Thursday, July 7, 2016
Police Terror in America: Notes from Beyonc'e, Kev Choice, June Jordan, Marvin X, Fritz Pointer, Fahizah Alim, Dominique Villanueva
Love Letter to Black men from Dominique Villanueva
Black Men of my life, I know my prayers won't protect you from the insane social sickness that you survive each day. I feel inadequate and the right words escape me, but I want you to know that I LOVE YOU DEEPLY and there are more women like me, confused and imperfect, who know that there is no combination of words that we can put together to ease your journey. And I will walk with you, as will so many other women, and be your strength, and soft place, and light, and sounding board, and your reflection, and your reminder, and whatever else I can be when you need me, because I LOVE YOU.
Beyoncé Pens Open Letter on Alton Sterling, Philando Castile Deaths: ‘Stop Killing Us’
“We are sick and tired of the killings of young men and women in our communities,” begins the statement released Thursday on Beyoncé’s website. “It is up to us to take a stand and demand that they ‘stop killing us.‘”
The deaths of both Sterling and Castile have launched a series of protests, fueling the fire of the ongoing debate of the police’s treatment of black men. Cell phone footage saw 37-year-old Sterling shot and killed by two Baton Rouge, La., police officers after pinning him to the ground outside of a local convenience store early Tuesday. The death has spurred a civil rights investigation by the Justice Department.
Castile, 32, was killed after a police officer opened fire on him during a traffic stop in Minnesota on Wednesday night. The aftermath of the death was shown in a Facebook Live video shot by Castile’s girlfriend, who was a passenger in the vehicle.
“We’re going to stand up as a community and fight against anyone who believes that murder or any violent action by those who are sworn in to protect us should consistently go unpunished,” reads Beyoncé’s statement. “These robberies of lives make us feel helpless and hopeless but we have to believe that we are fighting for the rights of the next generation, for the next young men and women who believe in good.”
“Fear is not an excuse. Hate will not win,” she adds. “We all have the power to channel our anger and frustration into action. We must use our voices to contact the politicians and legislators in our districts and demand social and judicial changes.”
She follows the statement with a call to action, urging readers to contact their local congressman or woman and providing links to voice protests to the deaths of Sterling and Castile.
It’s not the first time Beyoncé has spoken out on the issue. Her video for “Formation,” which dropped earlier this year, depicts images such as a submerged police car and the phrase “Stop shooting us” painted on a wall.
The video ignited controversy, with many calling the singer anti-police. “I have so much admiration and respect for officers and the families of the officers who sacrifice themselves to keeps us safe,” she later told Elle magazine of the controversy. “But let’s be clear: I am against police brutality and injustice. Those are two separate things.”
BAMBD artist Kev Choice reflects on State terror in America
Feeling traumatized. Feeling angry and hopeless. Had to fly to LA, just for the day, just to check in on my daughter out here pursuing her dream as a basketball player. Had to do something real. Something I know can make a difference. Be a father. Be a good man. Live in the moment, to the fullest. We never know when our time will come. Yet, I'm not scared of police. I've dealt with them before. I've been slammed, arrested, pulled over for petty reasons. I'm cautious, careful, but I'm not scared of them. To walk in on my aunt in tears as she was watching the news and saying she couldn't sleep and had been praying for me and all the men in my family all night pains me. To get text from friends saying they love me and are scared for me as a black man hurts my heart. We are dealing with severe trauma. Let the graphic images of these two brothers murders be a catalyst to a revolution. Change must come. From within and all around. Now. #AltonSterling #PhilandoCastile
Journalist emeritus Fahizah Alim on State Terrorism in America
Back in the day, when I was a student activist at UC Berkeley, I joined other courageous youth who supported the Black Panthers and we followed the police and watched them from a far when they stopped black motorists, hoping to stem the wanton and widespread police brutality on Black men. As I watched the videos today of these cowardly, inhumane lowlife cops who killed these innocent young Black men in front of their babies, I proclaim again that they were pigs then and they're pigs now. Cowardly racist, PIGS. Fuck the Pigs!!! The Motherfucking Pigs who are getting away with murder everyday!! It's gotta stop!! By any means necessary!!--Fahizah Alim
Comment: Now you know Fahizah is one of my students, full of passion and fire for truth and justice, and on rare occasions will employ the Marvin X linguistics! lol--Marvin X
Marvin X and journalist emeritus Fahizah Alim
Tell me something
what you think would happen if
everytime they kill a black boy
then we kill a cop
everytime they kill a black man
then we kill a cop
sometimes thinking about the 12th House of the Cosmos
or the way your ear ensnares the tip
of my tongue or signs that I have never seen
like DANGER WOMEN WORKING
I lose consciousness of ugly bestial rapid
and repetitive affront as when they tell me
18 cops in order to subdue one man
18 strangled him to death in the ensuing scuffle
(don't you idolize the diction of the powerful: subdue
and scuffle my oh my) and that the murder
that the killing of Arthur Miller on a Brooklyn
street was just a "justifiable accident" again
(Again)
People been having accidents all over the globe
so long like that I reckon that the only
suitable insurance is a gun
I'm saying war is not to understand or rerun
war is to be fought and won
sometimes the feeling like amaze me baby
blots it out/the bestial but
not too often tell me something
what you think would happen if
everytime they kill a black boy
then we kill a cop
everytime they kill a black man
then we kill a cop
you think the accident rate would lower subsequently
--June Jordan (RIP)
Fritz Pointer's poem Mixed Love
Dedicated to Lovell Mixon
Lovell Mixon (left) smoked 4 pigs in Oakland shootout a short time after they killed Oscar Grant. Fritz Pointer (above) said the suffering people of Oakland enjoyed an obscene pride in his actions after decades of police abuse, in spite of the Black Panther Party’s valiant resistance during the 60s.
