Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Black Dialogue: Sam Anderson, Muhammad Ahmed and Fritz Pointer on BPP/BLM History, A Response to Baba Lumumba

Brotha Marvin,

Brotha Muhammad is correct. By July/August of 1966 I was made Organizational Director and part of my work did include helping to build the United Front effort via BPP chapters across the US. 

In fact, we saw ourselves picking up where Brotha Malcolm had left off in his stillborn Organization of Afro American Unity (OAAU) and his first step in running for City Council in 1965 (he was supposed to meet with a broad body of NYC activist ministers and politicos and intellectuals the evening of 21 February at Bill Epton’s Progressive Labor Party Harlem office which was above the then small Sylvia’s Restaurant).

We-The Harlem Black Panther Party - in July 1966 met at Sista Yuri Kochiyama’s apartment and took the OAAU’s 13 point program and rewrote into the 10 point program of the BPP… and used it as our basis for outreach and recruitment of organizations and individuals in forming BPP chapters.

I think where this origin gets obscured or erased is how historians and journalist did and do their work. You see, when Bobby Seale and other Panther members LEGALLY went into the Sacramento State Capitol with their weapons to support the continuance of the open-carry law, the bourgeois media went crazy with the powerful images of young Brothas with rifles, shades and black leather jackets.

So for the big US corporate media, this was the beginning of the BPP. our Harlem grassroots organizing work was not sensational enough for them. In a very short period of time, the BPP notion of building a United Front (as Malcolm was advocating via the OAA) morphed into BPP chapter building. We got calls from every sector of Black America inquiring how to form a BPP chapter. However, our original Harlem BPP was riddled with COINTELPRO operatives and our own naiveté and we soon lost control of the leadership of the Black Panther Party building effort and that’s when Bobby and Huey stepped into the NATIONAL leadership role of the Party (like November December of 1966).

So… historians (as far back as the 1970s) would go to the newspapers and magazines to look at the origins of the BPP even tho we BPP Founders had a paper trail, an office, TV interviews and a couple of articles in the NYC papers.

Sam



brother,
there is confusion.West Coast development came after East Coast and Midwest.What we were doing in Harlem was building a Black United Front with SNCC/Loundes County Freedom Oganization.We  wrote Stokley and got permission from SNCC to form the BPP in New York.Stokley came through at least twice;once speaking with the Harlem BPP and then again for a strategy meeting which it was decided at that meeting  what we all could do together was build the BPP.that's when a directive went out to our people to build united front effforts with others to build BPP's. the BPP did not start off as a vanguard party..It's initial purpose was to develop an independent third political party that would exhaust the legal means of struggle in the existing political system.The question was how to proceed;to transform,dialecitically.I have sent Baba's essay to the East Coast.You should get a response soon.We love Baba but there is confusion.

muhammad

Fritz Pointer

Thanks for your truth-telling: for telling the TRUTH. What you might also mention is that I, Fritz Pointer, and my sister Anita - yes, one of The Pointer Sisters - were members of RAM as it morphed into The Black Panther Party of Northern California, with: Ken Freeman, David Mudavanha Patterson, Issac Moore, Vincent Lynch are some who met together, often, in San Francisco. Even then, we saw ourselves allied with Fannie Lou Hammer and the Lowndes County Alabama Democratic Freedom Party, actually, whose image and logo was The Black Panther.  It ain't exactly Wakanda - which seems to short shrift Black American sisters anyway...bless its childish heart. With music blaring in the background, to cover our discussions, in an underground flat in S.F. we read missives from Robert Williams and Carlos Moore who was in Cuba at the time.  We are those whom The Party attacked in San Francisco, guns blazing, at a house party - depicted with humorous caricature in dashikis in the Panther Film, demanding WE not call ourselves Panthers.  That was easy: because, we knew it meant more than leather jackets, black berets' or dashikis. Perhaps, we've all learned this by now.

