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Tuesday, January 1, 2013
AALBC.com Newsletter
Afghanistan and Echoes of 1989
With U.S. Set to Leave Afghanistan, Echoes of 1989
By THOM SHANKER
Published: January 1, 2013
WASHINGTON — The young president who ascended to office as a change agent decides to end the costly and unpopular war in Afghanistan. He seeks an exit with honor by pledging long-term financial support to allies in Kabul, while urging reconciliation with the insurgency. But some senior advisers lobby for a deliberately slow withdrawal, and propose leaving thousands of troops behind to train and support Afghan security forces.
Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters
Soviet officers and soldiers near Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1988. Troops would leave the next year.
This is a nearly exact description of the endgame conundrum facing President Obama as he prepares for a critical visit by Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, planned for early January.
But the account is actually drawn from declassified Soviet archives describing Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s closed-door struggles with his Politburo and army chiefs to end the Kremlin’s intervention in Afghanistan — one that began with a commando raid, coup and modest goals during Christmas week of 1979 but became, after a decade, what Mr. Gorbachev derided as “a bleeding wound.”
What mostly is remembered about the withdrawal is the Soviet Union’s humiliation, and the ensuing factional bloodletting across Afghanistan that threw the country into a vicious civil war. It ended with Taliban control and the establishment of a safe haven for Al Qaeda before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
But scholars who have studied the Soviet archives point out another lesson for the Obama administration as it manages the pullout of American and allied combat forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
“The main thing the Soviets did right was that they continued large-scale military assistance to the regime they left behind after the final withdrawal in ’89,” said Mark N. Katz, a professor at George Mason University and author of “Leaving Without Losing: The War on Terror After Iraq and Afghanistan” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012).
“As long as the Afghan regime received the money and the weapons, they did pretty well — and held on to power for three years,” Mr. Katz said. The combat effectiveness of Kabul’s security forces increased after the Soviet withdrawal, when the fight for survival become wholly their own.
But then the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, and the new Russian leader, Boris N. Yeltsin, heeded urgings of the United States and other Western powers to halt aid to the Communist leadership in Afghanistan, not just arms and money, but also food and fuel. The Kremlin-backed government in Kabul fell three months later.
To be sure, there are significant contrasts between the two interventions in Afghanistan. The Soviet invasion and occupation were condemned as illegal aggression, while the American one was embraced by the international community, including Russia, as a “just war,” one with limited goals of routing the Taliban and eliminating Al Qaeda. That war of necessity has since evolved into a war of choice, one the Obama administration is working to end as quickly as is feasible.
Despite the differences going in, both the Soviet Union and the United States soon learned that Afghanistan is a land where foreigners aspiring to create nations in their image must combat not just the Taliban but tribalism, orthodoxy, corruption and a medieval view of women. As well, Pakistan has had interests at odds with those of the neighboring government in Afghanistan, whether Kabul was an ally of Moscow or of Washington.
“The Soviet Union did not understand religious and ethnic factors sufficiently, and overestimated the capacity of Afghan society to move very fast toward a modern era, in this case socialism,” said Svetlana Savranskaya, director of Russian programs at the National Security Archive, an independent research center at George Washington University.
“Here I see similarities with the approach of the United States, especially with all the discussion about trying to leave behind an Afghanistan that is democratic and respects the rights of women, ideas that simply are not accepted across the broad society there,” said Ms. Savranskaya, who has written extensively on the Soviet archives.
If the Soviet experience offers any guidance to the current American withdrawal, she said, it would be to accelerate the departure of foreign combat forces — but to leave in their place a “sustained, multiyear international involvement in military training, education and civilian infrastructure projects, and maybe not focusing on building democracy as much as improving the lives of the common people.”
And she noted that the United States should already be seeking partnership with Afghan leaders beyond Mr. Karzai, who is viewed across large parts of the population as tainted by his association with the Americans.
Pentagon officials have signaled that they are hoping for an enduring military presence of 10,000 or more troops, but may have to accept fewer, to cement the progress of the years of fighting. Those troops would focus on training and supporting Afghan forces along with a counterterrorism contingent to hunt Qaeda and insurgent leaders.
In a parallel, one of Mr. Gorbachev’s closest early confidants, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the foreign minister, advocated a slow withdrawal pace — and pressed for 10,000 to 15,000 Soviet troops to remain to support the Communist government. The Soviets left only 300 advisers.
But after losing more than 15,000 Soviet troops and billions of rubles, the Kremlin knew it had to somehow justify the invasion and occupation upon withdrawal.