You had an avtomat Kalashnikova of ’47?
Assembled in minutes by children in the old USSR. Kalashnikov and Heston are beaming with obscene pride:
In the efficiency of the automatic In the accuracy of your aim
In hitting the Pig’s Eye
Four in a row!
You could have surrendered like Amadou Diallo Raised your hands
Taken sixteen
And nothing in your “cold dead hands”
Except a wallet!
Ancestor Poet June Jordan's poem on Police Violence
Tell me something
what you think would happen if
everytime they kill a black boy
then we kill a cop
everytime they kill a black man
then we kill a cop
you think the accident rate would lower subsequently?
sometimes the feeling like amaze me baby
comes back to my mouth and I am quiet
like Olympian pools from the running
mountainous snows under the sun
sometimes the feeling like amaze me baby
comes back to my mouth and I am quiet
like Olympian pools from the running
mountainous snows under the sun
sometimes thinking about the 12th House of the Cosmos
or the way your ear ensnares the tip
of my tongue or signs that I have never seen
like DANGER WOMEN WORKING
I lose consciousness of ugly bestial rapid
and repetitive affront as when they tell me
18 cops in order to subdue one man
18 strangled him to death in the ensuing scuffle
(don't you idolize the diction of the powerful: subdue
and scuffle my oh my) and that the murder
that the killing of Arthur Miller on a Brooklyn
street was just a "justifiable accident" again
(Again)
People been having accidents all over the globe
so long like that I reckon that the only
suitable insurance is a gun
I'm saying war is not to understand or rerun
war is to be fought and won
sometimes the feeling like amaze me baby
blots it out/the bestial but
not too often tell me something
what you think would happen if
everytime they kill a black boy
then we kill a cop
everytime they kill a black man
then we kill a cop
you think the accident rate would lower subsequently
--June Jordan (RIP)
Fritz Pointer's poem Mixed Love
Dedicated to Lovell Mixon
Lovell Mixon (left) smoked 4 pigs in Oakland shootout a short time after they killed Oscar Grant. Fritz Pointer (above) said the suffering people of Oakland enjoyed an obscene pride in his actions after decades of police abuse, in spite of the Black Panther Party’s valiant resistance during the 60s.
You had an avtomat Kalashnikova of ’47?
Assembled in minutes by children in the old USSR. Kalashnikov and Heston are beaming with obscene pride:
In the efficiency of the automatic In the accuracy of your aim
In hitting the Pig’s Eye
Four in a row!
You could have surrendered like Amadou Diallo Raised your hands
Taken sixteen
Or, heard the bells, like Sean Bell
“Made it to church on time”
Your wedding day now a funeral day
And nothing in your “cold dead hands”
Nothing!
Or, lay face down, a boot on your neck like Oscar Grant And get it in the back And be blamed
And nothing in your “cold dead hands”
Cuffed in steel.
You had an AK-47!
Easy to use
Easy to transport
Easy to kill
The AK has caused more deaths
Than Hiroshima
Than Nagasaki
Than HIV
Than the bubonic plague
Than malaria
Than all earthquakes
Than anything organic or synthetic, metal or chemical. Kalashnikov’s automatic:
Won’t jam when dirty or wet
Has a feather trigger a child can pull
“Can turn a monkey into a combatant”
There’s pride in that...obscene pride
In the accuracy of a killer
The rehearsal on man-sized silhouettes
Dark shadows
The outline of a person
The will to kill.
The vulgar pride in:
The ABM
The drone
The nuke.
Hitting the pig’s eye.
All you needed was the will
And nothing in your “cold dead hands”
Nothing!
Or, lay face down, a boot on your neck like Oscar Grant And get it in the back And be blamed
And nothing in your “cold dead hands”
Cuffed in steel.
You had an AK-47!
