Category Archives: american history

As Summer Begins To Fade, The Last Word On………

Posted on by drumsintheglobalvillage

……………..Mumia’s case? As is, is this really it? It looks like it. But as he joked with Angela Davis recently when she asked him (on the phone) in front of an audience, “Any last words?”, thankfully, it won’t be his last word.

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……………2015!!!!!!!

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………………..That ending! So if that cop dude is a “Robin” of sorts, why not have a “Nightwing” movie franchise? “Nightwing,” a Daredevil knockoff, is a great character because Dick Grayson is a great character.

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…………………That reboot. This is just one fan’s opinion, but I thought it was as good as the first Tobey Maguire “Spider-Man.” (DUCKS ROTTEN FRUIT AND TOMATOES :)) SEPTEMBER 4th UPDATE: A belated comment: I enjoyed this discussion.

"More Truth In Myth Than There Is In Truth": Hearing Natalie Diaz

Posted on by drumsintheglobalvillage

Watch Poet Natalie Diaz Returns to Her Roots on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Really enjoyed this segment. It really stood out on a show as culturally conservative as the PBS NewsHour.

 

JEFFREY BROWN: Next, a story of poetry, basketball and the preservation of a native language. It begins with a trip down the Colorado River.

HUBERT MCCORD, Mojave Tribe: (SPEAKING MOJAVE)

NATALIE DIAZ, author: What’s that?

HUBERT MCCORD: (SPEAKING MOJAVE) is rattlesnake fangs.

NATALIE DIAZ: If you look at the peaks there, they almost look like rattlesnake fangs.

JEFFREY BROWN: For Mojaves, this part of the Colorado River, California on one side, Arizona on the other, is (SPEAKING MOJAVE) the place where the spirits live. And on our early-morning boat trip, before the heat of the desert reached 105, we saw bighorn sheep, wild donkeys, sharp cliffs and rock formations that all are part of the Mojave story.

NATALIE DIAZ: (SPEAKING MOJAVE) is the people who change into the mountain.

JEFFREY BROWN: So they’re — they’re sitting up there forever?

MAN: It looks like they’re standing and sitting?

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.

MAN: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: But if the stones continue to stand, the stories and the Mojave language itself are in danger of being lost. And that’s the reason for these trips, to bring young people together with elders like 85-year-old Hubert McCord, one of a handful of fluent speakers left in the Fort Mojave Indian tribe.

The language preservation effort is being organized by 33-year-old Natalie Diaz.

NATALIE DIAZ: They are constantly reminding us of the time crunch. You know, we have this many years and we’re supposed to do this, this, this and this. How are we going to get there? But. . .

JEFFREY BROWN: It is a race against time, they’re saying.

NATALIE DIAZ: It definitely is.

One of the most probably crushing moments for me was listening to Hubert. He said, what are we going to do? What are my people going to do? Meaning, when he’s gone, he’s not going to be able to help and to teach them anymore.

This is (SPEAKING MOJAVE). This is (SPEAKING MOJAVE).

JEFFREY BROWN: Diaz herself only heard bits of the language from her grandparents as a child and has no formal training in linguistics.

In fact, this calling to preserve her native language is a recent one; 16 years ago, she left the reservation here to pursue a completely different passion, basketball, first at Old Dominion University in Virginia, then professionally in women’s leagues abroad.

NATALIE DIAZ: It was kind of my way to navigate between the different cultures. On the reservation, if you were good at basketball, you could do anything. You know, fit into any group, and then off the reservation as well.

JEFFREY BROWN: It was at Old Dominion that she also began to write poetry.

NATALIE DIAZ: I thought, hey, writing can offer me something, some sort of — again, some sort of quiet that I have always kind of been looking for.

For me, writing — it’s kind of a way for me to explore why I want things and why I’m afraid of things and why I worry about things. And, for me, all of those things represent a kind of hunger that comes with being raised in a place like this.

JEFFREY BROWN: Diaz’s first book, titled “When My Brother Was an Aztec,” has just been published, with many poems that deal with the harsh realities of reservation life: poverty, teen pregnancy, and the methamphetamine drug addiction that plagues many young people, including one of her brothers.

NATALIE DIAZ: “Now he’s fresh-released from Rancho Cucamonga, having traveled the Mojave trail in chains, living with your parents, and you have come to take him to dinner, because he is your brother, because you heard he was cleaning up. Holler upstairs to your brother to hurry. He won’t come right away. Remember how long it took the Minotaur to escape the labyrinth.”