Mr. Gorbachev had “to face up to a difficult problem of domestic politics which has puzzled other nations finding themselves in similar circumstances,” Rodric Braithwaite, a former British ambassador to Moscow, wrote in “Afgantsy” (Oxford University Press, 2011), his book on the Soviet intervention based on Communist Party documents.
“How could the Russians withdraw their army safely, with honor, without looking as if they were simply cutting and running, and without appearing to betray their Afghan allies or their own soldiers who had died?” Mr. Braithwaite wrote of the internal Kremlin debate, in terms resonant of the Americans’ conundrum today.
Around the time of the Soviet withdrawal, an article by Pravda, the Communist Party mouthpiece, clutched for a positive view as the Soviet Army pulled out. Read today, it bears a resemblance to the news releases churned out by the Pentagon detailing statistics on reconstruction assistance.
“Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan repaired, rebuilt and constructed hundreds of schools, technical colleges, over 30 hospitals and a similar number of nursery schools, some 400 apartment buildings and 35 mosques,” the article said. “They sank dozens of wells and dug nearly 150 kilometers of irrigation ditches and canals. They were also engaged in guarding military and civilian installations in trouble.”
The Kremlin had learned that its armies could not capture political success, but Soviet commanders made the same claims upon withdrawal that are heard from NATO officers today: not a single battlefield engagement was lost to guerrillas, and no outpost ever fell to insurgents.
That understanding seemed to animate Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta as he toured Afghanistan recently in a traditional holiday visit with the troops.
At each stop, Mr. Panetta acknowledged that significant challenges remain to an orderly withdrawal and a stable postwar Afghanistan, and not just the resilient insurgency.
He cited unreliable Afghan governance, continuing corruption and the existence of insurgent safe havens in Pakistan. None of those are likely to be fixed with American firepower
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New Year's Day in the American Slave System
But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns.
On the 2d, the slaves are expected to go to their new masters. On a farm, they work until the corn and cotton are laid. They then have two holidays. Some masters give them a good dinner under the trees. This over, they work until Christmas eve. If no heavy charges are meantime brought against them, they are given four or five holidays, whichever the master or overseer may think proper.
Then comes New Year's eve; and they gather together their little alls, or more properly speaking, their little nothings, and wait anxiously for the dawning of day. At the appointed hour the grounds are thronged with men, women, and children, waiting, like criminals, to hear their doom pronounced.
The slave is sure to know who is the most humane, or cruel master, within forty miles of him. It is easy to find out, on that day, who clothes and feeds his slaves well; for he is surrounded by a crowd, begging, "Please, massa, hire me this year. I will work very hard, massa."
If a slave is unwilling to go with his new master, he is whipped, or locked up in jail, until he consents to go, and promises not to run away during the year. Should he chance to change his mind, thinking it justifiable to violate an extortedpromise, woe unto him if he is caught! The whip is used till the blood flows at his feet; and his stiffened limbs are put in chains, to be dragged in the field for days and days! If he lives until the next year, perhaps the same man will hire him again, without even giving him an opportunity of going to the hiring-ground.
After those for hire are disposed of, those for sale are called up. O, you happy free women, contrast your New Year's day with that of the poor bond-woman! With you it is a pleasant season, and the light of the day is blessed. Friendly wishes meet you every where, and gifts are showered upon you. Even hearts that have been estranged from you soften at this season, and lips that have been silent echo back, "I wish you a happy New Year." Children bring their little offerings, and raise their rosy lips for a caress. They are your own, and no hand but that of death can take them from you.
But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns.
She may be an ignorant creature, degraded by the system that has brutalized her from childhood; but she has a mother's instincts, and is capable of feeling a mother's agonies. On one of these sale days, I saw a mother lead seven children to the auction-block. She knew that some of them would be taken from her; but they took all. The children were sold to a slave-trader, and their mother was bought by a man in her own town. Before night her children were all far away. She begged the trader to tell her where he intended to take them; this he refused to do.
How could he, when he knew he would sell them, one by one, wherever he could command the highest price? I met that mother in the street, and her wild, haggard face lives to-day in my mind. She wrung her hands in anguish, and exclaimed, "Gone! all gone! Why don't God kill me?"
I had no words wherewith to comfort her. Instances of this kind are of daily, yea, of hourly occurrence. Slaveholders have a method, peculiar to their institution, of getting rid of old slaves, whose lives have been worn out in their service. I knew an old woman, who for seventy years faithfully served her master. She had become almost helpless, from hard labor and disease. Her owners moved to Alabama, and the old black woman was left to be sold to any body who would give twenty dollars for her.
