Showing posts with label resistance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label resistance. Show all posts
Cumberbatch o'
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Likely conversation...
Stacey's acquaintance: "Cumberbatch? That's a funny coincidence. Like that British actor...?"
Stacey: "No. It is not funny."
If Stacey did not know. She would not know. (repeat 2x).
But she did know. And so, with a precision our condition in this era and this place call for, she could know that she knew and act like she know.
Ships Cut Off on the African Coast
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How much went unwritten? How much resistance at the point of contact? Before the kings and queens of Europe's ships left Africa, how many of us returned traumatic violence with superior wits, courage & physical power? And how many of those successfully returned home? They say we had few successful slave revolts (Ayti* and Palmares and other cuba/jamaica Maroons among the top). But it is these revolts, they are the top (in effectiveness). These Africans decided (one way or another) to forgo the passage into the Ma'afa altogether. Trace the genealogy from there of black resistance. It's modifications into:the pen of Prince Hall and the brothers in newly independent Massachusetts (stolenwealth of) through the speeches of Hon. Marcus Mosiah Garvey through to the ministry of Martin Luther King Jr.
*idren love ayti, kouzen mwen. their opening the door & STOP of openpresision actually for a time reversed the poles on the earth at that time. but they should have built ships and sailed to france and thrashed yt supremacy there at it's root, then on to england and so like...
Illinois woman killed same day sister sat behind Obama
An 18-year-old Chicago woman was killed the same day her sister sat on the stage behind President Barack Obama, listening to him push for gun control legislation.
Janay Mcfarlane was shot once in the head around 11:30 p.m. Friday in North Chicago, said Lake County Coroner Thomas Rudd. Mcfarlane, a mother of a 3-month-old boy, was in the Chicago suburb visiting friends and family.
North Chicago police said two people are being questioned in connection with Mcfarlane's death, but no charges have been filed.
"I really feel like somebody cut a part of my heart out," Angela Blakely, Mcfarlane's mother, said.
Blakely said the bullet that killed Mcfarlane was meant for a friend.
Hours earlier, Mcfarlane's 14-year-old sister was feet from Obama at Hyde Park Career Academy, where he spoke about gun violence and paid tribute to Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old honor student fatally shot last month in a South Side park. Police have said it was a case of mistaken identity, and two people have been charged.
Pendleton's death was one of more than 40 homicides in Chicago in January, a total that made it the deadliest January in the city in more than a decade. Pendleton, a drum majorette, had recently performed during Obama's inauguration and the slaying happened about a mile from his Chicago home.
Blakely told the newspaper that Janay Mcfarlane had been affected by Pendleton's death.
"She always said after Hadiya Pendleton got killed, 'Momma that's so sad,'" Blakely said. "She was always touched by any kid that got killed. She was always touched by mothers who couldn't be there for their babies because they were gone."
Mcfarlane was supposed to graduate from an alternative school this spring, Blakely said, and wanted to go into the culinary arts.
"I'm just really, truly just trying to process it — knowing that I'm not taking my baby home anymore," Blakely said.
A girl was lynched today.
In Bogalusa, Louisiana 1964
In Bogalusa, Louisiana 1964 civil-rights workers were surrounded by a horde of Ku Klux Klansmen. A Black man named Charles Sims saw that the chief of police was merely observing what could have been lots of bloodshed. Charles Sims walked over to the police chief and told him: “You better stop `em. Cause if you don’t, we’re gonna kill them all.” The top cop saw armed Black men staked out in protective formation around the building housing the civil-rights workers. There was no Klan violence that night. Sims later declared, “That night a brand-new Negro was born.” Cross burning ended suddenly in Jonesboro, Louisiana the night that a cross was set on fire in front of a clergyman’s house. The Deacons for Defense and Justice began busting shots at the KKK as the torch touched the cross. The Klan departed and never repeated that trick. In early 1965 Black students picketing Jonesboro high school were confronted by hostile police and fire trucks with hoses prepared to hose the black students until a car of 4 Deacons emerged and in view of the police, calmly loaded their shotguns. The police ordered the fire truck to withdraw. During a 1965 summer demonstration, white hecklers turned violent and threw a brick which struck a Black woman, Hattie Mae Hill. The white mob surrounded the car the Deacons were using to aid the terrified woman. As the white mob closed in on Deacon Henry Austin he fired point blank into the chest of Alton Crowe who was in the front of the mob. While Crowe survived, the fun of beating up on blacks died that afternoon in Bogalusa. No longer able to attack Black people without fear of retaliation from gun-wielding Deacons, the Klan began to lose its power-hold on the region. With the threat of violence greatly diminished the Deacons for Defense and Justice’s visibility declined. After 1968, the Deacons were inactive. The wife of one of the last surviving Deacon leaders says “I became very proud of Black men. They didn’t bow down and scratch their heads. They stood up like men.”
