On June 7, 1998 in Jasper, Texas a Black man, James Byrd Jr. was severely beaten, chained to a pick-up truck and dragged to his dismemberment and death. His head was severed after one mile while his torso was dragged for an additional two miles. Three crackers with links to the KKK and Aryan nation were held responsible. Dr. Daniel Kunene (Emeritus Prof. U.W. Madison) author of Heroic Poetry of the Basotho, Chaka (translation of the famous novel by Thomas Mofolo). Pirates Have Become Our Kings, From the Pit of Hell to the Spring of Life, The Zulu Novels of C.L.S. Nyembezi and The Rock at the Corner of My Heart wrote the following poem in memory of this horrific event.

Dr. Daniel Kunene, poet

In the first mile of the Jasper trail
the texas sun shines uncommonly bright
does not once blink
while the truck rattles on

in the cabin:
“do you still
go out with annie mcguire?”

“O ya! nice lass
nice ass”

In the second mile of the Jasper trail
the sun listens
a cow bellows
a rancher cracks his whip

behind the truck
HE sees sparks and a million stars
lighting up the endless firmament
MY GOD! MY GOD! WHY DO YOU FORSAKE ME?
then
darkness

inside the cabin
annie mcguire has come alive
and a young man besmears his pants
at the mere thought of annie mcguire

In the third mile of the Jasper trail
the shooting stars have died into their ashes
and the shadows around the sun
have crowded together to cover its face
from the shame

inside the cabin:
“I wonder how the nigger is doing back there”

A crow caws
and instantly the air is choked with cawing crows
that have suddenly filled the sky
for midnight has descended on the Jasper trail
yet the young men in the truck fail to see
the eclipse
the chaos

they stop
they come out
“I feel sick Bob!”

“don’t be a squeam Ricky
aren’t you a Texan?”

“what’s a squeam Bob?
I’m going to throw up Bob!”

“ah, go puke you jellybelly
I’ll go empty my bladder over him”

Somewhere
a Spirit that escaped
in the moment of decapitation
at the last crossroad
cries
“Forgive them
for they know not what they do”

(c) 1999 by Daniel P. Kunene



Berkeley Juneteenth Slave Apology Proclamation

Supervisor Keith Carson and President Nate Miley are authors of a Slave Apology Proclamation,scheduled to be adopted on Tuesday, June 7, 2011, at approximately 10:45am at the regularlyscheduled Board of Supervisors meeting, at 1221 Oak Street, 5th floor, Oakland, CA.

The resolution recommends that the Board adopt a resolution apologizing for the enslavement andracial segregation of African Americans, and calls for economic reparations benefiting African Americans, in health, education and housing programs.

The proclamation acknowledges the brutality of slavery, described as “involuntary servitude,” and the resulting disparities it created. The “separate but equal” Jim Crow era was described as “the lingering after effect of slavery” which created enormous tangible and intangible damage and loss of dignity and liberty. The resolution also recommends that state and federal governments issue a similar formal policy and recommit to bringing an end to racial prejudices, disparities and injustices in our society, and says that in order to promote healing and reconciliation, the injustices need to be identified.

The resolution will be accepted by Delores Cooper Edwards, representing Berkeley Juneteenth Association, Inc. (BJAI), an organization who for the past 24 years has held Freedom Day celebrations which honor African American heritage and commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery.

Edwards says she initially had reservations about the resolution, saying: “How can this apology undo the impact slavery had on the entire fabric of America?” But says the apology should serve as “a reminder that the fight for freedom and equality is continuous.” Edwards say she will accept the apology not only for African American citizens, “but for all citizens of Alameda County, regardless of complexion, group, or language,” quoting President John Kennedy: “Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.”

BJAI will read the resolution in its entirety at its annual Juneteenth celebration scheduled for Sunday, June 26, 2011, 10am-6pm on Alcatraz @ Adeline, in the city of Berkeley. After the Festival, the resolution will be placed in the organization’s historical archives.