JEFFREY BROWN: So that’s a way of processing I guess a real experience, but through — I hear Minotaur myth, all kinds of things.

NATALIE DIAZ: Yes. I think there’s more truth in myth than there is in truth.

I mean, I can sit here and tell you, you know, Jeff, this is — it’s terrible having a brother like this. It’s really bad. It’s awful. But that’s not going to register with you. But, for me, poetry allows me to kind of break down images and kind of see what they’re made of. And so I’m able to reinvent images and colors and sounds, and, you know, and all of the senses kind of come together to give you a more truthful picture of what’s happening.

JEFFREY BROWN: It was two years ago that Diaz decided to return home and work to revive a language that’s been in decline since the late 1800s.

Even into the 20th century, Native children were put in a government-run school near here that was intended to take and even beat the language and culture out of them. Today, some of the elders can still recall those days.

HUBERT MCCORD: My mother could tell you that, because they came around with horses and tied them up like and then put them in wagons and then took them to school. And you’re not supposed to even talk Mojave anymore up there. If you do, you get punished.

JEFFREY BROWN: Hubert McCord, who is one of the last of the tribe’s bird singers, has watched as the language drained away over several generations, from men leaving the reservation for work, extended families no longer living together and handing down rituals, and, of course, the bombardment of media and culture from the larger Anglo society.

NATALIE DIAZ: Okay. So we will get you miked up then.

JEFFREY BROWN: He and several other elders are now working with Natalie Diaz to record words, stories and songs.

HUBERT MCCORD: It’s a long time ago.

JEFFREY BROWN: Helping her create a talking dictionary for students to use on computers.

NATALIE DIAZ: Hubert, how do you say creation mountain?

HUBERT MCCORD: (SPEAKING MOJAVE)

NATALIE DIAZ: Yes. So that’s one of the most important places that you guys have as Mojaves.

JEFFREY BROWN: Some of those students join the elders in a weekly workshop. It’s a small program, still in its infancy, but one that’s striking a chord.

Are you surprised that there’s this interest now in coming to you to hear your stories and get you to translate?

HUBERT MCCORD: I’ll tell you the truth. I am a little — I am surprised. I am.

JEFFREY BROWN: Yes?

HUBERT MCCORD: And, in my heart, I feel good.

JEFFREY BROWN: Natalie Diaz says that, for her, this effort is really part of a much larger reconnection and sense of identity, especially for young people in the tribe.

NATALIE DIAZ: In Mojave, everything passes through your dreams. All your gifts come from dreams. And so, what they worry about, in one of our workshops, they discussed maybe the dreams are coming to the kids, but maybe they’re coming in Mojave, and maybe they don’t understand that. And so they’re not going to know what their gifts are. They’re not going to know what they should be doing. . .

JEFFREY BROWN: Wow.

NATALIE DIAZ: . . . because they don’t speak the language.

JEFFREY BROWN: The next step is a larger summer workshop, where elders, including Hubert McCord, will continue to pass on Mojave words and songs of the river, the rocks and the birds.

What I Said In Full To The Grio

Posted on by drumsintheglobalvillage

The Grio interviewed me about this petition. So I squeezed my entire doctoral dissertation into six paragraphs. 🙂

Here’s what I sent it:

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I am deeply disturbed by this turn of events in New York City. Black radio—particularly when 1190 WLIB-AM had a Black news/talk format in the 1980s, and you could listen to “Nighttalk with Bob Law,” the show created by National Black Network and originating on 1600 WWRL-AM—was a powerful force in the lives of many New Yorkers. Both played an extraordinary role in my political and cultural socialization.

I am a native of Newark, N.J., so most of us grew up on New York City media. When I listened, WLIB was exactly what some Black journalists called it: “The Afrocentric University of the Airwaves.” I was introduced to the concept of Afrocentricity because of WLIB and “Nighttalk.” WLIB taught me about some older men named “Dr. Clarke” and “Dr. Ben,”  and I listened intently to what they had to say about world history. New York’s Black radio identified for me who was out in the street fighting for Black people, and why they were doing it. And who their enemies were. And why, by extension, I now had to consider their enemies my enemies. A Communication major at Seton Hall University, I started cutting class and staying home in the mid- to late-1980s to listen to what the activists, historians and others had to explain about the condition of Black people, and the responsibility of all Black people—particularly those in media—to struggle for Black self-determination and self-definition.

WLIB and “Nighttalk” were living, crackling, commercial-filled, radical street-level HBCUs. They took the historic legacy of Black radio and furthered it. Even KISS, owned by white corporate types, had a brother named Bob Slade who understood this tradition and represented community concerns. I understand he’s now on WBLS, but what will happen if there’s no more WBLS?

