Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 806

212° - Jasiri X (Produced by Soy Sos)

Jasiri X:
I never really wanted the role of Hip-Hop artist that speaks when something tragic happens in our community, but I guess it is what it is. I got so many calls, tweets, and texts from folks asking me to say something so here it is. It’s raw and angry because that’s how I feel about more Black death unjustly at the hands of the police. For Michael Brown, Eric Garner, John Crawford, and Ezell Ford, I hope your lives are not in vain, and God brings your families peace. For my community, this won’t stop until we stop it, and the first step is unity. I called this song 212 degrees because that’s the boiling point. The lid is about to blow off this whole masquerade.Black bodies being fed to the system
Black American dead or in prison
Love for the murderer never the victim
Dead kids cant beg your forgiveness

We are at war
What you telling me to be peaceful for
When they break the peace by firing the piece now the peace gets tore
I don’t give a fuck about Quik Trip’s store

Calling all Gods its frauds in the pulpit
Miss me with that get along bullshit
Scared cause you master got a bullwhip
Imma get a hollow point that’s a good tip

We are not for the oakie doke
Mj’s doctor in a overcoat
See Imma give em shots they overdose
Street preaching till the block got the holy ghost

Cut scene
Got my enemy in the center of the beam
Spin him till he lean
What do you expect given what we’ve seen
I refuse to be next on that television screen

Amin, I say what I mean
I am not cosigned by Jimmy Iovine
I will not go blind from the from the things I’ve seen
3rd eye and its on high beam

Will these cops go to jail for
Eric Garner, John Crawford, Ezell Ford

I am Michael Brown resurrected to strike you down

See in Ferguson they murdered him call the cops and the purge begins
Bring tanks to heard em in & tear gas that burns the skin
40 cal 50 cal 60 cal guns
Lights Camera Action now Revered Al comes
The rioting and looting and they asking how come
All these dead black children yall mother fuckers sound dumb
We’ve been shot to death choked out burned up smoked up
And they wonder why niggas feel safer in the dope house
Peaceful protesting man I seen it it was no doubt
Then cops started firing and every broke out
A sister got shot in the head she went to Howard
Where’s Obama, Where’s Holder? The Feds? Who got the power?
Man I swear I aint wanna go in I waiting hours
But these others rappers ain’t saying shit most of em cowards
This no guns and all heart waking inside a Walmart
Grabbing every toy riffle and point em at them mall cops
Like Fuck yall you’re lucky this the only thing that touched off
I’m praying for the day that whole system get shut off
For that look in Eric Garner’s eyes when he couldn’t breathe
For the slugs in Ezell Ford’s back that caused him to bleed
For Renisha McBride on that porch about to leave
I hope they beat Ted Wafer like his name was Patsey
May God forgive me for these words that I had to write
May my spirit be preserved in the afterlife
Forgive me for my sins an let my good deeds matter twice
If nobody is swinging back then God damn I have to fight

J. Cole: "All We Wanna Do is Take the Chains Off...All We Want to Do is Be Free"

#DontShoot #Handsup #MikeBrown #Ferguson

Vigil by Charles Bane, Jr.

Vigil by Charles Bane, Jr. | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
On the 20th of January, 1942, high ranking members of the German government met in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to plan the destruction of Europe's Jews.  State sanctioned, it resulted in the extermination of six million men, women and children. 
The impulse of racism in America—agreed to by the majority in an unconscious conference long ago—is  genocide. It's  evidenced by its targets and the legal instruments used to destroy. 
It is dangerous to advance nothing less as the root cause of deaths within the minority community, because lesser ideas will be grasped by the murderous to use as smoke, while they continue to hunt. They are driven, as the Nazis were who searched cellar and attic, by pathology.
White America is sorely deaf. It  does not hear gunfire, the grief of parents, or anguish from communities that are walled. And although community policing, class action suits by whole communities against police departments for terror inflicted, in addition to lawsuits brought by victims' families, are all appropriate, they are not the equal of what the slain deserve. 
What Michael Brown deserves, and John Crawford, Eric Garner, Jonathan Farrell and Trayvon Martin is a National Day of Mourning, on a weekday. The vigil would require that no one of a grieving People go to work, from technician to company president, from attorney to commercial pilot to zoologist.
The date would be as fixed as the unity of a Folk ever traveling to a place in the sun. America would largely halt. Headlights deserve to be put on that day as cars follow, in procession, the unsafe on every street. Grief for the innocent has never been more deep, but even deeper is the desire to have the spirit of the murdered returned to life by the recognition that no number of bullets are enough to extinguish those who, for right, advance.
At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blowYour trumpets, angels, and arise, ariseFrom death, you numberless infinitiesOf souls. --John Donne***

Charles Bane, Jr. is the American author of The Chapbook ( Curbside Splendor, 2011) and Love Poems ( Kelsay Books, 2014). His work was described by the Huffington Post as "not only standing on the shoulders of giants, but shrinking them."  Creator of The Meaning Of Poetry series for The Gutenberg Project, he is a current nominee as Poet Laureate of Florida.