Fritz Pointer
Democratic World Federalist
World Peace through World Law



The Untold Story of the Origins of the Black Panther Party
by Baba Lumumba
INTRODUCTION
The modern Black Freedom movement began to take shape in the mid-fifties; about the time Ghana fought for and achieved its independence and the Supreme Court in the USA integrated the public school system in the South. There were many other circumstances, in addition to these two important developments, that came together and encouraged the development of what…has become known as the modern Black Freedom movement of the sixties and beyond.
Those involved in this period are sometimes called the Black Power generation. One aspect of this period of Black History that has not been widely discussed involves the interplay of the two movements that made up the Black Freedom struggle of the era: the assimilation focused Civil Rights Movement and the independence focused Black Nationalist Movements.
It is important to understand that these two distinctly different movements, although separated by end goals, were and are also deeply intertwined. Trying to understand the Black Freedom Movement in North America requires that you know and understand the differences between these two movements as well as the influence that they had on each other. The true history of the modern Freedom Movement of today cannot truly be comprehended without understanding the interplay of the two separate strains of the Black Freedom struggles. The gun-toting story of the BPP has become legendary in the tales of the Black Freedom struggle. But do we know the real story? Do we really know how the BPP came to be? What actually came together to produce the phenomenon we know as the BPP?
The Three Versions of the BPP’s Beginning
In one version of the story, the party started with a voter registration drive during the Civil Rights Movement. In this version, the slate of political candidates put forth by a voter registration drive in Lowndes County Alabama is where the BPP started. In another version, the BPP began as a vanguard political party established by Bobby Seal and Huey Newton in Oakland, California in 1966. The third version, is a much more accurate version of the parties beginning. The BPP started as a vanguard political party created by a national underground organization calling itself The Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), as an attempt to build an over ground organization that could work to prepare Black people for an upcoming revolution that RAM felt at the time was eminent and necessary.
Without an accurate historical record of how and why the party came into being, it’s impossible to understand and thus assess its outcomes and the consequences for today. An accurate understanding of the BPP’s origins are important in the development of contemporary tactics and strategies that are much likely to be successful in the future. In the development of effective approaches to the problems that confront Black people today, we need to know what worked and what did not work in the past. Lies, distortions and even honest mistakes in the historical record, constitute real barriers to understanding and planning for the future. Inaccuracy can inhibit or even stymie the effective development of successful approaches going forward. The simple truth is that we cannot learn from our mistakes if we don’t know what they were.
The Roots of our Historical Revisionism
There are many reasons why the historical record is often distorted: one is simply the need of individuals involved wishing to present themselves to the world and history in the best possible light, be it factual or not. The personal concerns of the individual, are often of greater importance to the individual than historical accuracy.
The other important reason that we often end up not knowing what really happened is that those that have the most power in society are able to use that power to reinforce the distortions of individuals to serve their propaganda interests. In the case of the BPP story, the most important reason that the real story has never been accurately presented is that the establishment desires to squelch the truths about the important role that the independence (Black Nationalist) wing played in the Black Freedom struggle. The powers-that-be seek to place all inspirational Black struggles in the modern era into a “civil rights” context, not in a “struggle for independence” context. The establishment seeks to control the frame-of-reference of the Black Freedom movement as one aspect of attempting to control the movement. They want the Black public to understand the Black freedom struggle solely in the context of Black people seeking to be a part of their system. They dare not present a people who desire to create their own system. The powers-that-be will do everything they can to delegitimize independence as a valid option in the minds of Black people. Information is simply not presented about this very influential segment of the Black Freedom struggle; so for many, independence is never really an option considered by most.
The Real Story
The BPP emerged from the need of RAM to create an over-ground formation that could help develop the capacity of Black people to execute a successful revolution that would replace the system, not join it. The BPP was not formed by the student wing of the Civil Rights Movement’s voter registration drive in Alabama, nor was it a creation from the minds of Bobby Seale and Huey Newton.
The constructs that came together to form The BPP, came from an underground organization calling itself The RAM. RAM was an underground organization created by Robert Williams and a close associate, after his escape to Cuba that was made necessary by an attempt to frame him for the kidnapping of a white couple in Monroe, North Carolina. Robert Williams came to the conclusion that armed revolution was the direction that Black people should seek.
Williams was at one point, the head of the NAACP in Monroe, North Carolina. He was removed from his position by Roy Wilkins, the national chairman, because of his expressed belief in self-defense. Williams and his wife escaped to Cuba and began to publish The Crusader Newsletter which presented his proposition that armed struggle was the only answer for the liberation of Black people. They also began to broadcast in the Southern United States, over what was called at the time Radio Free Dixie. Robert Williams had become the champion of the self-defense wing of the movement, in large part due to his book, Negroes with Guns, in which he proposed that Black people not only had the right, but also the obligation, to defend ourselves against the violence that was directed against us while trying to win our freedom. This was a position that ran contrary to the prevailing thought of the Civil Rights Movement.
California Black Nationalist History
