What is it?

I MC'd an event last night, here in East Palo Alto, it was great. It was good to connect with the community outside of work to celebrate our people. I love being African, and Black History Month lasts all year for me. This is the time that I take to share with other people why I love my people so muuch and why I work so hard to make sure that our children have all the opportunities they deserve. I work hard to try to find ways to help young people change their thinking, to craft the right mentality to be successful.

In any case, life is Beautiful.
Peace and Blessings

Negro History Week

Black History Month, African History Month-whatever we call it, how can we celebrate the contributions of a people over the course of history? How can we make people understand us when we barely understand ourselves? I have been blessed with an education that made African history an integral part of everything I learned. I learned that I could not be afraid of or alienated by math because the Egyptians long ago mastered mathematics, and they were Black. I learned that I could not be afraid to travel because Kankan Musa had sent expeditions all around the world. I learned about almost every subject in the context of the contributions of African people to that subject. I was also taught that African History is a living thing that did not at all begin with the introduction of the African slave to the US and the New World. I was taught that African history is the History of Mankind itself since the earliest human beings first stood upright in Africa.
I am listening to Dr Martin Luther King right now, and he was the most amazing man. He had a Nationalist consciousness, and this is never ever talked about. He talked about economic empowerment, the need for "the Negro" to control hi s own destiny, economically, socially and culturally. Now all we hear is "I Have a Dream" and I feel that is just a way to get people to say "See all he wanted was for Blacks and Whites to live together. We did that. Dr. Kings dream has been accomplished". That is such a lie, Dr King wanted Black people in this country to have full equality and here we are barely making it.
It is as if we are a people blinded. Here it is all in front of us, everything we would need to "make it" but we are so busy chasing the "shiny things" as my good friend Malachi Muhammad would say, that we miss the boat, we miss what is truly important. It hurts me so much, I cry sometimes, I really do. From what I know about the History of African people,this is really our lowest point.'
How can we do this to ourselves? How can we not teach our children to pursue excellence? How can we not teach them to take everything that they can and to use it for the betterment of all their people? I had that and I want my children to have that! When exactly did it become favorable or even acceptable to fail? We are such a great people...Marcus Garvey called us "Oh you Noble Ethiopians...." now the kids I work with call each other "Ethies" meaning Ethiopian as some kind of derogatory comment. What happened to us? Here we are just one generation removed from the Black Power movement, one and a half from the civil rights movement and three or four generations out of Slavery. Have we forgotten? Why do we act so beastly towards each other? The sad thing is I think that I know many of the answers to these questions, the sociological and spiritual answers anyway, and that makes me so sad. The answers are just as painful as the questions and the reasons I ask them. I only ask that God Almighty continues to give me the strength to continue to work with these young people and that He blesses me with insight as to how I can aid in the solution, not just point my finger at the problem.
But in anything the steps to forming a solution must start with identifying the problem, then forming a strategy to address the problem, and finally implementing that strategy successfully making the neccessary adjustments along the way.
I have a good handle on what the problem is, I think that I have identified some successful strategies for addressing these problems, all there is to it is for me to get off my butt and implement.
If anyone is reading this, can you please let me know?

Freedom Fighter

Freedom Fighter

I identify most closely with those labeled “causes lost”
The little brothers and sisters they call upon when they need some battles fought
When someones got to get gassed or shot
And whether you believe it or not
They are training, mining and finding our children in these inner city schools
They’ve labeled them generation “XYZ” aka Shining Happy Fools
But I know that they are nothing less than Shining Diamonds and Precious Jewels

The masters tools?
We are going to take them and remake them.
Creating all these new laws to control our lives
While we steady innovatin on how to break them..
And when I see my people I’m yelling “As Salaam Alaikum”
Whether you’re Muslim or not

Because for you, my brother? Peace. Love. Happiness.

Your back is all I got.
In case you forgot, you wanted to know what I thought, what I was thinking
Is that you’re beautiful. You are beautiful.
The most amazing thing is the smile of an African child with uninterrupted dreams.
One who can say “I am all that I am! Not all that I seem!”
And I am going to continue along these themes
They say that “Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitudes”
but who among the masses wants to remain a slave?
Raise your hand if you want to be listened to and raise a fist if you’re willing to be brave.
As for myself, I will only march and parade behind the flag that Freedom and Justice wave.
They want to control your soul, so they say its only Jesus, but I know its only Love that saves
But sometimes I have questions, so I bend my knees and raise my head and hands to the sky.
I get down and I ask God “Why?”
But I already know the answer, I always have.
The truth lies right before me,
And so I pledge to walk this walk
To Fight this fight
To live this life
Of a Freedom Fighter
Until the day I die.

Freedom Fighter

Freedom Fighter

I identify most closely with those labeled “causes lost”
The little brothers and sisters they call upon when they need some battles fought
When someones got to get gassed or shot
And whether you believe it or not
They are training, mining and finding our children in these inner city schools
They’ve labeled them generation “XYZ” aka Shining Happy Fools
But I know that they are nothing less than Shining Diamonds and Precious Jewels
The masters tools?
We are going to take them and remake them.
Creating all these new laws to control our lives
While we steady innovatin on how to break them.
and when I see my people I’m yelling “As Salaam Alaikum”
Whether you’re Muslim or not
Because for you, my brother? Peace. Love. Happiness.
Your back is all I got.

