WHY DID YOU KILL ME?!

I originally posted this a couple days after my nephew and his best friend were gunned down by other young Black men. Since that time, we have lost many more young Black men, women and children in the U.S.and around the world.   A few names here; Amadou Cisse, University student-Chicago, Kyle Moore High school student-Atlanta, Nakita Wilson high school student-Atlanta, Luis Navarro high school student-Philadelphia, Kadijah Waldron middle school student-Westmoreland, Jamaica, Stephen Lyons university student-Chicago. Karl Wilson-Memphis. One child is killed every 90 minutes in the U.S. That’s 32 every 48 hours!

For my family and all the families of the world suffering today due to senseless killings.

Brandon Hammond and Marcelles McElvaine gunned down 12/06/06

 Why can’t you just stop? My people in Southern California, my people world wide, we are killing ourselves, we are doing their job for them. There is no longer a need for white men in hoods and torches to come and drag you from your home to lynch you. You are lynching yourselves. This week the lives of three young men were taken from them senselessly. But, not only did you kill them you killed their mothers, you killed their grandparents, you killed their fathers, you killed their siblings, you killed their children, you killed their aunts and uncles, and the rest of their family and friends, yet when you committed this murder you killed a part of you. So, on the day of the funeral, when we have to wipe tears, when we have to comfort the mothers, when we have to bury our dead, that day we will bury a part of ourselves and a part of you, we will bury with our dead. It’s a wicked cycle that you perpetuate! You are the ignorant and downpressed donkey being ridden by the system of police agencies, spurred on by the prison industrial complex that you choose to ignore. You are being exploited by the particular police agencies in your community. The police are not interested in eradicating gangs, gang violence or drugs. They feed off of it. They need it for their own existence. You are their meal ticket, for without you claiming a set, selling drugs or killing yourselves they would soon lose their miniscule livelihood. As you are the downpressed donkey, these police agents are the tax burdened, debt holding, mules of the system. Without the killing and rampaging your donkey mind leads you to do, these tax mules would soon be out of a job. From your donkey mind comes the babble that you hate the police, "*uck the police" yet you work tirelessly to keep them employed with their foot on your neck. For my mothers: I know each day you cry for your young men and women. Though you smile, laugh, and force yourself to work everyday I know you cry inside. Every minute, I know you send a prayer out to keep us safe even when you know we are not doing the best we can in life. I wish our people could feel your pain, I wish our young men would stop creating a killing field of young black bodies, and learn how to kill the system that’s killing them. On the day that we bury our dead a piece of me will be buried that day as one of the three young men that died this week was my nephew!!

Caught in more lies, while the U.S. economy dies!

Dubya refuses to end his war threats against Iran, though the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate released on December 03, 2007 that "...Iran yielded to internationl pressure and halted its nuclear programme in 2003..."  Tehran says that it never had a nuclear weapons program.  So, why then is Dubya still sabre rattling?  Why does he persist in raising the temperature of the American people against Iran?  I am going to scream it to you for the third time. 

 IRAN IS COMPETING IN THE OIL MARKET BY ESTABLISHING THE EURO AS THE CURRENCY OF CHOICE FOR THE BUYING AND SELLING OF IRANIAN OIL!!!!  This is a direct threat to the U.S. green back.  You call it the dollar, money, cash, scrilla, dough, bread, bones, whatever, its worth-less.  When you go to the market, the gas pump, the mall, you are witnessing the worth-less-ness of the U.S. dollar.  You are not seeing the rise in prices but the fall of the dollar.  I know this is off the beaten path for some of you.  I know you say what does this matter when we have Dunbar Villiage, the death of Black people by the hands of Black people.  Well, one of the reasons the death and destruction is taking place, is for the dollar, for money.  So why won't Dubya and his cronies come out and tell the real real reason for the war talk?  So where to now? 

Liberation Begins in the Hearts and the Minds of a People!

Iron mask and collar used during slavery 

I was having a conversation on my daily commute through Atlanta with some enlightened brothas on MARTA, the transit system here. We began by talking about power and what power truly is and much of the hidden history of the United States. And how gaining knowledge, true knowledge of the history of Black people and the land in which we live is powerful medicine. For instance, little do people know that Great Britain, Spain, France and the United States paid tribute to several nations in west Africa (some call the Barbary Coast as if they were barbarians) for rights to travel the sea lanes between Africa, Europe and the Americas, (read here) that later became known as the Triangular Slave Trade. We discussed how teaching this information to Black youth could better help the mindset of many of our children.

However, one of the brothas said that even with this information being taught, learned and understood we would still not be as formidable of a people that we could be, because many of us are full of sh*t! A few people listening to the conversation reared back and said you got that right brotha! You know how ni**ahs can be! Knowing they missed the point he said to them “I don’t think you are getting what I’m saying. You are literally full of sh*t! Remember, we started out by saying that liberation begins in the hearts and minds of the people. Yet, the hearts and minds of our people are polluted. So, he began to explain how the foods we eat may truly be affecting the way we think and act. We are eating crap instead of food. Many of us engage of eating McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy’s, Taco Bell and from all the other “feed” chain stores that are set up in our cities, never once thinking how what we ingest affects our minds, how we think. Most of us don’t realize that most of the meats we eat are from female animals. Not knowing that when we eat an animal we are ingesting more than meat, but we are eating the blood of the animal (this is part of what makes a steak juicy) and in the blood is DNA, and there are the chemical messengers also known as hormones and also the fat of the animal..