The modern Black Nationalist history in California starts with the Afro-American Association (AAA). The AAA was a Black Nationalist organization that sprang from the union of college students and community activists that developed from the refusal of the University of California to allow Malcolm X to speak on campus in 1961. The principal organizers were Black students from the UC: Donald Warden, Henry Ramsey and Donald Hopkins. The AAA was the political starting point of almost all the Black individuals in California that would later go on and distinguish themselves in California across the political spectrum.
The AAA took a page from the Black Nationalist movement based in Harlem and began to connect the poor Black community with the college student movement by carrying out regular street corner rallies inviting all to participate under a Black independence and pride theme. At these rallies individual members would take turns speaking to gathered crowds of neighborhood people about the need to create an independent Black community that is proud of its African origins. The narrative at the time was that Black people needed to reestablish our independent communities much like we had in the past, but with the additional element of pride in our African origins, and [unified] economic strength; to do so, the groups asserted, required strong educational achievement on the part of Black people. The theme was taken directly from the ideas of Marcus Garvey. The fundamental idea was that we needed to be ourselves and do for ourselves before we could truly move forward. An African identity, business acumen and educational achievement were themes of the AAA. The AAA was much more economic and culturally focused than internationally, politically focused. This fact was at the center of many disputes that would later split the organization into the divisions that resulted in the formation of Kwanzaa and the BPP in later years.
The reasons that the Afro-American Association were so important is because it laid the ground work for the two most important Black power developments to come out of California including the BPP and Kwanzaa. Membership and connection to the AAA included almost everyone of modern Black historical significance. In order to understand the two principal developments that emerged from California during this period: the BPP and the development of Kwanzaa (the only internationally recognized Pan African holiday) you must understand their origins and how their development depended on and related to each other.
The Split in the Afro-American Association
The AAA was composed of many different intellectual/ideological influences of the time, chief among them was E. Franklin Frazier’s Black Bourgeoisie, Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, Robert Williams and his fight with Roy Wilkins, and such books as Myth of the Negro Past, The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson, the novel Invisible Man, as well as the book Black Moses (the story of the life and times of Marcus Garvey). All of these influenced the direction and the conflicts within the organization.
The AAA was principally made up of college students at several institutions in California. The most important of which at the time was UC Berkeley. A second important reality at the time was the fact that Northern California, and Berkeley in particular, were the region of free-thinking and home of the free speech movement. The fact that California in general, and Northern California in particular, were openly liberal communities, played an important role both in AAA’s development and demise. For Black college students trying to understand how to play a role in fighting against the system, while preparing to join it, was one of the most ongoing and obvious contradictions that contributed to both the creation of the AAA and it’s later fractionalizing. This dilemma plagues all student based movements, but it was particularly problematic for the AAA because of its Black Nationalist framework in the ultra-liberal community in which it was born.
The AAA was overtly critical of integration focused organizations such as the NAACP as well as the Black middle-class’ inability to relate to and advocate for the interest of poor Blacks as well as the thrust of the integration minded Civil Rights Movement based in the south. There was conflict…regarding the degree to which they’d oppose the USA’s imperialistic establishment. These issues based in international developments, conflicts going on in the Black movement, and factors peculiar to California, made the AAA possible and at the same time produced the contradictions that tore it apart and led both to the development of Kwanzaa and the BPP.
The students that made up the AAA were in a unique position to attack the contradictions of the Civil Rights Movement; but there was no clear way of resolving these contradictions even among themselves. At the time, California was the bastion of liberalism. It was in the midst of the Free Speech Movement, the Free Love Movement, the Psychedelic Movement and the Marxists Class Based analysis/Communist and Socialist Movements, the Labor Movement, as well as the soon to come Farm Workers’ Movement. As students, many of AAA’s members were deeply ambivalent about a Black Nationalist movement centered on Black concerns that excluded whites and others even though Black Nationalism formed the bases of the stance that they were taking. These issues went unresolved and formed the basis for many divisions and conflicts within the organization. Unlike other cities in the North, East and South, the California Black Nationalist movement represented by the AAA had a very deep level of ambivalence which was amplified by the very liberal community out of which it developed.
The first two and most important splits in the AAA took place almost simultaneously in Northern and Southern California. International developments also began to have an impact on the AAA and Black Nationalist solidarity in general in the state. In addition to the stresses created by the values of the community, it’s leadership seemed to want to keep the organization away from positions that could be interpreted as being overtly anti-American and thus anti-business while the strong Liberal/Marxist oriented influence so prevalent in the Bay Area fought against any form of racial exclusion in any organization that wanted to be seen as being progressive in that community. Others focused on the need to incorporate the world wide revolutionary struggle of non-white peoples against colonialism rather than just a local, community based understanding and strategy to address the problem. California became the place that all of these influences collided to produce the explosive mix that became its two biggest Black legacies: The Black Panther Party and Kwanzaa.
Study Groups