In case you forgot, you wanted to know what I thought, what I was thinking
is that you’re beautiful. You are beautiful.
The most amazing thing is the smile of an African child with uninterrupted dreams.
One who can say “I am all that I am! Not all that I seem!”
And I am going to continue along these themes

They say that “Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitudes”
but who among the masses wants to remain a slave?
Raise your hand if you want to be listened to and raise a fist if you’re willing to be brave.
As for myself, I will only march and parade behind the flag that Freedom and Justice wave.
They want to control your soul, so they say its only Jesus, but I know its only Love that saves.

But sometimes I have questions, so I bend my knees and raise my head and hands to the sky.
I get down and I ask God “Why?”
But I already know the answer, I always have.
The truth lies right before me,
And so I pledge to walk this walk
To Fight this fight
To live this life
Of a Freedom Fighter
Until the day I die.

She Thug...Poem

She Thug

She thug
Real hard
Hit hard as a man
Hold it down for hers better than anyone
Coz she bleed regularly

Cause and she ain’t afraid of pain
Ain’t nothing worse than the pain she seen
already

Forced down behind her building
In the grass
Focusing on the clouds above her
Right past the man/boy on top of her
Past the pain in her ass and knees
She stays focused right past the pain

Stay clear
She thug hard
Hard as any man can
Say “bitch” better than anyone
Coz she know better than anyone what it truly means to be one

To not give a fuck
To ride or die
Sometimes just to die
But no one will ever know she tired of riding

Been ridden way too hard too many times
Forgot what it was like to be soft and tender
She thug hard

Hard as anyone could
Got to be hard to keep the hurt out
Her walls? Built real tall.

She feel like the key been thrown away
Nobody knows she sings real low soft and sweet
Into her pillow
Cry her self to sleep nightly
She sing right through her pain
She know she got to stay hard, cool and thug real hard.

i do not love america

I do not love America.

I do not tear up at the sight of the red white and blue. Fireworks on the fourth of july, just remind of me of wars of aggression against foreign people. Independence day is a farce because my people were in no way free. On thanksgiving I say prayers for the blood of the indigenous slain and dispossessed.

The Pledge of Allegiance is like acid in my mouth. I will not speak lies about this country. I will not speak lies about this country. I will not believe this countries lies.

I cannot rationalize the Westward expansion or the growth of industrial capitalism, nor can I comprehend the human feelings behind rationalizing the slave trade. No amount of strangeness or animosity could make me think what happened to us was in any way okay. I think that if I were white and linked in any way to the oppression of indigenous or African people, I would not be able to live a quiet life.

Some people say “Well it is a whole lot better here than any other place.” I don’t bother to argue, but I do wonder how many of the people that say that have ever lived any other place. And what makes it better? Is it the cable television? Is it the shopping? Is it the “freedoms”? Or is it just the fact that if I can manage to secure a place in the Middle Class, that I can get enough stuff to insulate me from the things that make me feel uncomfortable? I can get a job that will take me from in front of the kids who grew up in tabloid television homes. I can move into a neighborhood where there are not as many homeless people. I can eat Japanese, or Chinese or Indian or Soul food, any time I want. I can consume a whole lot more than I can in other places. I can send my son to a school where I can be reasonably certain that he is going to get a basically sound education. Are these the things that make America “better?” I have heard a lot of people say that it is the diversity of the people here in the US, this is one of the things that makes America great. Most places where I go, there are still a majority of white people just outside the door of that place, so that to me doesn’t count. A little pocket here and there, a few belts of cosmopolitan behavior, that does not matter to me. None of these things make me feel in my heart that America is the best place for me.

What would make me love America is if I felt like America loved me. If America really valued me and people like me. If I felt like America wasn’t super eager to throw my sons' precious life in front of some bullets, if America showed me in some real substantive way that I was a valuable citizen. That what I said mattered, that the issues of my community were American issues, and then I would maybe begin to love America.

Instead America has never loved me, she has always, always, always treated me and others like me, as if we didn’t matter, like what we have to say is not that not that important. I am forever “special interest” America has loved my labor, my music, my food, my body, my blood, but she has never loved me. She has never loved me enough to say that she was sorry for hurting me, for abusing my children, for treating us, my special interest group, like we were beneath the regard of the rest of her “regular” citizens.

No, America has never loved me, never respected me, never treated me well at all. She has always treated me like shit, has always turned a deaf ear to my pleas and when I did love her, she didn’t love me back.

growing up

There are a lot of changes happening in my life. I know that I could announce them here, but since I don't even write in this thing regularly, no one reads it. I have been a bastard, I've done a lot of really effed up stuff, but through it all i have thought that I would come throught it on the other side a better human being. Sometimes I didn't even realize what a bastard I was being.
I have been a terrible dissapointment to my family, i hope it is not too late to redeem myself.
Okay in other news, I went to church. Being in a good church is always a good thing, to be around other people who have faith in God as the basis for their life. When it comes to me and God, my walk has always just been me and the Man Upstairs.My belief in God comes from the basis that my mom and grandmom laid down and the experiences that I've had that confirm that belief.
My prayers have always been answered. I seem to land on my feet no matter how far I fall. God is always good to me.