The late, great Nigerian bandleader Fela Kuti was one of the most dynamic, original and uncompromising musicians to emerge from the great post-colonial African pop explosion in the 1960s and ’70s. A natural-born iconoclast, Fela was a legend in his own lifetime; as infamous for his lifestyle and politics as he was acclaimed for his music.

Fela Ransome Kuti was born into an elite Yoruba family in Akeokuta, Nigeria in 1938. Fela’s grandfather had the distinction of being the first African to ever record music in Europe, recording religious songs for EMI in the 1920s, and his mother was a well-known nationalist leader who famously campaigned for Nigerian independence. From childhood, Fela was groomed for big things.

In 1958, Fela’s family sent him to London to study medicine, but within weeks of arriving in England, he instead enrolled in Trinity College of Music, where he spent four years studying piano, composition and theory. After-hours he led his highlife/jazz combo Koola Lobitos through the rounds of London Jazz clubs, to some small acclaim.

In 1962 Fela returned to the newly independent Nigeria (the country separated from Britain in 1960), and took a job in Lagos as a trainee for the Nigerian Broadcasting service. He also reformed Koola Lobitos to play the swinging clubs of the booming city, and soon left the job to pursue music full time. In 1969 he took his band to Los Angeles to record, and became enamored of James Brown and the Black Panther movement, two things that would radicalize Fela’s sound and vision.

He returned to Lagos in 1970, and promptly renamed his band Afrika 70 and opened his own club, which he dubbed “The Shrine.” There he, along with drummer and arranger Tony Allen, pioneered a new style they dubbed Afrobeat. The sound borrowed the muscular horn arrangements and slinky guitars of James Brown’s funk and grafted it onto thundering Yoruba rhythms to come up with one of the most potent African pop styles ever recorded. In the next three decades he would record over 77 albums with Afrika 70 and their successors, Egypt 80, including such legendary sides as “Expensive Shit,” “Coffin For Head Of State,” “Colonial Mentality” and “Army Arrangement.”

Singing neither in Yoruba nor the King’s English, Fela delivered his musical jeremiads in pidgin English, so as to reach as wide an audience as possible. And he was loved for it by the masses, who made him a star. But his broadsides against the corruption and of General Olusegun Obasanjo’s military government made him some enemies in very high places, and he suffered repeated harassment, including a full scale attack on his Lagos compound (which he called “The Kalakuta Republic”) in 1977. Over 1,000 soldiers set fire to the premises and beat anyone they could lay their hands on, including Fela’s 82-year-old mother, who was thrown from a window and later died from her injuries. Fela himself suffered fractures in his skull, arm and leg. In his lifetime Fela would undergo 356 court appearances and three separate imprisonments, including a 1985-87 sentence on trumped-up currency charges that made him a poster boy for Amnesty International.

But if Fela’s music made him a target, his outrageous lifestyle made him a magnet for trouble. A notorious and flagrant pot smoker, womanizer and iconoclast, Fela was infamous for such antics as wearing nothing but his underpants and formally rejecting his “European” middle name and replacing it with “Anikulapo,” which roughly translates as “He who keeps death in his pocket.” But perhaps his most famous stunt was his 1982 simultaneous marriage to 27 women (whom he later divorced in 1986, stating that “no man has the right to own a woman’s vagina”).

Yet for all his badboy behavior, Fela’s legend continues to grow long after his death from AIDS-related complications in 1997. There have been numerous books, tribute albums and even a traveling museum show devoted to his life. But his greatest legacy is still his music; which continues to evolve and mutate. His son Femi carries on the family franchise with his band Positive Force, while Fela’s former arranger Tony Allen continues to push the sound forward, even as a whole new crop of Afrobeat revivalists such as Antibalas carry the Afrobeat torch into the 21st century.

