Political Power on Demand: The Coming of the New Black Political Journalism

By Sala Nkrumah

Clearly the fight for the hearts and minds of the people is always at the basis of any aroused political struggle, and this is especially true for African Americans. But with the dissolution of commercial black radio and the drowning out of any progressive alternatives in black music leaves, there is little room left to ideologically challenge the racist-capitalist order through the use of traditional journalism.

The white power structure is sophisticated and capable of changing and adapting. Since the close of the second world war and the emergence of the U.S. as an neocolonialist empire, it has responded to ideological and financial challenges from the developing countries by pulling the dagger of neo-liberal economic reforms out of its red and white cloak to stab, cut, beat and batter the peoples of Latin American, Africa and Asia in responses to their demands for justice.

In reaction to domestic pressure, it touts and promotes Barack Obama, the pro-imperialist black man, to create the allusion of electoral fairness and democracy when in reality is that Obama only represents the narrow, superficial class interests of the traditional elements of the power structure.

They distract the youth by pushing images of Jay-Z holding the arm of Beyonce, telling us this is news, this is journalism. The truth is, however, none of that crap is news and what the practice is not journalism. What they are passing off on us are false gods and perverse idols used by the power structure to make money and destroy the culture. While we have deeply distracted consumers, we also have the reality of the prison industrial complex.

2007 requires progressives and revolutionaries to not only think “outside the box,” but also to operate in a world where there are few guideposts. With the growth of high-speed Internet, viral video, bogging, portable educational devices (MP3 players, Ipods, etc.), we now have at our disposal mediums which negate the white corporate centralization of ideas and information. But by no means should we abandon the revolutionary struggle using newspapers, radio shows etc. to get the word out.

In addition to revolutionizing art in the form of black political theater, we must expand our political arsenal to include these new mediums. Historically, we have not only anchored our political foundations on the works of Huey P. Newton, the Black Panther Party, Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon, among others, but we have rested on the laurels of their often outdated models to reach our community.

I dare speculate that if Elijah Muhammad were here today, he would use youtube to never miss a day to denounce the wicked white man. Malcolm would have recognized that since he could not always travel abroad, he turn to other methods to communicate his message internationalized revolutionary struggle. Even Dr. Du Bois would have used the new technology to carve out a new avenue to reach into the souls of black folk. Imagine King’s poor people campaign under these realities.

This reality, just as everything in life, has an expiration date. Already corporations like AOL/Time Warner, Google, AT&T, as well as a bastion of other monopoly capitalists are lobbying congress to repel “net neutrality.” They are trying to privatize the Internet for high priced corporate bidders, making it expensive for small guerilla operations to access the web. So we must use what we can to keep the black genocide from taking place and being completely blacked out. We must support already existing institutions like Original World Magazine, A7 Movement, and always take a deeper look at the ways we conduct our struggle.

Music for your thoughts:

http://www.zshare.net/audio/01-allah-u-akbar-mp3.html

http://www.zshare.net/audio/06-drop-bombs-mp3.html

http://www.zshare.net/audio/dont-you-wish-you-had-what-you-had-when-you-had-it-mp3.html

The Falsification of King Tut: A Black Philadelphia Proposal

By Hannibal Casanova
A Philadelphia based cultural analysts and activist

Each generation out of relative obscurity must discover its mission fulfill it or betray it.
Fanon

The essential nature of this brief paper is to outline a proposal, giving emphasis to some of the critical questions and concerns facing Black Philadelphia’s activists, organizations, historians, communities and especially educators, in an attempt to mobilize a resistance movement against the local Falsification of King Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, appearing at the Franklin Institute from February 3rd through the end of September of 2007.

In June 2005, the magazine issue of National Geographic featured on its cover “The new face of King Tut.” This was a facial reconstruction done by way of “forensic Science” and a “computerized tomography scanner” (CT scanner) which produced over 1,700 digital x-ray images under the direction of Dr. Zahi Hawass and his ‘Supreme Council of Antiquities.’ While I am for the advancement of science, technology, and computers (only because our antecedents the ancient Egyptians were the creators of science), I am on the other hand, vehemently against “Science and Oppression” as articulated brilliantly by the late African-centered Egyptologist and philosopher Professor Jacob Carruthers Ph.D.