This mix of influences began to play out in the study groups that developed on the campuses of several colleges in the Bay Area. World conflicts that involved armed struggle/revolution against colonial powers (that were generally supported by the USA foreign policy) began to be discussed in the many different college based study groups that developed on the campuses in California. Such campuses as Merritt College in Oakland, San Francisco State and UC Berkley were associated with the AAA or its members. These groups began to take a much more militant anti-American stance that developed and then widened the rift in the AAA and those associated with it. Others wanted whites, some of which they were either married to, or were dating at the time, to participate in the organization or they wanted an ideological organizational framework that would incorporate people other than just Black people. The independent minded study groups made up of both active students and community activists proved to be one of the most significant forces that shaped the future direction of the California Black Liberation movement.
One of the first revolt’s in the AAA was led by Ken Freeman (my brother) a University of San Francisco graduate from East Oakland that was with the AAA from the beginning. Freeman was influenced largely because of contact that he had made with Cubans associated with the successful Cuban Revolution, his desire to link the Black struggle with the anti-colonialist struggle of the entire nonwhite colonialized world, and his desire to take a much more aggressive anti-American posture. This eventually led to a breakaway group that was formed and initially became RAM in Northern California and eventually what we now know as the original BPP of Northern California. This group went on to begin to develop their own publication SOULBOOK that helped to define this new ideological construct that became known as Revolutionary Black Nationalism. This development began to attract others who began to see themselves following a new path. This group began to link revolution, self-defense and Black identity through African culture as the formula for Black Liberation and taking a far more militant stance against what was seen as American Imperialism. This breakaway group can be thought of as the SOULBOOK group and went on to establish the House of Umoja, and The New School of Afro-American Thought in Washington DC.
The SOULBOOK group combined all of these ideas into a political/cultural perspective that came to be known as Revolutionary Black Nationalism. One of the things that should be known about this breakaway contingent of the AAA was that it very much retained one of the AAA’s most important perspectives, that of the importance of African culture to the Black freedom construct. This is important because the distorted propaganda that later developed from the breakaway Bobby and Huey group about the RAM/SOULBOOK group that it was a Black cultural nationalist organization afraid of armed struggle, not a Black Revolutionary Nationalist group, of their origins, that was preparing for armed struggle.
The idea of taking up arms struggle against the system, was considered by some to be something that individuals involved with African ways of life, were not willing to participate in or even consider. Some declared them to be groups that used culture to escape from a fight. This alleged dichotomy between the Black Revolutionary Nationalist and the Black Cultural Nationalist is fundamentally a contrivance designed to create a false impression that reinforces an inaccurate distinction created to smear the true originators of the original BPP in Northern California. This seminal organization embraced both African identity through African cultural practices and armed struggle. If this were not true there would never have been a BPP. The group of brothers and sisters that constituted the breakaway group of the AAA that became RAM in Northern California and established the initial BPP of Northern California embraced both armed struggle and the need for a strong African cultural identity.
The South/West Coast Connections
The connection between the Southern movement and the SOULBOOK breakaway group happened when a member of the SOULBOOK group travelled to Cuba and met Robert Williams, the disaffected NAACP head of the Monroe, North Carolina chapter.
In Cuba, Robert Williams teamed up with a Philadelphia member of SNCC to form RAM. They focused on establishing an organization committed to executing a successful arm struggle by Black people in North America. He began to publish the Crusader Newsletter that was distributed throughout the south and broadcast something called Radio Free Dixie from Cuba. The broadcast urged Black people to replace the system rather than try to reform the system. The call was to prepare for revolution. The ideas of Robert Williams, his connection with the disaffected AAA members who sought to establish a more comprehensive, revolutionary, Black international approach to the Black struggle in the USA (The SOULBOOK group), laid the fundamental ground work for the Black Panther Party and the idea that would come to be called the Revolutionary Black Nationalist Movement which included the practice of African culture with Garveyite influences, rooted in Black Nationalist thinking.
This was important because it signaled the birth of the idea that the Black Freedom struggle should include links to the anti-colonialist struggles in Latin America, Asia and most importantly on the continent of Africa. Employing armed struggle, self-defense and working with indigenous populations, created the construct that produced what the BPP came to represent.
Robert Williams’ self-defense movement and the fact that he was being protected and supported by the successful Cuban Revolution are the true origins of the ideas that formed the BPP. These basic elements of the BPP were not a part of the Lowndes County Alabama slate of candidates for public office that called itself the BPP or the constructs of the minds of Bobby Seale or Huey Newton. This is the true origin of the ideas that came together to form the BPP in California. The ideas that formed the BPP came from the need that the organization calling itself RAM (founded by Robert Williams and friend) needing a public face under which armed struggle development could be carried out is the real story. The coming together of these elements produced the BPP.
The SOULBOOK break-away faction of the AAA, became affiliated with RAM through the direct connect of one of our members visiting Cuba. This individual returned from California at the same time that I came home after my sophomore year at Howard University. The message that he brought back was that the Revolution was on! The breakaway AAA group had joined RAM and the revolution would be jumping off in a matter of months. He urged us to begin to prepare for that revolution immediately! 