Article (text) by Tom Pryor

PART I OF LESSON: By RBG Street Scholar

“POVERTY AND IGNORANCE EQUALS DEATH AND DISEASE. SOLVE THESE AND YOU WILL HAVE SOLVED THE PROBLEM OF BLACK ON BLACK VIOLENCE”

In my way of thinking about black on black violence from my studies and personal experiences it is an effect / consequence rather than a cause / primary issue. We live in the citadel culture of violence. There should be no denial that from its inception America has been a country that glorifies wars and violence in the name of “peace”. She has been at war against Afrikan / Black people from the time they brought us here against our will to date ( a most violent process). Every year in its history America has been at war and imposing violence in one form or another against one or more of its “adversaries”. Black people were/are reared and breed in a culture of white mob violence, lynching, slavery, suffering and death. The history of violence against Afrikans in Amerikkka is so horrific as to be almost beyond belief. Socio-structural and institutional violence (vertical violence) begets interpersonal and intrapersonal violence (horizontal violence).

Thus, the problem of black on black violence is a problem of cultural mis -orientation, self-hatred and self-alienation. What we are seeing manifest as black on black violence is an emulation of the cultural ways of our oppressor. We have internalized his ways. This is called intropression: When the oppressed are subject to oppression as long as us we internalize the oppressor and thus do to ourselves what the oppressor once did to us. When a Black man kills another Black man he’s saying in his mind “I’m gon kill you nigga” and in actuality he’s killing himself who he hates so much because he was train to do so…CULTURAL MIS-ORIENTATION LEADS TO SELF HATRED. Superimpose this on the facts of unprecedented unemployment rates in our communities, miseducation and the dope game / government element facilitated narcotization of our communities (CIA) , mass media propaganda that feeds us a study diet of consumerism, materialism and individualism; breeding jealousy, envy and haterism and you have all the ingredients for self destruction.

That being said, for those of us that are suffering from passivist psycho -pathology, please keep in mind that much of the life process is necessarily a violent experience, eg. childbirth, securing the meat that most of us eat and even the hot food you put in your mouth are all violent acts. My point here is that maybe the solution to black on black violence in amerikkka is RBG Luv. That is to say, proper knowledge and cultural orientation will inform us that we need to get RBGed Up and fight against the causes to prevent the effect. In doing this however, the first government we must overthrow is the government of our own corrupt minds. Something RBG Street Scholars Think Tank is about helping us do.

PART II OF LESSON: Dr. Amos Wilson

Black-On-Black Violence: The Psychodynamics of Black Self-Annihilation in Service of White Domination

BLACK on BLACK VIOLENCE represents a distinct milestone in criminology and Afrikan Studies. Its explanatory perspectives on the Sociopsycho-logical and politicoeconomic causes of Black-on-Black violence are exceptionally insightful, incisive, and iconoclastic. The psychodynamics of the Black-on-Black criminal are presented here with a depth and clarity rarely seen before.

NB: Pop-Out Reader from upper right for full screen reading:

PART III OF LESSON:

Black On Black Violence – Real Talk

By Paris (https://www.youtube.com/@GuerrillaFunkRec)

What is it with us? Why do we kill each other at a rate that’s disproportionately higher than that of other people? Sure, we’ve heard the excuses before – that we’re prone to crime, violent by nature, and poor and oppressed – but what are the real causes?

Here we are, in 2006, countless articles & news reports later, and our precious communities are still in a state of distress. It appears that the problem of black on black crime doesn’t seem to be improving, but rather steadily getting worse by the day. But what’s really going on?

It’s apparent to this observant eye that more often than not we’re acting out the way we’re expected to act — that is, fulfiling a role in society that has been decided upon and encouraged by people other than us. All we need to do is look at the television or listen to the radio to experience the sobering statistics or the self-hating bullshit that now passes as black entertainment on the evidently racist major networks to confirm this fact. Thuggishness and gangsterism, misogyny, brutality and ignorance have become synonymous with black life in the eyes of many, both inside and outside of our communities, as a result of both our actions and of corporate Amerikkka’s sanctioning and glorification of negative imagery and behavior. Our worst attributes are always awarded, paraded and celebrated by those whose job it is to keep us in a state of distress. Harsh, you say? Hardly. Fear of non-whites is big business in Amerikkka, and shows like COPS and virtually any news broadcast aid in the manifestation of that fear and the acceptance of its remedies – increased police presence, new prison construction and the passage of tougher laws. Besides, do you think black life really matters to them? That they care if we kill each other off?

