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.

Almost 05

And I'm thinking and praying more than usual. My friend Kamau is in Indonesia, and I am really worried that he may have been a victim in the catastrophe in S.Asia. So far, on the news there are 20,000 people dead. That's so many people. Lives taken, without warning. I can imagine, but it is a terrible thing to think about. I have been praying for my friend, and all those people that I don't know, but he must be close to. This is one of those "Acts of God" that takes life that there is no rationale for, nothing to do but accept it and try to help the living. The loss of life, that scale is hard to imagine. To be honest, I feel in a way selfish asking that my friend be safe when so many people have lost loved ones. Still I know, that it is not wrong, I just pray that those who have passed, pass on to peace.
I am leaving the country in two days, going to a place I have wanted to see since I can remember. Brazil has the largest population of African descendents outside of an African country. If it were an African country it would be one of the larger ones. I'm going to be there for about two weeks. Not enough time to really experience even the smallest part of the place but hopefully enough time to lay a foundation for friendship and my return.

I want to say a little about Xmas. I am a Christian, meaning that I follow Jesus Christ. Christmas has about as much to do with Jesus as the Easter Bunny. I prefer to call this time "the festival of mass consumption". Jesus would not want us to use this time to enrich ourselves and spend a bunch of money participating in and enriching this Babylon, this nest of snakes that we call the us, capitalism. Capitalism is the most anti christian force...well i won't go into more right now, I have give someone a ride and I wanted to get this out of my head before I forgot it.
Peace and Love.

African

It is hard to believe that I am only 3 generations away from African Slavery. My great uncle Sam died recently and he was one generation removed. He was born in 1914. His parents had been born in the late 1800's. Their parents, his grandparents, were enslaved Africans. African people were held in bondage for 246 years, and that is sixteen generations.
Sixteen generations of family dysfunction, cultural genocide and overall systematic oppression. It is hard to believe that even now, another 139 years after slavery was declared "un American", that we have forgotten how we got here, what we knew that held us together and the dreams of freedom that were thematic of our arts and expression.

I am an African. I was not raised with my language or as much African culture as I would have wished. I have only been to Africa once, but it changed me in a way that really helped me to who I am in relationship to the continent of Africa, the diaspora and the people who look like me.

For whatever reasons they have, many people have a problem with me and others claiming our heritage. Sometimes I am asked if I was born in Africa, if I have ever been to Africa, or if I know anything about Africa. It seems the underlying context is "If you knew anything about Africa you wouldn't be so quick to call yourself African." I have studied African history for a long time and I know that it is not all glorious. Some of it is bloody and unjust, much of what is going on in Africa now, the blame for it rests squarely on the shoulders of it's educated African leadership.

I am an African, in the same way that many of my friends are Mexicans andf Jews. Just because I don't speak the language of my forefathers or praise God the way my ancestors did, those things do not make me any less African.

Some poems I've written

This is the first poem I ever wrote. At age 12, I was a very "creative" kid. Constantly in my own world.

Big Blue Frog
I am a big blue frog
I am a big blue frog
I can fly though I don’t know whyI am a big blue frog
1982


This is a more recent poem, written just this year.
History

I do not want to be famous
Most men like me
Become famous by dying.
Most men, most people who think and act like me
Find their vindication in the grave

I do not want my name to go down in history
If they could:
Kill Fred
Kill George
Kill Medgar
Kill Malcolm
Kill Martin
Kill Bobby
Kill Jack

If they could kill Diallo-make his young body absorb
17/41 hot bullets
And not even taste Justice

Then what will they do for me?
When I do join my voice to that of those brave men And Demand Justice and Righteousness?
What will happen to me?

I want Peace
I want Justice
I want Love
I demand Freedom
I do not want to be famous
I do not want my name to go down in History
Covered in Blood
Mine or
my enemies’
Blood
Is just as precious
As my own
His dreams for his children
Just as strong as my own

His pain just as profound
His prayers just as fervent
His God just as real

If my name does go down in History
I wish it to be covered in Love
And flowers
From my enemies and Friends

I want to die of old age
Fighting for justice
Living as a free man
Believing in Love.
2004

I wrote this in 2000. When I was just getting to know my son and father again.

Five shots

I made sure I was fully loaded
Before I left to go and see him
The first time in a long while
I loaded all five shots carefully and left
When I saw him
I shot fast and all five shots
Caught him
Center mass
Knocked his ass right over
One in the head
Two in the heart
Another in the lungs
One in the gut
All five shots caught him
Center mass
Knocked his ass right over
I Love you daddy always
1 2 3 4 5
five shots

dedicated to my son Aaron and my father Jackie.

That's it for today.
-M

The FF would be pissed

Not the Fantastic Four, although I wish that there really were Superheroes to remind us of what is good. No, I mean the Founding Fathers, the Framers of the Constitution. The white dudes who jacked the US from the Natives. Maybe they wouldn't be mad, considering how they treated the people that were already here, how they treated the Africans and they were the ones who made the whole "Manifest Destiny" philosophy possible.

