The Amen Corner: Remembering James Baldwin ...in his own words

Remembering James Baldwin

His birthday was August 2nd. He was one of the greatest writers and thinkers of the 20th century. In his honor..and for our benefit....we should hear him ...in his own words.


If you have a free hour (lol), this is MUST watch video. James Baldwin's message in this and The Fire Next Time becomes even more powerful given today's political climate...and eerie in its accuracy (foreshadowing). All should really peep this...

http://mediacatalogue.blogspot.com/2008/08/debate-james-baldwin-vs-william-f.html


Get to know James Baldwin...and the understanding he communicate in the last few minutes is why he is so important to know...



“Take no one’s word for anything, including
mine – but trust your experience.” – James Baldwin

James Baldwin on What's Important




“Color is not a human or personal reality; it
is a political reality.” – James Baldwin

“This is why the most dangerous creation of
any society is that man who has nothing to lose.” – James Baldwin

“If we do not dare everything, the
fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is
upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow sign,
No More water, the fire next time!” – James Baldwin


Excerpt of speech from my film James Baldwin Anthology
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7Of0Abi10A



in his own words...and for our benefit...if we listen.

“But it is not permissible that the authors
of devastation should also be innocent.
It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.” – James Baldwin

Who is the Nigger? -James Baldwin (clip)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0L5fciA6AU



We are capable of bearing a great burden, once we discover that the burden is reality and arrive where reality is. – James Baldwin

The TRUE Cost of War...TRUE LIVES for TRUE LIES

In April 2007 I was asked to write a commentary for PLAYAHATA.COM..I had to choose a modern day villian or playahater...I chose the corporate interest fueling the Iraq war. Many understood this war was unnecessary, but few were paying the physical, emotional, and mental price...only the Iraqis and our youngest men and women that join the military to serve this country or access better opportunities really understood the cost. This week, Texas and anyone by their TV got a little glimpse.

It is ironic that veteran's day is around the corner. The irony has never been lost on me that we say we honor and respect our troops but we allow them to make unlivable wages (where some families must depend on AFDC). They fight on battlefields beside private entities that are often compensated 5 times what our soldiers make (Blackwater). Corporations and capitalists defend a system where banks that rip off consumers can then rob the treasury for bailouts in order to keep their 600 to 1 percent salary rate when compared to an enlisted Marine who puts his/her life and mental health on the line daily. Our GIs can't get decent health care (Walter Reed) but the Walton family (Walmart) can go anywhere in the world for the best health care their money can buy (Walmart being richer than 160+ countries) with the money they make from outsourcing American jobs to China and paying Chinese workers a couple dollars a day. The irony of it all...we accept this as inevitable. We believe what we are told to be true...we buy the true lies...


But the only inevitable thing is this system is unsustainable...and cracks in the dam (the numerous anecdotal stories that do not get reported of soldiers suffering from PTSD and crimes they commit) will give way to the dam breaking soon enough (this week's massacre).

I went back to the commentary I wrote over two years ago...that day I had a first hand encounter with one of the many anecdotal situations that play out everyday in the lives of our returning soldiers...The writing has been on the wall...and here it is:



my playahater choice is a little more personal because of one person that crossed my path two weeks ago. I was on a Southwest flight to Sacramento.Sitting beside me was a young brotha (24). He was a Marine and had already done 3 tours of duty in Iraq. He was supposed to finishing his time in June and was getting out, but he was not feeling too secure in that since the military can now call back discharged soldiers to tour, despite the fact that they have completed their contracts and done their time. Slavery is alive and well in 2007.

Back to the plane and the young brotha. He was from a military family; His father had served as well as his aunt and uncle. He had always wanted to be a marine. He has two young children. His hope now is that the military service legacy that defined his family will end with him. He does not want his children to follow in his footsteps. Why? War is hell and he has lived it. This brother was real jittery and obviously had seen more than any human being should. When asked what his job was in the marines, he answered: "you don't wanna know what I do" (saying this repeatedly). Then coming with:"I'm a killer." He then wanted to share with me the 4000 pictures and 100s of videos he had taken in Iraq. He watched the slideshow of bodies mangled, children decapitated and blood and guts lining the streets without any reaction. He wanted to talk about it and said it helped, so I just listened, trying not to get nauseous from the gore.


And for all that they must bear: being away from their families, killing men, women and children, living with that nightmare and coming home to subpar medical facilities and families that can't afford to live without food stamps, they get abandoned and random strangers sitting beside them on a plane must serve as psychiatrist. This war is my Playahater, and the ITT Corporation embodies what's wrong with the poor fighting the war for the rich's interests. We all deserve better than this, but especially brothers like this, and the Iraqis with which they now share the dance of death.


Original Link: http://www.playahata.com/?p=2352

Many believe the TRUE LIES that corporate interests fuel through corporate media...even when our TRUE LIVES...reality...is all we need to know.

TRUE LIES by Taalam Acey
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unntwxaF_LQ


"We are capable of bearing a great burden, once we discover the burden is reality and arrive where reality is."
"Take no one's word for anything, including mine - but trust your experience" - James Baldwin, The Fire next Time

one final note...

i went to see "This is it" again...and i think MJ really did say it best:

"The time has come. This is It. People are always saying.. 'Oh they, they'll take care of it.' 'The government will do it. They'll' ...They who? It starts with us. ..it's US. Or else it'll never be done." - Michael Jackson

Rise up Hip Hop Nation: What will be the Price for Peace?