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Governor Pardons Wilmington 10, Free at Last!
North Carolina governor pardons Wilmington 10
12/31/2012
The Rev. Benjamin Chavis gives a clenched fist salute on December
14, 1979, after being paroled by then-North Carolina governor Jim
Hunt. Chavis, one of the Wilmington 10 defendants, was pardoned
on Monday by North Carolina’s current governor, Bev Perdue, in
connection with the 1972 firebombing of a Wilmington, N.C.
grocery. (AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi)
14, 1979, after being paroled by then-North Carolina governor Jim
Hunt. Chavis, one of the Wilmington 10 defendants, was pardoned
on Monday by North Carolina’s current governor, Bev Perdue, in
connection with the 1972 firebombing of a Wilmington, N.C.
grocery. (AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi)
The Wilmington Ten are truly free, at last.
Outgoing North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue issued and signed a “pardon of innocence” for the group Monday. There are currently six surviving members.
The nine African-American men and one white woman had been convicted in the 1972 firebombing of a Wilmington, NC grocery store during civil-rights protests that arose after police shot an African-American teenager. Between the ten, they received combined sentences totaling 282 years in prison.
In the statement released from her office this afternoon, Governor Perdue, a Democrat, said that she “decided to grant these pardons because the more facts I have learned about the Wilmington Ten, the more appalled I have become about the manner in which their convictions were obtained.” That manner wasoutlined on our show Saturday by host Melissa Harris-Perry, who added her voice to the more than 130,000 who signed their names to petitions delivered to the governor’s office:
“…it was so overt that by 1977, at least three witnesses had recanted their testimony. And in 1980, the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the convictions of the Wilmington Ten—noting that the chief witness lied on the stand and that prosecutors concealed evidence.And now, according to the NAACP, newly discovered notes from the prosecutor suggest he racially-profiled prospective jurors—writing ‘KKK —good’ next to some names and referring to at least one black candidate as an ‘Uncle Tom.’”
Governor Perdue used similarly strong language in her statement about the injustices done in the trial:
This conduct is disgraceful. It is utterly incompatible with basic notions of fairness and with every ideal that North Carolina holds dear. The legitimacy of our criminal justice system hinges on it operating in a fair and equitable manner with justice being dispensed based on innocence or guilt – not based on race or other forms of prejudice. That did not happen here. Instead, these convictions were tainted by naked racism and represent an ugly stain on North Carolina’s criminal justice system that cannot be allowed to stand any longer.
Wilmington Ten member Wayne Moore, who was 19 at the time of the firebombing and received a nearly 30-year prison sentence, shouted his joy at the governor’s decision via Twitter:
----------------------NC governor signs pardons for Wilmington 10
The Wilimington 10 back in 1972.
WBOY-TV
updated 12/31/2012
By MARTHA WAGGONER
--Associated Press
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - Outgoing North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue issued pardons Monday to the Wilmington 10, a group wrongly convicted 40 years ago in a notorious Civil Rights-era prosecution that led to accusations that the state was holding political prisoners.
Perdue issued pardons of innocence Monday for the nine black men and one white woman who received prison sentences totaling nearly 300 years for the 1971 firebombing of a Wilmington grocery store during three days of violence that included the shooting of a black teenager by police.
The pardon means the state no longer thinks the 10 - four of whom have since died - committed a crime.
"I have decided to grant these pardons because the more facts I have learned about the Wilmington Ten, the more appalled I have become about the manner in which their convictions were obtained," Perdue said in a news release Monday.
The three key witnesses in the case later recanted their testimony. Amnesty International and other groups took up the issue, portraying the Wilmington 10 as political prisoners.
In 1978, then-Gov. Jim Hunt commuted their sentences but withheld a pardon. Two years later, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., threw out the convictions, saying perjury and prosecutorial misconduct were factors in the verdicts. Advertise AdChoices
"We are tremendously grateful to Gov. Perdue for her courage," said Benjamin Chavis, the former national NAACP executive director who was in jail and prison for about five years before his release. "This is a historic day for North Carolina and the United States. People should be innocent until proven guilty, not persecuted for standing up for equal rights and justice."
In addition to Chavis, the surviving members of the Wilmington 10 are Reginald Epps, James McKoy, Wayne Moore, Marvin Patrick and Willie Earl Vereen. Those who have died are Jerry Jacobs, Ann Shepard, Connie Tindall and Joe Wright.
