BBWs #9: Wille Lynch Speech a Hoax & the Big Pay Back!

    As a result of s being cut off from our roots and being strangers in a strange land we are oftentimes the most gullible people on earth...and the most fanatic! We have more liqour stores in our communities than anybody else, more guns, drugs, churches, crime and Jesus freaks! We kill more blacks than anybody else and since Atlanta has become the new gay capitol of America it seems like we are now becoming homosexuals at a faster rate than anybody else. The good news is that our fanaticism shows that once we put our minds to something we can outdo anybody! Unfortunately it seems like we have also been dupped by the Willie Lynch Letter, which is supposed to be a "How to Control Your Slaves" manifesto that was presented to a group of slave owners in 1712!

    Fortunately noted Oakland scholar and historian, Professor Manu Ampim, did his homework and researched this paper, as we should have done, and discovered that although it gained its greatest noteriety because of the advent of the internet in the 90s, it can only be traced back to no earlier than the 1970s! Plus there are some obvious discrepancies and language faux pauxs that indicate the paper was written in modern times, my guess is by a Black Studies student and child of the Black Power movement who was trying to do something to wake up his people. But he made the mistake of using expressions like "up front" and "refuel", modern day colloquialisms; because they certainly had no cars, trucks or airplanes to refuel back in the 1700s or any fuel or petroleum products for that matter!

    But most importantly what the brother pointed out was that although we have suffered from "divide and conquer" tactics, the effects of those tactics were miniscule especially in comparison to the three main components that have lead to our present day predicament as a people. And those three things that have disabled us the most are: Migration, Urbanization and Intergration!

    We have become or have been forced to become so nomadic that it can be difficult for us to build or form relationships, organizations, unity and even friendships. Urban Renewal/Gentrification/Eminent Domain/Manifest Destiny/Freeways thru the neighborhood it's all the same. I once heard somebody say that the expression "Black Community" is an oxmoron - a contradiction in terms! And however false that statement might be still there is too much truth in it to ignore!

    Urbanization and migration moved us away from "down home", back south and caused us to lose a lot of natural affection for each other! Northern negroes, both male and female are harder and colder and more independent - more like the white folks and towns they migrated to. When I say Chicago, New York, Detroit and Oakland you think of rugged blue collar toughness, not the soft, pliable, matriarchal, nurturing environments we came from! We left our land and our farms and our agriculture and our ability to grow our own food and build our own homes and towns and cities and wound up in Concrete Jungles! Not only did they take the Sun from us and put him in a book, but the put cement between us and the earth and herded us into ghettos and turned us into Block Monsters, with no one to prey on but each other!

    And all that was still managable because we still had each other and our businesses and our communities and neighorhoods and incomes and our own doctors and banks and artisians and athletes and theaters and teachers and schools and students who were performing above the national scholastic averages! But when intergration came we did a jail break from one another, the most talented folks of our communities left to go work for and with the white man, welfare came in to divide the family and without many sheperds to guard the flock the wolves came in with drugs and guns and gangs and forked tongues and suddenly the neighborhoods become hoods without neighbors!!!!

    With no land, no businesses and no property we became professional guests, permanent guests in other peoples stores, apartments, projects, hotels, hospitals, arenas and towns; subject to be thrown out, rejected or evicted at anytime. We have become like a sports team without a home game or a home field advantage, always playing on the road and trying to excel in hostile environments - like the Christians versus the Lions in the Roman Coliseum!

    So Buy Black Wednesdays is about enabling ourselves to play more home games in comfortable nurturing surroundings in neighborhoods instead of hoods and communities instead of coliseums, with fellow team mates in our own stadiums and businesses and properties and homes, on our own land, where we grow our own food and teach and govern our own children and citizens. And all this simply by changing our spending habits and patterns...and becoming fanatics about buying black, black business and black people!

(Work in Progress)

Buy Black Wednesdays 7: Columbus, the White Cat Who Brought the World 500 Years Bad Luck!