Understand that our focus and priorities need to change, and that nobody can be relied upon to care about us but us. This should be obvious to all of us by now. Things that many of us seem too often to be concerned with (game, pimpin’, the life, etc.) are of little importance to others. So let me say it for the record – fuck game. Do you think the bank, the phone company or a prospective employer care about game? Care about pimpin’? Life goes on without it. And while game may make you cute in the eyes of shallow folks, nowadays what you know is more important than how you look or act. Contrary to popular belief, nigga-slick is out of fashion. Only through education and hard work will we move beyond simply surviving to success.

But back to the point. While the violence we see and hear on TV, films, and in black music remains a contributing factor that keeps us on our self-destructive path, it is by no means the sole reason. Many of us have a pent-up rage that easily triggers aggression — aggression that often results from a combustible blend of cultural and racial baggage that many of us carry.

What we need to do now is break out of the mold of acting out in ways expected of us. Angry black men without focus aren’t a threat to anyone but themselves, and have become the targets of ridicule by those outside of our communities. Again, who cares if we kill each other off? We must care.

It can be argued that black life is viewed by many as being worthless, and it should come as no surprise that many studies have confirmed that the punishment blacks receive when the victims of violent crime are white is far more severe than if the victims are black. Add to this the lack of opportunity, sense of deprivation, powerlessness and alienation that many of us experience since birth and the picture becomes all-too-clear — that society is not set up for our benefit. We have to make our own way, and in order to get there we must first respect ourselves and each other. Easier said than done, you say? Why? Everything is easier when we get along, especially since it appears that many others don’t want us to. The name of the game now is to be focused. Stay focused on not only the present, but on your future too. How many young folks today can’t envision themselves older than 25? How many plan for the future at all?

The devaluation of black life by systematic racism and the media has encouraged many of us to have disrespect for life and to act out our aggressions onto others — often with the victims being women and other black males. When this happens, we all lose.

And what about gangs and drugs? The introduction of crack cocaine by the CIA into our communities during the 1980’s made black youth gangs bigger and more dangerous than they had ever been before. The illicit profits of drug trafficking provided, and continues to provide, vicious incentives for those of us without direction, immediate opportunity or hope to murder ourselves. In fact, much of the recent escalation in the murder rates can be directly traced to busted drug deals, competition over markets, disputes over turf and bruised egos.

So what must we do? We must take responsibility, first and foremost, for both ourselves as individuals and as a collective. We must understand that our brothers and sisters are not our enemies. Again, we have no one to look out for us but us. When you see wrong, speak on it. Intervene. Reach out to your friends and family if they are at risk, and be receptive to other people’s points of view if you are feeling like violence is your only alternative. You might just save your life or the life of someone you know.

 THE OFFICIAL AND ONLY STATEMENT OF:
Dr. Kamau Kambon

I made a statement on a panel in Washington, D.C. on October 14, 2005 and today I am prepared to bring remarks on my original comments:

My Official Statement today is that, “I speak for No One”

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for all the Ancient Afrikans of Kemet- the original name that was changed by the greeks to Egypt- who were invaded and murdered in mass numbers, over the course of centuries by: the hyksos, the assyrians, the libyans, the persians, the turks, the greeks, the romans, the spanish, the portuguese, the french, the british and the arabs-all of whom desecrated and pillaged Kemetic Temples, Royal tombs, and robbed from these Afrikan sanctuaries priceless artifacts and sacred texts that now sit in european museums, “prestigious” university basements, and the private homes of the rich throughout the world.

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the millions of the Afrikans in West Afrika who were terrorized and kidnapped by the europeans and enslaved in the dungeons of El Mina, Cape Coast, and in the hellholes of dungeons in Senegal.

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the millions of Afrikan men in those dungeons who refused to submit and were put three to four in a cell and were left there for all of the other enslaved Afrikans to see them die a slow and painful death

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the millions of Afrikan women who were put 200, 300 and sometimes more in a stone room no bigger than small auditorium where they had to fight each other to get air that came only through a hole in the rock cell no bigger than the size of a soccer ball.

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the millions of Afrikan women who were selected by the white commander of the dungeon to be raped repeatedly and sometimes left
to die in their own blood.