".... the right of our manifest destiny to over spread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federaltive development of self government entrusted to us. It is right such as that of the tree to the space of air and the earth suitable for the full expansion of its principle and destiny of growth."
-Sullivan 1839
An ok introduction to Manifest Destiny
http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/dialogues/prelude/manifest/d2aeng.html
A more comprehensive piece:
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/E/manifest/manifxx.htm

The White Mans' Burden
The white man is on the March. Reading early American literature and taking an historical look at the movement of people and power in the US, I can only assume that our nations' recent actions in Iraq are the manifestations of the Anglo need to expand and conquer whatever he can, at whatever cost.

I am horrified to see what this nation is doing. How can we call ourselves a nation of morals, values, of God loving individuals and families when we allow our troops to kill people for oil and power? How does that fit into the philosophy of Christ?

Bush is not a Christian. It is impossible that he is a Christian, just as it is impossible that a true Muslim would ever take an innocent life. There is nothing in the Gospel of Jesus that tells us that killing for any reason is okay. There are things that instruct us on how to be forgiven, but nothing that gives us permission to kill one another for any reason.
Bush is flouting Gods laws. He is a coward and an imbecile. Is he in DC trying to figure out a way to spread Goodwill and Peace through love? No. The President is busy finding ways to intimidate and kill people who do not believe as he does.

Since when is occupation liberation?
I look at Iraq and I see a nation of people who are used to fighting, for whatever their reasons are. People fight and kill each other. Nations have conflict. People rise to power and fall based on many factors. Saddam was a bastard. Okay no doubt. He was. But here are all these people, supposedly Iraqis fighting like hell to get the US out. Where were these men when Saddam was in power? Why weren't they suicide bombing him and shooting at his troops? If people wanted change so badly in Iraq, why when change came were they so hostile to the people who brought it? I don't have the answers, I don't know, I am just asking questions. I hate to see people die. I know that this situation could be lived out in another way. I see that America is becoming a malevolent empire and that the majority of the people here in this nation are complicit, that we are content to sit by and let the elite in this nation send our children to their deaths and condemnation for politics. That is sad and evil beyond words. I wish there was a way for me to wash away the stain and stink of being an American right now.We are not doing the right thing in Iraq and everything around us tells us that. The people in Fallujah are called "insurgents" and we are told that Americans have killed at least one thousand. So we are to believe that these people have the military strength to fight the US? I think not. What we are fighting is the idea that America is the "Great Satan". That we are evil. What then are we doing to disprove this notion? America has declared war on the Iraqi people, for no reason. There were no Iraqis piloting planes on September 11th. There were no weapons of mass destruction, no delivery system, no cooperation with Al-Qaeda. nothing. no threat. Iraq was no threat to the US. But I believe that if we continue to fuck up their country, kill their children and destroy their nation to make the world safe for America, that the fight is going to be brought to American shores. Some shit will blow up here, or some people will be poisoned, something bad. And then its going to be called "Terrorism" and that act is going to be the justification for a whole new round of aggression somewhere else. Of course to even suggest this is probably sedition, but I really believe that this government is acting against the best interests of not only the American people, but the whole world.


Fuck the Government
I also want to be clear that I love the American people, but I hate the government. The American people, my countrymen, I think are good in their hearts. It would be hard to convince someone who has been a victim of US aggression that, but I do believe that. I am an African American. I see America from the inside out, and I hate this place with a passion. Not the physical land that this Nation is located on, but the spiritual ground that it lays on.

I was always taught, in school anyway that America was a place where people came to flee poverty, religious persecution, to pursue freedom and liberty in the ways that they saw fit. Now the Right wing, millenialist Christians control the government and they seem to want the rest of us, to just toe the line. There is comparatively more "Freedom" here in America, than other places, but at what cost? And isn't the rest of the world just becoming more and more totalitarian? Is there anyplace where the free exchange of ideas is encouraged and the will of the people is implemented? Is there a place where the individual as well as the collective health is nurtured by the state? Not this place, not America. I came to understand at an early age, that America was a place where some white people (Anglo Saxons to be exact) came to set up a new outpost for people like them. They tried to dress it up in pretty words, but the people that have benefitted the most from America and all of its systems has been the descendents of those Anglo Saxons and the people who look like them. All the rest of us hyphenated Americans have just taken the crumbs. America is a place where you can lick off the bullies' plate, eat the leftovers from massas' plate. Where you can side with the the big kid that everyone else is afraid of.

That's enough for tonight.
Power to the peaceful. Please America wake up and do the right thing. We cannot continue to abuse the rest of the world.

Initial Rant

How in the Hell?
Did we get to this point? I hope Kerry wins. I really do, because Bush is a treasonous lying bastard in all forms, he is a damn devil. Please Lord, let Kerry win, because if he doesn't the Retarded ass Republicans have open license to screw us all over.