There are those who would have you believe that seeing a black cat (like me!?) cross your path will bring you bad luck. But the Native Americans had no idea when they first saw that white cat named Christopher Columbus that he would be bringing them and the whole world 500 years bad luck!         Those two hundred years between 1400 and 1600 were an unfortunate turning point in world history. During that time Europeans began to sell the rest of the world a can of beans with their picture and lable on it (a white Jesus centered Christianity), that took them from the Dark Ages to the Space Age and from the barbaric Middle Ages to the barbaric Super Power that America is today, leaving much of the world behind in a dark age of poverty and oppression, with nothing to show for it but a can of beans -  without a can opener!        When we are born into the world all we have to grow up on are the stories our parents and the world feed us. But if our parents and their parents and the whole world were brought up on lies than probably much of what we believe in are lies, untrue or misleading; Like when we were taught in school that Columbus discovered America.     And many of our parents believe that we should pursue a "I am qualified to be a success in life degree" from college because that is a part of the American Dream; and that the ideal place for us to seek higher learning is from a prestigious university like Harvard. When the best thing Harvard can really do for you is teach you a watered down version of your own stolen legacy!!!     Because the truth of the matter is...that not one single university in the history of the world on planet earth has ever been able to create one Michael Jackson, not one James Brown, not one Thelonious Monk, not one Bob Marley, not one Marcus Garvey, not one Josephine Baker, not one George Washington Carver, not one Muhammad Ali, not one Great Pyramid or a single genre of music like the Blues, Jazz, Funk, Hip Hop or R&B! Why? Because you can't touch this and you can't teach this! Black magic! The magic of black people!     This special Khemistry is in y/our genes! Your melanin and dark skin tone distinguishes you as a Planetary Elder, one who embodies the wisdom of the ages, one who is blessed with eons of insight and intution and millenia of magic and overcoming in your DNA and coursing through your veins! Just as a record or CD is imprinted with music so have you been deeply sunkissed and sprinkled with stardust from the rhythms and music of the spheres and the mojo and juju of the most ancient of years!     The number one rule of the Original People and most Indigenous People is respect your elders! But there is a tribe of Grown Juvenile Delinquents who have no respect for anything! These Baby Souls have carjacked the world but they don't know how to drive so they keep crashing into everything; spilling millions of gallons of oil into the oceans, knocking over whole (rain) forests and millions of sacred trees and killing millions of indigenous people and wildlife! You and the other indigenous peoples of the world should be teaching them instead of them teaching you!     And as far as the American Dream is concerned, you have to be asleep to believe it! After 500 years of being burnt in our own ashes it is time for the Phoenix to rise! We must stop funding the Inhumane Society and their enterprises of madness and support our own and more nobler agendas! Your community is your university! Out of all the infinite heavens and all the infinite earths that little acre of land called your community is the university God (Universal Intelligence) planted you in! And if we support them enough soon our communities will be more sustainable, prosperous and greater centers of higher learning than their universities!     This is one of the reasons I created not only Buy Black Wednesdays but also All Afrikan Saint's Day - a red black and green alternative to Halloween. All Afrikan Saint's Day is intended to be an afrocentric Day of the Dead! An all Afrikan holiday where we revisit and pay homage to our black heroes and ancestars instead of ghosts and goblins and spiritual gangsters! A day to excavate Black Gold and Black Power from incredible Black Legacies! A day where we may still wear costumes and lavish adornments and play make-believe, but we do so to re-member the great Afrikans who preceded us, through poetry, song, dance, music, drumming, skits, speeches and re-enactments of great moments, groups and individuals in Black History!     All Afrikan Saint's Day is intended to be held on the same day as Halloween. However we will have a promotional event on Sunday, October 16, 6 to 9pm at Shashamane's Restaurant, 2507 Broadway, in Oakland.     Paradise Day is October 6th in the city of Oakland, a distinction I was given for my many years of service in the arts community, but will be celebrated on Sunday, October 2nd, 6 to 9pm at Shashamane's Ethiopian Restaurant.     Vote today for the world of the future now! Buy Black Wednesday! Also check out my new Buy Black Wednesday video web show at http://www.buyblackwednesdays.com/

Buy Black Wednesdays 6: We've Made Everybody Else Rich! Now it's Our Turn!

Turns out the freedoms we won weren't enough, we also need discipline! No disrespect to other cultures, but when we got a little freedom we did a jailbreak from each other and ran into the open arms of everybody else and made them rich! We ran to Chinatown to get Chinese food, we ran to Japantown to get sushi and Japanese food! We ran to the taco stand to get Mexican food! We ran to Little Italy to get pizzas in Italian shoes and suits! We ran to Mac Donalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken and to everybody else's restaurant to make them rich!

We ran to the Asian Beauty Salons to get manicured and pedicured and our fine East Indian hair weaves and made them rich! Our comedians and boxers have made comedy clubs throughout the country and Showtime and HBO rich! Our music has made Sony, the Music Industry and the whole world rich! We've made Pimps, Pushers, Preachers and ghetto slum lords rich! We left our Black Wall Streets with 600 businesses in a 10 Square mile area and our Harlems and Little Africas and were seduced by Greener Pastures, the American Dream and Goldy Locks to make Disneyland, Hollywood, Manhattan and Suburban Malls rich!

We ran to Nike for $200 running shoes and made them rich! We ran to the NBA and made the National Basketball Association Rich! We ran to the NFL and made the National Football League rich! We ran in the Olympics and made the International Track Federation, ABC, NBC and CBS sports rich! We had our own professional baseball teams in the Negro Leagues, an Ebony Field of Dreams with the best baseball players in the Universe, but we allowed ourselves to be seduced and put thousands of black folk out of work and communion to return to our former slave masters and make them and Major League Baseball rich! And that rich ebony Field of Dreams has vanished into the mists of time!

Our young boys and girls get athletic scholorships and the promise of a free education to play ball at major colleges and universities and make them rich! "Run nigger, run!" Because this is primarily what the colleges are for and about: money... human roachtraps and 4 to 8 year detention centers for our community's brightest minds and greatest talents! And if they can't use you to further their White Supremacy endeavors they spit you back out into the world shackled with thousands of dollars of debt! Meanwhile, while you were pursuing the American Dream, the American Nightmare was swallowing up your community, killing your homies, turning your brothers and sisters into crackheads and tricks and disenfranchising the whole neighborhood once again with gentrification and disorientation and a brand new expressway where your thriving black businesses used to be!

So as a form of therapy and medication we make Newport and Malt Liqour makers rich! Our physical constitutions and oppression anxieties are so strong that we need a "double poison" to get a buzz! We can't just smoke regular cigerettes we gotta have menthol! And we can't just drink regular beer we gotta have Malt Liqour! And our poor drinking and eating habits have made many a doctor, hospital and Undertaker rich!

We've made America rich, Europe rich, Asians rich, Jews rich, Arabs at the corner liqour store rich and every Tom, Dick and Harry has fed off of and is benefiting from our labor, talent and Life Force but us!!!! Even our poets and spoken word artists are making other people rich! Which is why I'm giving a For Colored Girls, $1000 (Winner takes All!) Sistar Slam in November to encourage literacy, art, culture and cooperative economics! We've made everybody else rich, now it's our turn!

Support black and community friendly businesses everyday, but especially on Black Wednesday!