Today, KISS is gone, Gil Noble and “Like It Is” are starting to become fading memories, and WLIB is gospel. “Nighttalk” is gone and Bob Law is a restaurateur. Gary Byrd is holding on to his career for dear life.

So losing WLIB and WBLS? New York’s historic Black Liberation Stations? If that happens, it will be a major setback for Black political socialization and community development. New York has always been a leader in Black activism because its radical and progressive traditions—Garvey, Adam, Malcolm, streetcorner speakers, rallies/protests etc.—transferred successfully to radio and television, giving a political and cultural education to multiple generations at the same time. I’m 44, and I remember when New York local television had FIVE local and national Black public affairs shows on weekends. (“Like It Is” (WABC) “The McCreary Report” (WNEW/WNYW) “Tony Brown’s Journal” (WNET/PBS) “Essence: The Television Program” (SYNDICATED, BUT AIRED ON, MADE AT AND BY WNBC) and “Positively Black” (WNBC). Black people in New York were organized in the  late 1960s and early 1970s because they had forums they trusted that told them what was going on. They continued to count on Black radio in the 1980s, 1990s and even the 2000s to educate them politically and culturally, and to organize them.

Regardless of media consolidation, whites have the entire political and social spectrum on their radio dial—from Pacifica to Rush, with NPR and all-news radio in the middle. Historically, a Black radio station had to fulfill all of the functions Black people needed—educator, motivator, activist, spiritual uplifter. What we have now—a (mostly white) corporate abandonment of those ideas—is bad enough. But not to have it at all in the nation’s biggest, most powerful, and politically and culturally Blackest market will show how Black communities once again have been given symbolism instead of substance in the Obama era.

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Congrats To……….

Posted on by drumsintheglobalvillage

………Hazel Trice Edney, who has been elected president of the Capital Press Club. It has a great history.

Her old newspaper, The Richmond Free Press, wrote thusly in its June 7-June 9 edition:

Hazel Trice Edney, a former Richmond Free Press reporter, has donned a fresh journalism hat.

Ms. Edney, who now owns and operates a Washington-based wire service and teaches journalism classes at Howard University, is the new president of the Capital Press Club, the nation’s oldest Black journalism association.

The Louisa County native and Harvard University graduate was elected May 1 to lead the 300-member group for four years.

The club was founded in 1944 when Black and female reporters were barred from the National Press CLub and other white-controlled journalism organizations.

She is currently president and CEO of Trice Edney Communications and editor-in-chief of the Trice Edney News Wire, which she launched in November 2010.

Also a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, Ms. Edney began her reporting career with the now-defunct Richmond Afro-American. She was the first member of The Free Press news staff and mainly covered City Hall and the State Capitol after the paper began publication in 1992.

She left Richmond in 1998 aftger receiving a fellowship to Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she earned a master’s degree.

Her career sicne has included stints as a legislative aide to now-deceased U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and as editor-in-chief of the news service of the National Newspaper Publishers Association.

Among her journalism honors, she was inducted into the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame in 2009 and last year received the New America Media Career Achievement Award.

Lauryn Hill: "Failure To Create A Non-Toxic, Non-Exploitative Environment Was Not An Option"

Posted on by drumsintheglobalvillage

An extraordinary statement about media, society and the role of the artist.  In the tradition.

For the past several years, I have remained what others would consider underground.  I did this in order to build a community of people, like-minded in their desire for freedom and the right to pursue their goals and lives without being manipulated and controlled by a media protected military industrial complex with a completely different agenda.  Having put the lives and needs of other people before my own for multiple years, and having made hundreds of millions of dollars for certain institutions, under complex and sometimes severe circumstances, I began to require growth and more equitable treatment, but was met with resistance.  I entered into my craft full of optimism (which I still possess), but immediately saw the suppressive force with which the system attempts to maintain it’s control over a given paradigm.  I’ve seen people promote addiction, use sabotage, black listing, media bullying and any other coercion technique they could, to prevent artists from knowing their true value, or exercising their full power.  These devices of control, no matter how well intentioned (or not), can have a devastating outcome on the lives of people, especially creative types who must grow and exist within a certain environment and according to a certain pace, in order to live and create optimally.