A 1ne 2wo, A 1one 2wo.
light up in that spot
knowin' that we can rock
doin the hole-in-the-wall spot
this shit here- must stop
like freeze,
we makin' the crowd move
but we not makin' no Gs
and that's a no-no."
~Andre
Warm Manure
Un-American Investigators
The committee's fat,
Smug, almost secure
Co-religionists
Shiver with delight
In warm manure
As those investigated-
Too brave to name a name-
Have pseudonyms revealed
In Gentile game
Of who,
Born Jew,
Is who?
Is not your name
lipshitz?
Yes.
Did you not change it
For subversive
purposes?
No.
For nefarious gain?
Not so.
Are you sure?
The committee shivers
With delight in
Its warm manure.
~Langston Hughes, The Panther and the Lash
- - - - - - - - -
" 'Your honery'," Simple elsewhere had threatened
to testify, if called long as I have been black, I been an American. Also I was a democrat-but I didn't know
Roosevelt was going to die.' Then I
would ask them, 'How come you don't have any Negroes on your Un-American
Committee?' And old Chairman Georgia
would say, 'Because that is un-American'."
~Langston Hughes, (Jesse B Simple), Arnold
Rampersad, The Life Of Langston Hughes Vol. II, p217
Citizen Chances Changed All That..."Oddness".
"In april 1769, Henry Laurens, one of early America's
wealthiest merchants, wrote to Captain Hinson Todd, who was seeking a cargo
from Jamaica to carry to Charleston, South Carolina. Laurens was an experienced slave trader and
he worried that Todd was not. He
therefore cautioned that if the Jamaica merchant "should Ship Negroes on
board your Sloop, be very careful to guard against insurrection. Never put your Life in their power a
moment. For a moment is sufficient to
deprive you of it & make way for the destruction of all your Men & yet you
may treat such Negroes with great Humanity." It was an odd but revealing statement. Laurens instructed the captain to treat with
"great humanity" the very people who would, given a split-second
chance, annihilate him and his entire crew."
~Marcus Rediker, The
Slave Ship (p. 35-6)
Kindly Disagree.
...is like the spring without the fall
there's only one thing worse,
in this universe,
that's no Aunt Jemima[s] at all."
Lupe's Ghosts, Tina's Words, Marlena's Change.
Alert. Great San Ko Fa moment happening. ...See this segment documentary video by Boston
police officer Bill Willis (it is part 5 of 6 clips) -a GREAT video:
A prophetic voice, Tina Chery, happens around minute 4:09. Sister works for the Louis Brown Institute for Peace- in honor of her slain son. Lupe (& others i have seen in the community, first hand) are fulfilling / creating learning moments for me, such that i have felt like...like 'we are achieving' in the spirit of Tina's words. A big 'GIVE THANKS' to these brothers. I give thanks to my Brothers for catching hell, catching cases, catching lead, catching this ERA (not seen since the peak of lynching 1 century ago) that our parents and grandparents didn't keep from us. That we focus and real change to end it.
Starting with the Necessary Obedience
The quilombos -the hiding places* used by
runaway slaves-constituted an exemplary moment in that learning process of
rebellion-of a reinvention of life on the part of slaves who took their
existence and history in hand, and, starting with the necessary "obedience,"
set out in quest of the invention of freedom.
~Paolo Freire, Pedagogy
of Hope, p. 92
ina ah de head, aunty jemima o'? Seen? ...places we must 'use'.
Fought As Well As They Could
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"In
1730, for instance, newspaper accounts and a letter written by a Royal African
Company agent at Cape Coast Castle all reported that the Africans rose and
killed all but three of the sailors on board the Boston ship William.
