Black Bird Press News & Review

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Marvin X and Quitta X--Yes, she quit me, now we're "just friends"--Charlie Parker Tune

photo Kamau Amen Ra

Marvin X and Quitta X--yes, she quit me so now we're "just friends"--Charlie Parker tune.

Somebody said you have to be a friend to have a friend! And how can you be lovers when you're not even friends?

photo Kamau Amen Ra

You Don't Know Me

You don't know me
you had a chance to know me
before we made love
you had a chance to know my mind
understand my fears
learn about issues
help me heal some things
but you wanted to make love
so you don't know me
we made love
but you don't know me
don't have a clue
think I'm a good dick
or you some good tight pussy
but you don't know me
and never will now
because you wanted to make love
you wanted to get a nut
we didn't even talk much
a little bit leading up to sex
I went along
I was horny too
but you don't know me
and I don't know you
now we never will
we blew it forever
because we made love
too fast too quick too soon
now you think you own me
I can't breathe
can't talk on the phone to friends
because we made love
because I gave you some dick
you gave me some pussy
now I'm no longer human
I'm your love slave
you my slave
we're in love but you don't know me
we gonna get married
but you don't know me
we're gonna have children
but you don't know me
you're gonna beat my ass
but you don't know me
you're going to jail
but you don't know me
we're getting a divorce
but you don't know me
now we're friends "Just Friends" Charlie Parker tune
But you don't know me and never will.
--Marvin X

Bill Cosby, Chief Black Bourgeoisie Culture Policeman, arrives in Penn court

By Joseph Ax,Reuters

By Joseph Ax

NORRISTOWN, Pa. (Reuters) - Bill Cosby returned to a Pennsylvania courthouse on Tuesday for the first time since his lawyers' failed effort to have the sexual assault charges against the comedian thrown out.

Striding past dozens of television news cameras, Cosby, 78, headed to the courtroom where prosecutors in Montgomery County are expected to outline some of the evidence against him.
Before being hit by a wave of sex assault allegations, Cosby had been one of the most beloved U.S. entertainers.

A heavy police presence was aimed at keeping order outside the courthouse in Norristown. Tuesday's preliminary hearing will focus on the only allegation that has led to criminal charges, that Cosby in 2004 drugged and assaulted Andrea Constand, a former basketball coach at his Temple University alma mater.

Cosby has denied ever assaulting anyone and has portrayed his encounter with Constand as consensual.

The vast majority of the sexual assault accusations by about 50 women dating back to the 1960s are too old to be the subject of criminal prosecution. Pennsylvania prosecutors leveled their charges in December, days before the statute of limitations was to expire.

Several cases are the subject of civil lawsuits, in which victims say Cosby libeled them when he accused them of lying about the incidents.

The accusations have destroyed Cosby's reputation, which he built during years of family-friendly comedy.

Last month, an appeals court rejected a bid from Cosby's lawyers to have the criminal case dismissed because of what they described as a non-prosecution agreement he struck with a former Montgomery County district attorney a decade ago.

The former prosecutor, Bruce Castor, has said he agreed not to press charges in exchange for Cosby's testimony in a civil lawsuit filed by Constand.

But current prosecutors questioned Castor's testimony, saying there was no written evidence of such a deal. They also said Castor did not have the legal authority to prohibit his successors from bringing charges in the future.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax in Norristown, Pa.; Editing by Barbara Goldberg, Scott Malone and Lisa Von Ahn)

Who's Afraid of Communism?

Who’s Afraid of Communism?

Americans have largely forgotten the anti-Communist sentiment from decades past

Why have Christians allowed Communists to be the Good Samaritans of Latin America?--Eldridge Cleaver

By Malcolm Harris

April 27, 2016- newrepublic.com

With the Berlin Wall barely a memory and Airbnb in Havana, American anti-communism is probably at its historical nadir. Bernie Sanders has proven the word “socialism” doesn’t scare the next generation; a lot of us even seem to like the idea. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, remembers a different time, when griping about the Reds was an American hobby. She writes fondly about it in her memoir Living History: “We sometimes ice-skated on the Des Plaines River while our fathers warmed themselves over a fire and talked about how the spread of communism was threatening our way of life.”

