When Ajike Owens was alive, she dreamed of becoming a famous entrepreneur. “You laugh at me,” she’d tell her mother, Pam Dias, “but one day the whole world’s going to know my name.” Years later, filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir thought about Owens’s avowal while sifting through the 30-plus hours of police body-camera footage and audio recordings that make up The Perfect Neighbor, her Oscar-nominated Netflix documentary about the two years leading up to Owens’s killing.
The documentary tells the story of Susan Lorincz, who regularly called police to the otherwise tight-knit Florida community where Owens was raising her four children to complain about neighborhood kids playing near her rented property. On June 2, 2023, Lorincz rang authorities over a dispute involving Owens’s children, roller skates, and a missing iPad. Minutes later, the white 58-year-old Lorincz fatally shot her Black neighbor, 35-year-old Owens, through her closed front door.
Susan Lorincz tells her side of a neighborhood dispute, as captured in police body-cam footage that fuels much of The Perfect Neighbor.Courtesy of Netflix
As the case against Lorincz was coming together, attorneys for Owens’s family gained access to hours of police body-camera footage through the Freedom of Information Act. Reviewing it alongside her producing partner and husband, Nikon Kwantu (whose cousin was Owens’s best friend, Kimberly Robinson-Jones), Gandbhir said it “reminded us of films like The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity. The community had lived a real-life horror film. So we wanted to create something that placed you in the community.” To raise both media awareness around Owens’s killing and money for the family, Gandbhir and her editor, Viridiana Lieberman, made a film in which cops inadvertently serve as cinematographers.
Geeta Gandbhir is a double Oscar nominee for The Perfect Neighbor (best documentary feature) and The Devil Is Busy (best documentary short).Bryan Derballa/Getty Images
Some have argued that watching a film told largely through the very same system that failed Owens could make viewers identify too closely with law enforcement. “We were really not that concerned with the perspective of the police. They were just the vehicle to showcase this community as they were. When the police come into communities of color, surveillance can be used to criminalize,” Gandbhir tells Vanity Fair in response. “We wanted it to humanize.”
She doubles down on the belief that “our society essentially failed this community. [The police] didn’t see them as worth protecting. Susan was able to weaponize her race and privilege. And by not realizing she was a danger to the community and probably herself, her life is ruined too,” Gandbhir continues. “She’s ostensibly spending the rest of her life in jail. And as an abolitionist at heart, I really wish that on no one.”
Lorincz attempted to utilize Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law as a defense, arguing that she was legally allowed to use deadly force because she feared for her life when Owens banged on her door demanding to speak after her son said Lorincz threw a pair of skates at him. This was also the successful legal tactic of Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, who was acquitted in 2013. In 2024, Lorincz was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 25 years in prison. She has appealed her conviction.
Leaders of the Federal Bureau of Investigation fired more than a dozen agents who kneeled amid Black Lives Matter protests in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 2020. Many of the agents had already been demoted or put on administrative leave.
One source told CBS News that the termination letter to the agents cited their alleged “lack of judgement” in their actions. The agents had been photographed kneeling after encountering protestors during the demonstrations that followed George Floyd’s death in May 2020. The kneeling had angered some in the FBI, but was also understood as a possible de-escalation tactic, the Associated Press reported.
The number of FBI employees terminated was not immediately clear, but two people told the Associated Press it was roughly 20.
The FBI Agents Association, which represents a majority of FBI agents, said that it “strongly condemns” the firings and urged Congress to investigate. The association accused FBI Director Kash Patel of violating the law and ignoring the agents’ “constitutional and legal rights instead of following the requisite process.”
“Leaders uphold the law – they don’t repeatedly break it,” the association said. “They respect due process, rather than hide from it. Patel’s dangerous new pattern of actions are weakening the Bureau because they eliminate valuable expertise and damage trust between leadership and the workforce, and make it harder to recruit and retain skilled agents—ultimately putting our nation at greater risk.”
An FBI spokesperson did not comment on the firings.
The firings come amid a broader personnel purge at the bureau as Patel works to reshape the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency.
Five agents and top-level executives were known to have been summarily fired last month in a wave of ousters that current and former officials say has contributed to declining morale.
One of those, Steve Jensen, helped oversee investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Another, Brian Driscoll, served as acting FBI director in the early days of the Trump administration and resisted Justice Department demands to supply the names of agents who investigated Jan. 6.
A third, Chris Meyer, was incorrectly rumored on social media to have participated in the investigation into President Donald Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. A fourth, Walter Giardina, participated in high-profile investigations like the one into Trump adviser Peter Navarro.
A lawsuit filed by Jensen, Driscoll and another fired FBI supervisor, Spencer Evans, alleged that Patel communicated that he understood that it was “likely illegal” to fire agents based on cases they worked but was powerless to stop it because the White House and the Justice Department were determined to remove all agents who investigated Trump.
Patel denied at a congressional hearing last week taking orders from the White House on whom to fire and said anyone who has been fired failed to meet the FBI’s standards.
The Golden Globe winner recently opened up about the “uncomfortable conversation” she had with an Italian journalist about the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements in Hollywood, noting that she “didn’t really pay too much attention” to the fan response.
“I think I’m less online than I used to be,” she said at a New York Film Festival press conference on Friday, according to People. “So I didn’t really, to be completely honest — and I love to lie, I make money lying. But yeah, I didn’t really pay too much attention.”
Edebiri added, “But, I mean, I think it was just a very human moment. And I think in a strange way, uncomfortable conversation, it’s kind of one of the many things our film is about. So shout out to tie-ins!”
In Luca Guadagnino‘s After the Hunt, premiering Oct. 10 in theaters, college professor Alma Olsson (Julia Roberts) finds herself at a complicated crossroads when her prized pupil Maggie Price (Edebiri) accuses her colleague Henrik Gibson (Andrew Garfield) of sexual assault, threatening to expose a dark secret from her own past.
Despite being awkwardly excluded from a question by Italian journalist Federica Polidoro about what was “lost during the politically correct era” in Hollywood now that the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements supposedly “are done,” Edebiri clarified that the “work isn’t finished at all.”
“Yeah, I know that that’s not for me, and I don’t know if it’s purposeful it’s not for me, but I just am curious,” said Edebiri after the ArtsLife TV reporter clarified her question was only for co-stars Roberts and Garfield during an interview promoting After the Hunt.
One fan on X praised Edebiri for handling the moment “with poise and grace,” as another called out Polidoro for “being unprofessional.”
Polidoro has since responded to the backlash, doubling down and defending herself against alleged online attacks. “I will not tolerate or accept defamatory or violent language, and I reserve the right to seek legal protection against those who, in recent days, have chosen to hide behind the digital mob to insult and attack me instead of seeking a civil and constructive discussion,” she wrote.
Did you know they have anti-wokeness crusaders internationally? Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, and Julia Roberts shut down leading questions from a journalist on the Italian press tour for After the Hunt. A video posted by Italian site ArtsLife TV shows a reporter asking Garfield and Roberts what “to expect in Hollywood after the MeToo movement and the Black Lives Matter are done.” Roberts, dumbfounded, asked a clarifying question. “Can you repeat that?” she asked. “And with your sunglasses on, I can’t tell which of us you’re talking to.” The reporter repeated that the question was for Garfield and Roberts — not Edebiri — and was what will Hollywood be like now that Me Too and Black Lives matter “are done” and “if we lost something with the politically correct era.”
Edebiri then interjected. “I know that that’s not for me, and I don’t know if it’s purposeful if it’s not for me,” she said. “I don’t think it’s done, I don’t think it’s done at all. Hashtags might not be used as much but I do think that there’s work being done by activists, by people every day that’s beautiful, important work. That’s not finished, that’s really, really active for a reason because this world’s really charged. And that work isn’t finished at all.” Garfield backed her up, saying both “movements are still absolutely alive.”
Edebiri added that media attention may skew people’s perception of what is or is not happening on the ground. “Maybe if there’s not mainstream coverage in the way that there might have been, daily headlines in the way that it might have been eight or so years ago, but I don’t think it means that the work is done. That’s what I would say.” That’s what she’d say if she was asked. But she wasn’t asked.
Daunte Wright was killed on April 11, 2021, about ten miles from the spot where Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd in front of a crowd of outraged onlookers. Wright also met his death at the hands of police officer, Kim Potter, who drew her service pistol instead of her taser and fatally shot the 20-year-old during a traffic stop. Potter was ultimately sentenced to a paltry two years for her crime and was released after 16 months.
Source: Stephen Maturen / Getty
According to APNews, now that Potter is back on the streets, she is looking to cash out on her criminal conviction by launching a speaking tour to wax poetic about her “mistake” by telling other police officers about her experience. It should go without saying that Daunte’s parents, specifically his mother Katie Wright, are none-too-pleased about it.
“I think that Kim Potter had her second chance. She got to go home with her children. That was her second chance,” Wright said. “I think that when we’re looking at police officers, when they’re making quote-unquote mistakes, they still get to live in our community. They still get to continue their lives. That’s their second chance. We don’t have a second chance to be able to bring our loved ones back.”
Source: Brandon Bell / Getty
What makes this cockamamie scheme even more infuriating is that the person helping Potter execute this idea is the prosecutor who was supposed to help put her behind bars in the first place. Imran Ali resigned from the case citing “vitriol” and “partisan politics” that rubbed his tender yellow belly wrong.
“This is the definition of why I decided to walk away. You have somebody that recognizes the need for reform, recognizes the need for redemption, recognizes the need to engage. And still,” Ali said. “If you’re in law enforcement in this country, there is no redemption.”
With all due disrespect, f*** Imran Ali and f*** Kim Potter’s “redemption”. If she wants to “redeem” herself, there are a myriad of ways to do so without making money off of a dead Black man. Ali insists that these speaking engagements are about “reform” and teaching officers not to make the same mistakes that Potter did. However, the language in the contracts that Ali drafted for Potter’s “services” reads as follows:
“The officer, and the prosecutor who quit in protest, will deliver a dynamic presentation on the truth of what occurred, the increased violence and non-compliance directed towards law enforcement, the importance of training, and steps we can take in the future,”
Where exactly is the language of “reform”? This sounds more like “Kim Potter killed someone who deserved it and was treated very unfairly by society and if you kill someone who deserves it, then you will be treated unfairly also”
Source: KEREM YUCEL / Getty
Potter’s September event was canceled in the wake of public criticism. However, she is still being asked by other police departments to come speak.
CAPITAL REGION, N.Y. (NEWS10) — June 27 is National HIV testing day, and the New York State Department of Health says New York is at an all-time low of new infection rates. NEWS10 speaking with a local group on their efforts here in the capital region to help eradicate the disease.
New York has hit historic lows in HIV new infection rates since the pandemic’s height in the 1990s. However local HIV specialists say now is not the time to relax.
“The battle is not over. There are places and populations that are increasing in rates of infection, and we need to get those individuals identified and we need to help them get into the care that they need. Because there are things that we can do now that’ll make life normal and long lived,” said Kim Atkins, Executive Director Alliance for Positive Health.
New York’s new infection rates have plummeted 42% since 2011 from nearly 4000 new infections a year down to just over 2000 a year in 2022. 18% of new infections tested positive for AIDS and 69% of new infection rate diagnoses are people under the age of 40.
The Alliance for Positive Health has been providing free testing for nearly 40 years. “Testing needs to continue, and we need to identify people because people are still getting infected,” said Atkins.
And now, the Alliance for Positive Health teams can get to more people in further away places with their new mobility fleet. “This is the newer one we have a larger one that we could test two people at once. Recover 15 counties so we go all the way up to Plattsburgh and all the way down to Hudson and anywhere in between,” said Testing Supervisor Alliance for Positive Health, Niurka Diaz Gonzalez.
Chris Francis has been with the Alliance team for over 10 years and is part of the Care Coordination. He tells NEWS10 Reporter James De La Fuente about the importance of testing.
“I suggest people get tested every couple, of every two to three months. Especially if they’re sexually active.” Francis says testing is personal. “I care about my physical and mental health. It can take a toll on your mental health if you don’t get tested not knowing what you have or if you’re clean.”
As black and brown communities are adversely affected Chandler Hickenbottom, co-founder of Saratoga BLM says her organization is taking focus on testing, as well.
“As of right now we don’t have anything posted. But I think that is something that after having this conversation, I think it would be really great and important for us to start getting more involved in. So, joining the campaign to show the importance of not just getting tested in general, not just even for HIV, but for all sexually transmitted infections and STD’s. That is definitely very important,” said Hickenbottom.
A spokesperson with NYDOH says, “HIV in New York State has fallen to historic lows. At its peak in the mid-1990s, New York diagnosed nearly 15,000 new cases per year; that number was down to 2,318 in 2022.”
Ever since Juneteenth became a national holiday, corporations have been trying to do to it what they’ve done with Pride: strip it of its roots and turn it into a commercialized holiday to sell more stuff.
There’s a scene in American Fiction in which Jefferey Wright’s character is appalled at the suggestion that his book is promoted for a Juneteenth holiday release. Yet, the white corporate executives are so pleased with themselves for the idea: how inclusive, they thing, how perfectly celebratory.
And while now that Juneteenth marks a national day off, it will be marked with gatherings and celebrations, it should be a day of remembering. Celebrated on June 19th (hence the portmanteau), Juneteenth marks the day in 1865 (almost 160 years ago) when enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, were finally informed of their freedom. More than two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had legally freed them, these were the last enslaved people to be legally free citizens. Therefore, the holiday marks the actual end of slavery in the United States — unless you count prison labor and other forms of legal enslavement (I do).
Many people are still confused as to how the Emancipation Proclamation had failed to be delivered to all enslaved people. But it wasn’t like there were Apple News alerts. News took time to speak. Major General Gordon Granger’s announcement of General Order No. 3 in Galveston delivered the long-overdue message that all enslaved individuals were free, symbolizing a critical turning point in American history.
It’s a holiday that doesn’t just celebrate the freedom of formerly enslaved people but also recognizes the system’s failure to actually deliver on its promises.
Though the holiday was celebrated informally, Juneteenth is also entangled with memories of summer 2020 during the Global Black Lives Matter protests. After George Floyd was murdered by police in May 2020, protests erupted all summer and marked a shift in the conversation about race in America and beyond. This momentum culminated on June 17, 2021, when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law, making Juneteenth a federal holiday.
For the first time, we were talking about racial as a structural institution rather than a series of small actions. We were finally addressing the deep-seated roots of racism in our systems and in ourselves. But of course, this all got gentrified fast. People started putting “anti-racist” in their Instagram bios and thought that was enough. And don’t even get me started on the Black squares on Instagram.
It was Biden’s alleged intention for recognizing Juneteenth as a national holiday to not only honor the historical significance of the day but also underscore a commitment to acknowledging and addressing the legacy of slavery and the ongoing pursuit of equality and justice in the United States.
However, just four years later, what have all those promises for change accomplished? Many companies promising to do good have since fired their DEI staff. Many copies of bell hooks and anti-racist books bought during the first wave of support are sitting dusty on bookshelves somewhere. And now we have Juneteenth. But is it enough?
But activism can only be diluted if our commitment to it wanes. Every year, I challenge us all to strengthen our commitment to the values we purported to support in 2020. Read those books. Ask yourself if you’re living up to your #antiracist Instagram bio. And consume media by Black people that actually aims to educate its audiences — not just placate them with mediocre claims of representation.
From documentaries to narrative features, here are some films to inspire your activism and anti-racism this month:
I Am Not Your Negro
James Baldwin is one of the most insightful voices from the Civil Rights era. His writing, as well as his interviews, challenged American society and politics through both fiction and non-fiction. But many often forget that he spent the last years of his life in Paris in fear that the US government would literally murder him as they had his contemporaries. Directed by Raoul Peck, the film is based on Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript, “Remember This House,” which was intended to be a personal account of the lives and assassinations of three of his close friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. By juxtaposing Baldwin’s commentary with images from the Civil Rights era and contemporary times, “I Am Not Your Negro” becomes both a commentary and call to action urging us to acknowledge the truth of the system and also do what we can to change it.
The 13th
We can’t talk about Juneteenth without talking about the 13th Amendment, which prohibited slavery in the United States “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” With the problem of mass incarceration disproportionately affecting Black Americans, it has become a form of legalized slavery. No amount of Juneteenth merchandise will disguise the fact that the freedom we celebrate is conditional. Ava DuVernay’s seminal 2016 documentary takes this loophole as its starting point – tracing the many ways it’s been hideously exploited from the Civil War onwards to maintain a racial hierarchy with commentary from Angela Davis, Senator Cory Booker, Michelle Alexander, and more.
Origin
A narrative can be as educational as a documentary when done correctly. Ava DuVernay’s most recent drama Origin (2023) chronicles the journey of reporter Isabel Wilkerson’s acclaimed book, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.” It follows Wilerson’s investigation to how caste systems shape social hierarchies in the United States to parallels with caste systems in India and Nazi Germany. Through a blend of personal narrative and historical analysis, the film interweaves Wilkerson’s interviews, archival footage, and acting inspired by true events to highlight insidious caste-based discrimination that plagues societies around the world.
Rustin
Celebrate the intersectionality of both Juneteenth and Pride month with Rustin (2023), a biographical drama that brings to life the story of Bayard Rustin, a key architect of the Civil Rights Movement. He helped organize the March on Washington and was one of MLK’s key advisors for a time. But why haven’t you heard of him? Because he was gay — and he was ousted from MLK’s inner circle due to homophobia. Directed by George C. Wolfe, the film stars Colman Domingo as Rustin, capturing his dynamic and often challenging role as an openly gay Black man fighting for social justice in a time of profound prejudice. It’s a reminder of our interlinked struggles and how all justice depends on each other. It’s also a call to action to be more inclusive and intentional in our activism.
Judas and the Black Messiah
One of the most powerful voices of the Civil Rights movement and chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s, Fred Hampton was assassinated by by members of the Chicago Police Department as part of a COINTELPRO operation. COINTELPRO, Counterintelligence Program, was an FBI program investigating “radicals” — which mostly amounted to Civil Rights Leaders. In this dramatic retelling of Fred Hampton’s story and murder, director Shaka King focuses on the involvement of LaKeith Stanfield as William O’Neal, the FBI informant who infiltrated the Black Panthers and ultimately betrayed Hampton, played by Daniel Kaluuya. Watch for Kaluuya’s compelling portrayal of Hampton that makes you understand the impact of this rousing leader, and inspires all of us to engage in our communities rather than pick the ebay way out like O’Neal.
Genius: MLK/Malcolm X
The acclaimed Genius series turns its eye upon these two Civil Rights leaders in this biopic series. It underscores their differences and their similarities, while exploring what made them so effective. It focuses on their formative years, how they became the leaders they were, and who they were in their personal lives — often imperfect but still determined to create change. By focusing on their humanity, it stops them from being over-mythicized and reminds us that we too can create change if we are committed to it.
The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
As the first major documentary on the Black Panthers, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution is directed by Stanley Nelson examines the Party’s rise of in the 1960s and its impact on the Civil rights and American culture. It clears up some myths about the Panthers while emphasizing what they actually stood for. Emphasizing both forgotten heroes and familiar faces.
The Black Power Mixtape
The Black Panther Party is chronically misunderstood. This compilation of tapes come from videos shot for Swedish television between 1967 and 1975, capturing the tail end of the Civil Rights Movement; the shift away from Martin Luther King Jr’s nonviolent policies to a more militant approach; and the brutal oppression faced by the leaders of the Black Power movement. Weaved between commentary from Erykah Badu, Angela Davis, and Stokely Carmichael’s mother, these tapes tell the Black Panthers’s story from their Point of View.
Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play.
One of the most controversial and talked-about Broadway plays, Slave Play ignited public interest and ire in equal measure. It was the most Tony-award nominated non-musical play in history in 2019. Though it was too controversial to actually win any Tonys. It was also Julia Fox and Kanye West’s first date. Do with that what you will. Written by Jeremy O. Harris, it investigates the way that racism and the lineages of slavery are still pervasive in our society — and our intimate relationships. But this is not a film version of the play. It’s a genre-bending exploration of the production of the play, as well as a conversation about its themes.
Coming to Netflix on Juneteenth, the follow up to last year’s Barbie phenomenon: a documentary on the origin of the Black Barbie. “If you’ve gone your whole life and you’ve never seen anything made in your own image,” says producer Shonda Rhimes in the trailer, “there is damage done.” The documentary follows how the Black Barbie came to be. Written and directed by Lagueria Davis, Black Barbie takes audiences through first-person perspectives of three Black women who worked at Mattel during the iconic doll’s incubation: Kitty Black Perkins, Stacey McBride-Irby, and Davis’ Aunt Beulah Mae Mitchell. “I’m excited for people to know their names, a part of their story, and this part of history,” says Davis.
The Black literary tradition is rich and exhaustive, and 20 poems could never hope to scratch its surface. But each one of these poems also contains a world within itself—a refracted look at one’s wounds or visions of new ones or, often, both bound up together in the ways only American poetry can achieve.
These are laments, songs of revolution (both internal and societal), and recipes for change. Some feel like prophecies for the current moment and others feel like visions of even bigger seismic shifts. They speak best for themselves but they call all of us to join them. From Amiri Baraka to Octavia E. Butler, black poetry is truly something amazing to behold. In honor of Black Lives Matter, here are 20 revolutionary poems by black poets.
1. Poem About My Rights by June Jordan
Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear
my head about this poem about why I can’t go out without changing my clothes my shoes my body posture my gender identity my age my status as a woman alone in the evening/ alone on the streets/alone not being the point/ the point being that I can’t do what I want to do with my own body because I am the wrong sex the wrong age the wrong skin and suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/ or far into the woods and I wanted to go there by myself thinking about God/or thinking about children or thinking about the world/all of it disclosed by the stars and the silence: I could not go and I could not think and I could not stay there alone as I need to be alone because I can’t do what I want to do with my own body and who in the hell set things up like this and in France they say if the guy penetrates but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me and if after stabbing him if after screams if after begging the bastard and if even after smashing a hammer to his head if even after that if he and his buddies fuck me after that then I consented and there was no rape because finally you understand finally they fucked me over because I was wrong I was wrong again to be me being me where I was/wrong to be who I am which is exactly like South Africa penetrating into Namibia penetrating into Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland and if after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to self-immolation of the villages and if after that we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they claim my consent: Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what in the hell is everybody being reasonable about and according to the Times this week back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they killed him and before that it was Patrice Lumumba and before that it was my father on the campus of my Ivy League school and my father afraid to walk into the cafeteria because he said he was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong gender identity and he was paying my tuition and before that it was my father saying I was wrong saying that I should have been a boy because he wanted one/a boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and that I should have had straighter hair and that I should not be so boy crazy but instead I should just be one/a boy and before that it was my mother pleading plastic surgery for my nose and braces for my teeth and telling me to let the books loose to let them loose in other words I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A. and the problems of South Africa and the problems of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white America in general and the problems of the teachers and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very familiar with the problems because the problems turn out to be me I am the history of rape I am the history of the rejection of who I am I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of myself I am the history of battery assault and limitless armies against whatever I want to do with my mind and my body and my soul and whether it’s about walking out at night or whether it’s about the love that I feel or whether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina or the sanctity of my national boundaries or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity of each and every desire that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic and indisputably single and singular heart I have been raped be- cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic the wrong sartorial I I have been the meaning of rape I have been the problem everyone seeks to eliminate by forced penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/ but let this be unmistakable this poem is not consent I do not consent to my mother to my father to the teachers to the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in cars I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name My name is my own my own my own and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this but I can tell you that from now on my resistance my simple and daily and nightly self-determination may very well cost you your life
2. A Journey by Nikki Giovanni
It’s a journey . . . that I propose . . . I am not the guide . . . nor technical assistant . . . I will be your fellow passenger . . .
Though the rail has been ridden . . . winter clouds cover . . . autumn’s exuberant quilt . . . we must provide our own guide-posts . . .
I have heard . . . from previous visitors . . . the road washes out sometimes . . . and passengers are compelled . . . to continue groping . . . or turn back . . . I am not afraid . . .
I am not afraid . . . of rough spots . . . or lonely times . . . I don’t fear . . . the success of this endeavor . . . I am Ra . . . in a space . . . not to be discovered . . . but invented . . .
I promise you nothing . . . I accept your promise . . . of the same we are simply riding . . . a wave . . . that may carry . . . or crash . . .
Disembark the Turners seem to say, those starburst barges glowing in the dusk, but I can’t read old Rembrandt, his guarded eyes are jewels, like black men. Even the loaned, marble busts of kings and soldiers fail to arrest you. It’s nearly closing time. The elderly linger, rapt. Who has looked at either of you lately with such tenderness? Entering the narrow hall, I ignore my favorite portraits, their ruffles and bodices, carnations and powder puffs, afraid to share my joy with you, yet your bearing in this space—the procession of your shoulders, the crowns of your heads— makes them sing anew. You are both good men. Walk into the Fragonard Room. You both seem bored still. It’s fine. Perhaps we can progress like these panels, slowly and without words, here—the city where I first knew men in the dark— in this gold and feminine room.
In the head, and I will not shoot myself In the back, and I will not hang myself With a trashbag, and if I do, I promise you, I will not do it In a police car while handcuffed Or in the jail cell of a town I only know the name of Because I have to drive through it To get home. Yes, I may be at risk, But I promise you, I trust the maggots Who live beneath the floorboards Of my house to do what they must To any carcass more than I trust An officer of the law of the land To shut my eyes like a man Of God might, or to cover me with a sheet So clean my mother could have used it To tuck me in. When I kill me, I will Do it the same way most Americans do, I promise you: cigarette smoke Or a piece of meat on which I choke Or so broke I freeze In one of these winters we keep Calling worst. I promise if you hear Of me dead anywhere near A cop, then that cop killed me. He took Me from us and left my body, which is, No matter what we’ve been taught, Greater than the settlement A city can pay a mother to stop crying, And more beautiful than the new bullet Fished from the folds of my brain.
5. Sci-Fi by Tracy K. Smith
There will be no edges, but curves. Clean lines pointing only forward.
History, with its hard spine & dog-eared Corners, will be replaced with nuance,
Just like the dinosaurs gave way To mounds and mounds of ice.
Women will still be women, but The distinction will be empty. Sex,
Having outlived every threat, will gratify Only the mind, which is where it will exist.
For kicks, we’ll dance for ourselves Before mirrors studded with golden bulbs.
The oldest among us will recognize that glow— But the word sun will have been re-assigned
To the Standard Uranium-Neutralizing device Found in households and nursing homes.
And yes, we’ll live to be much older, thanks To popular consensus. Weightless, unhinged,
Eons from even our own moon, we’ll drift In the haze of space, which will be, once
with a second chance: The blue jay hawks his pretty wares and the oak still stands, spreading glorious shade. If you don’t look back,
the future never happens. How good to rise in sunlight, in the prodigal smell of biscuits – eggs and sausage on the grill. The whole sky is yours
to write on, blown open to a blank page. Come on, shake a leg! You’ll never know who’s down there, frying those eggs, if you don’t get up and see.
7. Between the World and Me by Langston Hughes
And one morning while in the woods I stumbled suddenly upon the thing,
Stumbled upon it in a grassy clearing guarded by scaly oaks and elms
And the sooty details of the scene rose, thrusting themselves between the world and me….
There was a design of white bones slumbering forgottenly upon a cushion of ashes.
There was a charred stump of a sapling pointing a blunt finger accusingly at the sky.
There were torn tree limbs, tiny veins of burnt leaves, and a scorched coil of greasy hemp;
A vacant shoe, an empty tie, a ripped shirt, a lonely hat, and a pair of trousers stiff with black blood.
And upon the trampled grass were buttons, dead matches, butt-ends of cigars and cigarettes, peanut shells, a drained gin-flask, and a whore’s lipstick;
Scattered traces of tar, restless arrays of feathers, and the lingering smell of gasoline.
And through the morning air the sun poured yellow surprise into the eye sockets of the stony skull….
And while I stood my mind was frozen within cold pity for the life that was gone.
The ground gripped my feet and my heart was circled by icy walls of fear—
The sun died in the sky; a night wind muttered in the grass and fumbled the leaves in the trees; the woods poured forth the hungry yelping of hounds; the darkness screamed with thirsty voices; and the witnesses rose and lived:
The dry bones stirred, rattled, lifted, melting themselves into my bones.
The grey ashes formed flesh firm and black, entering into my flesh.
The gin-flask passed from mouth to mouth, cigars and cigarettes glowed, the whore smeared lipstick red upon her lips,
And a thousand faces swirled around me, clamoring that my life be burned….
And then they had me, stripped me, battering my teeth into my throat till I swallowed my own blood.
My voice was drowned in the roar of their voices, and my black wet body slipped and rolled in their hands as they bound me to the sapling.
And my skin clung to the bubbling hot tar, falling from me in limp patches.
And the down and quills of the white feathers sank into my raw flesh, and I moaned in my agony.
Then my blood was cooled mercifully, cooled by a baptism of gasoline.
And in a blaze of red I leaped to the sky as pain rose like water, boiling my limbs
Panting, begging I clutched childlike, clutched to the hot sides of death.
Now I am dry bones and my face a stony skull staring in
yellow surprise at the sun….
8. A Litany for Survival by Audre Lorde
For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns looking inward and outward at once before and after seeking a now that can breed futures like bread in our children’s mouths so their dreams will not reflect the death of ours;
For those of us who were imprinted with fear like a faint line in the center of our foreheads learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk for by this weapon this illusion of some safety to be found the heavy-footed hoped to silence us For all of us this instant and this triumph We were never meant to survive.
And when the sun rises we are afraid it might not remain when the sun sets we are afraid it might not rise in the morning when our stomachs are full we are afraid of indigestion when our stomachs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish when we are alone we are afraid love will never return and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid
So it is better to speak remembering
we were never meant to survive.
10. RIOT by Gwendolyn Brooks
A Poem in Three Parts
A riot is the language of the unheard. —Martin Luther King, Jr.
John Cabot, out of Wilma, once a Wycliffe, all whitebluerose below his golden hair, wrapped richly in right linen and right wool, almost forgot his Jaguar and Lake Bluff; almost forgot Grandtully (which is The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Scotch); almost forgot the sculpture at the Richard Gray and Distelheim; the kidney pie at Maxim’s, the Grenadine de Boeuf at Maison Henri. Because the “Negroes” were coming down the street. Because the Poor were sweaty and unpretty (not like Two Dainty Negroes in Winnetka) and they were coming toward him in rough ranks. In seas. In windsweep. They were black and loud. And not detainable. And not discreet. Gross. Gross. “Que tu es grossier!” John Cabot itched instantly beneath the nourished white that told his story of glory to the World. “Don’t let It touch me! the blackness! Lord!” he whispered to any handy angel in the sky.
But, in a thrilling announcement, on It drove and breathed on him: and touched him. In that breath the fume of pig foot, chitterling and cheap chili, malign, mocked John. And, in terrific touch, old averted doubt jerked forward decently, cried, “Cabot! John! You are a desperate man, and the desperate die expensively today.” John Cabot went down in the smoke and fire and broken glass and blood, and he cried “Lord! Forgive these nigguhs that know not what they do.”
THE THIRD SERMON ON THE WARPLAND
Phoenix “In Egyptian mythology, a bird which lived for five hundred years and then consumed itself in fire, rising renewed from the ashes.” —webster
The earth is a beautiful place. Watermirrors and things to be reflected. Goldenrod across the little lagoon.
The Black Philosopher says “Our chains are in the keep of the Keeper in a labeled cabinet on the second shelf by the cookies, sonatas, the arabesques. . . . There’s a rattle, sometimes. You do not hear it who mind only cookies and crunch them. You do not hear the remarkable music—’A Death Song For You Before You Die.’ If you could hear it you would make music too. The blackblues.”
West Madison Street. In “Jessie’s Kitchen” nobody’s eating Jessie’s Perfect Food. Crazy flowers cry up across the sky, spreading and hissing This is it.
The young men run.
They will not steal Bing Crosby but will steal Melvin Van Peebles who made Lillie a thing of Zampoughi a thing of red wiggles and trebles (and I know there are twenty wire stalks sticking out of her head as her underfed haunches jerk jazz.)
A clean riot is not one in which little rioters long-stomped, long-straddled, BEANLESS but knowing no Why go steal in hell a radio, sit to hear James Brown and Mingus, Young-Holt, Coleman, John on V.O.N. and sun themselves in Sin.
However, what is going on is going on.
Fire. That is their way of lighting candles in the darkness. A White Philosopher said ‘It is better to light one candle than curse the darkness.’ These candles curse— inverting the deeps of the darkness.
GUARD HERE, GUNS LOADED.
The young men run. The children in ritual chatter scatter upon their Own and old geography.
The Law comes sirening across the town.
A woman is dead. Motherwoman. She lies among the boxes (that held the haughty hats, the Polish sausages) in newish, thorough, firm virginity as rich as fudge is if you’ve had five pieces. Not again shall she partake of steak on Christmas mornings, nor of nighttime chicken and wine at Val Gray Ward’s nor say of Mr. Beetley, Exit Jones, Junk Smith nor neat New-baby Williams (man-to-many) “He treat me right.”
That was a gut gal.
“We’ll do an us!” yells Yancey, a twittering twelve. “Instead of your deathintheafternoon, kill ’em, bull! kill ’em, bull!”
The Black Philosopher blares “I tell you, exhaustive black integrity would assure a blackless Amrica. . . .”
Nine die, Sun-Times will tell and will tell too in small black-bordered oblongs “Rumor? check it at 744-4111.”
A Poem to Peanut. “Coooooool!” purrs Peanut. Peanut is Richard—a Ranger and a gentleman. A Signature. A Herald. And a Span. This Peanut will not let his men explode. And Rico will not. Neither will Sengali. Nor Bop nor Jeff, Geronimo nor Lover. These merely peer and purr, and pass the Passion over. The Disciples stir and thousandfold confer with ranging Rangermen; mutual in their “Yeah!— this AIN’T all upinheah!”
“But WHY do These People offend themselves?” say they who say also “It’s time. It’s time to help These People.”
Lies are told and legends made. Phoenix rises unafraid.
The Black Philosopher will remember: “There they came to life and exulted, the hurt mute. Then is was over.
The dust, as they say, settled.”
AN ASPECT OF LOVE, ALIVE IN THE ICE AND FIRE
LaBohem Brown
In a package of minutes there is this We. How beautiful. Merry foreigners in our morning, we laugh, we touch each other, are responsible props and posts.
A physical light is in the room.
Because the world is at the window we cannot wonder very long.
You rise. Although genial, you are in yourself again. I observe your direct and respectable stride. You are direct and self-accepting as a lion in Afrikan velvet. You are level, lean, remote.
There is a moment in Camaraderie when interruption is not to be understood. I cannot bear an interruption. This is the shining joy; the time of not-to-end.
On the street we smile. We go in different directions down the imperturbable street.
Plant twelve date palms in a ring around the tarmac. Make them
tall, slight towers, leaning into the wind as princes do. Fear that the sweetness of dates will churn your stomach. Plant them anyways.
Plant the pudge of his fuzzless face in the arrested time of a school portrait. Plant his exotic name—found in a book that spelled dreams of eminence and hope for an uncertain coupling—in your ear.
Know that whether it leaches into the soil or not, this ground was watered with his blood. This tarmac turned a rioting red. Strike that. There was a screech of brakes, and sirens howling like a cliché, then
a volley of pops that might have been a game if only what came next was not such utter silence. The tarmac was red. There was no riot.
Build a circle of palms and something to keep them safe. Build a greenhouse around the twelve palms. Yes, a green house. This land is not our land.
Dig up the tarmac, the dark heavy loam of this side of town. Be sure to wear gloves as you dig through the brownfield’s mystification. Once the Cuyahoga River was a wall of fire.
God knows how rain melts metal. Dig into that earth and build a foundation. Quarry it.
Let the little boys and little girls of Shaker Heights and Orange bring a Game Boy or cellphone, or other toy made our of coltan that, chances are, a little boy or little girl dug up by hand in the DRC.
Let the children lay their shiny toys in the foundation. Seal up ground with molten lead. Die-cast its melted weight. Yes, make a typecaster’s mold, and leave it a dull grey, like flint.
Stamp out a broadside, only set it in the foundation’s floor. Let us read the letter that says this officer was unfit. Let us go over it step by step, every time we walk toward the green
house of imaging what this boy’s boyhood should have been, the fulfilling of his name, his promise. Plant an oasis here. How is not my problem.
*
Let someone who remember how cook de rice. Let she cook de rice with palm oil ’til is yellow an sticky. Of course dem have palm oil in Cleveland. Dis no Third World we livin in.
Let she cook she rice an peas. Let she say how she know to do it from a film she seen. In de film, dem people from de sea island gone to Sierra Leone and dema find dey people,
dey people dat sing de same song with de same words. Come to find out dem words is not jes playplay words, dem words for weeping. So dema sit down together, an weep together, dey South Carolina an Sierra Leone family.
Dey weep over de war, an de water, an de fresh and de forgotten, an dey cook dat rice ’til is yellow and sticky. Dey nyam it with dey hand, outta banana leaf and de old, old man, him say,
you never forget the language you cry in.
Let all dem little girls from Shaker Heights skip the gymnastics meet. Let dem come and eat rice and eat rice ’til they don’t want to eat rice no more an let dem still have rice to eat. Let them lose their innocence.
Let horizons settle low. Let dates and raisin and apples and nuts seem a strange mockery of the new, the sweet, the hoped for. Let us share the matter.
Let us sit here under these date palms, and haggle over whose fault it is. Let the rage that says tear this shit down tear this shit down.
Let us start with the glass walls of the greenhouse, as a demonstration. Let the rage that says I cannot speak not speak. Let it suck speech into its terrible maw and leave us shuddering in silence.
Let the rage that says, black lives matter matter. Let that other rage that says all lives matter be torn down. Let the matter with how we don’t all matter in the same way churn up a monumental penitence.
Let the date palm offer us shade. Let us ask why we are still here. Let us lower eyes as we face his mother, his father, his sister.
“Give your daughters difficult names. Names that command the full use of the tongue. My name makes you want to tell me the truth. My name does not allow me to trust anyone who cannot pronounce it right.” —Warsan Shire
Many of my contemporaries, role models, But especially, Ancestors
Have a name that brings the tongue to worship. Names that feel like ritual in your mouth.
I don’t want a name said without pause, muttered without intention.
I am through with names that leave me unmoved. Names that leave the speaker’s mouth unscathed.
I want a name like fire, like rebellion, like my hand gripping massa’s whip—
I want a name from before the ships A name Donald Trump might choke on.
I want a name that catches you in the throat if you say it wrong and if you’re afraid to say it wrong, then I guess you should be.
I want a name only the brave can say a name that only fits right in the mouth of those who love me right, because only the brave can love me right
Assétou Xango is the name you take when you are tired of burying your jewels under thick layers of soot and self-doubt.