I have a problem with this deliberate reconstructive (one can argue deconstructive) and whitened caricature of the once royal Black African Boy king (Pharaoh Tutankhamen, [?-1328 B.C.E.]) of ancient Egypt (originally called Kemet), who lived approximately 3,300 years ago (18th dynasty), now reduced into a white computerized hybrid (strangely resembling a ‘middle eastern’ Turkish monk). Dr. Hawass laudably brags about his “forensic miracle” and parades his council and exhibition around the country.

The exhibition arrived here at the Franklin Institute in February of this year (Black history month, remember). Among his many installations are three facial bust of king Tutankhamen reconstructed from the boy king’s mummified corpse. There are several problematic implications that should be considered here by our educators and cultural activist in the community (exception, ASCAC and The King Tutankhamen Committee, who are already involved in this battle):
1) the continued attack, onslaught, rape and disrespect for African classical history and civilization;
2) the relentless utilization of revisionist history and science for oppression in the forensic reconstruction of an African Pharaoh Tutankhamen into a Western Arabized white caricature;
3) the delusional reconstructive facial changes from its indigenous African ancestral cultural features;
4) the continued forgeries and thieveries of ancient Egyptian artifacts; and
5) “What is to be done” (V.I. Lenin’s prophetic tract) by us in the Black/African and African-American community?

Moreover, according to historian and Egyptologist, Anthony Browder, author of the seminal and mammoth work Nile Valley Contribution to Civilizations, I have followed Hawass’ career for years and was not surprised by his findings. He has consistently stated that ancient Egypt was not an African Civilization and that indigenous Africans played no role in the history and early development. Hawass is also the driving force behind the King Tut exhibition which is currently touring the United States (personal communication, 2005); In addition, according to scholar activist, Mario Beatty Ph.D., author of the dissertation and magnum opus The Image of Celestial Phenomena in The Book of Coming Forth By Day: An Astronomical and Philological Analysis, and his masterful essay “Maat: The Cultural and Intellectual Allegiance of a Concept.” We must be political astute enough to recognize that we must self-consciously protect and defend the sacredness of African history and culture in the face of enemies who are equally, if not more, committed to preserving the sacredness of something different that has absolutely nothing to do with humanizing the world and who have no problem erasing African tradition in the process.

Professor Chiekh Anta Diop Ph.D., trained physicist, historian, masterful thinker, researcher and Egyptologist, author of the treatise African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, prophetically reminds us about our aim and objective as critical thinking people of the African race (I do understand that race is a social construct):

Ancient Egypt was a Negro [African] Civilization. The history of Africa will remain suspended in air and cannot be written correctly until African historians dare to compare it with the history of Egypt [Kemet]. It will be impossible to build … a body of African human sciences, so long as that relationship does not appear legitimate. The African historian who evades the problem of Egypt is neither modest nor objective, nor unruffled; he [she] is ignorant, cowardly and neurotic…The ancient Egyptians were Negroes [Africans]. The moral fruit of their civilization is to be counted among the assets of the Black world

Instead of presenting itself to history as an insolvent debtor, that Black world is the very initiator of the ‘western’ civilization flaunted before our eyes today. Pythagorean Mathematics, the theory of the four elements of Thales of Miletus, Epicurean materialism, Platonic idealism, Judaism, Islam, and modern science are rooted in Egyptian cosmogony and science. In a word, we must restore the historical consciousness of the African peoples…

Also, we must be intellectually and politically brave enough, to ask and answer these following critical and pressing questions: What are the implications when a historical wrong is allowed to tour our nation unchecked? Why should we as a Philadelphia African-American conscious thinking community allow this historical bamboozlement to come into our city unchallenged? What weak rationalizations would we skillfully tell our children about our inability or unwillingness to speak truth to power? What responsibility does the School District of Philadelphia have in allowing this miss-educational forgery to go unquestioned (specifically because this was the first city to implement African & African-American history into its school curriculum as a requirement)? And lastly, in the spirit of the Millions Man March, now the Millions More Movement, are we not in complicity with this historical blunder if we allow this fabricated exhibition to pass through our backyard critically unaddressed?

Clearly, many Africans, African-American scholars, and African/Black Egyptologists have raised these critical questions and concerns about this falsification of (Tut) African history and tradition. Therefore, the task confronting our communal “organic intellectuals” (Antonio Gramsci’s famous revolutionary conception) and people (in Philadelphia) is to rediscover, reclaim and recapitulate ourselves towards our African and African-American worldview. As a result, of this historical and ancient thievery (invasion and plunderous act of King Tutankhamen’s sacred and historical tomb), I am proposing the following action plans for a tentative initiation:
• Accepting the brave and conscious task of exposing, defending, and protecting the recent corruptive image of King Tutankhamen as an organizational agenda item for critical investigation in your group’s mission statement of this new 2007 year.
• Developing a committee that will put together tactics, strategies, and propaganda outreach activities for the development of a communal thrust against the Franklin Institute’s distorted exhibition. Also, our initiation must be well organized and planned to produce an effective protest resistance against the Institute’s falsified exhibition of this computerized and manufactured King Tutankhamen.
• Developing a nationwide (and local) calls for our African and African-American historians and Egyptologists to lead the debate (via T.V., radio, museum panel, communal colloquium, churches, etc.) over the historical and continued distortion of our ancient Nile Valley civilization.
• Developing a well defined Coalition/Alliance with local and nationwide groups that are already involved in this intellectual warfare of history such as the study groups, ASCAC and King Tutankhamen committee, for the purpose of collaborating to forge a community movement against this falsification of our historiography.
• Encouraging Black (local and international) writers to produce essays, articles, and protest letters to be infused into the local papers in our communities (local and international) that will uncover historical facts and give intellectual emphasis/clarity to the historical authenticity of the African/Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen.
• Calling the National Geographic magazine and insisting that they stop their subjective and false propaganda that places Egypt in the mythical “Middle East” or “Mediterranean” and begin publishing the facts that Egypt belongs to the physical African continent.
• Developing a proposal that will call on the Millions More Movement’s Educational Committee to begin monitoring the School District of Philadelphia (and the School Reform Commission) for a progress report on authenticating the practical application of the African and African-American history course, specifically the history of Egypt (originally called Kemet), which was already infused into the Public School curriculum framework of 2005.

The aforementioned action steps are just the preliminary and tentative stages which are recommended action plans to activate a practical application. Furthermore, the author is open to change or modification according to the philosophy and ideology of the group’s methodological and cultural aims and objectives. In other words, nothing is written in cement or stone (plus, this proposal belongs to the Black/African people of Philadelphia who believe in factual historical congruency). Again, the aim and objective of the author of this proposal is to alert the various organizations and Black communities to prepare/include in their organizational meetings strategies to hopefully defend and protect our sacred Egyptian (Kemetic) historiography from being white washed right under and in our owned backyard.

Finally, and most importantly, we as a people need to recast, rebuke, and debunk, this Western terrorist invasion of our African ancestral consciousness. In the final analysis, only when we can excoriate from our African minds this Eurocentric epistemological conception of knowledge and information (Descartes’ I am because I think and because I think, therefore, I am, rather than Mbiti’s I am because we are and because we are, therefore, I am) can we really become a free and independent thinking people, and therefore, radically abandon this anti-intellectual vexation of self. Let us stop being isolated sideline lurkers of African (negro-centered) consciousness, wallowing in our self inflicted servility, and get (organically) involved in the African struggle to liberate our minds from our Western incarcerated conceptualizations. It is only then, that victory will be ours!

African Power!