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the millions of Afrikan men and women who survived the dank, cold dungeons only to face being forced through THE DOOR OF NO RETURN and onto waiting ships that would transport them to places of grief and agony beyond their own Afrikan comprehension

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the millions of Afrikans who were shackled to the bowels of stink ships where they had to ride next to their dead uncle, dead brother, dead sister, or dead mother on the long journey to lands where incomprehensible anguish awaited

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the millions of captive Afrikan women aboard those ships who felt compelled to murder their own beautiful babies so these infants would never know or experience the nightmare of enslavement.

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the millions of captive Afrikan men who tore off their own legs from the shackles to dive overboard from those stinking vessels and who would rather face death in the jaws of man-eating sharks than remain enslaved

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for those millions of Afrkan men, women and children who suffered THE MIDDLE PASSAGE and whose bones are in the watery burial ground called the Atlantic Ocean- better known to those who know their history as THE AFRIKAN OCEAN because it overflows with the blood and life force of over 100 MILLION AFRIKANS

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the millions of Afrikans who landed in the Caribbean Islands where they underwent THE SLAVE MAKING PROCESS of further de-humanization and the breaking of their arms, legs and AFRIKAN SPIRITS in preparation for the long and hard work and burdens they were to bear

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the millions of the Indigenous of the americas who were savagely brutalized, tortured, raped, secretly given smallpox in blankets, and murdered, simply for opening their hearts, minds and arms to white strangers coming off a long and weary journey. Impact of christopher columbus, as written by Father Bartomole De Las Casas in his book, “The Disruption of the Indies, highlighted that, directly or indirectly, columbus was responsible for the deaths of between 12 to 25 MILLION indigenous. The population of the indigenous was reduced from 100 MILLION to 25 MILLION, according to T. Browder, Nile Valley Contributions to Civilization.

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for all those Afrikans who arrived in North America bewildered, brutalized, weak, robbed of their culture, language, religions, families, cosmologies and longing for their own homeland

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for all the Haitians who soaked the earth with their own blood in war by giving their lives to defeat Napoleon, who led the mightiest army of that time. I speak for Boukman, for Toussaint, for and Dessailines, the leaders of the Haitians who never gave up their struggle for Freedom and Independence

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for Harriet Tubman, who made 19 trips to free enslaved Afrikans, forcing some, as she said, “to be Free or Die” In her moments of contemplation, she was overheard saying, “ I freed hundreds of slaves, and would have freed hundreds more, if only they knew they were slaves”

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. DuBois, Fredrick Douglass, and all the Black people who begged and petitioned the american government to intercede to stop white people from the wanton beatings, murdering, lynching, raping and terrorizing of Black men, Black women and Black children-the government did nothing-the deaths continued

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for all of the thousands upon thousands of the enslaved Afrikans who were set “free” by the emancipation proclamation but given absolutely nothing by their former slave masters: no food, only the clothes on their backs, and no way to get away

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the thousands of newly “freed” enslaved Afrikans who were arrested en masse as vagrants, panhandlers, and bums; then hired out to corporations and chain gangs to be forced to work for free, again, and these men literally worked themselves to death

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the thousands of Black soldiers who gave their lives in the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Vietnam, and the Gulf War only to return to their america and be lynched, physically, economically or socially, while wearing their u.s. uniforms as white people sang “America the Beautiful

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the over 2 THOUSAND Black people, mostly men, who, at the turn of the 19th century, were lynched, castrated, some burned alive, and others whose fingers, toes, penises and eyeballs were cut from their living bodies and used as souvenirs and trophies by white people

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the many men, women and children who were murdered in Wilmington, North Carolina and Tulsa Oklahoma-both considered BLACK WALL STREETS- and their land stolen from them with the sanction of the american government. Mention here about Las Vegas where Black people loss their land, like they did in Tulsa, Oklahoma

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the Tuskegee men who were experimented on by the white doctors who intentionally gave the Black men syphilis while the antidote was withheld as the experiment went on for some 40 years

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the 7,600 Black and poor women in North Carolina, and two other states, who were sterilized without their knowledge or permission in clinics as part of the population control program. These sterilizations went on from 1929 to 1974- 65,000 Black and poor women, in this country, were sterilized during this period.