During the April Democratic primary debate, the candidates were asked about NATO, and a curious thing happened. Donald Trump had called for European nations to contribute more to the organization’s budget; Bernie Sanders more or less agreed. But when it came her turn, Hillary Clinton praised NATO, calling it “the most successful military alliance in probably human history.” Neither the moderators or Sanders pressed her on this point, but it’s a bizarre assertion, on par with some of Trump’s goofier statements. In its 67-year history, NATO has conducted a handful of major military operations, all centered on the breakup of Yugoslavia or the (disastrous) American-led War on Terror. The most powerful? Maybe. The most successful? Not a chance.

The only way anyone could possibly think of NATO as among the most successful military alliances in human history is if they thought NATO won World War II. But NATO was formed in 1949, and World War II ended in 1945. Still, weren’t the Allies a sort of proto-NATO? For millennials in particular, that makes a lot of sense: Forged in the victory over Nazi Germany, the story goes, a group of Western democracies (led by the U.S., U.K., and France) formed a mutual-defense pact to prevent the same thing from happening again. World War I gave us the UN, and its sequel gave us NATO. But anyone over 35 should know this story’s wrong; there’s a character missing.

The Soviet Union didn’t just help win World War II; they were, by most metrics, the most important player. They lost the most people, 50 times as many as America did. But even in formerly occupied territory, the memory of the USSR’s role seems to be fading along with its monuments. In a post about this particular lapse in historical recollection at Vox—tellingly titled “The successful 70-year campaign to convince people the USA and not the USSR beat Hitler”—Dylan Matthews cites the French blogger Olivier Berruyer’s analysis of poll data. Asked to choose from the U.S., the U.K., and the USSR, 58 percent of French citizens credited America with doing the most to defeat Germany, while 20 percent picked the Soviets. In 1945, with the liberation just complete, those numbers were reversed.

I imagine that if you asked the average young American what army liberated Auschwitz, they would say ours. Which is wrong, but it’s hard to blame them: Capitalism won, and we’ve moved on to new bogeymen. If you don’t need to warn innocent children away from Soviet seduction, there isn’t much need to tell them about communism at all. We can fill the gaps in the history books with patriotism.

Ignoring history, however, won’t make it go away. Without the Soviet threat, the anti-communist barricades are a little understaffed. And with faulty censors, who will stop the culture industry from making communism seem cool? The two most famous Soviets right now are probably Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, the KGB spy stars of the critically acclaimed F/X show The Americans. Despite having been created by a former CIA agent and set in the 1980s, Elizabeth and Philip aren’t the bad guys. They’re the good ones. In Nicaragua, in El Salvador, in South Africa, in Afghanistan, the American government’s policies are portrayed as worth fighting against by any means necessary. It’s a more honest description of the history than Clinton’s, in her memoir. “In the past,” she writes of the Cold War in the Western Hemisphere, “American policy in the region led to the funneling of foreign aid to military juntas that opposed communism and socialism but sometimes repressed their own citizens.”

Anti-communism has been a powerful force within American politics and culture for over 150 years. In their book The American Slave Coast, Ned and Constance Sublette date its inauguration to the 1850 Nashville convention on Southern secession, when Langdon Cheves, former Speaker of the House and South Carolina congressman, denounced abolitionists as communists:

What we call the rights of man, or the admission of great masses to the power of self-government, has brought into action the minds of persons utterly unqualified to judge of the subject practically, who have generated the wildest theories…. This agitation has recently reached the United States…, and has brought under its delusions the subject of African slavery in the Southern States. It is of the family of communism, it is the doctrine of Proudhon, that property is a crime.

Cheves’s speech, the Sublettes write, was no fluke: “Proslavery writers formulated the first generation of American anticommunist rhetoric.” Cheves and co. weren’t wrong: Communists (including Karl Marx) really did want to destroy slavery, but patriotic American history books don’t have room for left-wing internationalism. Anyone involved in creating one of those textbooks grew up in a time when Marxists were the Bad Guys and people who questioned that got in trouble.

You might not know it from the history books, but American communism has always been racialized. When Jim Crow laws banned interracial organization, the Communist Party was the only group that dared to flout the rule. In 1932, when the Birmingham, Alabama police went to shut down a Party meeting, a present national guardsman wrote his superior: “The police played their only trump by enforcing a city ordinance for segregation which, of course, is contrary to Communist principles.” Now we tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement within liberal parameters, but everyone who fought for black liberation was called a communist at one time or another, and not always inaccurately.