Music for your thoughts (If you cannot clink this link through, copy and paste it in your url to download or listen to music.):

http://www.zshare.net/download/08-talk-to-me-featuring-jaguar-wright-m4p.html

http://www.zshare.net/download/02-spoonful-m4p.html

http://www.zshare.net/download/11-superstar-m4p.html

Dear White Folk: No Escape

Wondering where former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld might be these days? A good guess would be his get-away home in Maryland. The five bedroom, four bathroom and five fireplace home built in 1804 has an interesting history that is linked to the sacred African American fight for justice and democracy.

The name of Rumsfeld’s mini estate is Mount Misery. In1833 Edward Covey, a farmer notorious for breaking unruly slaves for other farmers, owned the home. One slave sent to Covey to be broken was the rebellious 16-year-old Frederick Douglass, who went on to become the great anti-slave labor activist. Covey assaulted Douglass, and Douglass kicked Covey’s ass and fled North (remember Malcolm talking about the field Negro).

Vice President Dick Cheney and his even more right wing wife, Lynn, a real whiteness nut, live about two miles up the road from Mount Misery on their get-away mini estate, Ballintober.

The irony for white folks here is that no matter what escapist narrative they try to conjure, whether it be sun-tanning or making authentic American music, they always end up in the geography of black people’s struggle (meaning the fight for justice) and pain.

Imagine if all of America had the political sophistication to embrace the attitude of black people about Iraq before the ill-fated invasion. Based on our history in this country, we knew that an American invasion of Iraq would end in bloody disaster. If there is any justice in the universe, one could only hope that Mount Misery might open up and swallow Rumsfeld and suck-up crazy Dick and Lynn Cheney too.

Another, more considered justice awaits George W. Bush, the real butcher of Baghdad.

Music for your thoughts. If this link does not take you directly to a page to download this song, copy the link and paste it in your url.

http://www.zshare.net/download/13-love-from-the-sun-slowdown-m4p.html

http://www.zshare.net/download/01-let-my-people-go-m4p.html

Murals: Insipid, Not Inspiring

By Joseph P. Blake

I did something the other day I don't normally do - I stopped to look at one of the many murals that decorate the walls of Philadelphia. I'm not a big fan of murals, at least not the kind usually found in communities bordering on full-scale gentrification, such as Mantua and parts of North Philadelphia. This day, however, my attention was drawn to one painted on the side of a house next to a vacant lot on 16th Street near Montgomery, right across the street from Temple's athletic field. It features images that are almost otherworldly in their presentation and somewhat spooky and unnerving in design.

Dominant is a man blowing a whiff of smoke from his mouth that floats off and blends into another interesting scene of children playing. I thought the colors were nice, but it had no impact on me other than to say, "Hmmm. That's interesting." For me, that meant it was, unfortunately, like so many other murals in economically compromised neighborhoods: It was a snapshot of a moment, thought, or perception unconnected to anything in the neighborhood or anyone living there. There was no greater "thing" being hinted at, and certainly no reason to be moved in any way, which is what I think any good public art usually does. I've seen wall art (I think the word mural in Philly has evolved into something less than worthy of its meaning) on buildings from Mexico City to the suburbs of Rome, Paris and London. All are major cities with areas that look eerily familiar in some cases to Mantua and sections of North Philadelphia.

There, the art is usually of a political or deeply historical nature and expresses a view that is born of passion and defiance and pays tribute to heroes both local and ideological.The closest I've seen to something like that in my hometown is the wall art in Chinatown that features a hand representing the community stopping the bulldozers from razing their neighborhood to make way for a ballpark/convention center/parking lot/whatever.

That feeling of community and defiance comes through loud and clear and is an inspiration to view. And that, in essence, is what troubles me about these feel-good murals in areas under stress from poverty, violence, and now, gentrification.
Instead of showing passion, compassion, and a spirit of self-determination and permanence, these murals have no more impact than a smiley face on a T-shirt.
It is no different than painting homey scenes over the boarded-up windows of abandoned buildings, which actually was done on North Broad Street near Lehigh Avenue. I know people will say, "Well, the community asked for this," or that the community "was consulted before this mural was painted." My response to that - if that's true in all cases - is that then there is a deeper disconnect between reality and perception than I had imagined. Also, few, if any, of the artists who do the actual paintings come from the community they are interpreting on the wall.