Posted by at No comments:

Monday, March 5, 2018

Black Panther as neo-Tarzanism

Black Panther as neo-Tarzanism

alt

Biko Agozino

pambazuka.org
Feb 23, 2018
Hollywood expects everyone to cheer whenever African characters are starred as superheroes even if the roles assigned to them include the mass murder of fellow Africans while subtly promoting the interests of colonisers. 
Hollywood films should always come with a consumer health warning to people of African descent: “Beware of The Ideology of the Aesthetic”, as Terry Eagleton would put it. With all the hype, Black Panther: Long Live the King falls under this manipulative ideological warfare genre and should have been subtitled, Down With The King, for subscribing to what Wole Soyinka would dismiss as the pseudo tradition of neo-Tarzanism. 
Director and co-writer, Ryan Coogler, a fan of black comics, set out to make Black Panther exciting enough to most (especially to fans in the black community) to push pre-sale tickets to unprecedented levels for Marvel Films. The film offers black children heroes that look, talk, and costume like them and it tries to challenge the stereotypes of Africa as a poor continent. Aesthetically the film may have succeeded with the impressive production design of Hannah Beachler who also designed Beyoncé’s Lemonade and the story line of Africans fighting genocidal wars over who should sit on the throne shattered box office records to prove that African stories sell; but it still sucks. 
The casting of an all-female Gadhafi-style praetorian guard led by General Okoye (Danai Gurira) has been hailed for revolutionising female roles beyond wives, wenches, witches, and whores. Innovative were the use of indigenous African knowledge of herbs to heal the wounded, the speaking of African languages with subtitles, the deployment of Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) to free the Chibok girls in Sambisa forest, and the war and transportation technological gadgets built by Princess Shuri (Letitia Wright) who gave an unprovoked middle finger to her brother, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), prompting instant rebuke from Queen Angela Bassett. However, these innovations appeared to have been subordinated to the enduring narratives of white privilege in Africa. Nakia should have won the #MeToo pin to protest the pestering of T’Challa that she should quit her job as a top spy and marry him.
The demeaning of African leadership started with T’Chaka (John Kani) going all the way to Oakland to kill his brother and potential rival as the suspect who revealed the secret of their vibranium weapons technology to a Boer booty hunter. No European or American heads of state appeared because hunting spies is a low level national assignment that is never carried out by heads of state. If T’Chaka was the only one smart enough or protected enough to go after spies, why go and kill his own brother instead of going after the spies who stole the vibranium secret? 
Eric Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), the son of the murdered brother, now a deadly US veteran with notorious records in Afghanistan, returned with the body bag of the white bounty robber, Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) that he had earlier served in organised crime. He killed Zuri, the kingmaker (Forest Whitaker), when he confessed that he was the snitch that ratted on his murdered father. He successfully challenged T’Challa for the throne in the Nollywood-like narrative (see Charles Okocha as Igwe 2Pac, with almost identical characterisation). Killmonger asked to be buried under the sea like his (Igbo) ancestors who chose to drown rather than be enslaved, an apt allusion to the fact that the Igbo also suffered the foundational genocide in postcolonial Africa during the Nigeria-Biafra conflict.
The returning African American prince was regarded as an outsider or foreign spy (perhaps for pronouncing the silent T in T’Challa and T’Chaka) whereas a known foreign spy (Martin Freeman as Everett K. Ross) was recruited in a fratricidal divide-and-conquer war for political power. It would have been better to organise a free and fair election and let Africans choose their leaders. The proposal by Killmonger to arm the African diaspora with vibranium weapons so that they could fight for freedom was rightly rejected by T’Challa who should have observed that the African diaspora are already armed and are killing one another instead of advancing the African love philosophy of Ubuntu.
After T’Chaka died, T’Challa had inherited the walkabout assignment to hunt the spies unsuccessfully to South Korea. The rest of the film was about how he lost the throne to cousin Killmonger before being revived for a battle royale that he won with the help of Ross, a Central Intelligence Agency spy, who was placed in the driving seat of a drone program that helped to massacre Africans. Okoye and the African women who served as guards fought bravely for whoever was the king on the throne but they could have fought such battles with the men to end monarchies and militarism across Africa and institutionalise decolonised democracies of scale. 
The vast majority of Africans yearn for democratic systems of government and not for family dynasties that use the common mineral wealth to buy personal real estates in US “ghettoes” even if for the worthy goal of establishing a science exchange programme on a basketball court under the direction of a royal family member. The film started and ended with African American children playing basketball in Oakland, California and then flashed to Africa to show African children herding sheep as a deceptive cover to conceal the wealth and power of Wakanda. 
There should have been schools and universities in a democratic Africa rather than a fiefdom of an absolute monarchy and African diaspora children should have been represented in school settings where they spent more time than on basketball courts. Instead of showing African children herding sheep that may not survive in the extreme sunshine of the continent, the film could have reflected the ongoing violence between cattle herders and farmers across Africa and tried to resolved such contradictions by promoting the establishment of ranches. Instead of going to America to establish a science exchange programme in the country that leads the world in scientific innovation, the film should have concentrated on spreading the marvels of Wakanda technology and science to the rest of Africa.
Disney and Marvel should have given credits to Nnedi Okoroafor, the Nigerian-American multi award-winning author of African futurism novels whose work appeared reflected throughout the film. Marvel must have been warned of possible intellectual property challenges by the author, hence they commissioned her to write the digital comics version of the film narrative in six parts from 13 December 2017 to 14 February 2018. On her Facebook page she reported that she was the first writer to use the phrase, Long Live the King, in a Marvel comic; but the question is, who will be the first to write, Freak The King in a pro-democracy movie plot promoting the People Republic of Africa?
* Dr. Agozino is Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg. He produced and directed Shouters and the Control Freak Empire , winner of the Best International Short Documentary, Columbia Gorge Film Festival, USA, 2011.
 
Posted by at No comments:

Marvin X reviews Black Panther

Marvin X reviews the film Black Panther

Image result for image of Black Panther film

Let me begin with praise to ancestor Sun Ra and his Myth-Science philosophy. Throughout watching Black Panther, I kept thinking of Sun Ra's film Space is the Place in which  his space ship lands on earth and he deplanes dressed as an Egyptian god, or shall we say Supreme god Ra. I imagined how Sun Ra would have expressed his Myth-Science philosophy with the resources of Disney. But have no doubt Sun Ra would have much praise for the Afro-futurist mythology of Black Panther. He claimed he was from space  via Egypt or Kemet. Black Panther was a myth-science film that clearly projected Ra's teachings, even to the point of the "Negro" (he was half Wakandan) Killmonger identifying with his maternal ancestors who refused to be victims of the European-American  slave system, instead they jumped ship rather than suffer oppression. The Qur'an says, "Persecution is worse than slaughter!" Sun Ra used to say that Africans must pay reparations to North American Africans for selling us to Europeans. Killmonger's final statement redeemed him from his reactionary behavior, especially as a running dog for American imperialism. His body was covered with marks of his life as a killer for imperialism, aka, globalism. We recall a veteran Special Forces Marine who would not read my writings too long because my words made him angry for all the killing he was forced to do throughout the world. He said America should be bombed every day for her murderous deeds throughout the world. Killmonger was a similar victim, although he becomes the villain whose main focus was to seize the throne in a succession struggle, after the old king killed his father in Oakland, of all places, although the Black Panther Party was born and died in Oakland after being labeled by the FBI as the number one threat to the internal security of the USA.