In Hashtag Protest, 'Black Twitter' Shows Its Strength

BYP100 Responds to the Deaths of Four Black Men Killed by Police Officers

BYP100 Responds to the Deaths of Four Black Men Killed by Police Officers
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEAugust 13, 2014Contact:media@byp100.org773-834-1706
In the past two weeks, police officers have strangled, shot and killed four, unarmed Black men. We honor the lives of Eric Garner, John Crawford, Michael Brown and Ezell Ford; and mourn with those who love them.
As we grieve the loss of our brothers, we also mourn the life of Renisha McBride and grieve over the brutal beatings of Marlene Pinnock and Ersula Ore. Despite the lack of media attention, we know our sisters are also brutalized and murdered at the hands of police officers and vigilantes too.
In the aftermath of yet another series of slaughters, we have been asked to accept the unacceptable expectations of a society that has never loved us.
Are we to sit quietly and see our own sisters’ and brothers’ bodies rotting in the streets?  Should we be expected to continue to struggle to identify our family members by their socks or jewelry because there are too many bullet holes in their faces?
Regardless of education level, style of dress, romantic partner or circle of friends, Black people in the United States are the targets of a system that supports merciless police officers, willing to spill our innards on street corners. They face no consequences in a ‘criminal injustice’ system. There is no recourse because Black people, especially poor Black people, are all too often seen as sub-human.
Beyond our current frustration and anger, our memory hums as our ancestors call out to us. We will redeem their suffering through collective work for liberation. Stoicism, respectability politics and piecemeal measures of progress are not working. Our tearful pleas and desperate cries have gone unheard.
Since 1619, this white supremacist and patriarchal society has devalued and demonized Black bodies in order to justify the forests of hatred and greed they have planted over every square inch of this land. While police officers, judges, and juries continue to nurture these vile gardens, we choose to create a new path. Patience and properness have their place, and their place is in the past. We reject sanitized portrayals of Black liberators which are used to manipulate us into apathy and inaction.
We recognize that American media, law enforcement and ‘criminal injustice’ systems do not recognize Black people as humans worthy of respect and dignity. Investigations continue to arrive at the same conclusions — the victim is guilty.  With this statement and our actions, we rebuke their opinions, analysis, and their critiques of our chosen methods and strategies to achieve our liberation. With this statement we affirm the value of all Black lives, especially our brothers and sisters in Ferguson, MO who are being referred to as ‘animals’ ‘thugs’ and ’niggers’ by those sworn to protect them.
We are resolute in our desire to build a new world for all of us. We are organizing and taking direct action on the ground. We are committed to working with organizations who share our values, and will continue to organize. Now, we need to hear from you. Our stories are powerful tools that when used effectively can bring about the conditions for our liberation.
We ask Black people between the ages of 13 and 35 to submit 1-3 minute videos describing how you have been profiled, abused or violated by the police. Click here to learn more and submit your video.
We ask you to crowd every street corner, bus stop and block with your stories. We ask you to love and protect each other. We ask you to raise your voices so that even Eric, Mike, John, Ezell and Renisha may hear.
#BlackLivesMatter,
BYP100
We Ready, We Comin’
www.byp100.org
###
Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100) is an activist member-based organization of Black 18-35 year olds, dedicated to creating justice and freedom for all Black people. We do this through building a network focused on transformative leadership development, non-violent direct action organizing, advocacy and education using a Black queer feminist lens. We are an organization affiliated with the Black Youth Project.

Dear Civil Rights Leaders: This is not About You!

