Some Religious Pimps By Kaleb F.A. Tshamba In the name of "God," they take from their followers, who pray and submit.   In the name of "God," they take from their followers, who pay and commit.   In the name of "God," they get used, they get used, by smart guys, who speak in the name of "God," who speak wise.   In the name of "God,' these spiritual leaders grow rich, and achieve fame. The poor victims and believers, living standards remain the same.   In the name of "God," they are brainwashed by, false prophets, and their lies,   In the name of "God," they take from babies, the sick, the weak and the young.   In the name of "God," they take life savings from old women, the cripple, the deaf, and the dumb.   In the name of "God," they enslave and brainwash with their lies.   In the name of "God" they take. In the name of "God" they fake. In the name of "God" they make. In the name of "God," In the name of "God," In the name of "God," They tell us that they are Godddd  . . . Damn lie, In the name of "God." Source: Eyes of a Poet

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I have witnessed police brutality by racist cops and their unprovoked attacks on Afrikan-Amerikan men with my own eyes. I myself was once a victim of a crude game of Russian roulette, was threatened and called a nigger by two white police officers who had picked me up from the Carroll Park Golf Course. I still can remember those wooden telephone poles on Annapolis Road with homemade mannequin models of Afrikan-Amerikan men hanging from a rope tied around their necks, and at night in Westport's big park there were cross burnings. . . . Through my poetry I began expressing my activism and my protest.

I have been invited to perform at numerous protest demonstrations outside the prisons, at City Hall, the State House, at recreation centers and parks, at colleges and universities, and a large number of churches and radio stations throughout Baltimore City by reading my political poetry. . . . Poetry can be used to educate as well as entertain the listener or the reader. . . . To understand me is to understand my story. These poems are part of my story and my evolution.—Kalb Faouly Attimn Tshamba, Preface to Eyes of a Poet

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Facing a possible arrest over the fatal shooting of an unarmed former Marine after a night of club-hopping, Baltimore Police Officer Gahiji A. Tshamba continues to pop in to the Eastern District station where he worked for years. Here, the 15-year veteran is among friends and colleagues, known not as a killer enraged by slights over a woman but as the quiet, studious-looking officer who, as one colleague put it, would "do anything to help you." . . .  Tshamba, a reserved and smallish man who in photographs looks more like an R&B singer than a streetwise officer, grew up in the Baltimore area and has three siblings, including twin brothers, records indicate. No one responded when reporters visited their homes, scattered from North Baltimore's Winston-Gardens to Bolton Hill. They and others, including the father's ex-wife, who lives in Woodlawn, did not respond to interview requests.

Facing a possible arrest over the fatal shooting of an unarmed former Marine after a night of club-hopping, Baltimore Police Officer Gahiji A. Tshamba continues to pop in to the Eastern District station where he worked for years.

Here, the 15-year veteran is among friends and colleagues, known not as a killer enraged by slights over a woman but as the quiet, studious-looking officer who, as one colleague put it, would "do anything to help you." . . .    .

Tshamba, a reserved and smallish man who in photographs looks more like an R&B singer than a streetwise officer, grew up in the Baltimore area and has three siblings, including twin brothers, records indicate. No one responded when reporters visited their homes, scattered from North Baltimore's Winston-Gardens to Bolton Hill. They and others, including the father's ex-wife, who lives in Woodlawn, did not respond to interview requests.

Public records for family members point back to the same three-story brick rowhouse on West North Avenue owned by Kaleb Tshamba, identified in a court divorce file as the officer's 60-year-old father. Virtually every relative has listed that address as a residence at one time or another over the past decade. The home appears occupied, but nobody has answered the door on repeated visits or responded to notes requesting interviews.

Plants hang in the windows and flowers bloom in a pot outside. A sign in the window warns: "No loitering or sitting on the steps. Will result in your arrest. By order of the Baltimore Police Department."

The home's answering machine asks callers to leave a message if they want to schedule an event at the Arch Social Club, located a few blocks to the east at West North and Pennsylvania avenues. Founded in 1912, it is one of the city's oldest African-American clubs and was once a venue for famous jazz musicians.

Kaleb Tshamba keeps a poetry journal on an Internet site called ChickenBones, described as a literary publication of African-American themes. The elder Tshamba has written a—

 lengthy personal history describing growing up in southern Baltimore's Westport public housing developments and being one of the first black families there in 1956.

He writes about racism at the hands of white police officers in the 1950s and 1960s, and of working for a defunct glass company after graduating from Edmondson High School.

In the late 1970s, the father writes, he became a "full-fledged social conscious political poet" who spoke at demonstrations outside Baltimore prisons, City Hall, the State House, churches and universities. His personal history does not contain any references to family or to his son the police officer.—Officer in shooting led turbulent life, Trouble on and off the force

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Tshamba's turbulent past  / Justified Ltr - Non-fatal Shooting of George McAleer (Tshamba)

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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

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Africa Makes Some Noise—Documentary on contemporary music from Africa

02_My_Story,_My_Song.mp3 (24503 KB) (Kalamu reading "My Story, My Song" Featuring blues guitarist Walter Wolfman Washington)

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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

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The Persistence of the Color Line Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency By Randall Kennedy Among the best things about The Persistence of the Color Line is watching Mr. Kennedy hash through the positions about Mr. Obama staked out by black commentators on the left and right, from Stanley Crouch and Cornel West to Juan Williams and Tavis Smiley. He can be pointed. Noting the way Mr. Smiley consistently “voiced skepticism regarding whether blacks should back Obama” . . . The finest chapter in The Persistence of the Color Line is so resonant, and so personal, it could nearly be the basis for a book of its own. That chapter is titled “Reverend Wright and My Father: Reflections on Blacks and Patriotism.”  Recalling some of the criticisms of America’s past made by Mr. Obama’s former pastor, Mr. Kennedy writes with feeling about his own father, who put each of his three of his children through Princeton but who “never forgave American society for its racist mistreatment of him and those whom he most loved.”  His father distrusted the police, who had frequently called him “boy,” and rejected patriotism. Mr. Kennedy’s father “relished Muhammad Ali’s quip that the Vietcong had never called him ‘nigger.’ ” The author places his father, and Mr. Wright, in sympathetic historical light.

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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)

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Ancient African Nations

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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

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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg

The Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804  / January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of Haiti 

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