Not Another Tape

Not Another Tape

Not Another Tape!
Not another state sanctioned assination
Not another black body to mourn.
There is a grieving happen all over this place.
This grief is for the pigmented ones…
our sister brother cousin ones
often suppressed, miseducated, envied yet hated ones
…it feels like a permeant state this grief.
How do you live when we always dying?
How you living … we crying?
To love under oppression is to be in a constant state of grief, lost, sadness, anger?
Fatha Baldwin named it a constant state of rage.

This rage is blazing in the bellies of us the tired ,fighting, resisting, ones
Yea you I feel you raging, you the fired up and ain’t taking it no more ones.
The old, young, wild, free, bold, queer, conscious and laying your bodies on the gears, facing fear, protesting, yelling, campaigning, demanding, and building a better world, ones.
This rage is a flame burning in the hearts of weeping mothers who’ve buried children shot down by these systems.
There is a grieving happen all over this place.
This grief is for the pigmented ones…
our sister brother cousin ones.
Targeted by too many violent system ones.

This grief is radiating from all us.
The ones who hurt when people hurt.
Those who feel powerless to stop the assault on black, brown, poor, and anybody who refuses to bow to state violence.
There is a grieving happening all over this place accompanied by a battle cry.
One moment we’re crying the next fighting.
When you’re done crying how and why
on the backs of those tears
are what now …lets go… can’t stop now… . ‪#‎strugglecontinues‬ ‪#‎DiryArtBoi‬

 

 

Refining Tunes/Tools.

Letting go of the pacifiers and tools we have developed to survive is a daily challenge.  How does one move forward when the very things that once propelled you through  your darkest moments are now hindering you?    

Music is a big part of my self care practices. I have songs for everything.This summer I deleted most of the gospel music from my music library.  When I get really emo and home sick, missing my mother in particular, I fiend for my gospel hits. My mother put me on to Fred Hammond and my old soul gravitated towards Shirley Cesar and Betty Griffin Keller when I was teenager.  I think I love gospel music for the same reasons I love rap music, it is fantasy, myths, truths,  and reflections of the black experience wrapped in the drama and creativity that happens when Africans make music.  I think some call it soul. They both  weave stories of our lives with a boldness that   speaks to the core of what it means to be human. 

On the flip side I can only listen to but so much of both gospel and rap music because with those reflections come the legacy of violence, trauma , self hate, and all the other isms that color our experience as Africans in Amerikkka.  The music I’ve used to get through in the past can perpetuate the same things I’m working daily to unlearn and resist.

My use of gospel music as a coping mechanism and false sense of security was blocking my ability to develop sustainable tools for dealing with reality.  The tools that are instrumental to this thing called liberation. Its difficult to take the meat and leave the bones in any situation. There are still many songs both rap and gospel that I will use as tools of survival and inspiration but every now and than you gotta  clean house and reduce some harm.

Its a difficult tightrope I walk every time I click through my iPod.  Music is powerful it can indoctrinate you with your oppressors propaganda while showering you with the strength needed to step back from the myths again and again.

Once Twice a Con lets move on.

I support black people of all genders and classes getting together to celebrate our beauty and to develop political platforms but the million man march is a joke. It’s political grand standing and theatre at best. Anyone who would follow that slimy shady, sexist, classist, homophobic, megalomaniac, Louis Farrakhan is a fool. I just have to say it. He has done so much damage his hands are stained with Malcom’s blood. With All the resources he has built through his temple and followers in Chicago their impact on the south side should be 10x what it is. He’s just an old time hustling ass preacher who found a nice con in pushing Islam and claiming to continue Elijah Muhammad’s Legacy. It’s really sad and disappointing to see black folks so thirsty for political attention that we would follow that man for another symbolic March.After all the political activity this past year where is the event to build alliances between recently politically active young people and previous generations? We don’t have to agree on everything but can we agree to stop following snakes who continue to degrade women and poor people for starters? Can we agree to put a pause on useless marchers until we build some strategic alliances amongst ourselves that will have a direct impact on the violence of poverty they are using to keep our people in economic and psychological choke holds? Can we try to do this without people trying to build brands, get rich in the process, or trying to become the next mayor/president. Surely we have realized after multiple million men marches and countless black mayors,senators,and even a president that our strengths and solutions ly somewhere else amongst ourselves outside the trappings of respectability, capitalism, and the american political system.

More Than Justice

You Shine We Shine

We do not have to agree on everything for me to be your fan, supporter, and a person who enjoys seeing you do well. This is apart of what it means for me to practice solidarity. If we truly believe that our freedom and happiness is tied together across many intersections then when I shine you shine and vis versa. Competition can be fun but is often bred in us to keep us divi

ded. We have to intentionally work against the urges to compare and compete for profit over people. A common challenge to this are our own insecurities and ignorance of self. When you are ok with who you are you don’t need to compare nor do you feel threatened at others’ success. Now someone else’s success or shine at the expense of my peeps or liberation politic thats another story.