The film's focus on the struggle for succession tackles a constant theme of African or Kemetic culture and history, from the early days of Nile Valley culture. Chancellor Williams writes about struggle over succession rites as a chief reason for migrations when African kingdoms fell into chaos, along with invasions and ecological factors. Aside from being blessed with a precious metal, the above factors may explain the Wakandan xenophobia, or tribalism or narrow minded nationalism. Some critics have called the Wakandans reactionary because they were for themselves first and foremost, rejecting Pan Africanism outright, or any degree of internationalism.  Although after the rebirth of King T'Challa, and his return to the throne, he attempts to change the political ideology of his nation.

Many or perhaps millions who have seen Black Panther and thoroughly enjoyed it as a Hollywood fantasy from the Disney world of make believe, do not want to hear any discussion of the deeper nature of Black Panther. After all, it's not a documentary. But Chairman Mao taught us all art is propaganda and reflects the values and mission of one class or another, either the bourgeoisie ruling class or the oppressed masses. Disney's Black Panther primarily gave us a film glorifying the African ruling class, a class many African revolutions fought to eliminate, especially for their role in the slave trade, in which they accumulated surplus capital along with the Europeans, not to leave out the Arabs. Even after independence, the African ruling class morphed into neo-colonialism. When the white man was called colonizer in Black Panther, the audience laughed. The Wakandans were never colonized but most African nations suffered colonization which morphed into neo-colonialism that Kwame Nkrumah told us was, "Colonialism playing possum."

While the film is a political disaster by projecting African royalty with its tainted past and/or present, those enamored of African culture will enjoy a boost of cultural consciousness. We Africans are a beautiful people, a cultured people, a people of genius in science and technology. If Black Panther replaces sagging pants with Dashikis, surely, the film must be applauded. If it forces women to throw off their wigs as the woman did in the film, it must be applauded. The music, the chants, the communal dancing, the most colorful costumes and traditional ritual face makeup, should help Africanize a starving population of North American Africans. The technology seemed excessive although we need to see African people utilizing science, technology, artificial intelligence, time travel.

Again, the negative is that the only two North American Africans in the film were killed for reactionary behavior, suggesting Black Americans are villains or not "real Africans," which prompted a North American African  woman to depart the cinema shouting "Killmonger for life!" I translate her statement as, "I'm a Nigga fa life!"
--Marvin X
3/4/18

Addendum:The Psycholinguistic Deconstruction of the word Nisa as per Women in the film Black Panther

In the Arabic language, Nisa has two meanings depending on syllable stress. Nisa means woman in one definition and another syllable stress Nisa means forget her, i.e., to forget the woman. We are thankful for ancestor Imam Warith Din Muhammad for his lecture on Nisa, chiding men for forgetting women. Of course in the patriarchal mythology women are booty at best, i.e., the spoils of war. Females were often buried in the desert sands because they were of no value in the patriarchal society.

And yet, how ironic it was that the wealthy trade woman Khadijah economically uplifted the budding prophet Muhammad Ibn Abdullah when she put him over her resources and most importantly was the one who comforted him when the Angel Gabriel gave him divine revelations that overwhelmed him. He sought refuge in her and she encouraged him to pursue his divine mission.

Still, in the patriarchal society, Muhammad did his best to teach respect of women or Nisa, and taught men not to forget women. Although,  as per family, he admonished believers that Allah is first and foremost, "If your wives, children and the wealth you acquire are dearer to you than Allah, then wait until His command comes, and He guides not the unjust!"

As per plural marriage or polygamy, he said if you can't give justice and equality (and he said you never can) don't even try it. I bear witness the Prophet was right because I could not be just and equal in my polygamous marriages that were a total failure, especially  when I realized the women would never love each other. They didn't even like each other. One wife told me she would have loved her co-wife if I wasn't in the picture, since they were on a similar spiritual vibration. And even after I was separated from them both, they bought and sold from each other at the Berkeley Flea Market.

From the beginning of my polygamous life,  I focused on making my children of three mothers love and respect each other, even if the mothers could not do so, and in fact, taught hatred to my children in the typical manner of mothers in plural marriage no matter in America or Africa and elsewhere.

No matter, my children are closer than I know and are even secretive in their loving sibling relationships. Alas, often they keep hidden from me their deep love and respect for each other. My oldest son Marvin K said long ago, "We're all smart!" He thus acknowledges the DNA or genetic connection between his siblings. 

As per women in the film Black Panther, I neglected to note the most wonderful role they played.. Imagine, a woman military general, a woman scientist, an independent woman seeking to discover her bliss in the best manner of Joseph Campbell,  even though she was loved by and loved the king, but only submitted to him after he had his Osirian resurrection  Women were repeatedly shown as warriors, not to mention their awesome communal ritual powers as dispensers of wisdom. Their physical beauty alone was overwhelming, especially bald headed and locked and their costumes were an antidote to the dress of our women addicted to European-colonial dress.