So know then, that when we are eating animals we are ingesting the mental and physical characteristics of the animal. We are eating the hormones of the animal. Now, since most meats come from the female gender of animals we are eating primarily the female hormone estrogen. Could this be a reason for the feminization of males, ie, down low brothers? Almost all of the animals raised on factory farms never see the light of day, never roam and graze, never eat grasses and grains that are normal diet for them so they are pumped full of antibiotics. Could it be because of the use of these antibiotics that we are seeing more resistant strains of bacteria? Most factory farms have to meet the high demand of the consumer so the animals are given growth hormones for faster growth or more milk production. Is this why we are seeing our young female children as young as eleven with a body shape of a 18 year old? Are we witnessing a low grade “roid” rage in many of the young males in our community? Is this why they may be committing murder and rape at ages as young as 8?

Our food is polluted with many man made things in the name of the consumer god and this god may be killing us. In turn our minds are polluted because of the toxins we carry in our stomach and colons. Understand that a toxic colon will lead to a toxic brain and toxic thoughts, thus a toxic mind. Toxins can be passed, however, this comes by going to the TOILET!!! We don’t drink water, we don’t eat raw vegetables (fiber) therefore we don’t go to the bathroom. So like the brotha said many of you are full of sh*t! I hope we get his point. Without a clean body we will not have a clean mind and because of this, liberation may be harder to come by than we think.

When I reached work after this conversation, a co-worker made an announcement to us that there was a mass found in his colon and its cancerous. Last year he had and angioplasty done because he had 70% blockage of his arteries. I wonder if he knows both ailments are related? Lets pray for him and his family.

Memba Billy Ocean?

Photo courtesy of TriniSoca.com

Do you remember Caribbean Queen?  Nights I Feel like getting down, There'll be sad songs to make you cry & Get outta my dreams get into my car?

Billy Ocean!  A Blast from the past!

Cleansing ourselves before we can change anything else

Sovereign Queen Califa of Ancient Black California

I was listening to an early morning talk program as I got dressed to come to the plantation this morning. The conversation centered around, a possible change in how crack cocaine dealers have been sentenced compared to those that sell powdered cocaine. Yet, the callers invariably shifted the subject to Black people being brought over on slave ships from Africa, how we need to form our own separate nation and reparations. I have always been interested in how Black people feel we need a separate state or nation when we can certainly choose to immigrate to nations, Black nations that already exist such as Liberia, Jamaica, The Bahamas or St. Kitts the way Randall Robinson, the founder of TransAfrica did in 2004. These nations are clearly autonomist and would greatly value any manpower and knowledge that we could supply. So why talk of creating a separate nation when they are here? Would this not assist in repairing our minds, bodies and spirits?

This brings me to reparations talk that came up during the program. I enjoyed a post on the Second Book of Asabagna blog by guest poster Brotha Pruitt entitled Reparations/Spiritual and Collective Action. He made some very excellent points concerning gaining reparations and shined a light on the idea of sovereignty, stating “ Blacks can undergo this task by holding a Plebiscite for Sovereignty…” a national vote among Black people in America. Sovereignty is a degree of knowledge many of us no little about. To regain one’s sovereignty demonstrates that we were a subjugated people, some forced into slavery from Africa but most subjugated after losing wars with the encroaching Europeans right here in the Americas. Sovereignty is a lofty but attainable notion. Yet, for me sovereignty begins with the self. We can talk of exercising sovereign rights, we can speak of reparations. However, we have work to do on ourselves, on our minds, on our children.

I believe we have to work on our minds because what we think will become what we say. What we say becomes what we do. In the post Brotha Pruitt kept referring to Black people as a separate people from himself. He would say “they need to address…” or “In order for them to do…” This alone speaks volumes about the mind set of one that is the Reparations Leader and Chairman Committee for African American Reparations (CAAR).

Apparently we are in need of personal cleansing, personal sovereignty, beginning with those that are working out front for “us.” To speak of Black people as “they” and “them” somehow removes the speaker/writer from “us.” What happened to African proverb I AM WE? Maybe I am being too harsh but, I often see and hear us talking about many lofty things yet many of us don’t take care of small personal improvements. I was recently having a conversation with a close friend of mine and she was explaining that there are ways we can exercise certain sovereign rights and how to demonstrate them. I agreed with her that, in fact, we can demonstrate these rights but I asked her has she started by pulling her credit report and could she understand her rights concerning her report? The answer was no!

We have issues that we can overcome. We have health problems we can overcome by simply thinking differently, eating differently. Dick Gregory says we are a nation of people that are sleep deprived and dehydrated. We can cure a lot of our physical ailments by simply drinking the right amount of water daily. Can we start reparations by making ourselves healthy? Why gain reparations and maintain poor health? Why create a separate nation and have no knowledge of the credit reporting system or how currency/money flows in the world or in the country you live now? These are the things affecting us now that we can do something about now.