Easy to use
Easy to transport
Easy to kill
The AK has caused more deaths
Than Hiroshima
Than Nagasaki
Than HIV
Than the bubonic plague
Than malaria
Than all earthquakes
Than anything organic or synthetic, metal or chemical. Kalashnikov’s automatic:
Won’t jam when dirty or wet
Has a feather trigger a child can pull
“Can turn a monkey into a combatant”
There’s pride in that...obscene pride
In the accuracy of a killer
The rehearsal on man-sized silhouettes
Dark shadows
The outline of a person
The will to kill.
The vulgar pride in:
The ABM
The drone
The nuke.
Hitting the pig’s eye.
All you needed was the will
The will to kill
The will to be free
Simply...Free
Not ideologically
Not intellectually
Not romantically
Not consciously
Not politically
Like Nat Turner
Like Malcolm X
Like Steve Biko
Like Fred Hampton
Not like that...simply
Not behind bars.
The repulsive, indecent respect some pay: To the monsters created
To vindicate a people’s historical abuse Surprised that the monsters
Dutifully designed
Consciously created
Meticulously molded
For the cities of Iraq
For the cities of Afghanistan
For the cities of America Frankensteinesque
Should act other than
Monsteresque.
Is Fanon correct?
Is such violence redemptive?
Is it cleansing?
Is it a rebirth?
For a microsecond
For this generation
The score was evened.
Four pig’s eyes in a row!
Wow! How sick! This obscene pride. --Fritz Pointer 17 April 2009
The will to be free
Simply...Free
Not ideologically
Not intellectually
Not romantically
Not consciously
Not politically
Like Nat Turner
Like Malcolm X
Like Steve Biko
Like Fred Hampton
Not like that...simply
Not behind bars.
The repulsive, indecent respect some pay: To the monsters created
To vindicate a people’s historical abuse Surprised that the monsters
Dutifully designed
Consciously created
Meticulously molded
For the cities of Iraq
For the cities of Afghanistan
For the cities of America Frankensteinesque
Should act other than
Monsteresque.
Is Fanon correct?
Is such violence redemptive?
Is it cleansing?
Is it a rebirth?
For a microsecond
For this generation
The score was evened.
Four pig’s eyes in a row!
Wow! How sick! This obscene pride. --Fritz Pointer 17 April 2009
Burn, Baby, Burn, Marvin X's poem written shortly after the Watts Rebellion, 1965?
Burn, Baby, Burn
Tired.
Sick an' tired
Tired of being
sick an' tired.
Lost.
Lost in the wilderness
of white america
are the masses asses?
cool.
said the master to the slave,
"No problem, don't rob an' steal,
I'll be your drivin wheel."
Cool.
And he wheeled us into 350 years
of black madness
to hog guts, conked hair, covadis
bleaching cream and uncle thomas
to Watts.
To the streets.
To the kill.
Boommm...2 honkeys gone.
Motherfuck the police
Parker's sista too.
Black people.
Tired.
sick an' tired.
tired of being
sick an' tired.
Burn, baby burn...
Don't leave dem boss rags
C'mon, child, don't mind da tags.
Git all dat motherfuckin pluck,
Git dem guns too, we 'on't give a fuck!
Burn baby burn
Cook outta sight
Fineburgs
whitefront
wineburgs
blackfront
burn, baby, burn
in time
he
will learn.
--Marvin X
from Soulbook Magazine, Fall, 1965
Tired.
Sick an' tired
Tired of being
sick an' tired.
Lost.
Lost in the wilderness
of white america
are the masses asses?
cool.
said the master to the slave,
"No problem, don't rob an' steal,
I'll be your drivin wheel."
Cool.
And he wheeled us into 350 years
of black madness
to hog guts, conked hair, covadis
bleaching cream and uncle thomas
to Watts.
To the streets.
To the kill.
Boommm...2 honkeys gone.
Motherfuck the police
Parker's sista too.
Black people.
Tired.
sick an' tired.
tired of being
sick an' tired.
Burn, baby burn...
Don't leave dem boss rags
C'mon, child, don't mind da tags.
Git all dat motherfuckin pluck,
Git dem guns too, we 'on't give a fuck!
Burn baby burn
Cook outta sight
Fineburgs
whitefront
wineburgs
blackfront
burn, baby, burn
in time
he
will learn.
--Marvin X
from Soulbook Magazine, Fall, 1965
Poet/activist Marvin X. Burn Baby Burn is a classic of the Black Arts Movement. Some say it is Marvin X's greatest poem. The Pointer Sister's brother, Fritz, told Marvin, "Thanks for the
post. By the way, you should hear my sister, Bonnie, recite your poem
"Burn, Baby, Burn" word for word with sincere feeling and passion.
Just though I'd share that."
photo Pendarvis Harshaw
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