Dear Civil Rights Leaders: This is not About You! by Damien Conners | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
As a young executive director of one of the nation’s most influential civil rights organizations, I am beyond amazed at the level of pomp and circumstance that shrouds what should be the true emancipatory work of organizations positioned to make substantive change and serve as representative voices for the oppressed and silenced across the country.
I am troubled by the degree to which ego, bravado, posturing and back-scratching both characterizes and so deeply infects the ethos of institutions with such wealthy legacies of freedom fighting. Exploiting the most dutiful of PR strategies and engaging empty partnerships for the sake of corporate notoriety, the civil rights community is failing.
From memorial marches to commemorative demonstrations, to loosely paraphrase a Bible verse, “there is an appearance, but the power thereof is denied.” We are in trouble. But we don’t have to be.
Dear civil rights leaders, this is not about you!
While you continue to rub elbows with power brokers and evade moral imperatives, there is a generation dying and being killed. Their voices are being stymied and their cries muted by the egregiously egotistical narcissistic power hungry position jockeying of baby boomers whose net worth rests on appeasement politicking. Am I angry, yes! Enough is enough! We don’t care about your deals. We don’t care about who you know or who you’ve met. We don’t care about pictures, plaques or presentations – all aimed at placating the interest of those who fund your devolution.  This is not about you!
This is about the countless young black and brown babies who are malnourished and under-educated. This is about the black boys and men who are being shot down in streets across America by desensitized un-empathetic police officers who see no value in their lives. This is about the black and brown girls and boys who are reminded daily by the imposition of political, social, economic, physical and emotional violence that their lives have no value beyond the myopic caricatures within popular culture which are used to commodify black and brown existence.
This is not about you! It’s about the people. It’s about those communities overrun with violence. It’s not about you. It’s about the elderly who cannot afford prescriptions or rent. This is not about you. This is about the mother who goes to bed hungry because she only has enough to feed her children. This is not about you. It’s about the gay and lesbian boys and girls who are bullied to the point of suicide. This is not about you. It’s about the young black and brown boys who are hopeless, misunderstood, and day after day endure the trauma of having to live, thrive, and survive in communities consumed by deep dysfunction and decade upon decade of discriminatory divestment.
But, maybe this is about you! Maybe it’s all about your acquiescence to the delusion of black arrival. Coretta Scott-King rightly noted, “struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.” But when an obstinate generation of self-aggrandizers touts, as bearers of history and the voices of the community, a delusional narrative of freedom and victory, we all lose. We are not free. We are freely working on freedom. Struggle is never-ending. Freedom is never really won.
We are fighting daily to address the regressive legislation that will continue to disenfranchise. We are daily combating stereotypes and micro-aggressions. We are daily fighting mis-education, under-educated and the systematic denial of our true history. So is this about you, no! But then again, yes, it is! It’s about your negligence and lack of priority. “Young people” have become your cat’s-paw and trope for “caring”.  Our lives have literally begun to end because you, “civil rights leaders”, are “silent about things that matter”.
Now, this does not apply to all of you, just most of you. You hold “young people” at abeyance for the sake of occupying a space that provides you the privilege of special invites and the allocation of special dollars which in turn muzzle your bite for equity, fairness and justice.
In 1968 on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, it is said that the drum major for justice was lost and the civil rights movement ended. There was a time when I refuted this claim, but I am daily becoming a believer. Have I lost hope, no. But my will to press forward in “the freedom struggle” is often tested as I sit through the pageantry of disingenuous acclamations tossed around and about by folk who are not interested in coalescing around the issues that matter-- redlining, gerrymandering, poverty, mandatory minimums, racism, sexism, classism, militarism and a culture of violence to name a few.
The black protest tradition, as rooted in the black prophetic tradition and its call to consciousness, was birthed out of the many subversive acts of the enslaved hopeful… in many ways, this signified to the collective “movement” toward a unified effort within the context of more suitable conditions. Consider this a “first step” act of subversion which has as its aim: accountability.
Dear civil rights leaders: this is not about you! 
**

Damien Conners is the Executive Director of Excel Bridgeport, an organization working to ensure a world class education for all Bridgeport children.  Previously, he served as the national executive director and COO of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Inc. (SCLC)—an organization led and co-founded by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Among other accomplishments during his tenure at SCLC beginning in 2010, he is honored to have founded the SCLC Poverty Institute, an organization founded to address systemic inequity. Follow him on Twitter: @DameAlexander

#IfTheyGunnedMeDown: Key Hashtags in 'Black Twitter' Activism

New York Times Reporter Tanzina Vega examines the role of 'Black Twitter' in recent activism among  young Black Americans.