The bombing of the white-owned Mike's Grocery occurred less than three years after the 1968 assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Schools in Wilmington and New Hanover County hadn't desegregated, and black students began a boycott.
The United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, for whom Chavis worked, sent him to Wilmington to advise the students. On Feb. 6, 1971, the white-owned Mike's Grocery was firebombed, and police killed a black teenager that night. A day later, a white man was shot and killed.
The National Guard then moved in to end the violence.
Wilmington 10 survivors and family today.
The Wilmington 10 were convicted in October 1972 on charges of conspiracy to firebomb Mike's Grocery and conspiracy to assault emergency personnel who responded to the fire.
The trial was held in Burgaw in Pender County after a judge declared a mistrial the first time. A jury of 10 blacks and two whites had been seated in the first trial when prosecutor Jay Stroud said he was sick, and the judge declared the mistrial. At the second trial, a jury of 10 whites and two blacks was seated.
The three key witnesses who took the stand for the prosecution recanted their testimony in 1976. And the prosecutor, Stroud, became a flashpoint for the Wilmington 10 supporters.
In November, NAACP state leaders said they believe newly uncovered notes show Stroud tried to keep blacks off the first jury and seat whites he thought were sympathetic to the Ku Klux Klan.
They showed the notes on a poster board, saying the handwriting on the legal paper appeared to match notes from other prosecution records in the case.
At the top of the list of 100 jurors, the notes said, "stay away from black men." A capital "B'' was beside the names of black jurors. The notes identify one potential black juror as an "Uncle Tom type," and beside the names of several white people, notations include "KKK?" and "good!!"
"This conduct is disgraceful," Perdue said. "It is utterly incompatible with basic notions of fairness and with every ideal that North Carolina holds dear. The legitimacy of our criminal justice system hinges on it operating in a fair and equitable manner with justice being dispensed based on innocence or guilt - not based on race or other forms of prejudice." Advertise AdChoices
Stroud told the StarNews of Wilmington that he wrote some of the notes but declined to confirm that to the AP in November. On Monday, he told the AP that he wouldn't have written "stay away from black men," and said someone could have forged the notes.
The N.C. State Bar lists Stroud as a former defense attorney whose status is inactive at his request. Stroud has been arrested more than a dozen times in the past six years, and his son told The Gaston Gazette in 2011 that his father suffers with bipolar disease and that he was diagnosed about the same time he graduated from law school.
"I think she has made a mistake," Stroud said of Perdue on Monday. "The case was prosecuted fairly, and the jury reached a unanimous verdict fairly quickly after a six-week trial. And they found all 10 defendants unanimously guilty of all charges. And I think her decision is flying in the face of the jury's verdict."
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Associated Press writer Michael Biesecker in Raleigh contributed to this story.
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Martha Waggoner can be reached at http://twitter.com/mjwaggonernc
Monday, December 31, 2012
Marvin X Speaks on the Transition of Poet Jayne Cortez
Greetings, Marvin---
Thank you again for sharing your creative remarks regarding Jayne Cortez. The show will air from 4pm - 6pm tomorrow on KPOO, 89.5FM, San Francisco/www.kpoo.com.
Hope you get to listen. either way, I will forward you a copy tomorrow night. Merry New Year! No justice, no peace...
--
--
Safi wa Nairobi
KPFA Radio, 94.1FM
1929 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way
Berkeley 94704 CA
510.848.6767, ext. 647 (station)
510.444.7226 (personal)
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Navigating the Perilous Mental Landscape
Navigating the perilous Mental Landscape
Like the earthquake in Japan, man too is in mental motion, a mind quake of the most devastating degree that is rocking his mental equilibrium to the core!
We must be aware of the times and what must be done. A blind man named Ray Charles told us "the world is in an uproar, the danger zone is everywhere...." And so it is, ancestor Ray, there is turbulence in the land and in man, woman and children. As the earth enters another 25,000 year cycle of history with the coming New Age of high spiritual consciousness, there are many who remain deaf, dumb and blind to present and future events, even though the news is full of rapidly changing events in the global village. One would need to be in worse shape than Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder not to see the earth is in transformation, even Nature itself. The ice is melting, the sea rising, the forests burning, earthquakes and tsunamis , drought, famine, pestilence, in diverse places, just as Jesus predicted.
Apparently, many do not believe what Jesus said even when they see events he predicted before their very eyes, on the news, Twitter, Facebook, Cable TV and elsewhere. He said mother would be against child and child against mother and father. Did he not say brother would be against brother and sister against sister? And do we not see this in our social relations today.
