FreeQuency: "The Gospel of Colonization"

When Mwende "FreeQuency" Katwiwa started speaking this piece, I thought, "Oh, good! This is going to be about immigration. We need that so much right now."

And then she dropped the words "Jesus Christ" into a sentence and I thought, "Oh, dear. I didn't know she was into that."

See, the thing is, FreeQuency is located in New Orleans (about 45 miles from where I live) so we've been in contact about her coming to my campus in the spring. But while there's nothing wrong with being a Christian, of course, in Louisiana, it's often connected to a particularly conservative -- and even oppressive -- worldview. So I was startled and momentarily disappointed, but she quickly moved on.

Only a matter of seconds later, she was channeling Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and I was, again, a FreeQuency fangirl.

FreeQuency is the current Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion. If you haven't been exposed to her before, you're about to find out why.

America, the Beautiful...or Not

All this needs today is "America, the Beautiful" playing in the background while Porsha O. gives it to us from her perspective.

Porsha O: "Capitalism"

Kai Davis: Fuck I Look Like?

I came to Louisiana for a nine-month temporary gig in August of 2007. So, by the time I finish this school year, I will have taught here for a decade. The day I arrived, I was told, "You will find our students lacking. They're under-prepared. They don't like to read. And they don't know that's a problem."

My thought at the time was, "Even if that's true, why would somebody say that to me on Day One? That's like calling students incapable before I even meet 'em." But it turned out that, by and large, I was being told the truth.

On the other hand, I eventually learned (on my own) that, while any low income student might demonstrate the traits I had been warned about and even students from families with money might have succumbed to the traits along the way, Black students, in particular, were the most likely to arrive as first year students looking and sounding like they fit the profile.

Then, I started dragging them to my office one at a time to explain the okey-doke. I assured them that, with a little input and a lot of effort -- despite the obstacles placed in front of them since birth -- they could build the boat while it was in the water and they were standing in it. Over the years, more than a few have proven me right.

The upshot is that, while many classes on the campus have two or three Black students at most in them, my classes tend to weigh in at 30% or better Black -- even the first year students who just arrived and are taking Intro courses with 90 students in them. It's not because I'm wonderful. It's because I tell them the truth. And I know who they are. And in the mirror of my face they see themselves succeeding. Because -- given a real shot -- they are ferociously ready to learn and ready to teach.

On Baltimore, Just So You Know

Staceyann Chin: "All Oppression Is Connected"

Sunni Patterson: "We Made It!"

I have posted this before, but this needs to be viewed again and again. Because it's true. And true is as good as it gets.

Whatever Happened To The Jackal?

I just learned that the infamous prison on Riker's Island in New York City holds 14,000 prisoners, about three times as many as Angola State Pen here in Louisiana. M-m-m! So of course, at some point shortly, I'll be posting again on the topic of prison.

In the meantime, I came across the YouTube video above that tells the story of what happens to put some men in those places. In her poem, "To An Aspiring Junkie," Maya Angelou wrote: "Climb into the streets, man, like you climb into the ass end of a lion." Guitarist Ronny Jordan and spoken word artist Dana Bryant communicate the same message in their own inimitable fashion.

Tit for Tat?

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." -- Mahatma Gandhi

It's been a rough week for America. And those of us who write for publication find ourselves in a bit of a bind. Political correctness has taken on a whole new meaning in the aftermath of the shooting spree by a mentally ill young man in Arizona a week ago yesterday. Six people are dead; thirteen more were injured. And even Sarah Palin (ever the clever) was reduced to defending her "don't retreat, re-load" rhetoric as the perfectly reasonable "political debate process" in which all elected officials participate (proving yet again that she believes no one else is paying any more attention to reality than she is).

Fwoan at For Want of a Nail discussed last week how the incident is now being used to suggest that any criticism of the Powers-That-Be may incite to violence -- using a tragedy to further entrench Power and push any fascist agenda. Jack Crow at The Crow's Eye reminds us in the wake of President Obama's oration at the funeral of nine-year-old Christina Green, one of the shooting victims, that the collective Presidency since 9-11 has been responsible for the deaths of many innocent children in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan (at least), so Obama's words are disingenuous at best. And, frankly, I think about violence so much -- because we are surrounded by it 24/7 -- I sometimes worry I'm going to succumb to compassion fatigue and be found in a closet somewhere with my thumb in my mouth. Even if I'm not bleeding, I ache for those who do.

And The Students Become The Teacher

It's been a tough week or so. I didn't get nearly enough sleep for one thing. And there's been rather a lot of drama related to the re-opened school de-segregation case as folks on our side have been head-butting senselessly. I just love when that happens. Not.

At least I finally finished my statement for the court on the effects of internalized oppression on children of color "educated" in the segregated school system in this parish. Then, I spent all day Tuesday watching the melodrama that is the court itself. On Wednesday, I started teaching a new course. And after class, while discussing Robert King's book on his life as one of the Angola 3 with a young man I had loaned it to, another young Black man I've been working with over the past eighteen months dropped by to invite me to a spoken word event he was performing in that night.

Now, understand that this man was not doing spoken word when we met. And he has struggled with his unfolding. But two months ago, he found his voice and he wanted to show me. So I went. And not only did he bring the house down, but he did it reflecting my teaching back to me. He took our conversations and turned them into an war cry about what Black people in the United States are up against today. He covered poverty and education and parenting and prison. (My favorite line was "Prison is Fort Knox and Black men are the gold...")