America, Stark Raving Mad

America, Stark Raving Mad

"It's a wonder we all haven't gone stark raving mad."
--James Baldwin, interview with Marvin X, 1968


We know murder can become an addiction, the murderer actually gets high killing. So imagine the psycho-pathological mentality of the American military killing around the world. Wars and proxy wars, from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, and elsewhere, some places we know nothing about and shall never know, but the US killers are on the move, spreading mayhem across the globe, with over one hundred bases in nations with the primary motive of securing free market capitalism at the point of a gun, tanks, planes, drones, etc.

Again, once the killer starts it is hard to stop, to withdraw, to end the occupation.
America is due to exit Iraq this year but don't believe the hype. As we said months ago, the war in Iraq hasn't started. The US mass murder was only a dress rehearsal. If and when the US retreats, the Sunnis and Shia will engage in a battle with regional implications. The Saudis have been deeply involved it insuring the continuation of the Sunni insurgency. The Saudis lead the pack of Sunnis who have every intention of never allowing a functioning Shia government, after all, they are considered heretics of the first order, additionally, they are considered puppets of Iran, another Shia nation with mythological goals of expansion from the Tigress and Euphrates to the Mediterranean.

Of course don't leave out Israel in this equation. She has united with the Saudis to block Shia expansion. Israel is already hemmed in on one side by Shia supported Hamas in Gaza and Iranian proxi Hezbollah in Lebanon.

And so we should expect the war in Iraq to continue, perhaps in a low intensity manner, but war none the less. And war is hell, the blood, breaking of bones, wailing of women, the raping and torture. Trillions of dollars gone down the drain so retired Generals in the US can make a few billion as CEOs of defense related corporations.

Of course war is only politics by other means, thus the real insanity is in the political structure, an entity totally under the control of special interest groups or lobbyists who care nothing about people, only fees from those they advocate. They are so sick with it, they will advocate for dog catchers, men with boys, or any project for profit. And so we have the insanity of the best democracy money can buy.

Our President is securely in the hands of Wall Street. He is their mascot, a man of supposed intelligence, but more in line with the great capitulators in history. He accepted insults from Zionist Netanyahu that hurt to watch. How could a real black man allow a white man to insult him in the White House before the entire world. He must be a sick puppy. The most powerful man in the world is a wimp.

I asked a friend of mine with contacts at the White House, who is Obama? My friend is 73 years old. He replied, "You don't want to know the answer to that question. If I tell you, you won't live to be 73!"

The mental health of America is deteriorating at a rapid pace. The babies talk of killing, the youth are killing. Babies two years old must be removed from child care centers due to sexual assault. Five year old girls are banned from child care because of lesbian sexual activity. Apparently, the sexual identity crisis is full blown. Boys who aren't gay, sound gay. A young man said, "My friends sound gay because they have never heard a man's voice."

The sexual identity crisis is only part of the general mental breakdown. We have a society with more than 14 million people unemployed and there isn't a job program under discussion by the Government. We assume the unemployed are expendable in the global free market capitalist order. The capitalist say, "We have a bountiful field of workers in China and India. To Hell with high priced American workers." Yes, the capitalist swine will kill their mothers for a profit. The profit motive has driven America, in the words of Baldwin, "...to rationalizations so fantastic it approaches the pathological...."
--Marvin X

Suheir Hammad

“INTO EGYPT” BY SUHEIR HAMMAD // 02.03.11
BYFEN


tunisians started it. egyptians followed. palestinian-american suheir hammad wrote to it. we have to remind one another that art endures. we hope you find light in suheir’s words:

into egypt

to be ready
you will want beauty
as your face
you will want to greet the day with a heart
you will wish was open
you will want to be brave
and you only fear
want belief in anything
and everything is doubt
when there is light finally you might squint
the sight of it all might make you

steady you will want
a vision ahead
redemptive dissonance
music for the end of
chorus for the coming of
manifest hum into hymn
the noise of it rivers you
you will cry water into flames
vulture your own heart to feed

you will want to love your self
at all enough you will want
to flee and forget the leaving
will have to leap still wanting
you will want to wait for witness
you will want to wait for those already gone
you will want until you are want
you will want until
you are ready