For sure, African women executed power, beauty and intelligence that should inspire North American African women and all women to transcend the patriarchal mythology, whether African or European!
--Marvin X/El Muhajir
3/8/18


On Thursday, March 8, 2018, 6:49:50 PM PST, Marvin X Jackmon jmarvinx@yahoo.com [blackantiwar] wrote:


 


On Thursday, March 8, 2018, 6:05:02 PM PST, Marvin X Jackmon jmarvinx@yahoo.com [blackantiwar]
wrote:


 

Bay Area folks, don't miss the Respect Hip Hop Exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California, March 24-August 12, 2018. As per the Black Arts Movement as the foundation of Hip Hop, the archives of Marvin X and the Black Arts Movement will be displayed. FYI, the Museum is planning a permanent exhibit of the Black Power Movement, including the Black Arts Movement. The museum is discussing a partnership with Oakland's Black Arts Movement Business District, CDC, of which the museum is a venue in the district and a permanent exhibit of Oakland's Black radical political,cultural and economic history is vital to uplift those stuck in the low information vibration, says Marvin X. As a BAM/BAMBD co-founder, Marvin has begun meetings with the Oakland Museum to make the Black Power Exhibit a reality and homage to all those freedom fighters who gave selflessly their sweat, blood and tears. Marvin X says, "Oakland is one of the most radical cities in America, similar to Fallujah, Iraq, a city of resistance that was decimated by US forces. Oakland suffered the same decimation vie Cointelpro, Army, Navy, Marines, National Guard, local police, agent provocateurs and snitches. There were snitches who told of planned rebellions and simply reported on the Black Mood.   

".....Marvin X is a teacher of primeval knowledge, a knower of both street poetry and book poetry. In fact, he combines the two in a powerful way. Each verse is a teach act, each stanza--a class. His use of alliteration, rhymes, assonance, dissonance and free rhymes indicates he has absorbed the teachings of the academy. Yet, the street consciousness lying in the cut of its content links him directly to the poets of the new idiom called Rap." Of course critic James G. Spady placed Marvin X at the very foundation of Rap, whether conscious or unconscious, "When you listen to Tupac Shakur, E-40, Too Short, Master P or any other rappers out of the Bay Area of Cali, think of Marvin X. He laid the foundation and gave us the language to express black male urban experiences in a lyrical way!"--James G. Spady, Philadelphia New Observer Newspaper

Marvin X says, "Of all the rappers in the Bay who absorbed my spiritual energy, only Askari X can claim my crown! Askari, no matter his mental condition, took the torch of Black Islam and ran to the mountain top shouting, "Laeelahah, elaillah, Elijah Muhammad rassululah!" Askari X went on to honor his master teacher, Master J founder of the Ansaru Allah. But Askari recognized me as the reincarnation of Marcus Garvey and addressed me as Marcus Garvey. I recognized his talent as superior to Tupac or any other rappers. Not only could he sing but he had the Islamic mythology that made him stand taller than other rappers stuck on the low information vibration.

Askari X

Askari X

Biography

Askari X, aka Ansar El Muhammed and Ricky Murdock, is a hip-hop artist from Oakland, California. He has 3 albums and is on many compilation albums and as a guest on several albums. He is famous for coining the term RBG. Stic.man and M-1 of Dead Prez talk about Askari X often in music and credit him as one of their main musical influences.
Askari X is known for black power messages combined with spiritual Islamic themes. His lyrics have a message similar to Fred Hampton, Bobby Hutton, Marcus Garvey, Huey P. Newton, and Malcolm X, including the Black Panther mentality and political manifesto of Malcolm X: "by any means necessary." His sound is characterized by slow powerful drum beats and a flow similar to Tupac. His message is similar to rap artists Dead Prez, X-Clan, Immortal Technique, Public Enemy, and Steve B.I.K.O.
Askari X espouses a mixture of ideologies, one being that of a revolutionary, who uses carnal weapons and guns to obtain freedom, along the lines of the Black Panthers and the African People's Socialist Party. The other being that of s/c Black Islam (Teachings of thee Nation of Islam) as taught by Ansar El Muhammad, Thee Select One, thee ALLAH Master J, which is foundated on the teachings of Thee Messenger, Thee Glorious Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, which strictly forbids the use of or even possession of guns or carnal weapons of any sort. Askari X also mixes in various levels glorifying the Thug culture, slang, even drug use at times, all with an intent of capturing the imagination of African American youth with audio imagery similar to the conditions they grow up in. As any movie script writer, director, or producer, Askari X without double standard could be innocent of any negative influence his songs may have on those who listen to his songs.
Askari X stands out from other revolutionary underground hip-hop artists with his powerful, blunt, and direct message in support of the black liberation struggle and for being one of the first artists of the RBG movement. Taking anti-racism to a militant level, Askari X supports a revolution against violent racism that matches the notorious aggression of the white supremacist movement. His genre could be identified as a conscious rap artist.