It is crystal clear to me we are in times in which a friend is no longer a friend, a wife and husband no longer wife and husband. There is no love between them. Husbands and wives say the horrible things to each other. Daughters and sons say the most wretched things to their parents, often when the parents are helping them.
But when the danger zone is everywhere, no one, no relationships are exempt from the turmoil sweeping the old order out and ushering in the New Era. But there is an almost organic relationship between the earth quaking and the minds of men, women and children becoming totally unbalanced. In this time of radical change of Nature and man, those with no understanding shall become unglued, losing their fragile mental equilibrium or simply tripping out. Ultimately, they become a danger to themselves and others and must be committed, for they are not the person we knew only yesterday. Today they are a total stranger who does not know us, cannot even recognize us, yet we have known them since childhood. They could be a sibling yet they do not act like there is any blood relationship between us. We behave like total strangers.
It could be parent/child relationships that come to such a low point children will sue parents or visa versa. In short the love is gone. Amiri Baraka tells us in his play A Black Mass, "Where the souls print should be there is only a cellulose pouch of disgusting habits...."
As we walk the streets be very careful what you say to people, for they are on edge, on the precipice, ready to strike out at the slightest perceived negative incident, or wrong word uttered.
Yes, they are ready to kill, so be aware as you make your daily round.
The political/economic atmosphere is charged with venom, but it is misplaced aggression, for no one is going after the bankers, the loan sharks, the Wall Street financiers who were casino gamblers with the wealth of the people, stealing 13 trillion dollars in the sub prime housing scam.
And yet hardly a banker is in jail, meanwhile 2.4 million mostly poor are incarcerated for petty crimes, additionally they suffer drug abuse and mental illness, not to mention lack of proper legal representation at the time of their trials. The only white man doing time is the one who stole from the rich, not the poor. Those who robbed the poor are yet receiving multimillion dollar bonuses while 30 million workers are unemployed and millions are now homeless.
It is this atmosphere that is so unsettling to the mental state of those who were already suffering stress from the general hostile environment, from bad food, the media dispensing
information from the world of make believe and promoting the addiction to white supremacy conspicuous consumption
How do we move from problem to solution, from addiction to recovery, from sickness to healing?
The Buddhists says knowledge plus the right action. We must first understand the time and what must be done. These are perilous times, very dangerous, thus one must tip through the tulips, through the mind fields that lay before us, behind us, to the right and to the left.
We must practice eternal vigilance and stay on guard against being deceived. There are those who wish to deceive us so that we remain victims of the slave system. They will not tell us all the institutions are exhausted, political, economic, educational, religious, marital. None of these shall continue with business as usual. They must and shall undergo radical structural change, if not simply thrown into the dustbin of history where they belonged long ago.
Those not prepared for radical change shall be blown by the wayside where they shall inhabit the lower realms of an animal existence until they die or recover from savagery and come into the era of civility and spirituality beyond religiosity.
Those who are a danger to themselves and others will need to be confined to a program of long term recovery, a rehabilitation of their disgusting habits, namely greed, ego, pride, lust, arrogance, and other deadly sins, and most importantly the inability to practice freedom, justice and equality, constitutionally unable to share the wealth and practice democracy or the consent of the governed.
The end is the beginning and the beginning is the end, or rather what goes around comes around. What we are witnessing and experiencing is not linear time but circular, for we shall continue, but only those who are able to jump out of the box of the old structures into the new.
The fearless ones, they shall be successful. Those not motivated by the illusions of the monkey mind shall be successful. We pray for the others who persist in their inordinancy, blindly wandering on, as the Qur'an says.
--Marvin X
4/7/11
Marvin X Speaks in Fresno at the African American Museum
Marvin X spoke briefly in Fresno last night at the African American Museum's Kwanza ceremony. The
poet told of his early life in the Valley, struggle to teach at Fresno State University, his recent national book tour and the importance of North American Africans preserving their archives. He made the audience aware that two of Black America's greatest authors are from Fresno, himself, of course (audience laughter) and Sherley Ann Williams (RIP).
According to the museum's founder, Jack Kelly (RIP), "When Marvin X fought to teach at Fresno State College (now University), he made things better for everybody, not just students at FSU. Black police officers were not allowed to patrol the white side of town until Marvin X came to FSU."