Assétou the light Xango the pickaxe so that people must mine your soul just to get your attention.
If you have to ask why I changed my name, it is already too far beyond your comprehension. Call me callous, but with a name like Xango I cannot afford to tread lightly. You go hard or you go home and I am centuries and ships away from any semblance of a homeland.
I am a thief’s poor bookkeeping skills way from any source of ancestry. I am blindly collecting the shattered pieces of a continent much larger than my comprehension.
I hate explaining my name to people: their eyes peering over my journal looking for a history they can rewrite
Ask me what my name means… What the fuck does your name mean Linda?
Not every word needs an English equivalent in order to have significance.
I am done folding myself up to fit your stereotype. Your black friend. Your headline. Your African Queen Meme. Your hurt feelings. Your desire to learn the rhetoric of solidarity without the practice.
I do not have time to carry your allyship.
I am trying to build a continent, A country, A home.
My name is the only thing I have that is unassimilated and I’m not even sure I can call it mine.
The body is a safeless place if you do not know its name.
Assétou is what it sounds like when you are trying to bend a syllable into a home. With shaky shudders And wind whistling through your empty,
I feel empty.
There is no safety in a name. No home in a body.
A name is honestly just a name A name is honestly just a ritual
A certain doubleness, by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another.
— Henry David Thoreau
i I didn’t choose the word — it came pouring out of my throat like the water inside a drowned man. I didn’t even push on my stomach. I just lay there, dead (like he told me)
& “I” came out. (I’m sorry, Father. “I” wasn’t my fault.)
ii (How did “I” feel?)
Felt almost alive when I’d get in, like the Trojan horse.
I’d sit on the bench (I didn’t look out of the eyeholes so I wouldn’t see the carnage).
iii (Is “I” speaking another language?)
I said, “I” is dangerous. But at the time I couldn’t tell which one of us was speaking.
iv (Why “I”?)
“I” was the closest I could get to the one I loved (who I believe was smothered in her playpen).
Perhaps she gave birth to “I” before she died.
v I deny “I,” & the closer I get, the more “I” keeps receding.
vi I found “I” in the bulrushes raised by a dirtiness beyond imagination.
I loved “I” like a stinky bed.
While I hid in a sentence with a bunch of other words.
vii (What is “I”?)
A transmission through space? A dismemberment of the spirit?
More like opening the chest & throwing the heart out with the gizzards.
viii (Translation)
Years later “I” came back wanting to be known.
Like the unspeakable name of God, I tried
my 2 letters, leaving the “O” for breath,
like in the Bible, missing.
ix I am not the “I” in my poems. “I” is the net I try to pull me in with.
x I try to talk with “I,” but “I” doesn’t trust me. “I” says I am slippery by nature.
xi I made “I” do what I wasn’t supposed to do, what I didn’t want to do — defend me, stand as an example, stand in for what I was hiding.
I treated “I” as if “I” wasn’t human.
xii They say that what I write belongs to me, that it is my true experience. They think it validates my endurance. But why pretend? “I” is a kind of terminal survival.
xiii I didn’t promise “I” anything & in that way “I” is the one I was most true to.
I am now at the age where my father calls me brother when we say goodbye. Take care of yourself, brother, he whispers a half beat before we hang up the phone, and it is as if some great bridge has unfolded over the air between us. He is 68 years old. He was born in the throat of Jim Crow Alabama, one of ten children, their bodies side by side in the kitchen each morning like a pair of hands exalting. Over breakfast, I ask him to tell me the hardest thing about going to school back then, expecting some history I have already memorized. Boycotts & attack dogs, fire hoses, Bull Connor in his personal tank, candy paint shining white as a slaver’s ghost. He says: Having to read the Canterbury Tales. He says: eating lunch alone. Now, I hear the word America & think first of my father’s loneliness, the hands holding the pens that stabbed him as he walked through the hallway, unclenched palms settling onto a wooden desk, taking notes, trying to pretend the shame didn’t feel like an inheritance. You say democracy & I see the men holding documents that sent him off to war a year later, Motown blaring from a country boy’s bunker as napalm scarred the sky into jigsaw patterns, his eyes open wide as the blooming blue heart of the light bulb in a Crown Heights basement where he & my mother will dance for the first time, their bodies swaying like rockets in the impossible dark & yes I know that this is more than likely not what you mean when you sing liberty but it is the only kind I know or can readily claim, the times where those hunted by history are underground & somehow daring to love what they cannot hold or fully fathom when the stranger is not a threat but the promise of a different ending I woke up this morning and there were men on television lauding a wall big enough to box out an entire world, families torn with the stroke of a pen, citizenship little more than some garment that can be stolen or reduced to cinder at a tyrant’s whim my father knows this grew up knowing this witnessed firsthand the firebombs the Klan multiple messiahs love soaked & shot through somehow still believes in this grand blood-stained experiment still votes still prays that his children might make a life unlike any he has ever seen. He looks at me like the promise of another cosmos and I never know what to tell him. All of the books in my head have made me cynical and distant, but there’s a choir in him that calls me forward my disbelief built as it is from the bricks of his belief not in any America you might see on network news or hear heralded before a football game but in the quiet power of Sam Cooke singing that he was born by a river that remains unnamed that he runs alongside to this day, some vast and future country, some nation within a nation, black as candor, loud as the sound of my father’s unfettered laughter over cheese eggs & coffee his eyes shut tight as armories his fists unclenched as if he were invincible
The war said let there be peace and there was war.
The people said music and rain evaporating against fire in the brush was a kind of music and so was the beast.
The beast that roared or bleated when brought down was silent when skinned but loud after the skin was pulled taut over wood and the people said music and the thump thump thump said drum. Someone said war drum. The drum said war is coming to meet you in the field. The field said war tastes like copper, said give us some more, said look at the wild flowers our war plants in a grove and grows just for us.
Outside sheets are pulling this way and that.
Fields are smoke, smoke is air.
We wait for fingers to be bent knuckle to knuckle,
the porch overrun with rope and shotgun
but the hounds don’t show. We beat the drum and sing
like there’s nothing outside but rust-colored clay and fields
of wild flowers growing farther than we can walk.
Torches may come like fox paws to steal away what we plant,
but with our bodies bound by the skin, my arc to his curve,
we are stalks that will bend and bend and bend…
fire for heat fire for light fire for casting figures on a dungeon wall
fire for teaching shadows to writhe fire for keeping beasts at bay fire to give them back to the earth
fire for the siege fire to singe fire to roast fire to fuse rubber soles to collapsed crossbeams fire for Gehenna
fire for Dante fire for Fallujah fire for readied aim
fire in the forge that folds steel like a flag fire to curl worms like cigarette ash fire to give them back to the earth
fire for ancient reasons: to call down rain fire to catch it and turn it into steam fire for churches fire for a stockpile of books fire for a bible-black cloak tied to a stake
fire for smoke signals fire to shape gun muzzle and magazine fire to leap from the gut of a furnace fire for Hephaestus fire for pyres’ sake fire licking the toes of a quiet brown man fire for his home fire for her flag fire for this sand, to coax it into glass
fire to cure mirrors fire to cure leeches Fire to compose a nocturne of cinders
fire for the trash cans illuminating streets fire for fuel fire for fields fire for the field hand’s fourth death
fire to make a cross visible for several yards fire from the dragon’s mouth fire for smoking out tangos fire to stoke like rage and fill the sky with human remains fire to give them back to the earth fire to make twine fall from bound wrists fire to mark them all and bubble black any flesh it touches as it frees
They took the light from our eyes. Possessive. Took the moisture from our throats. My arms, my lips, my sternum, sucked dry, and lovers of autumn say, Look, here is beauty. Tallness only made me an obvious target made of off-kilter limbs. I’d fall either way. I should get a to-the-death tattoo or metal ribbon of some sort. War took our prayers like nothing else can, left us dumber than remote drones. Make me a loyal soldier and I’ll make you a lamenting so thick, metallic, so tank-tread-hard.
Now make tomorrow a gate shaped like a man. I can’t promise, when it’s time, I won’t hesitate, cannot say I won’t forget to return in fall and guess the names of the leaves before they change.
The war said bring us your dead and we died. The people said music and bending flower, so we sang ballads
in the aisles of churches and fruit markets. The requiem was everywhere: a comet’s tail disappearing into the atmosphere,
the wide mouths of the bereft men that have sung… On currents of air, seeds were carried as the processional carried us
through the streets of a forgetting city, between the cold iron of gates. The field said soil is rich wherever we fall.
Aren’t graveyards and battlefields our most efficient gardens? Journeys begin there too if the flowers are taken
into account, and shouldn’t we always take the flowers into account? Bring them to us. We’ll come back to you. Peace will come to you
as a rosewood-colored road paver in your grandmother’s town, as a trench scraped into canvas, as a violin bow, a shovel,
an easel, a brushstroke that covers burial mounds in grass. And love, you say, is a constant blade, a trowel that plants
and uproots, and tomorrow will be a tornado, you say. Then war, a sick wind, will come to part the air,
straighten your suit, and place fresh flowers on all our muddy graves.
19. For My People by Margaret Walker
For my people everywhere singing their slave songs
repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an unseen power;
For my people lending their strength to the years, to the gone years and the now years and the maybe years, washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending hoeing plowing digging planting pruning patching dragging along never gaining never reaping never knowing and never understanding;
For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama backyards playing baptizing and preaching and doctor and jail and soldier and school and mama and cooking and playhouse and concert and store and hair and Miss Choomby and company;
For the cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn to know the reasons why and the answers to and the people who and the places where and the days when, in memory of the bitter hours when we discovered we were black and poor and small and different and nobody cared and nobody wondered and nobody understood;
For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and play and drink their wine and religion and success, to marry their playmates and bear children and then die of consumption and anemia and lynching;
For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New Orleans, lost disinherited dispossessed and happy people filling the cabarets and taverns and other people’s pockets needing bread and shoes and milk and land and money and something—something all our own;
For my people walking blindly spreading joy, losing time being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when burdened, drinking when hopeless, tied, and shackled and tangled among ourselves by the unseen creatures who tower over us omnisciently and laugh;
For my people blundering and groping and floundering in the dark of churches and schools and clubs and societies, associations and councils and committees and conventions, distressed and disturbed and deceived and devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches, preyed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty, by false prophet and holy believer;
For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding, trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people, all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless generations;
Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control.
See! There he stands; not brave, but with an air Of sullen stupor. Mark him well! Is he Not more like brute than man? Look in his eye! No light is there; none, save the glint that shines In the now glaring, and now shifting orbs Of some wild animal caught in the hunter’s trap.
How came this beast in human shape and form? Speak man!—We call you man because you wear His shape—How are you thus? Are you not from That docile, child-like, tender-hearted race Which we have known three centuries? Not from That more than faithful race which through three wars Fed our dear wives and nursed our helpless babes Without a single breach of trust? Speak out!
(THE VICTIM SPEAKS🙂
I am, and am not.
(THE MOB SPEAKS AGAIN🙂
Then who, why are you?
(THE VICTIM SPEAKS AGAIN🙂
I am a thing not new, I am as old As human nature. I am that which lurks, Ready to spring whenever a bar is loosed; The ancient trait which fights incessantly Against restraint, balks at the upward climb; The weight forever seeking to obey The law of downward pull—and I am more: The bitter fruit am I of planted seed; The resultant, the inevitable end Of evil forces and the powers of wrong. Lessons in degradation, taught and learned, The memories of cruel sights and deeds, The pent-up bitterness, the unspent hate Filtered through fifteen generations have Sprung up and found in me sporadic life. In me the muttered curse of dying men, On me the stain of conquered women, and Consuming me the fearful fires of lust, Lit long ago, by other hands than mine. In me the down-crushed spirit, the hurled-back prayers Of wretches now long dead—their dire bequests. In me the echo of the stifled cry Of children for their battered mothers’ breasts.
I claim no race, no race claims me; I am No more than human dregs; degenerate; The monstrous offspring of the monster, Sin; I am—just what I am. . . . The race that fed Your wives and nursed your babes would do the same Today. But I—
(THE MOB CONCLUDES🙂
Enough, the brute must die! Quick! Chain him to that oak! It will resist The fire much longer than this slender pine. Now bring the fuel! Pile it round him! Wait! Pile not so fast or high! or we shall lose The agony and terror in his face. And now the torch! Good fuel that! the flames Already leap head-high. Ha! hear that shriek! And there’s another! wilder than the first. Fetch water! Water! Pour a little on The fire, lest it should burn too fast. Hold so! Now let it slowly blaze again. See there! He squirms! He groans! His eyes bulge wildly out, Searching around in vain appeal for help! Another shriek, the last! Watch how the flesh Grows crisp and hangs till, turned to ash, it sifts Down through the coils of chain that hold erect The ghastly frame against the bark-scorched tree.
Stop! to each man no more than one man’s share. You take that bone, and you this tooth; the chain, Let us divide its links; this skull, of course, In fair division, to the leader comes.
And now his fiendish crime has been avenged; Let us back to our wives and children—say, What did he mean by those last muttered words, “Brothers in spirit, brothers in deed are we”?
If I was President The first thing I would do is call Mumia Abu-Jamal. No, if I was president the first thing I would do is call Leonard Peltier. No, if I was president the first person I would call is that rascal John Trudell. No, the first person I’d call is that other rascal Dennis Banks. I would also call Alice Walker. I would make a conference call. And I would say this: Yo, you troublemakers, it is time to let all of us out of prison. Pack up your things: Dennis and John, collect Alice Walker If you can find her: In Mendocino, Molokai, Mexico or Gaza, & head out to the prisons where Mumia and Leonard are waiting for you. They will be traveling light. Mumia used to own a lot of papers but they took most of those away from him. Leonard will probably want to drag along some of his canvases. Alice who may well be shopping in New Delhi will no doubt want to dress up for the occasion in a sparkly shalwar kemeez. My next call is going to be to the Cubans all five of them; so stop worrying. For now, you’re my fish. I just had this long letter from Alice and she has begged me to put an end to her suffering. What? she said. You think these men are the only ones who suffer when Old Style America locks them up & throws away the key? I can’t tell you, she goes on, the changes this viciousness has put me through, and I have had a child to raise & classes to teach & food to buy and just because I’m a poet it doesn’t mean I don’t have to pay the mortgage or the rent. Yet all these years, nearly thirty or something of them I have been running around the country and the world trying to arouse justice for these men. Tonsillitis hasn’t stopped me. Migraine, hasn’t stopped me. Lyme disease hasn’t stopped me. And why? Because knowing the country that I’m in, as you are destined to learn it too, I know wrong when I see it. If that chair you’re sitting in could speak you would have it moved to another room. You would burn it. So, amigos, pack your things. Alice and John and Dennis are on their way. They are bringing prayers from Nilak Butler and Bill Wapepah; they are bringing sweet grass and white sage from Pine Ridge. I am the president at least until the Corporations purchase the next election, and this is what I choose to do on my first day.
The city of Seattle has agreed to pay $10 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Black Lives Matter protesters who claimed that they were victims of excessive force during the 2020 demonstrations.
The settlement comes after years of legal battles and negotiations between the city and the protesters.
A group of 50 BLM protesters filed the lawsuit claiming that the Seattle Police Department was a bit heavy-handed during the demonstrations following the death of George Floyd.
Floyd died in 2020 during an arrest involving excessive force by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, sparking nationwide protests and unjustified race riots.
Doing the math, the settlement amounts to a $200,000 payment to each protester involved in the suit.