No mention was made of the fate of the Africans, and although the vessel
was later reported to have run aground at Anomabu, there is no reason to
believe the victorious Africans did not either jump overboard or take the
William's boats, ultimately getting ashore and reclaiming their freedom. In January of 1747, a Rhode Island ship
underwent a revolt off of Cape Coast Castle, and the entire crew was killed
except for two mates who jumped overboard and swam ashore. Taking its information about this revolt from
a letter, one Boston newspaper wrote that "what became of the Vessel and
Negroes afterwards the Letter does not mention." Even though this incident occurred in a busy
slaving shore, and it is not at all unreasonable to presume that at least some
of the Africans succeeded in escaping inland.
…the
possibility of revolt also helped earn Africans a grudging respect from those
whose business it was to enslave them.
As one sailor was compelled to write of a revolt in 1790, after more
than one hundred slaves had taken possession of a French slaver as it was at
anchor off the African coast, "I could not but admire the courage of a
fine young black, who, though his partner in irons lay dead at his feet, would
not surrender, but fought with his billet of wood until a ball finished his
existence. The others fought as well as
they could, but what could they do against firearms?"
~Eric Robert Taylor, If We Must Die (p. 135-6).
What could they do? ...they could fly away home & knew it. Awo.
A man called "No. 3" and a woman called "No. 4"
"Norris
kept a captain's log for his ovyage in the Unity from Liverpool to Whydah, to
Jamaica, and back to Liverpool between n1769 and 1771. A week after weighing anchor at Whydah and setting
sail to cross the Atlantic, Norris noted that "the Slaves made an
Insurrection, which was soon quelled with ye Loss [of] two Women." Two weeks later the enslaved rose again, the
women once more in the lead and therefore singled out for special punishment;
Norris "gave ye women concerned 24 lashes each." Three days later they made a third effort
after several "got of their Handcuffs," but Norris and crew managed
to get them back into their irons. And
the following morning they tried for a fourth time: "the Slaves attempted
to force up ye Gratings in the Night, with a design to murder ye whites or
drown themselves." He added that
they "confessed their intentions and that ye women as well as ye men were
determin'd if disappointed of cutting off ye whites, to jump over board but in
case of being prevented by their Irons were resolved as their last attempt to
burnt the ship." So great was their
determination that in the event of failure they planned a mass suicide by
drowning or self-incineration. "Their
obstinacy," wrote Norris, "put me under ye Necessity of shooting ye
Ringleader." But even this did not
end the matter. A man Norris called
"No. 3" and a woman he called "No. 4," both of whom had
been on the ship a long time, continued to resist and died in fits of madness. "They had frequently attempted to drown
themselves, since their Views were disappointed in ye Insurrection."
~Marcus
Rediker, The Slave Ship (p. 32).
The FOR REAL Don't Stop, Can't Stop, Won't Stop. (BA homing impulse.) Awo.
Esteban Montejo (en Cuba). A man AGAIN.
"…hands were swollen.
I camped under a tree. I stayed
there no more than four or five days.
All I had to do was hear the first human voice close by, and I would take off fast.
I came to hide in a cave for a time. I lived there for a year and a half. . ..I
was careful about all the sounds I made, And of the fires. If I left a track, they could follow my path and
catch me. I climbed up and down so many
hills that my legs and arms got as hard as sticks. Little by little I got to know the
woods. And I began to like them. Sometimes I would
forget I was a Cimarron, and I would start to whistle. Early on I used to whistle to get over the
fear. They say that when you whistle,
you chase away the evil spirits. But
being a Cimarron in the woods you had to be on the lookout. I didn't start whistling again because the guajiros or the slave catchers would come. Since the Cimarron was a slave who ahd
escaped, the masters sent a posse of rancheadores after them. Mean guajiros with hunting dogs so they could
drag you out of the woods in their jaws.
I never ran into any of them. I
never seen any of those dogs up close.
They were trained to catch blacks…
When a slave catcher caught a black, the master or the overseer gave him
an ounce of gold or more.
Truth is that I lived well as a cimarron, very hidden, very
comfortable. I didn't even allow other
cimarrones to spot me: "cimarron with cimarron sells
a cimarron." For a long time
I didn't speak a word to anyone. I liked
that tranquility. …You live half wild when you're a cimarron.
