To know me is to know my blind passion. That passion lead me say things at a time I most likely should not have. Images of dead citizens at the hands of a government meant to save them kept breaching my psyche, so unwelcomed but forcefully unrelenting. As these bloody scenes tormented my soul, I jolted back to the reality of screams in a church full of people who the day before, shut down a bridge for nearly a work shift, determined to be heard. And they were being heard, as the Mayor joined the interim police director and multiple public officials to hear citizen concerns at a church called Greater Imani. Imani is a Swahili word, one of the seven pillars of Kwanzaa, celebrated the last weeks of the year traditionally by Africans living in America.
Kwanzaa and politics
There has rarely been a time in real life where I felt a more present need to sing Kuumbaya lighting candles and humming Hebrew songs than that day at Greater Imani. Today, I find myself wandering whose idea it was to convene at a church, the day after our city almost lost grip of our nationwide known culture? Where else would urban people unfamiliar with political culture feel guilt for being angry or loud? How else to calm them?
(Warning, this may get uncomfortable. Ready?)
Religion has historically been a tool for controlling citizens, fact. Africans entering America via government owned ships were given Christianity along with new chains as a welcome gift, free of charge. Can you imagine teaching a religion to someone who doesn't speak your language and isn't allowed to learn to read? ...
(Warning, this may get uncomfortable. Ready?)
Religion has historically been a tool for controlling citizens, fact. Africans entering America via government owned ships were given Christianity along with new chains as a welcome gift, free of charge. Can you imagine teaching a religion to someone who doesn't speak your language and isn't allowed to learn to read? ...
Like everything else slaves were made to do, the forced indoctrination of a new religion came the same way as all things free labor culture related did, courtesy whips and lashes. Today, New Africans in America no longer acknowledge the sun as a god or pray for harvest, praising the land as they till, treating each creation of the earth, including themselves, as a holy entity of their own. It has become ttradition that praise is a Sunday event and reverence is for preachers, not other people, land or creatures. Despite how Africans received knowledge of Christ, as he is called, his religion has many great points for believers and non believers alike. Though the meeting was held at a institution built on African culture, it could have improved with truly embracing all the principles that lay within Kwanzaa practice: unity, self determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith.
Sitting there on the first row, I felt anger rise, then a desire to help, as I had precisely reached out to the interim police director's office that morning seeking to do so. Though that help wasn't taken at the time, as it was not the city's meeting to organize, I knew I'd have yet another sleepless night or three if I let the moment pass. I knew before the event started that an oppressor cannot alone organize the oppressed, and know of my track record with at-risk people, though preferably youth. I've organized forums with city officials and citizens before, but this was no organized forum. In my spirit I knew I would be needed in some way, so sleepless, I went. Raised in a church I felt my grandmothers belief in me that I could do anything. I recalled my grandfathers stories of working in cotton fields in Mississippi for work on the weekends, his need to go the service because no European would gainfully employ a mocha colored man whose best skill was preaching, which didn't always provide for ten kids. My grandfather's father died when he was young, I recall granddaddy's crocodile tears when I asked him of his father, a father whose parents were slaves. My grandfather has been gone a very long time now, but he believed in Christ and all his principles, and would not leave this earth until those principals were in my heart
Born to speak like Christian leaders
I have grown weary of writing as I have much work to get back to but I felt a need to share this with you all, those who look for my writings, my events, my classes, my performances, my next startup venture. I feel so loved at times I don't feel so tied to a culture hell bent on me feeling disenfranchised. Poverty is a mentality taught, the American society is built to have a poverty class, things are as they should be, as they are designed. Change, we must understand, will take effort, organized, consistent, seriously unrelenting effort. That historic day at Greater Imani, feeling the pain of four generations I recognized a familiar, unified cry. A man by the name of Martin Luther King, Jr., a civil rights leader famously assassinated in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee, a few miles from where we sat some 40 years later, took up the efforts of that cry before his demise. King's last organized effort was The Poor People's Campaign of 1968 which crucially called for an "Economic Bill of Rights" drafted by his colleague Bayard Rustin. An often forgotten aspect of the Campaign was to petition the government to pass an Economic Bill of Rights as a step to lift the load of poverty. The requests in that Bill of rights were:
There were people in the church spilling their hearts about being unemployable, or barely getting by to make ends meet. There were indeed police related questions, but more to the system of justice that makes people who pay their fines still suffer a guaranteed life of poverty. While I understood and knew the time for that conversation would come, I knew that no one in power would really hear an emotional, loud plea, nor could this all be done in one meeting. Knowing that there have been marches since Africans were granted citizenship with hope of full American rights, I spoke from a hesitant, heavy place. The publisher I occasionally submit work to was there that day, unknown to me until after I finally spoke, his staff has warned a need to draw a line between the writer in me versus the "activist", as I am often accused. The problem is that as of this date, I had not put in an application to be neither journalist or activist, I simply am who I am without rule to any but my own heart and convictions. I shook the doubt of needing to be an employee, reminded myself that I am entrepreneur by choice, and gave in to the feeling of guilt taking over my being. My citizenship was taking precedence as I flashed back to the day prior.
There were students protesting the day before outside the FedEx Forum, students who walked up to me with hugs, speaking about poetry and how they are practicing speaking occasionally, but feel more connected to these protests than literature. And there I was, being a journalist, staying neutral, even though I run a blog and don't have to follow standard rules to get my thoughts out. How cowardly! So fine, I'll speak. How can you have an organization called Speak Poetry Academy and be afraid to do what you teach? Here's what I had to say:
- $30 billion annual appropriation for a real war on poverty
- Congressional passage of full employment and guaranteed income legislation [a guaranteed annual wage]
- Construction of 500,000 low-cost housing units per year until slums were eliminated
There were people in the church spilling their hearts about being unemployable, or barely getting by to make ends meet. There were indeed police related questions, but more to the system of justice that makes people who pay their fines still suffer a guaranteed life of poverty. While I understood and knew the time for that conversation would come, I knew that no one in power would really hear an emotional, loud plea, nor could this all be done in one meeting. Knowing that there have been marches since Africans were granted citizenship with hope of full American rights, I spoke from a hesitant, heavy place. The publisher I occasionally submit work to was there that day, unknown to me until after I finally spoke, his staff has warned a need to draw a line between the writer in me versus the "activist", as I am often accused. The problem is that as of this date, I had not put in an application to be neither journalist or activist, I simply am who I am without rule to any but my own heart and convictions. I shook the doubt of needing to be an employee, reminded myself that I am entrepreneur by choice, and gave in to the feeling of guilt taking over my being. My citizenship was taking precedence as I flashed back to the day prior.
There were students protesting the day before outside the FedEx Forum, students who walked up to me with hugs, speaking about poetry and how they are practicing speaking occasionally, but feel more connected to these protests than literature. And there I was, being a journalist, staying neutral, even though I run a blog and don't have to follow standard rules to get my thoughts out. How cowardly! So fine, I'll speak. How can you have an organization called Speak Poetry Academy and be afraid to do what you teach? Here's what I had to say: