Will Obama Win Re-election

Given the Republican field and, more importantly, the crisis of financial capital, Obama, who showed his allegiance to it, the resources necessary to win re-election will be made available to him

Barbados: Can You Ever Go Home Again

By Terry E. Johnson

Stress in the work place is palpable. Money is tight. Cash starved businesses are barely holding on. The news is terrible, and it goes on and on and on. An inexpensive trip to Barbados may be just the thing to renew the spirit and help to re-focus on the brighter side of life.

That is exactly what I did recently. While in Barbados I ate so much good food that I had to jog almost every evening. There were belly laughs, too, - like the time a tourist thought she blew her head off while taste testing rum - and breathtaking panoramic views of beaches and sweeping landscapes.

The politics and history of the island are just as hypnotic as the sound of waves from the blue-green sea crashing onto the white sand beaches.

To get there, I jumped on US Airway’s newly inaugurated direct flights from Philadelphia to Barbados.

The last time I visited the Island was 23 years ago. So much as changed on the 20-mile long, 14-mile wide Island since then. Sugar used to be the main industry, but is tourism now. With the bustling tourism industry has come wide roads replacing narrow that used to be lined with sugar cane crops growing so close to the edge of the asphalt that you could hear the ruffling of cane leaves as cars swish by.

If street life is any indication of the quality of life on Barbados, one of the things that jumps out immediately is that unlike many other Caribbean Islands, there is very little bagging on Barbados. About the only desperate hawking of goods was the street corner stands selling coconut water.

It is easy to understand why the nation of 250,000 people could become a vacation destination. It has summer temperature at about 85 degrees, and the US dollar weighs in at 2-to-1 against the Barbados dollar. The island has a literacy rate of 98 percent. Though it is an English-speaking nation, a careful ear can pick up the African influenced in the Bajon dialect.

Tourism geared toward the British and Americans require strange contortions of a nation’s history. Some bits of history our distorted while other painful stories are completely ignored.

Barbados is among the most developed nations of the Anglophone Caribbean. Life, at least to the outsider, has a nice, easy flow. Soca is the music that animates life, but a new brand of hip hop influenced sounds is making its presence felt. Rihanna, a Barbadian singer, is one example of this new music.

Many of the homes on Barbados are built with cinder blocks and painted in vivid colors. The small wooden homes are called “chattel houses,” a term that goes back to the plantation days when the home owners would buy houses designed to move from one property to another.

I arrived on the Island at about 3 p.m., four hours after leaving Philadelphia flight. I jumped into a taxi and headed straight for Sweetfield Manor, a bed and breakfast at which I was booked for a four nights stay. It was a short ride.

Chris, the taxi driver, turned right into what at first appeared to be an ally with huge concrete walls until the van stopped at a high raw iron gate. The gate opened and we drove a short distance until reaching a huge white house surrounded by colorful flowers and palm trees.

George and Ann Clarke (Ann is an absolute charm, George talks too much) bought the property in 2002 and renovated it. They opened it in 2005 as a bed and breakfast. It is an inviting place with eclectic furnishings, reflecting the creativity of Ann, who is a painter and author of a children’s book. Guests stay in one of seven private, air-conditioned rooms. A former tennis lawn now contains a landscaped lagoon pool with a spa set into the upper rocks.

After a dinner that night at Brown Sugar Restaurant, which serves excellent food, I retired to my comfortable bed and slept well in preparation for a hearty breakfast and a fast moving day.

Ann is a great chef with some training coming from a culinary school in Florida, but most from her mother’s side while growing up in Michigan.

Most of her breakfasts are based on fruits and seasonings that are no more than a step or two from her kitchen door.

That first day, I woke up to a breakfast orange-pineapple juice; with; brochette wrapped eggs and mushrooms with tarragon sauce on top of a slice of roasted pineapple followed by a course of orange French toast.

I was so stuffed that I had to wrestle myself out of he chair to head off to an inexpensive visit to some of the historic sites in Barbados.

It is not just visiting historic sites that fascinate me, but it is also the moving around, the watching and listening to people, and brief stops at tiny stores that I find riveting.

Context is needed to appreciate contemporary life in Barbados. The Amerindians and Arawak Indians originally settled the island. Later the British introduced sugar cane to make rum. Eventually sugar became the dominant business. Some Irish Catholics were used as cheap labor, but as the plantations grew, an estimated 387,000 enslaved African workers were pressed into service.

My first stop was to the Lancaster Great House. On the way to Lancaster House, we drove through a traffic circle with a statue of a black man holding his arms in the air with broken chains dangling from his waist. It was a statue of Bussa, a slave rebel.

Bussa’s rebel helped speed the demise of slavery in Barbados. In the 18^th Century, Bussa launched an island wide rebellion aimed at toppling white plantation owners. Though he was killed in battle, his troops continued the fight until they were defeated by the superior fire-power of the British. Following Bussa’s attempt, and the end of slavery by the British, it was also ended in Barbardos.

Bussa was honored with the Emancipation Statue 169 years after that rebellion.

But everything about Barbados, the architecture, the music, the food, somehow goes back to the colonial, slaveholding period.

The Lancaster House is a magnificent example of 17^th Century architecture. It was built in the early 1799s almost certainly the result of master African craftsmen. Once owned by two acting governors, it is now an art gallery. The building as large, sweeping rooms and it is situated to maximize easterly winds. Like so many of the other sites in Barbados, with tropical flowers and birds, grounds of Lancaster house can leave one speechless.

After my visit there, I stopped by St. Nicholas Abby, one of one of only three Jacoban mansions in the Western Hemisphere.

Following lunch at a small seaside restaurant in Speightstown, I dropped by Arlington House Museum. The Museum is housed in an eighteenth century building and features three floors of exhibitions, including an interactive audio-visual display.

That evening I dined at 39 Steps Restaurant. While it is said that ambiance and good conversation can make any dinner good, I want to testify that this meal would have been great if I was eating it alone in an ally.

One of my favorite meals was fried flying fish. I had eaten it before, but I had forgotten how good it is. Flying fish is so intensely flavorful that it would be a capital crime to put hot sauce on it, and you know hot sauce and fried fish is a strong tradition.

These vignettes paint a brief portrait of how I spent my four days on Barbados. None of my site visits cost more than $10 to $15 Barbados dollars. While the bed and breakfast might have been a little pricy, rooms on the breaches can be had for very reasonable prices. So, on my trip to Barbados there was much good food, great people and a tropical paradise to die for.

One of my last visits was to the Mount Gay Rum bottling company, which is based in Bridgetown. I was taken on a wonderful tour of the factor with a hostess that wooed visitors with her ease and charm. Among the tourists were a man accompanied by two women. All three of them had pleasant smiles. After the group left the factory floor where the rum was poured into the bottles, we were taken to a bar area for a sniff and taste test.

The man and two women stood at the bar, which they could barely see over. As I listened to them, it was clear that they were British and seemed to have a strong Cockney accent.

The bartend explained the various brands made by Mount Gay and poured the brands into glasses. The man tasted the first one and indicated it was strong. One of the women tasted hers and grabbed onto the bar as she leaned slightly back.

When the second round came, the man began drinking his straight away. The bartender then laughed and said, ‘I see you’re warmed up.’ The man grinned and shock his head yes. This time the same woman smelled her rum and her body was thrown back again.

Third round up. The man only takes a sip, shakes his head and frowns.

The woman took another sip, frowned and, in her best cockney, said: “Nearly blew me head off.”

My inexpensive trip to Barbados left me with memories that will flow through my mind for the rest of my life. I think I need another vacation in Barbados to get over being in Barbados.

We Must Insist: Reparations

Reparations with its potential to reorganize the social and economic foundations of the United States is the only political idea with the potential of liberating African Americans so that we can live to our fullest potential.

A real reparations settlement must involve re-distribution of wealth and a new social order based on justice and democracy for all. It would alter the race, class and gender realities of every citizen of the United States. Even the current borders of the United States would be up for re-consideration.

The demand for reparations is a grand, sweeping proposal. It represents the best hope for the future of the nation and the just and environmentally sustainable development of the world. It stand in diametrical opposition to the consumers and materialism that so permeates this contemporary society.

There are some within the reparations struggle who believe that this ideal is unachievable. They caution us to take incremental steps, to make compromises with those who control the nation’s economic and social structures. Their vision of a reparations settlement involves government grants and resources to run various economic development programs, start businesses, operate media and run schools.

Similar kinds of post-Black Power era compromises by the black elite in the late 1960s, 70s and 80s led to the current ideological crisis. During this ebb in our struggle, the number of African American casualties, both physical and mental, continues to grow. The United States quiet race war against African and Native Americans has resulted in soaring incarceration rates, devastating healthcare injustice and deep psychological injuries that make it almost impossible to live a quality life.

We must develop strategies to organize within the African American community and to reach out to others to join us in this great project for justice, democracy and reconstruction.

What must we do to move beyond this crisis and achieve our ancestors’ dream?


Zion 's boom bip

Dr King's We Shall Overcome

Tunji Oyelana & The Benders' Ipasan

Donny Hathaway's Someday We'll All Be Free

Old heads, The Emotion's So I Can Love You

Time to Step Up: An Agenda for the Next Mayor

By Robert Amir

The Philadelphia mayoral race is just about in full swing and wouldn’t you know it, the democratic body politic is determined to show why it is one of the more backward and regressive in the western world. Issues are not being discussed substantively, blacks cannot agree on one representative and thus risk having their vote split – and while a State Senator is being indicted for only a tidbit of his corrupt activities – the Democratic ward followers endorsed the least qualified of the candidates because he wants “to fight”. Fight who, for what? A more fitting, inane comment could not have been uttered in this city of celluloid boxing heroes and high school drop-out police commissioner/mayoral icons.

All’s not lost though. There are a few very talented and astute people in the contest. And they need to hear from us now – on the issues. Some things are so obvious it’s almost embarrassing to think they need to be discussed. Other things are simply common sense. The people must weigh in not just on election day, but now as in a manner that hasn’t been done heretofore – by creating a people’s agenda.

Let’s start by declaring that the idea of more police as an effective response to the murder problem is a non-starter. We know that is not the case, there’s no evidence that it is, so let’s stop with this delusional and costly diatribe.

Among other issues or agenda items that need consideration are (in no particular order):

• Let’s impose a ban on Ritulin and other drugs being used on young children.

• Programs and mechanisms to stimulate small black business development have been a failure. Small business loan programs are a farce. New models need to be created that are not credit or collateral sensitive (and please don’t give me the micro-enterprise b.s. We’re not in India). Small business grants of a reasonable size need to be tried.

• There needs to be a major training program initiative in Philadelphia, with state of the art facilities in underserved communities. Ask yourself where do young adults of color go to learn how to drive tractors, become plumbers, electricians? Do the “bad” public high schools have counselors who can help direct young people to decent trade and vocational opportunities? These are situations that have never been addressed. It’s no wonder that so few blacks are involved in the building or more technical trades.

• A very important situation: the human service industry. This really requires a major opus but let’s begin by saying that a commission made up of some professionals but also community activists and middle managers of service providers must be convened to examine how, why and who receives human service (youth, job-training, anti-violence prevention, etc.) funding in this city. Part of the reason that we seem to make so little progress in ameliorating some of the social problems in the city is rooted in the way the human service industry operates. In 2006, a federal grant was awarded to a consortium of Philadelphia universities (University of Penn, Children’s Hospital, Temple University, Drexel) for a violence prevention program. The size of the grant was approximately 5 million dollars. Typically, for federal grants such as these, the city administration must sign off or sanction the applications. They should not.

None of the universities participating in the violence prevention program has any history of preventing youth violence. They are not in that business. Just as importantly, most colleges have an approved overhead administrative rate of between 30-40%. For every $10,000 of grant money that could be applied towards tutors, counselors and supplies needed to create effective programs for children, at least $3,000 will go to paying for the salary of Dr. Joe Blow at the university to help underwrite the cost of some Center for the Study of Urban Death.

Recently, an article appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer by Robert Moran claiming that the city administration “spurned” the use of proven anti-violence programs. Given the state of gun violence in Philadelphia, this politically charged statement and article was bound to raise eyebrows. The article claimed that out of eleven “blueprint” evidence based programs, the city was using five of them, but that the five were routinely under-funded. These alleged blueprint programs were so anointed by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence in Colorado, an institution originally funded by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency. One might ask why this Pennsylvania agency would fund one in Colorado to study crime prevention programs, considering the state’s and particularly Philadelphia’s tumultuous and legendary experiences with youth gang violence in the late 60s and early 70s. But that’s a discussion for another day.

The article suggests that Philadelphia officials and youth agencies are negligent for not using the blueprint programs and therefore not accessing more of the $6 million in violence prevention grants awarded by the Pennsylvania Commission (Philadelphia only received 5% of the money or $300,000). No one however, dares ask how a state agency that, according to its own literature “utilizes federal and state monies to assist units of government and private organizations to prevent and reduce crime” can virtually ignore the state’s largest city with the highest and most pernicious rate of youth violence. Rather than criticizing the city, it appears the leadership of the Commission is incompetent.

These are but two examples of the inherent problems with the way social service programs are funded and administered. Much more can be said about the many facets of the systems, whether youth development, social services, even education, but what must happen is that the new leaders in Philadelphia should help set a different agenda for funders and service providers – one that emphasizes a strategic effort that genuinely helps people and solves problems – not competitive proposal writing contests that fatten the coffers of already bloated universities.

• There are three levels of criminal justice in the city: that of the city, the state and the federal government. Obviously, the city has significant sway over its own system and it can move the discussion and funds for the prison-industrial complex in a new, progressive direction if it wants to. The problem of re-entry of former inmates back into communities is one of the great challenges the next administration will face. A genuine and sincere effort towards rehabilitation must be undertaken. Again, a commission of grassroots leaders and reform activists must be convened to design and offer real alternatives for this broken, sick enterprise.

• Anyone vying for our votes must develop an aggressive and progressive policy aimed at enhancing and expanding alternative media, cultural and artistic outlets. The consolidation of media companies over the past decade has had a riveting effect at “dumbing” down the masses and promulgating a regressive, radical right wing agenda. Moreover, the “values deficit” existing in too many black communities must be countermanded with programming and advertising that espouses fundamental moral and cultural standards. We, particularly young folks, must see and hear more about the intrinsic strengths of our ancestors that allowed us to survive against overwhelming odds. This can be done but there must be a long-term commitment and funding stream attached to such efforts. In fact, I think any crime prevention strategy that does not have a very serious, media component to it is doomed to fail.

• The reparations for African-Americans effort is just heating up in major cities with large black populations. The next mayor should support the Slavery Disclosure Act currently in effect in Philadelphia, but take it a step further and investigate the recent injuries perpetrated by financial institutions during the 20th century. These would include redlining and discrimination in loan policies. These issues have, in some cases been litigated and the banks found guilty. However, unless I’m mistaken, the victims of the discrimination were never compensated for their injuries. There are several other cases of this nature where institutional racism was brought before the courts, found to illegal, but restitution never paid to the victims or their heirs. Coupled with the legacy of slavery, this approach, because it involves more recent decisions and victims, should result in palpable, meaningful outcomes.

• Governments today are dominated by big money, corporate interests that have made the notion of democracy a fraudulent claim. I would love to see the next mayor help establish a Poor People’s Think Tank, so that progressive professionals, activists and concerned citizens could have a permanent institution that researched, communicated and advocated on behalf of the least of these in the city. It may not be called what I have suggested. But, something of this nature could be done with the genuine efforts of a mayor, helping to raise money for such an institution. It might involve coordinating and combining the efforts of organizations dedicated to particular aspects of the overall concept, but it could happen.

In short, we need progressive, results oriented, long term Afro-centric thinking more than ever in this campaign. The conventional, big-city, neo-liberal, let the private sector make it work model is a wrap.

Music for your thoughts:

http://www.zshare.net/audio/curtis-mayfield-lauryn-hill-here-but-im-gone-mp3.html

http://www.zshare.net/download/3-16-precious-lord-carolyn-bolger-payne-of-the-philadelphia-ambassadors-m4a.html

http://www.zshare.net/audio/03-time-has-come-today-mp3.html

http://www.zshare.net/audio/10-symphony-no-1-mp3.html

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