|
Dust Bowls and Wading Pools
A
Kwanzaa Editorial by Rudolph Lewis
December 28, 2008
Rudy, thank you for your
love of our people in their wretchedness,
all of them, from the bourgeoisie to the
grass roots. love, mx
Here, in Jerusalem's pine forest,
it's dark, damp, drizzling. Tomorrow promises to be
sunny and 70 degrees. The only sound to be heard tonight
is the dripping of water on dry oak leaves by the front
porch and the occasional horn bursts of trains at
crossroads
four miles away rumbling through Jarratt Town—headed north,
headed south. And the sounds in my sometime troubled head: they are human
voices: tight-tensioned weariness and fear; the sounds of
Depression, coming from far too many sources: near and
far: NYTimes headlines—Israeli
Gaza Strike Kills More Than 225.
Others are aware
too of the gargantuan bloody dust storms of the widely
mad use of war machinery, discoloring the world red and
black and causing distemper between citizen and citizen,
neighbor and neighbor, wife and husband, girlfriend and
boyfriend. Many of these feuds rage because of the
seizing of the earth’s resources for the few and the
lack of money in the economy, or desperation of the
bold, the air of rebellion, and the call for unionizing.
I have abandoned the well-lit urban
centers (which have devolved to war zones between the
poor and the police forces) with their weird
blue-flashing security cameras on every corner where the
black poor struggles for the dregs of oppression. I left
this street life for the darkly silent impoverished
wooded country side. Do I miss the restaurants, the
cinema, the theatres, the symphony, the opera, the
ballet, the parks, the museums? Yes. I pray for a more
civil America. I do my best to keep up with city life.
Here in the woods with its deer,
rabbits, squirrels, possums, coons, and turkeys, there are satellite
dishes for TV and internet; radio; telephone that I may
stay in touch with friends and the news which fill me in
on how the nation and people globally are faring. Much
of it is about war and starvation. Last evening, I
received a piece from my friend the poet, playwright,
and philosopher
Marvin X, who usually camps out, when he is not on
the road, at 14th and Broadway, the crossroads of
Oakland. The police because of his popularity among the
local poor and downtrodden informed him that he could no
longer "vend his books or teach." That is, Oakland can
no longer tolerate his peripatetic activities.
Tonight, while Mama lay in bed, I
watched
Bound for Glory, a 1976 film about Woodie Guthrie
and the 1930s Depression: a Turner Classic. Woodie was
played by David Carradine. The latter half of the film
dealt with Woodie the Artist in the work camps and the
factories encouraging workers to unionize and the
blowback from thugs hired by farm and factory owners.
Today, in the halls of Congress it is Southern Senators
in the pay of foreign companies that we now have to
contend.
Woodie gets busted up numerous
times trying to change the tenor of reactionary America
with its Chambers of Commerce and corporate media, the
entertainment industry (cable news, TV and radio as well
as the music industry) that blocks out or represses the
artist and the poet. But Woodie gets right back up and
composes another song, jumps another train, and seeks
out impoverished souls that need a kind and inspiring
word. The film reminds me of Marvin X, whom Ishmael
Reed called "Plato" for the work he does on the streets
of Oakland.
But maybe a black Woodie Guthrie
might be more suitable for Marvin as a moniker. Plato hired himself
out to the state and the children of the aristocracy. Woodie was for the least, the down and out, even to the
extent that he neglected domesticity: in the process, he
lost the love and comfort of wife and children. I know
my friend Miriam would ask the question, Did he love
enough? Did Malcolm? Did Martin? Did Jesus of Nazareth?
All three abandoned their families for a higher calling.
With the feuding kids of ML King, maybe we can indeed
now see the small petty effects of a father's
sacrificial abandonment.
All of this thinking and
contemplation about the role of the artist come in the
larger context of
E. Ethelbert Miller's call for a
Stimulus Bill to Support Artists and Writers. There
are those whom I admire who benefited by such government
intrusion into the arts:
Marcus Christian,
Sterling
Brown,
Richard Wright, and
Arna Bontemps. I do not
believe that Woodie Guthrie received anything from the
30s government arts program, which was more or less a
study of the poor, workers, and former slaves. Woodie
wanted to raise up the poor to Power over and
appreciation of their lives and art. Woodie said he
didn't want to sing for those drinking champagne.
I do not know what kind of poem
Elizabeth Alexander has written for the Inaugural. Maybe
it will go beyond that of
Frost (1961)and
Maya Angelou
(1993), and really lay the foundation for a New America. We hope it is not a windy inclement day:
overcast and damp. I hope it will be sunny and bright as
tomorrow promises to be. That it will be mild and truly
hopeful of the tomorrows to come in the next two years.
That it will begin a new era in literature and politics
in America.
We know that it has to begin at the
bottom and rise up to new values and ethics if real
change is to take root in the rural, urban, and suburban
centers of despair and cynicism. I read somewhere
that Republican president-elects do not care for poetry
and the arts. And so do not invite poets to their
inaugurals. Maybe we can disband and outlaw such
Republicans and
their ethics of greed and power. Maybe we can to flight
the ethics of our children’s gangster heroes—the
worship of benjamins, ghats, and rides.
But we have much work to do within
our communities: from the "bourgeois to the grassroots."
My friend
Kam Williams sent me an interview of one of the
stars of the new film Notorious,
which deals with the life of
Notorious B.I.G. I checked out some YouTube clips of
Biggie Smalls and Lil' Kim, which emphasize the
extolling of the gangster (or thug) life, the
irresponsible lives of the more talented younger
blacks—many who dropped out of school and respectable
life to sling blow and crack.