This legacy might be largely forgotten in the United States, but it isn’t gone. President Obama’s deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told The Atlantic that the rapprochement with Cuba began at the funeral for Nelson Mandela, where Obama shared the stage with Raul Castro:

We had used the black-and-white version of history to justify Cuba policy that didn’t make much sense; that was far past its expiration date. I think that he had enough of an understanding of history to know that whatever we think about the Cuban government’s political system and human-rights practices that, in fact, when it came to the anti-apartheid movement, they had a place on that dais at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service, and he was not going to, essentially, disrespect the legacy of Nelson Mandela by carrying forward that history and snubbing the Cuban president because of our bilateral relationship.

Mandela, in addition to being a hero to American liberals, was most likely a member of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party. And while America was denying that NATO’s attention to the shipping lanes around the South Atlantic had anything to do with supporting apartheid, tiny Cuba was sending tens of thousands of soldiers to fight against white nationalism in Angola on principle. Many historians credit Cuban intervention with delivering the deathblow to apartheid; at the time, The New York Times Magazine called the Cuban mission “strange.” If Obama wanted to share the stage with Castro, he had to drop decades of American bullshit.

The story of communism’s struggle against fascism and white supremacy has been repressed for generations, but this grip on our collective memory is slipping fast. David Simon is planning a series about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade—American leftists who fought against fascism in Spain. Steve McQueen is doing a Paul Robeson biopic, whose 1956 testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee is already the most cinematic thing I’ve ever heard. When asked about his membership in the Party, he invoked the Fifth Amendment (“Loudly”), at great personal cost. “Wherever I’ve been in the world,” he told them, “the first to die in the struggle against fascism were the communists.”

A new poll of adults under 30 found that 51 percent “do not support capitalism.” Zach Lustbader, a college senior involved in conducting the poll, told The Washington Post: “The word ‘capitalism’ doesn’t mean what it used to.” And if capitalism isn’t the Good Guy, young people might go looking for a more nuanced version of the Cold War narrative. Hollywood might even bring it to us first. Without the anti-communist lid, it’s hard to tell what we’ll find, and how the political landscape will change.

Hillary Clinton’s shoddy but common recollection can’t withstand a tablespoon of earnest scrutiny. As a new generation of Americans starts digging through the records, we’re going to hear a lot more questions.

Malcolm Harris is a writer and an editor at The New Inquiry. On Twitter, he’s @bigmeaninternet.

Monday, May 23, 2016

The Master Belgium Terrorist: King Leopold II

Martin Luther King in Ghana, West Africa, 1957

JUSTICE INITIATIVE

Note: We hear mostly about Martin Luther King. Jr. in Montgomery, Atlanta, Birmingham, Selma or Washington, DC, but rarely about his international travel. In 1957, Dr. King and his wife Coretta Scott King attended the independence ceremony in Ghana where King met Ghana's new president Kwame Nkrumah; spent time with other American leaders, also attending, such as A. Philip Randolph, Ralph Bunche, Mordecai Johnson, Horace Mann Bond, Senator Charles Diggs, and Congressman Adam Clayton Powell; met Vice President Richard Nixon who was also attending; and then while traveling through London on his way home he meets with Trinidadian scholar C.L.R. James. The degree to which Black Americans and Africans communicated before and particularly after WWII is impressive as Africa and those in the United States attempted to wrench their countries from the oppressive yoke of white supremacy and colonialism. For more information about Dr. King and the civil rights movement please go to the King Papers under the leadership of Dr. Clayborne Carson at Stanford University.

Heather Gray

Martin Luther King's Ghana Trip (1957)

In March 1957, Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife Coretta Scott King traveled to West Africa to attend Ghana's independence ceremony. King's voyage was symbolic of a growing global alliance of oppressed peoples and was strategically well timed; his attendance represented an attempt to broaden the scope of the civil rights struggle in the


President Kwame Nkrumah and Martin Luther King - Ghana 1957

United States on the heels of the successful Montgomery bus boycott. King identified with Ghana's struggle; furthermore, he recognized a strong parallel between resistance against European colonialism in Africa and the struggle against racism in the United States.

King was invited to the independence ceremony by Ghana's new Prime Minister, Kwame Nkrumah. King's friend Bayard Rustin coordinated the invitation with the help of Bill Sutherland, a civil rights activist and pacifist who was then working for Nkrumah's finance minister, K. A. Gbedemah. King's trip was funded by the Montgomery Improvement Association and the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, his congregation.