He described racial conditions on his tour, especially in South Carolina where his advisors and host told him to say nothing, just enjoy Gullahland. But the poet said Upsouth was no better, especially in New York City where 700,000 young black and Puerto Rican men were stopped and frisked last year. NYC is under police occupation, especially the hood, so America is essentially a police state controlled by pigs and fear. The Kwanza event ended with his talk. People said they were inspired by his remarks.
The poet was invited by Pamela Young, President of the Fresno chapter of the NAACP. Arrangements are being made by Museum Director Gregory Melancon to have the poet return during Black History Month.
Marvin X is available for speaking nationwide. Contact him at 510-200-4164 or his agent, Sun in Leo PR 718-496-2305, email: prgirl@suninleo.com.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Old Men Drive Alone
Old men drive around town alone
nowhere to go no matter how hard they try
the Mercedes takes them nowhere
can't stop by this friend's house he's dead
this friend is crazy
can't stop and chat with him
this nigguh is a long gone alcoholic
can't fuck with him
you drunk yoself
Henny and Bailey's
a deadly combo
separating mind from body
but you go out anyway
for air
too lazy to walk the lake down the street
fuck the lake
would ride bike if tire was fixed
paid the negro for a tire but didn't fix it
what's wrong with the negro
what about three centruries of free labor
think the negro ain't tired in his DNA
in the marrow of bones tired
would you work with no memory of pay
or wage slavery in the modern era
slave none the less
no food stamps
no medical
no parity
no job security
just work
three minimum wage jobs
enjoy life
don't let those Cali negroes come south talking shit
fuck up yo shit wit da white man
then leave
you stuck wit white man
three minimum jobs
can't pay car note after Cali nigguh departed
wish dat nigguh said nothing
just shut the fuck up and leave us lone
we know how to deal wit our peckerwood
Cali ass nigguh
deal wit dat Cali peck
and dad NYC peck
stop and frist ass peck
got you nigguhs under occupation
but you NYC nigguhs all that and bag of chips
stopped on every block wit pants hanging down
got any drugs
on probation parole
got gun
warrants
go ahead nigguh
might as well stay in South Carolina
shut up and stay
lease you got a job
minimum wage but job
ain't got that in NYC.
So I drive alone
no friends to call
no women friends
they gone or crazy too
I drive slow
through the Tenderloin of SF
do I know you?
Nigguh you still on the street selling dope
must be a snitch nigguh
how many nigguhs you sent to prison to stay on the street
I'm scared of you nigguh
I drive I drive
I pray I pray
asking God to tell me why You saved me
Please tell me why.
Why you didn't take me down in the mud with these other rats?
Why you save me to drive around in my Mercedes alone?
--Marvin X
12/28/12
Fresno
nowhere to go no matter how hard they try
the Mercedes takes them nowhere
can't stop by this friend's house he's dead
this friend is crazy
can't stop and chat with him
this nigguh is a long gone alcoholic
can't fuck with him
you drunk yoself
Henny and Bailey's
a deadly combo
separating mind from body
but you go out anyway
for air
too lazy to walk the lake down the street
fuck the lake
would ride bike if tire was fixed
paid the negro for a tire but didn't fix it
what's wrong with the negro
what about three centruries of free labor
think the negro ain't tired in his DNA
in the marrow of bones tired
would you work with no memory of pay
or wage slavery in the modern era
slave none the less
no food stamps
no medical
no parity
no job security
just work
three minimum wage jobs
enjoy life
don't let those Cali negroes come south talking shit
fuck up yo shit wit da white man
then leave
you stuck wit white man
three minimum jobs
can't pay car note after Cali nigguh departed
wish dat nigguh said nothing
just shut the fuck up and leave us lone
we know how to deal wit our peckerwood
Cali ass nigguh
deal wit dat Cali peck
and dad NYC peck
stop and frist ass peck
got you nigguhs under occupation
but you NYC nigguhs all that and bag of chips
stopped on every block wit pants hanging down
got any drugs
on probation parole
got gun
warrants
go ahead nigguh
might as well stay in South Carolina
shut up and stay
lease you got a job
minimum wage but job
ain't got that in NYC.
So I drive alone
no friends to call
no women friends
they gone or crazy too
I drive slow
through the Tenderloin of SF
do I know you?
Nigguh you still on the street selling dope
must be a snitch nigguh
how many nigguhs you sent to prison to stay on the street
I'm scared of you nigguh
I drive I drive
I pray I pray
asking God to tell me why You saved me
Please tell me why.
Why you didn't take me down in the mud with these other rats?
Why you save me to drive around in my Mercedes alone?
--Marvin X
12/28/12
Fresno
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