Rhetorical Bow Ties Won’t Protect Them by Mark Anthony Neal

Rhetorical Bow Ties Won’t Protect Them by Mark Anthony Neal | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Following the election of the first Black President, I recall there was the sudden push—largely among young Black college educated types—for Black youth to wear the part of the constituency that had helped elect Barack Obama. The impulse didn’t strike me as odd—a desire for respectability that is as old as the plantations that raised us—but the investment in a pathology about Blackness did.  
These were bright and ambitious young Black folk who believed that their intellect and talents were suspect if their pants sagged, they had gold in their mouth, or wore skirts didn’t cover enough thigh—as if such things have ever mattered to White peers, who regularly show up to classes at elite institutions wearing pajama bottoms, flip-flops and baseball caps.
The sentiments of these young folks seemed to align with those of Academy Award winning screen writer John Ridley (12 Years A Slave), who in a 2006 essay for Esquire Magazine , wrote “In the forty years since the Deal was brokered, since the Voting Rights Act was signed, there have been successes for blacks. But there are still too many blacks in prison, too many kids aggrandizing the thug life, and way too many African-Americans doing far too little with the opportunities others earned for them.”
Ridley’s piece was a reflection on Blacks  who “rioted” in Cincinnati in 2001, in response to the shooting death of an unarmed teen, Timothy Thomas—the 15th Black man to die in police pursuit or custody in a six-year period. Their crime, in the eyes of Ridley, was not simply their rage—which he deemed illegitimate—but how their actions detracted from the important foreign policy work being done by Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, during a particular moment of international crisis. In Ridley’s word’s: “Niggers fucked it up.”
If there was a message delivered to the unwashed masses of Black folk in the aftermath of the election of Barack Obama, it was “don’t fuck up.” And indeed beginning with his 11th-hour election season screed about sagging pants, the President has taken every opportunity to admonish Black folk about the value of education, wearing the right clothes and marrying your baby-making partner, in one case making the point about educational attainment, incredulously, to an audience of graduating Black students.
Six years into the Obama Presidency, we now realize that pulled-up, belted pants, neatly-pressed dress-suits and bow-ties are apparently a policy initiative intended to save Black men and boys.  President Obama was seemingly shamed into the creation of My Brother’s Keeper (MBK), in the aftermath of the Trayvon Marin shooting and with the stark realization (via every index imaginable) that the lives of Black youth were not significantly better under his leadership,  and perhaps worse.
With the tragedy of Trayvon Martin taking up narrative capital—as opposed to Renisha McBride, another unarmed teen who was murdered, and who apparently, could not have been the President’s daughter—My Brother’s Keeper helped the President respond to critics who believed that he was not doing enough for those who looked liked him, and those who voted for him with the hope that he would quell the “niggers”—or at least deport them (and others) in record numbers and hasten their incarcerations with the tacit approval, in his silence, of Stop-and-Frisk policies.
A year after the acquittal of Martin’s killer and only days after Renisha McBride’s shooter was found guilty of second-degree murder, 18-year-old Mike Brown—another unnamed teen in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson—was shot multiple times by a law enforcement officer. Brown’s killing occurs a month after video circulated of the NYPD’s execution of another unarmed Black male, Eric Garner, using an illegal choke-hold. 
We should expect nothing more from the President than rhetorical bow-ties as if the lives of Brown, Garner or even Martin, would have been spared had they been wearing the right clothes.  There will be no lecture forthcoming about the structural and psychic realities of White Supremacy on Black life.
To be sure the President is not to be blamed for the White Supremacy that continues to impact Black lives—indeed he has been subject to it. What becomes strikingly clear though, particularly with regards to national media coverage of these deaths, is that Black folk in this country are still not deserving of the basic courtesies afforded the loss of life—the loss of their humanity. The President’s silence on so many of these deaths sends the signal that these Black bodies are not deserving of respect, protection and legitimate grief—and for that, he should be ashamed.
***

Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of African & African American Studies at Duke University where is the Director of the Center for Arts, Digital Culture and Entrepreneurship.  He is the author of several books including the recent Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities .  Follow Neal on Twitter at @NewBlackMan

Filmmakers Erik Parker and One9 Discuss 'Time is Illmatic' at BlackStar 2014

ReelBlack
RBTV caught up with filmmakers Erik Parker and One9 , who closed the 2014 BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia with their feature debut, Nas: Time is Illmatic . 10 years in the making, Nas will be screening the film and performing his hits on a special tour in October via Tribeca Films.