King arrived in Accra, the Gold Coast (soon to be Ghana), on 4 March and attended a reception where he met Vice President Richard Nixon. King told Nixon, "I want you to come visit us down in Alabama where we are seeking the same kind of freedom the Gold Coast is celebrating" ("M.L. King Meets"). The next day, King attended the ceremonial closing of the old British Parliament. At the ceremony, the recently incarcerated Nkrumah and his ministers wore their prison caps, symbolizing their struggle to win Ghana's freedom. King wrote "When I looked out and saw the prime minister there with his prison cap on that night, that reminded me of that fact, that freedom never comes easy. It comes through hard labor and it comes through toil" (Papers 4:163).

At midnight on 6 March, King attended the official ceremony in which the British Union Jack was lowered and the new flag of Ghana was raised and the British colony of the Gold Coast became the independent nation of Ghana. King later recalled,"As we walked out, we noticed all over the polo grounds almost a half a million people. They had waited for this hour and this moment for years" (Papers 4:159). King's reaction to the Ghanaians' triumph was outwardly emotional. "Before I knew it, I started weeping. I was crying for joy. And I knew about all of the struggles, and all of the pain, and all of the agony that these people had gone through for this moment" (Papers 4:160).

Also in attendance at the ceremony were many prominent American activists, politicians, and educators: A. Philip Randolph, Ralph Bunche, Mordecai Johnson, Horace Mann Bond, Senator Charles Diggs, and Congressman Adam Clayton Powell. The honor of inclusion in this impressive group indicated King's prominence as a civil rights figure both at home and abroad.

Interviewed while in Ghana, King told radio listeners, "This event, the birth of this new nation, will give impetus to oppressed peoples all over the world. I think it will have worldwide implications and repercussions--not only for Asia and Africa, but also for America....It renews my conviction in the ultimate triumph of justice. And it seems to me that this is fit testimony to the fact that eventually the forces of justice triumph in the universe, and somehow the universe itself is on the side of freedom and justice. So that this gives new hope to me in the struggle for freedom" (Papers 4:146).

Despite falling ill for several days, the Kings had a private lunch with Prime Minister Nkrumah and met with anti-apartheid activist and Anglican priest Michael Scott and peace activist Homer Jack. King departed from Ghana for New York by way of Nigeria, Rome, Geneva, Paris and London. In London, the Kings had lunch with Trinidadian writer and political activist C.L. R. James, who was very impressed by the success of the Montgomery bus boycott.

SOURCES

Introduction in Papers 4:7-10.

King, "The Birth of a New Nation," Sermon Delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, 7 April 1957, in Papers 4:155-167.

King, Interview with Etta Moten Barnett, 6 March 1957, in Papers 4:145-148.

"M.L. King Meets Nixon in Ghana,"Pittsburgh Courier, 16 March 1957.

# # #

Save the Date: Next Black Arts Movement Business District Town Hall Meeting, Sunday, June 12, 3-5pm, East Side Arts Alliance

The next Black Arts Movement Business District Town Hall is scheduled for Sunday, June 12/2016, 3-5pm at East Side Arts Alliance.

Touchstones to be considered as umbrellas to build under

Housing

Anti-Displacement

Preservation

Additional space

Land Trust

Below Market Rate Art and Live space

City Owned Property (SRO’s and other)

Engagement with ongoing Development -- Built into future housing.

Rent Moratorium on Black Cultural Spaces/ Addition to Land Trust

Commerce

Creation and support of events unique to area’s intention and cultural designation.

Micro-lending to support entrepreneurial endeavors

Sidewalk vending

Market Days

City partner business installed in open venues owned by city where the city contribution is the space at a steeply discounted rate (i.e., $100.00 for a 66-year lease.)

Create tourism targeted events

Public performances in public spaces

Pop-up Art in public spaces

Plaza performances/ public installations of live art

Equitable Public Support of Artist and Cultural

Workers

Actively engage in an analysis of Oakland’s cultural funding suggest and lobby for reforms and or enhancements as deemed necessary.

Resolve issues of funding equity and equality in opportunity recognizing systemic barriers such as annual budget, and the number of volunteers etc.

Connect to cultural corridor funding and all possible funding -- leave nothing on the table

Development of Intellectual Capital

Museum - Community Access

Library

Research Centers

Sunday, May 22, 2016

Donald Trump, shut the fuck up about women!

Even before and certainly after a man deposits his seed in the womb of a woman, he has no rights over the control of her womb and the fruit thereof. Male politicians need to stay out of all issues relating to the body of women. Yes, stick to men's business! You'll be doing great if you can handle men's issues, which is doubtful--alas, you may need the help of women on these issues.