>via: http://www.fenmag.com/2011/02/03/into-egypt-suheir-hammad/



__________________________



6QS WITH POET SUHEIR HAMMAD // 11.22.09


BYMARWA


Suheir Hammad needs no introduction. You’ve seen her bust a verse on Russel Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, moving a nation with her post-9/11 poem, “First Writing Since.” And she recently starred in the groundbreaking film Salt of This Sea. But more than that, her poems aren’t merely read or heard–as one reader at a recent reading of her new work breaking poems put it, they are ones we “bear witness to.” FEN had the honor of getting these six questions in with her afterwards:


STATS:
ice cream: Tropical sorbet
song lyric: “As” by Stevie Wonder
superhero: The Universe

1. Did you get support or resistance from your family when you started your career?
There wasn’t resistance from just my family and there’s wasn’t support from just one place. As a woman, the life-choice to be an artist, isn’t nurtured in any of the communities I engage with. And that’s where artists have to push their voice, through the resistance.

I COMMITTED MYSELF TO MY CRAFT. AND IN A WAY, THE CHOICE WAS MADE FOR ME.

There was a tipping or turning point where I looked forward, and back, and decided I would work to be more honest and a better poet. That’s what poetry is. It’s about the human endeavor.

2. What are your influences and motivators?
Curiosity. There’s a specific kind of dysfunction in it. It has the ability to carry you to one place while it gets you stuck in some other places.

3. What’s missing from the Arab-American art scene in your mind?
I wouldn’t say there is a scene. We have disparate aesthetics, influences and ideas. And it seems like we’re all dealing with the same themes from different angles.

EVERY ARTIST NEEDS TO FIGURE OUT THEIR IDENTITY AND WHAT THEIR AESTHETIC IS.

My father raised me as a Palestinian in America not Arab-American. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I saw myself as Arab-American. So we need to rethink how language invites or excludes members of a community.

4. Tell us about making the transition from performing spoken word to acting.
I never wanted to act–never had that hunger to be on stage. It never fed me artistically or spiritually. But for something that I never wanted to do, I learned so much. And art is a self-study, and you have to continue to redefine yourself.

5. What obstacles have you run into and how have you overcome them?
There’s a tension between my personal definition and the inspiration for why I do what I do, and what the external world tells you to do. Along the way, you grow up. You figure out what you want to do. There’s always going to be that mystery. And that’s when I go back to the page. Poetry is there for me to work these things out–in craft and theme.

6. What’s your advice for aspiring artists?
Be the best artist you can be.

YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE YOU’RE CREATING AND BE THE BEST CREATOR THAT YOU CAN.

There’s nothing more important than your commitment to your craft. And everyone has a different road to being the best artist they can be.





>via: http://www.fenmag.com/2009/11/22/six-questions-with-suheir-hammad/





__________________________



VIDEO: SUHEIR HAMMAD: POEMS OF WAR, PEACE, WOMEN, POWER // 02.09.11
BYFEN



In the same way that we can count on Egyptians to stay in Midan Tahrir night after night, we can count on Suheir Hammad to deliver. Again and again. Press play and know that what you hear is true.