What is worse,
worst of all, thug life makes
pornography a salient aspect of teenage life:
conversations and sexual activity. It's a life highly
individualistic: anti-family, anti-community,
anti-intellectual, anti-life. Maybe the artistic
individualism of a Biggie or a Lil' Kim is necessary to
pull oneself out of poverty and criminality. But to what
end. There’s a long horrid distance from Nat King Cole
to Notorious B.I.G.; the
recently late
Eartha Kitt and
Lil Kim.
Success and show biz (and even rising from the lower
depths) may connect them—but the difference
and the problem is the message. My view is that Biggie
and
Lil Kim, though they “made it,” they did more moral
and ethical harm than good. They create ethical chasms
in our lives that seemingly cannot be bridged.
Can we bourgeois and
petty bourgeois
poets and writers and artists counter the proletarian raps about
killing and raping one another, niggering and bitching
one another; about the Ten Commandments of Crack (one of
the more noted and intriguing pieces by Biggie Smalls)?
Can we replace the culture of poverty with a culture
that is neither wine and cheese nor cocaine and other
kinds of blow? Can we (our children) stop sounding and
playing the dozens as the major aspect of our poetic
gifts from the bottom up? Can we begin another cultural
trend that does not emphasize graffiti and communal
warfare?
Yes, money is necessary. But do we
want it at any cost, at the cost of friends and family?
In his Ten Commandments, Biggie says that in the crack
life: "Never trust nobody." "Money and blood don't
mix." The primary activity of our children has to be
more than "Bullshit and Party." Of course, we need
government intrusion. But not that which emphasizes
police repression, forcing one of America's finest
intellectuals off the streets because he questions what
is just in our cities with 25 per cent unemployment.
We need the intrusion that supports
unionizing as Obama did in Chicago. We need poets at
workers and union rallies. We need workers (blue collar
and pink collar) who love poetry and poets as they do in
Russia, according to
Yevtushenko. If we are going to
have a new New Deal, a much higher per cent of American
workers have to be organized; fewer jobs must be shipped
abroad for the lowest wage. A living wage must become a
reality. I am not for extolling or funding the arts so that our
children worship Wall Street; or for promotion of an
ethics of getting ahead at any cost, whether it is
selling crack or bundled securities.
I do not know what will become of
Marvin's peripatetic activities on the streets of
Oakland. Maybe police repression will win out in America
against poets and change one can believe in. There is no
global ban on military take-overs. It is on
dark, damp, drizzling nights like this that make me
worry about the delicacy of good feelings and people unity. Many may
have misread scribbling about the Obama phenomenon,
post-racialism, and post-partisanship. Indeed, as
the poet Jerry Ward asks, “Where are the coordinates?”
Will they pull down the flashing blue security lights in
black neighborhoods in Baltimore? Will Marvin X be
allowed to walk freely and teach on the streets of
Oakland? Will the UAW be allowed to organize in
Mississippi and South Carolina, and in Tennessee and
Alabama for a union shop? When will we see true signs of a new
and lasting New Deal?
Anything worthwhile requires the
blood of saints—defiance and challenging the status quo
will remain a necessity—like Woodie Guthrie in the labor
camps, playing on his guitar and singing about a new union
of worker with worker, American with American. That which is worthwhile will
not be an armchair sport. For Obama's sake or his
sensibilities should
protest be silenced on 20 January 2009 if gays have a
beef with a Reverend Warren benediction or any other
political issue that
demands redress? Obama is human: he can
overestimate (as Barney Frank points out) and
underestimate (as
Frank Rich points out). Maybe the Warren
invitation as expended capital is small change. But none
wants to be overlooked! None wants to be silenced by
force.
There is no growth without
thunder and lightning: without hands to the plow:
without genuine struggle. MLK knew this reality, despite LBJ's
civil rights bills and
because of his Vietnam war. Fred Douglass knew this reality, despite
Lincoln the Emancipator and his emphasis on the Union. Malcolm X knew this reality,
despite his love for his mentor
Elijah Muhammad and his
emphasis on silence and appeasement of American
hypocrisy. All three paid the
highest debt for our present progress. What shall we do
besides enjoy the Inaugural spectacle from our living
rooms or from the great throng at the wading pool?
Should all arrogance, of our betters, be challenged? A
resounding Yes! This is no time to "sleep in a
dictionary," as Jerry Ward would say. We must strike while the iron is hot
and our minds clear.
I must go. Deer Woman is
calling me from the dark deep forest. I'll see you on
the new moon.
* *
* * *
 |
Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
* * *
* *
|
The Warmth of Other Suns
The Epic Story of America's Great
Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a
sharecropper's wife, left Mississippi
for Milwaukee in 1937, after her cousin
was falsely accused of stealing a white
man's turkeys and was almost beaten to
death. In 1945, George Swanson Starling,
a citrus picker, fled Florida for Harlem
after learning of the grove owners'
plans to give him a "necktie party" (a
lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
made his trek from Louisiana to
California in 1953, embittered by "the
absurdity that he was doing surgery for
the United States Army and couldn't
operate in his own home town." Anchored
to these three stories is Pulitzer
Prize–winning journalist Wilkerson's
magnificent, extensively researched
study of the "great migration," the
exodus of six million black Southerners
out of the terror of Jim Crow to an
"uncertain existence" in the North and
Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates
sociological and historical studies into
the novelistic narratives of Gladney,
Starling, and Pershing settling in new
lands, building anew, and often finding
that they have not left racism behind.
The drama, poignancy, and romance of a
classic immigrant saga pervade this
book, hold the reader in its grasp, and
resonate long after the reading is done.
|
 |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
posted 28 December 2008
|