Black Bird Press News and Review Popular Posts 3/8/18



On Thursday, March 8, 2018, 1:33:06 PM PST, Marvin X Jackmon jmarvinx@yahoo.com [blackantiwar] wrote:


 
cover photo Alicia Mayo
cover design Adam Turner
INTRODUCTION
By Nathan Hare

With the return of “white nationalism” to the international  stage and the White House and new threats of nuclear war, the black revolutionary occupies a crucial position in society today. Yet a black revolutionary of historic promise can live among us almost unknown on the radar screen, even when his name is as conspicuous as Marvin X (who may be the last to wear an X in public view since the assassination of Malcolm X).
This semblance of anonymity is due in part to the fact that the black revolutionary is liable to live a part of his or her life incognito, and many become adept at moving in and out of both public and private places sight unseen. For instance, I didn’t know until I read Marvin X’s  “Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter” that when he put on a memorial service for his comrade and Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, 1998, he was unaware that Eldridge’s ex, Kathleen Cleaver, had traveled from the East Coast and slipped into the auditorium of the church with her daughter Joju. As one of the invited speakers I had noticed her curiosity when I remarked that I had been aware of Eldridge before she was (he and I /had had articles in the Negro History Bulletin in the spring of 1962) and had met her before Eldridge did, when I was introduced to her while she was working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee at Tuskegee institute, but luckily for Eldridge I was happily married to the woman who years later would escort Kathleen around San Francisco in what I recall as a failed search for a black lawyer to take his case when he returned from exile in France.
Like many other persons across this promised land, I also thought I knew Marvin X. I can clearly recall seeing him walk into the offices of The Black Scholar Magazine, then in Sausalito, with a manuscript we published in the early 1970s.... However, his reputation had preceded him. For one thing, then California Governor Ronald Reagan had publicly issued a directive to college administrators at UCLA and Fresno State University to get Angela Davis and Marvin X off the campuses and keep them off.
Then over the years I continued to encounter him: when he organized the First National Black Men’s Conference, 1980, Oakland Auditorium, that drew over a thousand black men (without benefit of media coverage) to pay their way into a conference aimed at getting black men to rise again.  I was a member of his Board of Directors. I also attended a number of other conferences he organized, such as the Kings and Queens of Black Consciousness, San Francisco State University, 2001, and the San Francisco Black Radical Book Fair, 2004, as well as productions of his successful play, “One Day in the Life,”  with a scene of his last meeting with his friend, Black Panther Party co-founder, Dr. Huey P. Newton, in a West Oakland Crack house.
I will never forget the time he recruited me and the seasoned psychiatric social worker, Suzette Celeste, MSW, MPA, to put on weekly nighttime workshops in black consciousness and strategies for “overcoming the addiction to white supremacy.” On many a night I marveled to see him and his aides branch out fearlessly into the gloom of the Tenderloin streets of San Francisco and bring back unwary street people and the homeless to participate in our sessions, along with a sparse coterie of the black bourgeoisie who didn’t  turn around or break and run on seeing the dim stairway to the dungeon-like basement of the white Catholic church.
But when I received and read Marvin’s manuscript, I called and told him that he had really paid his dues to the cause of black freedom but regretfully had not yet received his righteous dues.
As if to anticipate my impression, the designer of the book cover has a silhouetted image of Marvin, though you wouldn’t recognize him if you weren’t told, in spite of the flood lights beaming down on him from above like rays directly from high Heaven, as if spotlighting the fact that Marvin ‘s day has come.
You tell me why  one of the blackest men to walk this earth, in both complexion and consciousness, is dressed in a white suit and wearing a white hat; but that is as white as it gets, and inside the book is black to the bone, a rare and readable compendium of Marvin’s unsurpassed struggle for black freedom and artistic recognition.
Black revolutionaries wondering what black people should do now can jump into this book and so can the Uncle Tom: the functional toms find new roles for the uncle tom who longs for freedom but prefers to dance to the tune of the piper; the pathological tom, whose malady is epidemic today, as well as the Aunt Tomasinas, can be enlightened and endarkened according to their taste in this literary and readable smorgasbord.
“Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X” is a diary and a compendium, a textbook for revolutionary example and experience, a guide for change makers, a textbook for Black Studies and community action, including city planners who will profit from his proposals and experiences in his collaboration with the mayor and officials of Oakland to commercialize and energize the inner city, with a Black Arts Movement Business District (BAMBD) that could be the greatest black cultural and economic boon since the Harlem Renaissance.  No longer just talk and get-tough rhetoric, his current project is cultural economics, Oakland’s Black Arts Movement Business District, an urban model evolving in real time in the heart of downtown Oakland, where people like Governor Jerry Brown once tried their hand before they turned and fled back into the claws of the status quo.
I can’t say everything is in this book, just that it reflects the fact that  Marvin, for all he has done on the merry-go-round of black social change, is still in the process of becoming.
Readers from the dope dealer to the dope addict to the progressive elite, the Pan African internationalist, the amateur anthropologist, the blacker than thou, the try to be black, the blacker-than-thous, the try to be white (who go to sleep at night and dream they will wake up white) and other wannabes; in other words from the  Nouveau Black to the petit bourgeois noir and bourgie coconuts, “Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X” is a fountainhead of wisdom, with a fistful of freedom nuggets and rare guidance in resisting oppression or/and work to build a new and better day.
Dr. Nathan Hare
3/8/18

 Dr. Nathan Hare, Father Black and Ethnic Studies, with his student, Marvin X
photo Adam Turner 

Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X
Introduction by Dr. Nathan Hare
Black Bird Press, Oakland, April, 2018
limited edition, signed
paperback
500 pages
$29.95
Pre-publication discount price $19.95
To pay by credit card, call 510-200-4164
email: mxjackmon@gmail.com
Posted by at No comments:

Friday, March 2, 2018

film screening BUSINESS IN THE BLACK


Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)