"Men don't know their asses from a hole in the ground. They must ask their woman, Baby, where's my asshole!" (from the monologue, One Day in the Life, a docudrama by Marvin X)

"Look, when I jump my pussy jumps, therefore my pussy belongs to me!" --Rashidah Mwongozi Sabreen in The Mythology of Pussy and Dick by Marvin X.

Donald, I have my own agenda but if I can help a human being, I will do so, so this is my message to you: Make no more statements about women, focus on American issues, international issues and men issues. Leave all statements regarding women to experts on your dream team. You claim you are a winner but you are acting like a loser and you will lose if you alienate women. I know you love women and I love women but your mouth can defy your ass so please shut up on women issues. Men love you because you speak like a man with his nuts out the sand, so don't alienate the women who are with you 100%, such as your wife, children and grandchildren. Again, I am not with you but I am not against you. --Marvin X

Maestro Marvin X, accompanied by the Black Arts Movement Poets Choir and Arkestra, featuring David Murray and Earle Davis, all three associated with the Sun Ra Arkestra. This performance was at the Malcolm X Jazz/Art Festival, Oakland, 2014. Marvin X is reading Amiri Baraka's poem DOPE. photo Adam Turner

Dear Donald,

I write to you as the father of three daughters, six sisters, a mother, three mothers of my children and several women who impacted my life on the most deepest level and I am forever grateful to all the females in my life.

Most importantly, people who observe me in my private life, say I am most humble when in conversation with my daughters. Indeed, my daughters have taught me humility as per relations with the feminine gender. One reason is because as the father of two sons, one transitioned and one totally alienated, I had to fall back on my daughters for spiritual and emotional support. But much to my surprise, my daughters sent me into shock when I saw their elegance in representing aspects of my personality. It was then that I had to deconstruct my addiction to the patriarchal mythology. I saw my daughters represented every dream I had for my sons. This rocked my patriarchal world to the deepest level, and yet I was proud of my daughters for representing me and thus continuing the tradition every parent desires of his children, especially when the claim no connection with the family tradition. In truth, the DNA is so strong we continue the family tradition no matter what, yes, often in total ignorance we are carrying on every dream of the ancestors.

I note that you have two sons who are involved in your world and this is great. I don't know if you have daughters, but if you do, I'm sure you are not keeping them below the glass curtain. As parents, we want the best for our sons and daughters and we never know which of them will assume the authority of our desires because DNA is like that.

We can see in our deepest dreams our children take up the baton and carry on even though we have never had a conversation on the matter and they assume what they are doing is on their dime rather than ours.

Most often this is amazing to us when we see they are indeed in the tradition but don't realize it.
I desire only the best for my daughters. I do not want the glass ceiling to stop them from their life goals and, I must admit, they continue to excel, except one daughter who is yet excelling but has totally given up on America and its white supremacy mythology. "Dad, Ghana may not have electricity 24/7 but Ghana doesn't have white supremacy 24/7. When I go to a four star hotel, nobody follows me around in Accra. When I go to an expensive store in Accra, nobody follows me around. And I have no desire to raise my daughter in a white supremacy toxic environment. I urge you to join me in Ghana.

Donald,
I am not for you or against you--do your thing. But man to man, I suggest you say nothing else about women issues. As I watch you perform on the political stage, I wonder how many times can you shoot yourself in the foot. As I am known as a foot shooter myself, I suggest you back yo ass up a little for your sake and the American people you want to save from perdition.

I am a revolutionary Black nationalist so I have no problem with you as a white nationalist. Do your thang. As per your building a wall at the border, America has the right to seal her borders. Mexicans have many issues as you have pointed out. I love Mexico and Mexicans because this nation gave me refuge during my exile as a resister to the war in Vietnam in 1970. Not only did Mexico give me refuge, but I was there with brothers and sisters from throughout Latin America, e.g., Cuba, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Columbia and elsewhere. We all are in gratitude for Mexico giving us refuge from US Imperialism. And yet this does not absolve Mexico for the slaughter of students at the University a few months before I arrived in 1970. This does not absolve Mexico for the disappearance of parents who came to the University looking for their children.

But what about US students who were slaughtered at Kent State and the Orangeburg massacure in South Carolina. Or the brutal, violent and longest student strike in American academic history at San Francisco State University to establish Black Studies and Ethnic Studies.

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

You Don't Know Me

Cosby arrives at Pennsylvania court in sex assault case

April 27, 2016- newrepublic.com

Monday, May 23, 2016

Sunday, May 22, 2016