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the over 6 million Black people in america who were members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and who mourned the arrest, trumped-up trial and deportation of the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey. This man, the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, was a man who wanted only to give his people back their true BlackNificent history, teach them meaningful skills, teach them to love their BLACK SELVES, and return to AFRIKA and resurrect the Black Woman and the Black Man to their rightful place of glory and
majesty among the families of the earth

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the thousands, if not millions, of Black men abducted by white men and taken off into the still of night and hanged and castrated.

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for all those Black people around the country who watched in anguish as the u.s. government harassed Elijah Muhammad, W.E.B Dubois, Paul Robeson, and many others and drove one of our greatest politicians, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., out of office on concocted charges.

That night, October 14, 2005, I stood alone and spoke for no one, no one at all, EXCEPT for all those Afikans who can no longer speak for themselves:

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the 1,227 Black troops who were SLAUGHTERED, BY THEIR OWN WHITE SOLIDERS, AND BURIED IN a MASS GRAVE-at Camp Van Dorn, a military base in southwestern Mississippi and near a small town called Centerville. Carroll Case outlines the full story of this tragedy in the book, “The Slaughter”.

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the many Black people who supported William Patterson and Paul Robeson who were two of the many authors of a petition to the United Nations entitled ‘WE CHARGE GENOCIDE”, that catalogued the evidence in the form of names, dates, times and places of Black people murdered around america at the hands of savage white people, while no one in government did anything to stop the violence or improve the social, housing, educational or health conditions of under which Black people lived.

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the four little girls who were blown into little pieces by a bomb, at the hands of white people, all yet to be known, while these harmless little girls were on their knees praying for a brighter tomorrow: Denise McNair (11 yrs.), Carole Robertson (14 yrs.), Addie May Collins (14 yrs.), and Cynthia Wesley (14 yrs.)-Addie’s sister, Sarah survived the deadly bombing (12 yrs.) and had to live with the horrors of this brutal murder all of her life

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the four thousand, or more, innocent Black and poor Panamanians and Granadians (who supported The New Jewel Movement), including pregnant women, and babies, murdered in their respective countries by invading white troops who then buried their victims in mass graves. None of this was accurately reported, by american media, to the american people, as part of a mass deception. No one speaks for the over twenty thousand, or more, Panamanians and Granadians who were made homeless as a result of these “invasions”, while still others of them were detained in concentration camps. To this day, there are hundreds of “cultural nationalists”, college professors, educators, journalists, lawyers, and others, languishing, for no reason, in prisons- in their own countries.

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for all the Black Panthers who were killed under COINTELPRO, and for Dr. Mutulu Shakur, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Imam Jamil- Al- Amin, and all the MANY BLACK POLITICAL PRISONERS who languish in the maximum-security hell pit jail cells of america. I speak for those Black political prisoners who have been held for over twenty to thirty years and are tortured, experimented on and put on hallucinogenic experimental drugs because their crimes include trying to stop the police murders of young Black men, implementing breakfast and food programs for those in their communities, trying to provide decent housing and good health care for all those in need and trying to educate the children so they don’t grow up ignorant.

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for all the dead members of M.O.V.E., in Philadelphia, who the city decided to drop a bomb on and kill babies, children, women and men in an act of premeditated murder

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for Emmitt Til and the countless Black boys and Black men who have been murdered by white men and their bodies thrown in swamps, rivers, streams or whose lifeless Black bodies now rest in shallow, unmarked graves all around the country

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for all the mothers, and grandmothers, who have lost their sons to the streets, drugs, prisons and graveyards, and their daughters to a concocted white standard of beauty that is absolutely impossible for them to attain.

These inherently beautiful Black girls and women have spent millions and millions of dollars every year in an industry that helped to create an inferiority complex in them and then profits from it.

