'If Neal Street Could Talk: 2007-12-23

“If We Must Die” by Claude McKay

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! We must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

The Spirit In The Sky

Excerpt from Chapter Four of Woodruff Park:

“Every morning in this land, hundreds of precious Afrikan children will awaken to consume copious amounts of grain, laced with a white adulterated sweetener; just one molecule away from crack cocaine. They will then douse themselves with the mother’s milk of another animal. I can imagine cows speaking amongst themselves saying, “Damn they nasty, I wouldn’t drink their milk!” After receiving their proscribed initial morning high, these drugged up highly addicted drug addict adolescent children will then chaotically run, prior to receiving hours of Apart-Hate education, to the nearest neighborhood candy store; where they will make more sugary drug deals, this time with strange speaking sometimes kindly, sometimes evil foreigners, who will spend their days in these drugged up children’s ghettos, often in total recall of the Black American soldiers who once fought their grand daddies in their own homes. In an economic sense, these little precious drug addicted Black children awaken each morning to watch the rape of their mother, over and over and over again.
This is a community that is clearly under seize; where early on in life, one is made witness to foreign occupiers who spend their days suckling away at the economic life of a people; only to make safe passage back into their own communities, in order to prepare their bounty for yet another day of ritual feasting. Where Black mothers once eked out a merge existence for their families, having white children to suckle at their breast, today the Black child is forced to suckle at the breast of indifference and alienation; and this is a community that has watched truth and falsehood suckle at the same breast for far too long.
The scene is played out over and over again everyday, all over these rolling hills, where foreign occupiers in the hood, run the legal storefront trade safely inside, and young ‘White T’s’ learn to survive, in their own neighborhoods, under a watchful eye, running an illicit trade outdoors. It must be a strange thing to be a foreigner in the land of your birth, because a whole nation seems to consider you and your people mealy consumers, and useless eaters, and your community becomes the political dumping grounds for the nation’s ills. You are colonized, from within, and from without, and alienated in your own homeland, and the world looks on at you with mock indifference. Death comes easy!”

From The Back Cover:

‘Numerous characters inhabit the extraordinary Universe that is the epic narrative world of Woodruff Park. There are creatures large and small, both mortal and supernatural, human and anthropomorphic, ancient and legendary, gods and goddesses, Black leaders, and common folk, some righteous and others not so righteous; and then there are those who only live in ‘blackface’. Nevertheless, all help to curry an original mythos with a distinctly African American Cultural Worldview. Here lies the painful residue that betrays the living witness of mute human discourse hiding inconspicuously behind the veil of Black life in America.

Read through these pages and witness the agonizing and dualistic, seemingly ‘flick-ted’ and schizophrenic Negro personality painfully attempting to negotiate its “two warring minds in one dark body!” ———with its human host hoping only at best to “dodge the spit of ‘their Fellows!’ Nevertheless, this is a world where there exist little dichotomy between the human experience and that of the supernatural world. Through both triumph and tragedy, in both word and deed, these are the passions uttered only in the hush houses of American life. It is an enchanted journey through the sparse foliage of a myriad of uniquely American ‘rituals of deception’. A world born of ‘The Maafa’, and viewed back of the psychopathology and the ‘tricknology’ that appears to hover ever-present upon the illusionary surface of everyday life within the legendary colonial-settler state. This is a place where passions live sheltered lives, like bizarre bitter secrets left perpetually untold; like some deformed twin left hidden in the basement. Of course, we all know that she is there but, ‘we really not supposed to talk about it!’

Woodruff Park eludes all of those fears and engages the reader on a truly enchanted sojourn through a spectacular epic of time and space; and into an authentic world of infinite possibilities. We encounter Auyurashia, the beautiful and seductive water-spirit, Queen of the Dammed and over-seerer of the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean. It is she who is the comforter to one hundred million tortured souls once carelessly cast into the sea. “I alone control the weather!” she declares. Then, there is Asi Yahola, The Black Drink Singer, come back to the South as a maniacal trickster in the satirical guise of a Harpy Eagle; still forever mocking the U.S. Government. We meet a large family of Live Oak trees (The Crying Trees) that actually do cry real tears in deep never-ending angst towards their complicity in so many senseless lynchings. And, who could ever forget the endearing Little Hannibal; the boy who would slay a Goliath and became a legend overnight. There are mortals, some of which are just so inconceivably cruel, and others possessing humanity so deeply profound that it will simply take your breath away.

This is the world that engulfs you in a Universe unapologetically set in Afrikan Time. Here is Truth spoken to Power with undaunted clarity, self-determination, and Sweet Butter Love; over a vast range of (his-) storical issues, events, and ideas. When viewed through the lens of Black life in America, this is Ourstory, reclaimed for ourselves through the inherently pure and indigenous ethos of a voice that actually looks like us! Yet, this is a vision that actually speaks to all humanity. That’s What’s Up!’

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Saturday, December 29, 2007

Mom's Death in Iraq Leaves Family Adrift http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-casualty25dec25,0,7006928.story

Thomas Davis and his sons pictured in Oswego, New York, near Ft. Drum, the base for his wife's unit. Staff Sgt. Carletta Davis went on her third tour while her family counted the days until her return, but she was killed by a roadside bomb near Kirkuk.

Lakota Sioux Indians Declare Sovereign Nation Status

On December 20, 2007, the Lakota Nation withdrew from all treaties with the United States and declared their independence. A delegation from the tribe made formal notice to the U. S. States Department. The Lakota said the decision was necessary due to what they descried as conditions of ‘Colonial Apare-[Hate]’. Life expectancy for Lakota men is less than 44 years, and 96 percent of the Lakota people live under the poverty line. The Lakota Nation also say the United States never honered many treaties, dating back to the mid 19th century.

The Joshua Generation