I found out about the end of slavery from all the people
shouting. . . They shouted, "We're free now." But I wasn't affected. To my mind, it was a lie… When I came out of the woods I started in
walking, and I met an old woman with two children in her arms. I called to her from a distance, and when she
came up to me I asked her: "Tell me, is it true that we're no longer
slaves?" She answered me: "No,
son, now we're really free." And,
with that, as quickly as I became a cimarron… I stopped being a cimaroon. And became myself…a
man…again."
put my foot in it
For Sure
For
sure I’ll get fed up
without
even waiting
for
things to ripen
like a
good camembert
So
until then I’ll just go
and put
my foot in it
or grab
by the collar
everything
I can’t stand
In
capital letters:
colonization
civilization
assimilation
and all
that
Meanwhile
you’ll
often hear me
slam
the door
~from Pigments by Léon-Gontran Damas, translated by
Franklin Rosemont
No Ocean Bottom Community SIMILAR
IN HONOR OF AFRICAN ANCESTORS AT BOTTOM OF THE ATLANTIC
Vicissitudes Underwater Sculpture - Grenada, West Indies
Artist Jason de Caires Taylor, with Johanna Fernandez , Ari Merretazon and Tina Varick
yut ah.
Mental Sag: we ARE this.
Hmm. (We are better than this.)
We are better than this?
Hypocrisy of the first order.
You are a part of we. You are not better than this.
Greatest lesson of 'U.S. civil rights' activism: to be approximately right > exactly wrong
We are better than this?
You are exactly wrong.
You left these kids. You left the community.
If not physically, then certainly Mentally. You (left) leave it in your mind every day.
...and posters like this soothe your conscience that tells you it was not worth it
to follow the dream (hollow mock) taught to you (to pursue at the cost of yourself) by the not-We.
You didn't listen to your Ancestors. (for they are only dead to you).
What are these kids doing?
What are they (who is a part of 'we') SAYING with their clothes?
Do you have a clue? Have you taken a look? (Yeah Yeah, jail culture blah blah blah...).
Try it yourself. Try doing what they do. Try to make your clothes look like they make.
Walk in their shoes. For real.
Can you, you Fool?
What is happening? You are making one body part longer, taller (spine, backbone)
at the expense of legs (legs -forward motion-are expendable).
In the society (of global 'no-love' power tradition) in which they walk (live), THEY FEEL SHORT.
THEY FEEL they've no BACKBONE.
Uprightness-Stability is even forsaken, they only want but to know BACKBONE: taller (human) feeling.
Sankofa yourself.
The last (national) person/group to show us our backbone where our wishbone currently lies was MLK, Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party for Self Defense (NOI and Tupac for a moment).
The same powers that eliminated them know too that 'WE' seeing a picture of the Obama family is a milisecond of backbone 'feeling' in the deep desert of our wishbone lives. ...curbs the want to get TALLER.
"UP YOU MIGHT RACE!" (Baba Garvey/Mama Harriet full-cry to us).
"We are better than this!" = "Up you sagging pants!" = all that you have to give?
Please.
How can you make that YOUTH feel TALLER (or tall enough) in and of himself?
Can you truly help him fight the meaning of the pants sag?
Or can't you see? Can't you hear? Or don't you want to?
Courage. (the civil rights generation had PLENTY of this...if not misdirected).
Hear WE. Hear 'your' kids. YOU RAISE THEIR PANTS. YOU RAISE THEIR IMAGE.
...and not with your fake ass education, fake ass jobs and fake as status.
You grinning American slave.
I bet you thought the billboard was a good investment of money.
(Was the money even yours? ...earned with clean hands?)
Your brain sag PUT the sag in their pants.
YOU tied up the youths feet (movement) with your POSING.
Can't blame them for saying F--- YOU and F--- YOUR 'BETTER'
in a way that no other younger generation has said to an older generation.
Its ok.
All of that is to say, if you love your own, (if you can love your 'we'), then LOVE THEM.
damn.
ref: http://bconx.blogspot.com/2010/03/teach-negro-child-60-ways-to-despise.html
http://bconx.blogspot.com/2011/05/seen.html
http://bconx.blogspot.com/2010/07/energy-in-us.html
http://bconx.blogspot.com/2010/05/cuffs.html
http://bconx.blogspot.com/2010/04/sister-knowknew.html
http://bconx.blogspot.com/2010/03/ch-art-er-whey.html
http://bconx.blogspot.com/2010/08/is-this-fair.html
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