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the untold numbers of young Black men who write to me from prison cells asking me to send them books, or who are on death row, soon to be executed, screaming at me through their letters, “I DIDN’T DO IT, MY LAWYER OR JUDGE MADE MISTAKES DURING THE TRIAL”

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for all the young Black men who come to me, just released from prison who, like the newly freed enslaved Afrikans under emancipation, have no where to go, no job possibilities, and no hope for a brighter future. Those who have skills and are working, are fired when it is discovered they have a prison record. The only place that will accept them is the newly built prison

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for all the beautiful Black children who are so excited to start school and have big plans for success, only to get there and find that the white female teachers already have quite a different plan for them.

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the hundreds, no thousands, of Black youth and Black men motorists who have been, over the years, stopped by the police and harassed. Black people, by consensus, refer to this as “Driving While Black”.

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for all of the Black people who have been, either by terror or bullets, murdered by the white police, who “thought the Black person had a weapon”-when, in some cases no weapon was found, or the “weapon” posed no real threat”: Amadou Diallo, 15 year old Randy Evans, Alberta Spruill, Patrick Dorismond, 19 year old Timothy Stansbury, 73 year old disabled grandmother, Eleanor Bumpus (NY), killed with a shotgun blast, the shooting of a deaf-mute, Errol Shaw, Shannon Lee Smith (Illinois), Calvin Champion (Nashville) an autistic man, William Anthony Miller (San Diego) mentally disabled, Harold Greenwald (Philadelphia), Margaret Mitchell (homeless woman, Los Angeles), Clement Lloyd (Miami), Kevin Cedeno, 16 years old, (NY), Jonny Gammage ( Pittsburgh ), 10 year old Clifford Glover (NY), Malice Green (Detroit), Timothy Thomas (Cincinnati), Accelyne Williams, a retired Methodist minister, died of a heart attack when a 13 member police SWAT team burst into his home, the wrong apartment, (Boston), Kenneth Walker (Ga.), Tyesha Miller (LA), and, and, and…

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the millions, upon millions of Black babies who died from poor health care during pre-natal term and for those who came to term but died from poor nutrition or malnutrition. And for the many children, teens, young adults and adults today who are raised eating techno-food, fast food, and who have never tasted any real food. And for those whose brains are short-circuited, from a lack of proper minerals and vitamins, who are labeled “special education”, mentally retarded or hyperactive-the new code words that replace those used in the early eugenics movement.

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the elderly Black people, who have struggled most of their lives to navigate through a system that was against them all the way, only to reach eldership status and find they have inadequate health care, no decent food, and are trapped in a system that considers them disposable people

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the Herrero people of Namibia who were eradicated by the germans, the Tasmanians, eradicated by the white australians, the 130 million southern Afrikans murdered by cecil rhodes so he could control diamond and gold mines, the 13 million Congolese whose arms, legs and ears were cut off and murdered by leopold, of belgium

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the Black people who marched-and got murdered by whites, those Black people who voted and got murdered by whites, those Black people who tried to go to school to get an education and got murdered by whites, those Black people who have tried to start their own businesses and got murdered by whites, those Black people who have become politicians to try to make a better way for Black people and got murdered by whites, those Black people who have tried to set up their own little independent groups and got character assassinated.

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for the worldwide Afrikan victims of A.I.D.S and all man-made diseases, who have died or who are in the process of dying, as the world watches as though they are watching a TV show

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for myself, as I watch while white people, who have power, guns, information, and influence, ride around in 60-70 thousand dollar cars, waste millions of gallons of water watering lawns and golf courses, run off on luxury cruises, conceal their identities and criminality by hiding behind “Inc”, make 80 billion dollars in profits off of oil, while ordinary people and the elderly freeze to death in small apartments, while the government bails out (code word for welfare) airlines that lose millions in one fiscal quarter yet, simultaneously, cutback on financial aid to Black students, while Black professors in white higher educational institutions have to struggle for fairness in the hiring and tenure process, while Black students seek constantly for fairness in grading and assessment, while Black faculty and Black staff have to seek constantly for fairness in evaluations, while white people window shop in malls, play golf, play bridge, sit in T.V. studios watching Dr. Phil or at home watching foolishness, and, by their actions, convey, generally, they just don’t give a damn about the great, great, great grandchildren whose Ancestors’ blood is soaked in the very ground on which we all stand

I speak for no one, EXCEPT, for the millions and millions and millions of Black people who thought, and acted like, they were european and eventually died in the most tragic of ways, being “mental slaves”

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for all of the Afrikans who were enslaved, terrorized, brutalized, tortured, raped, maimed, hanged and those who died from simply being enslaved, or who died from being worked to death.