I kept my life relatively simple, even after huge successes, but it became increasingly obvious that certain indulgences and privileges were expected to come at the expense of my free soul, free mind, and therefore my health and integrity. So I left a more mainstream and public life, in order to wean both myself, and my family, away from a lifestyle that required distortion and compromise as a means for maintaining it.  During this critical healing time, there were very few people accessible to me who had not already been seduced or affected by this machine, and therefore who could be trusted to not try and influence or coerce me back into a dynamic of compromise. Individual growth was expected to take place unnaturally, or stagnated outright, subject to marketing and politics.  Addressing critical issues like pop culture cannibalism or its manipulation of the young at the expense of everything, was frowned upon and discouraged by limiting funding, or denying it outright.  When one has a prolific creative output like I did/do, and is then forced to stop, the effects can be dangerous both emotionally and psychologically, both for the artist and those in need of that resource.  It was critically important that I find a suitable pathway within which to exist, without being distorted or economically strong-armed.

During this period of crisis, much was said about me, both slanted and inaccurate, by those who had become dependent on my creative force, yet unwilling to fully acknowledge the importance of my contribution, nor compensate me equitably for it.  This was done in an effort to smear my public image, in order to directly affect my ability to earn independently of this system.  It took a long time to locate and nurture a community of people strong enough to resist the incredibly unhealthy tide, and more importantly see through it.  If I had not been able to make contact with, and establish this community, my life, safety and freedom, would have been directly affected as well as the lives, safety and freedom of my family.  Failure to create a non toxic, non exploitative environment was not an option.

As my potential to work, and therefore earn freely, was being threatened, I did whatever needed to be done in order to insulate my family from the climate of hostility, false entitlement, manipulation, racial prejudice, sexism and ageism that I was surrounded by.  This was absolutely critical while trying to find and establish a new and very necessary community of healthy people, and also heal and detoxify myself and my family while raising my young children.

There were no exotic trips, no fleet of cars, just an all out war for safety, integrity, wholeness and health, without mistreatment denial, and/or exploitation.  In order to liberate myself from those who found it ok to oppose my wholeness, free speech and integral growth by inflicting different forms of punitive action against it, I used my resources to sustain our safety and survival until I was able to restore my ability to earn outside of it!

When artists experience danger and crisis under the effects of this kind of insidious manipulation, everyone easily accepts that there was something either dysfunctional or defective with the artist, rather than look at, and fully examine, the system and its means and policies of exploiting/’doing business’.  Not only is this unrealistic, it is very dark in its motivation, conveniently targeting the object of their hero worship by removing any evidence that they ‘needed’ or celebrated this very same resource just years, months or moments before.  Since those who believe they need a hero/celebrity outnumber the actual heroes/celebrities, people feel safe and comfortably justified in numbers, committing egregious crimes in the name of the greater social ego.  Ironically diminishing their own true hero-celebrity nature in the process.

It was this schism and the hypocrisy, violence and social cannibalism it enabled, that I wanted and needed to be freed from, not from art or music, but the suppression/repression and reduction of that art and music to a bottom line alone, without regard for anything else.  Over-commercialization and its resulting restrictions and limitations can be very damaging and distorting to the inherent nature of the individual.  I Love making art, I Love making music, these are as natural and necessary for me almost as breathing or talking.  To be denied the right to pursue it according to my ability, as well as be properly acknowledged and compensated for it, in an attempt to control, is manipulation directed at my most basic rights!  These forms of expression, along with others, effectively comprise my free speech!  Defending, preserving, and protecting these rights are critically important, especially in a paradigm where veiled racism, sexism, ageism, nepotism, and deliberate economic control are still blatant realities!!!

Learning from the past, insulating friends and family from the influence of external manipulation and corruption, is far more important to me than being misunderstood for a season!  I did not deliberately abandon my fans, nor did I deliberately abandon any responsibilities, but I did however put my safety, health and freedom and the freedom, safety and health of my family first over all other material concerns!  I also embraced my right to resist a system intentionally opposing my right to whole and integral survival.

I conveyed all of this when questioned as to why I did not file taxes during this time period.  Obviously, the danger I faced was not accepted as reasonable grounds for deferring my tax payments, as authorities, who despite being told all of this, still chose to pursue action against me, as opposed to finding an alternative solution.

My intention has always been to get this situation rectified.  When I was working consistently without being affected by the interferences mentioned above, I filed and paid my taxes.  This only stopped when it was necessary to withdraw from society, in order to guarantee the safety and well-being of myself and my family.

As this, and other areas of issue are resolved and set straight, I am able to get back to doing what I should be doing, the way it should be done.  This is part of that process.  To those supporters who were told that I abandoned them, that is untrue.  I abandoned greed, corruption, and compromise, never you, and never the artistic gifts and abilities that sustained me.