>via: http://www.fenmag.com/2011/02/09/video-suheir-hammad-poems-of-war-peace-women...
via vimeo.com

Poems from a student to Marvin X

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







June 2011

Superman went home

followed by Geronimo Pratt

Tears and struggle

from Harlem to Tanzania

Souls set free from heavy bodies

X’s wisdom brightens the midnight sky

in Babylon as

we remember Sun Ra

in the laughter of the living

Lupe proves it ain’t all a fiasco

Gil Scott and Plato’s Cave

revolutionary lessons

never televised

but still in syndication

Students remember teachers



X @ 67 Baba turned 67

his children forgave him

he may eventually forgive himself

but bless the demons that chase him

keep him pouring out

look may he flow forth

we were born &

will no doubt die

thirsty

keep him pouring out

long may he flow forth

keep him pouring out

bless his mama

living brightly in his memory

may she forgive him for

ignoring her at least this once

we worthless negroes are blessed

because

he has never left us alone

in his journey from miscreant to itinerant poet

he grew towards Mt. Thai & he wrote maps

so we could follow as he turned away from feathers

remembered how to talk to cows

learned from falling down

the value of things he never owned

sharpening his pen to sword point

bargained his soul back from the devil

for poems in the name of his grandchildren

as his students watched

they learned to plant seeds

we know you were here

you have carved on souls

in a forest that plants trees as it burns

in life’s fire all is clean

all is new again

Sun Ra never died he ascended

as you have

standing there in the light

sun over your left shoulder

forever in your righted eyes

bless us as

we present flowers to the living

Understanding White Supremacy in the Present Era

Understanding White Supremacy in the Present Era

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Geronimo Pratt and High Blood Pressure

High Blood Pressure and North American Africans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Africa for the Africans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Comment by Marvin X

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Goodbye, Gil Scott at Harlem's Riverside Church

Anna Webber/GettyScott-

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

Corey Sipkin/News

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

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

BY Michael J. Feeney
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, June 2nd 2011, 8:51 PM


Corey Sipkin/News

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

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

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

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

And she certainly did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Black Panther Geronimo Pratt Transitions to Ancestors

Black Panther Leader Geronimo Pratt Dies In Tanzania

Associated Press on June 3, 2011


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comment by Marvin X

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

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

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

$50 Million Suit Over Malcolm X Bio

$50M SUIT OVER MALCOLM X BIO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hamza Khatib, the Middle East's Emmett Till

Hamza Khatib was used as target practice. The bullets were not used to kill Hamza but to torture him. Imagine anyone being shot repeatedly in the arms and legs just because someone felt like it – now imagine that “anyone” be a frightened thirteen year old whose only fault was expressing, in the only way that he knows, his opinion in a country where that luxury is not given.

Hamza Khatib was castrated and his hands, feet, and abdomen were severely beaten. Overall, men in power who don’t care about him being so young and innocent subjected this teenager, for a period of well over a month, to most signs of abuse and torture imaginable.

Hamza Khatib and Emmett Til, two teenagers worlds apart, yet both suffered crucifixion at the hands of a society afraid of its shadow, let alone its children. The majority in the Middle East are children, thus the nature of his brutal murder reveals how dictatorial regimes fear the generation bound to replace them, unless these children are turned around, i.e., aborted, reactified, incarcerated or assassinated. Hamza and Emmett were not wanted simply because they were free beings, exercising the freedom of youth.

The power of youth cannot be eternally suppressed, maybe for a time the will participate in reactionary behavior, but once they see the light, we know the result, we see it in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria. Syria has long been a police state, a brutal regime that tolerated no opposition whatsoever.

My son Darrel/Abdul (RIP), won a Fulbright Fellowship to the University of Damascus. He told me what he endured as a young student, how the secret police interrogated him almost daily. Why was he going to the American Embassy to swim? Why was he hanging around those filthy Palestinians? He said there were Africans in Syria who are virtual slaves since their passports were taken, thus they cannot leave. Of course my dear friend Dr. Mohja Kahf has informed us of the terror in Syria. She recently sent out a passionate video reading her poem My People Are Rising!

Dr. Mohja Kahf,

Syrian-American

poet/novelist/professor

We salute the people of Syria, now led with inspiration from the child martyr of their revolution, Hamza Khatib. The murder of Emmett Till advaced Black liberation, let Hamza advance the liberation of Syria and the Middle East. "A child shall lead them."
--Marvin X

1/2/11