I speak for no one EXCEPT for the 600 million to ONE BILLION Afrikan people killed worldwide, from the time the Afrikan first encountered the white man, in the greatest atrocity this earth has ever seen – some call it “The Black Holocaust”, others call it “The Maafa”, but in the realm of this context and reality, there is no word for it. And when all is tabulated about what has happened, AND STILL HAPPENING, to the Afrikan, Black people, it defies and goes well beyond human comprehension. Some have asked white people, referring here to the government and corporations, to just consider talking about reparations, and those requests have fallen on deaf ears. Are there no reparations for Black people? Who is the best qualified on this earth, other than the Afrikan, Black people, to receive justice, compensation, due process and whatever else the reparation people are proposing? Why are white people not listening to, and implementing, the National Urban League when it issues the annual report, “The State of Black America”? Why are white people not listening to, and implementing, the suggestions of all the civic groups trying to advance the social, economic, educational, health and cultural concerns of Black people?

I speak for no one, EXCEPT for my Ancestors, our dead, and for myself and I am saying that I don’t even know half of the true history of Black people, but I have seen and know enough to be able to say, “the war and genocide against Black people, in all of the areas of life activity, worldwide, must stop. Do you have a better solution to offer to solve this problem?

Though it happened 30 years ago, Attica crystallizes many issues concerning criminal justice, race, and governmental accountability that are still troubling our society today. It goes down in history as the bloodiest uprising in an American penal institution. The four-day takeover began on September 9, 1971, at the Attica Correctional Facility, located in Attica, a town in Upstate New York.

1,281 inmates, mostly black, gained control of the prison, took 39 hostages, and issued 31 demands, primarily concerning improvements in inhumane prison conditions. Negotiations with State Corrections Commissioner Russell Oswald lasted four days, and involved 33 observers with New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller tracking the stand-off from afar.

After negotiations stalled, 500 armed troopers stormed the prison. In the end, 29 hostages and 10 guards were killed, all by police fire. Brutal retaliations and a cover-up followed. Inmates who suffered physical torture and reprisals filed a class action suit against the state. After 26 years, the case was settled with a $12 million award to inmates and their attorneys. Now the hostages are asking New York State for equal recognition.
1) Race and class were commonly acknowledged as being at the heart of tensions within Attica in 1971, but the huge disparity between African American and white felons continues today, raising questions about the color-blindness of the judicial system

2) Attica became the well-spring for the prisoners’ rights movement and the catalyst for reform in such areas as religious freedom, censorship of letters and reading materials, medical care and diet, visiting rights, educational programs, and legal services.
3) Many of these reforms have eroded in the past decade as a “lock ’em mentality” came back into favor. Numerous educational and training programs have ceased, and in 1998, Gov. Pataki vetoed funding for Prisoners’ Legal Services. Attica changed the way hostage negotiations are conducted. In training films, it serves as a textbook example of excessive and unnecessary government force. Today a “wait ’em out” strategy prevails. As a result, no one has been killed in any prison rebellion since Attica.

4) Governmental accountability for wrongdoing is still a live issue with Attica. As guard Mike Smith states in the film, “I don’t know any other employer who could murder their employees and get away with it, except the government.” The State of New York has never offered help, compensation, or an apology to the hostages or their widows. Only last year was the civil action suit settled with the inmates, who were subjected to torture and brutal retaliations after the state regained control of the prison.

The saga continues even now. As a resulting of lobbying by the Forgotten Victims of Attica, Governor Pataki formed a commission this spring to look into their request for an apology, counseling, compensation, the release of sealed records, and the right to an annual memorial service in front of the prison.

Black August originated in the California penal system in the 1970s. Many significant events in the New African Nation’s struggle for justice and liberation have occurred in August. The commemoration of Black August particularly hails the advances and sacrifices of Black Freedom Fighters.

Further Research and Study:
http://www.talkinghistory.org/attica/