As always, I'd like to begin by offering peace and respect to all. I have not posted an original writing in a long while, but the timing seemed right. Today the trial of the Oakland police officer that killed unarmed Oscar Grant was set to start. This past weekend, Oakland erupted again when four police officers and a young man were shot and killed in a standoff. Many call it karma. Others call it war. Maybe it’s a sign of the crossroads to come, where the path chosen will lead to either deception and war…or truth and peace. Recently I’ve received some messages with this sentiment from Shamako Noble of Hip Hop Congress: War is Deception. Peace is the Truth.

This essay will be different than most. I want to examine this sentiment in light of recent events in Oakland and what our reaction should be to them through a visual and textual essay of words and ideas. Video clips and quotations will be incorporated throughout to paint a picture of struggle and resistance, philosophy and strategies.

How do we fight for our rights when others are killing us to deny them? How do we choose the right(eous) path when the war path may be an easier way to freedom? No justice, no peace rings true.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. - Frederick Douglass

You have to understand

That people have to pay the price for peace.

If you dare to struggle you dare to win.

If you dare not struggle then god damn-it you don’t deserve to win.

Let me say peace to you if you’re willing to fight for it. – Fred Hampton

Fighting for our humanity is not optional. No lasting peace is possible without full human rights for all. The police state our communities have been subjected to denies our humanity. We are treated as suspects. When we are shot in the back (unarmed), there is no mainstream outcry. When a white woman is killed by her rich black husband and he gets off by working the system, a nation never forgets and finds a way to make him pay, even a decade later. Where is the same public outrage when a black man spends 20+ years in jail for a crime he was railroaded for by a racist sheriff? No outcry…just silence. No wonder there is resentment and distrust.

We are capable of bearing a great burden,

Once we discover that the burden is reality

And we arrive where reality is. – James Baldwin

Malcolm X: No progress

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzuOOshpddM

It is no surprise that Oakland would be the crossroads in this struggle for humanity. Oakland birthed the Black Panther Party for Self Defense (BPP). Malcolm X’s assassination birthed the BPP. The BPP and Malcolm X addressed the police state head on and provide a framework to understand the fire this time.

Malcolm X: Police and Criminals

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX1Bg2ZDABU

A true student of Malcolm X knows he never advocated violence, and lived his life by rule of law and a code of morality. His fight was a human rights struggle and he believed all had the right to their humanity and to protect that right when threatened…by any means necessary.

Malcolm X: On Violence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3WMfAmg3Bo

The BPP actually used the language of the Declaration of Independence as inspiration at the party’s inception. Huey P. Newton studied law to empower people with knowledge of their rights under the law when practiced as written. The BPP challenged the police state oppressing our communities (or the racist pigs as they often referred to them) but never advocated violence as a solution. Self Defense and understanding human rights as defined by international law was the foundation of BPP ‘s revolutionary struggle. Law was never the enemy…it was the weapon of choice.

In his note on the recent Oakland shootings, hip hop journalist Davey D describes a scene at a concert of crowds cheering when news of the police shootings were announced.

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=74094946592&id=882195719&index=0

If this is war, I guess, it makes sense for the embattled to cheer a “victory”…enemy down.

But is celebrating more death really a victory?

For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? – Matthew 16:26

It is scarcely worthwhile to attempt remembering how many times the sun has looked down on the slaughter of the innocents. I am very much concerned that American Negroes achieve their freedom here in the United States. But I am also concerned for their dignity, for the health of their souls, and must oppose any attempt that Negroes make to do to others what has been done to them. I think I know - we see it every day – the spiritual wasteland to which the road leads. It is so simple a fact and one that is so hard, apparently, to grasp: Whoever debases others is debasing himself. That is not a mythical statement but a most realistic one, which is proved by the eyes of an Alabama sheriff – and I would never like to see Negroes ever arrive at so wretched a condition. – James Baldwin

James Baldwin: On Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the American race question

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXwVnYGJ_Cw

In the end, universal law dictates all. We reap what we sow. I once heard Julianne Malveux tell a story: Someone asked her if the weight of being a descendent of slaves and that oppression was a burden. She answered: "better to be a descendent of slaves than slave masters". The righteous will be okay because they are have always been on the right side of the struggle...that is why some enslaved Africans were freer than their masters...and could sing and dance and smile and laugh and survive and LIVE under the most oppressive conditions. Our moral flame guides us through our darkest hours, and will lead us to the truth…peace.

So “be against nothing...just be clear what you are for" (Iyanla Vanzant). When we concentrate on what we are against (racism, sexism, white supremacy, capitalism, fascism, homophobia, etc.) we frame the struggle in terms of negatives and sooner or later can lose the true purpose of the
struggle...LIFE...

Life is your right..so we can't give up the fight..get up stand up - Bob Marley

...If we frame the struggle in terms of life affirming principles - peace, justice, love, and sustenance, our eyes remain on the prize, and our moral authority is the compass that will guide us down the right(eous) path.

Martin Luther King Jr.: Nonviolent Resistance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwKIUMbi9Jk

And I hope that each one of you will be able to die in the international proletarian revolutionary struggle and then be able to live in it.

And I think that struggles going to come.

Why don’t you live for the people.

Why don’t you struggle for the people.

Why don’t you die for the people. – Fred Hampton.

In our struggle against those that deny our humanity, and the impulses to compromise our own morality, let us DARE to pay the price for peace.

DARE…to struggle.

DARE…to exhibit moral clarity.

DARE…to define our humanity.

DARE…to face reality.

DARE… to love.

DARE…to live.

War is Deception. Peace is the Truth.