Perhaps I'm being harsh. Perhaps these murals are serving some purpose I'm too cynical to notice. Perhaps they're providing inspiration, education, or even community service for someone in need. But from where I stand, gazing at vacant lots, as real estate speculators with New Jersey and Delaware tags drive slowly through and presage impending increases in taxes that will force the same people represented in the mural to move - well, I'd be more impressed if there were a hand somewhere in there stopping a bulldozer, or something else showing self-determination, entrepreneurship, or political enlightenment.

So when Prince Charles and his bride Camilla take a tour of the murals during their upcoming visit here, I wonder what will cross their minds and if any of those thoughts will have anything at all to do with the people the murals are supposed to represent.

Joseph P. Blake, a former Inquirer editor, is a freelance writer

In Pursuit of My Dreams While Watching the Academy Awards Show

By Wil Durant

I have watched two awards show so far this season, the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards and I will watch the Academy Awards show in March. The reason is that I, a mature African American man, am in the process of transforming my life and pursuing a dream that I have held onto since I was a child. As a black man, it is difficult enough to survive, but to survive and chase a dream is like fearlessly walking across a minefield. But like our dignity, we can never give up on our dreams.

I was six years old, in the first grade talent show, when I sang “Just Walking in the Rain” in a yellow, rubber raincoat and hood with two little girls walking back and forth in raincoats and parasols, as I belted out this 1950’s hit about a broken hearted guy. I remember the bright lights of the stage and the thunderous applause. I remember happily running off stage, into my grandmother’s waiting arms. She picked me up and hugged me, one of the few times I remember. Thus began my love of acting.

I was in a class play, sometimes with lead roles, every year except when I went to the predominantly white high school. There, I didn’t take drama until my senior year. The Drama teacher, Mrs. Chamberlain, cast me, in the only role she could think of in the Senior Class production of “Taming of the Shrew,” playing an effete, but comic dress designer, who overreacts to Petruchio's destruction of the gown he’s designed for Kate’s wedding. This was 1968 in North Carolina and it should be noted that the only other Black person who had been on that stage was probably cleaning it. I thought I should have played Petruchio, but, hey, I made the most of my moment on stage.

Acting did not work for me as a way of making a living, mainly because I was poor and caught up in the sixties. The idea that you could do this and make money was almost as remote as going into space. There were so few Black folks in movies and television, this still being the era when neighbors would call one another with a BPOTV (Black Person on TV) alert.

Even though I dreamed and secretly wanted to go in front of a camera, no one said it was possible. No one said, “Kid, you can do it.”
I continued acting in college, thinking I would settle in New York, write and maybe act. Well, I ended up in Philly.

Though I did a couple of festivals and avant-garde plays, I still could not envision myself as a paid, professional actor. It took a back injury to give me the courage to go after my dream. In the course of my recovery, I began to list all things I wanted to do but for one reason or another, hadn’t gotten around to yet. I had never been injured before, and the idea occurred to me that I might not recover. Guess what was at the top of the list.

When I think about it, I am amazed that - despite being rather diffident and loaded with self doubt - I can somehow reach deep inside myself and find the confidence that allows me to step into an artistic arena that is rife with judgment and assessment just so that I might have the opportunity to assume the reality of some character brought to life by a piece of script I just read. To the extent that I could do that, and sell that reality for that moment, is the measure of my success. But God, when I’m good or witness somebody else who is good and rewarded for it, I love it! I’ll be watching.

I now have the nerve to actually tell people, “I’m an actor.” Of course, in self-deprecation, I always add that I’m not making much money at it. Money, I know, is the measure of success in America, but the pursuit of a dream is worth a fortune.

So, I’ll watch the Academy Awards and be excited for my favorites and feel some bit of kinship to those actors, and keep my dream close by.

Music for your thoughts. If you cannot clink through this linkl, copy and paste it in your url to download mp3.

http://www.zshare.net/audio/01-i-shall-not-be-moved-alternate-take-mp3.html


http://www.zshare.net/audio/bahamadia_uknowhowwedu-mp3.html