By the time he was finished, I was undone. And then the M.C. took the mic and told the beautiful young African-American audience that he wanted them all to give me props for what I had done to develop my student's mind so he could bring his poetry to the world.

And there I sat -- old, White, exhausted and grinning -- grateful to have the opportunity to be of service, grateful to be changing the world by feeding its children, grateful to be embraced and understood and appreciated for what is utter joy to me.

When he came into my office Thursday to give me the back story -- he's known as Giraffe on the spoken word circuit and if you pay attention, I suspect you'll come across him at some point sooner than later -- he turned me onto Sunni Patterson, another fine young African-American spoken word poet from New Orleans. So even though I don't have time or energy right this minute to make up for my lack of blogging lately, I'm posting this video as an offer of apology.


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NOTE: The graphic featured at the top of this post was skanked from the blog of another former student of mine, Omar, who left to write for and be the lead singer for Molotov Compromise. Omar has a new solo cd out, too, which you can check out (and buy) on his blog and his MySpace site.

A Song For Humans And Their Rights

When I get tired, my head works differently. More negative. Depressed. Sinking into some dark torpor. Swirling into a space I normally try to avoid.

Most of the time, however, when someone asks me how I am, I reply "Peachy!" And they laugh.

On Sunday, a cashier asked me how I was, and I quietly replied, out of nowhere, distracted and not even looking up, "Happy." We were both suprised.

"Happy?!" she exclaimed, startled. "As long as I've worked here, I don't believe I've ever heard a customer answer that way. Happy...humph."

But honestly, that's where I try to live. I mean, with people all over the world starving and being bombed by weapons of mass destruction and eating coca leaves to stave off the pangs of an empty stomach and snorting glue to kill the hopelessness; with people all over the world dying of infected mosquito bites and the result of drinking water that should not -- but must -- be drunk; with people all over the world being forced to make their bodies a sexual receptacle either because they do not have the power to resist or will not eat otherwise; with people -- even children -- all over the world fighting wars they never started and cannot win, despairing of ever again being free of the nightmares that have been deposited in their minds; how could I dare whine about my condition?

I eat, have health insurance, know my job (paying a living wage) will last at least until May. No one is subject to bomb my town tonight. I talked to my mother today on my daytime minutes and wasn't even worried about it. I have -- thanks to a lot of work and a lot of help -- bested most of the demons that were visited on me as a child. I do work I love. I no longer resent being born a woman. And overall, I do expect that, for the time being at least, my human rights are more or less protected. Looking like I look, living in the nation in which I live, having enough money to live on and having the support of others who care about me and know I dance well over the line sometimes, having been taught the skills of articulation and argumentation, having been granted the grace to finally stop apologizing for my existence, I am -- most of the time -- when I'm not tired, peachy.

But I am incredibly conscious of those who are not being allowed to exercise their basic human rights. The right to dignity, safety, privacy, and health, for example; the right to a decent education and meaningful work for a living wage; the right to express their views without being threatened, to worship the way they choose without harassment, and to participate in governing themselves without intervention; the right not to be locked up unjustly or tortured under any circumstances; and possibly above all, the right to equal treatment no matter what.

Last Friday, while starting my day in prayer and meditation, I suddenly began to cry. I couldn't stop the tears. I beseeched the Higher Power I call God to please save us from ourselves, to protect those who are powerless, to comfort those who are suffering for any reason, and to move on those who think they are the only ones who matter. I was a bit unnerved. The episode (as it were) came unexpectedly. And while it wasn't by a long shot the first time I've despaired of our human condition, its effect -- or the effect of what caused it -- has lingered.

And now here it is Human Rights Day. And I've been thinking about the death of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton, who was killed by the police on December 4th, 1969, for such heinous crimes as coming up with the first school breakfast program.

And I've been thinking about Joseph Conrad, whose book, Heart of Darkness, recounted the story of what Belgian King Leopold II did in the Congo between 1880 and 1920, killing, it is said, as much as half the population of the country in what Conrad called "the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of the human conscience." Conrad spent four months piloting a steamboat up the Congo River until he couldn't stand it any more, but it was ten years later before he could finally write down what he had seen, including the stuffed heads of Africans jammed onto stakes around a Belgian trading post. "The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary;" wrote Conrad, "men alone are quite capable of every wickedness."

And I've been thinking about how what Conrad saw and what Hampton experienced laid the ground work for the dual consciousness of my current students of color, who have been socialized to carry the belief in their hearts that they are inferior to people who look like me and that it is hopeless to imagine that they will ever be allowed to assume that their human rights -- the rights they OWN as citizens of the world -- will be respected.

My White students will write in a heartbeat how happy they are to live in a country where everybody's human rights are protected and how terrible it would be to live in a place like Iraq or Afghanistan where people are denied those rights. And my stomach turns. And my heart breaks a little more. And I become a little sadder.

Then I remember what Martin Luther King, Jr., once said: "I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality."

And I become a lot more resolute.

Carlos Andres Gomez

Black Amazon tipped me to this man recently, causing me to order his cd, "Live From New York," winner of the 2006 L.A. Music Award for Spoken Word Album of the Year. Receiving that cd, while I wait to purchase the upcoming dvd of his one-man show, "Man Up!", is now causing me to post this example of his work. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Carlos Andres Gomez performing "All We Have."