NEW: The city of Seattle has agreed to pay $10 million to settle a lawsuit from a group of demonstrators injured by police during the 2020 uprising in protest of George Floyd’s murder. https://t.co/8wty3nfN7n
Black Lives Matter Gets A Hefty Payday For Rioting
A statement from the City Attorney in Seattle seems to indicate that the $10 million payday was simply a means to settle the matter and move forward.
“This decision was the best financial decision for the City considering risk, cost, and insurance,” he said. “The case has been a significant drain on the time and resources of the City and would have continued to be so through an estimated three-month trial that was scheduled to begin in May.”
It’s never really a good strategy to give in to extortionists, especially those who burned and looted your city for months on end.
You don’t reward a child who steals a cookie by giving them $10 to buy more cookies.
Attorneys for the Black Lives Matter protesters claimed that their clients suffered a whole host of injuries ranging from hearing loss and broken bones to “emotional damage.”
Will BLM use some of that money to pay for the emotional damage they caused local businesses?
Journalist Andy Ngo, who documented much of the rioting, explains that such payouts “encourage future rioting.”
Like many other Democrat-run cities, Seattle has agreed to pay $10m to settle a lawsuit from 2020 BLM-Antifa militants who said police used “excessive force” to try to stop the riots and occupations. Such huge settlements encourage future rioting. Read: https://t.co/af7GaanaLR
According to various reports, the riots in Seattle caused millions of dollars in damages to businesses, public buildings, and infrastructure.
The Seattle Police Department reported that over 100 officers were injured during the protests, and many businesses were looted, vandalized, and set on fire.
The Seattle City Attorney’s Office estimated that the total cost of property damage and other expenses related to the riots was around $200 million.
This figure includes damages to private businesses, public buildings, and the cost of deploying law enforcement and other emergency services during the unrest.
Damages that occurred from today’s Seattle Riots (continued):
— Dozens of businesses broken into and looted
— Multiple Amazon’s were vandalized & broken into
— Multiple Starbucks’ were vandalized, broken into, & one set on fire
— Katie Daviscourt 🇺🇸 (@KatieDaviscourt) July 20, 2020
Those businesses got a lot less than $10 million. In fact, business owners received $3,650,000 for damages caused by the Black Lives Matter protests according to court filings.
As for something you can’t put a price tag on, there were reports of two deaths that occurred during the Black Lives Matter protests in Seattle.
One of these incidents involved a 19-year-old man who was shot and killed in the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) zone, and another involved a 32-year-old woman who was hit by a car while protesting on a closed section of Interstate 5.
Multiple other shootings took place in that seven-block area that police were forced to abandon during the “Summer of Love.”
What do you think about this? Let us know in the comments section.
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Former President Donald Trump drew cheers at a rally on Saturday after touting his endorsement from a “representative of Black Lives Matter” (BLM), despite the activist’s disputed affiliation within the decentralized movement.
Trump is currently among the packed field of candidates seeking the GOP nomination for president in 2024. In nationwide polling averages, he has consistently led the crop of candidates by significant margins, regularly garnering around 50 percent support from likely Republican voters, leading many to consider his nomination by the party next year inevitable.
Earlier this week, activist Mark Fisher appeared on Fox & Friends to discuss his endorsement of Trump, with the show touting him as a “BLM leader.” During his appearance, Fisher claimed that Trump has done “more for the Black community than any president I can think of in my lifetime” and decried the Democratic Party as “racist.”
BLM is a decentralized social movement focused on racism and other issues faced by Black Americans that has been more often associated with progressive politics, rather than the socially conservative policies embraced by Trump. While decentralized, the movement is represented by various prominent organizations at the national and state level, many of which have dismissed Fisher’s involvement with them and called his endorsement a “publicity stunt.”
Former President Donald Trump is seen at a campaign event. Trump on Saturday touted a recent endorsement from an activist who has claimed affiliation with the BLM movement. Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images
Black Lives Matter of Rhode Island, which Fisher has touted his involvement in, told Newsweek in a prior statement that he was “no longer associated” with the group. Fisher is also the founder of an organization in Maryland called “BLM Inc.”
“Did you see where a very respected representative of Black Lives Matter, new England?” Trump asked. “New England endorsed Trump, he said. He didn’t necessarily say the Republican Party, he said Trump because what we have done in terms of opportunity zones, and jobs and jobs, historically, if you look at the black colleges and universities, 10 year funding.”
Newsweek reached out to the national arm of Black Lives Matter via email for comment.
In a joint statement to The Providence Journal, BLM Rhode Island and the BLM Rhode Island Political Action Committee denounced Fisher as an “imposter.”
“This is a publicity stunt,” the statement read. “The right-wing continues to use and amplify fringe Black voices to create an idea of broad support for their corrupt candidates.”
It added: “Continuing to call Mark Fisher a Black Lives Matter leader is disingenuous and inappropriate. Both the founder of BLM Rhode Island and BLM Rhode Island PAC have denounced Mark and have made it clear that he is an imposter.”
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Source: Andy Cross/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images / Getty
Elijah McClain is dead and those responsible are getting six figures and jobs.
Nathan Woodyard was found not guilty of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide and now, according to The Guardian, he’s getting his job back and a fat check to go along with it. A spokesperson for the city of Aurora says that a city law mandated that Woodyard be offered his job back as a result of the exonerating verdict. Woodyard was the first officer to contact McClain after police received a call about a man who “looks sketchy” and eventually put the 23-year-old in a chokehold that led him to exclaim, “I can’t breathe” multiple times.
“[Woodyard] has elected to reintegrate with the APD and is currently on Restricted Duty (not in uniform, no public contact, and no enforcement actions) pending next steps in the reintegration process,” a city spokesperson, Ryan Luby, said in an email
The caller made it clear to the 911 operator that McClain was not carrying any weapons and was not causing damage or behaving in any way that suggested that he was violent. There was no reason whatsoever for Woodyard and his goons in blue should have approached him with aggression, much less try to subdue or arrest him. The last words that Elijah McClain can be heard saying to officers are, “I’m so sorry. I have no gun. I don’t do that stuff. I don’t do any fighting … I don’t even kill flies! I don’t eat meat … I respect all life … Forgive me! All I was trying to do was become better.”
F**k this pig and the jury that let him slide on killing a young Black man. Amerikkka is trash.
CLEVELAND, Ohio- Community activists opposing the recent deaths of jail inmates and a new multi-million dollar Cuyahoga County Jail slated for construction by county council will hold a rally and press conference on Monday, Nov 27 at 2pm in downtown Cleveland at the Justice Center outside of the jail at West Lakeside Ave and W. 3rd Street.
In a press release, activists, both Black and White alike, said they “demand answers from County Executive Chris Ronayne, who took office this year, County Sheriff Harold Pretel, and the county council members regarding four recent deaths in the jail. “
The coalition, according to the press release, includes the Cuyahoga County Jail Coalition, No New Jail Cuyahoga, Black Lives Matter Cleveland, Inter-Religious Taskforce on Central America, and REACH.
Activists said that the protest will demand transparency and accountability for the four inmate deaths, immediate and substantive changes to the conditions in the jail, and a moratorium on the sale of the Justice Complex and building of a new $750 million jail complex until the systemic problems with leadership and staff problems are solved.
The recent inmate deaths, and a score of inmate overdoses show that jail officials are not adequately addressing medical needs of community members who are incarcerated, say activists. Furthermore, they say that two of the four deaths are under investigation due to questionable circumstances around their deaths. In the most recent case of Rogelio Latorre.
Since the stunning US Marshals Report in 2018 that found inhumane conditions for inmates, there have been some 27 known deaths in the jail, say activists And in 2022 alone they say there were seven known deaths and jail activists
A new jail complex will not solve the staffing and leadership problems that these deaths allegedly expose, activists say.
No New Jail Cuyahoga and REACH say they will speak about the tragic shooting of a community member by police during a wellness check in Garfield Heights.
The new jail , say activists, was rushed, is non-transparent, and is a costly project that will not do anything to help change conditions for incarcerated people in the county.
Cuyahoga County includes Cleveland and is Ohio’s second largest county out of 88 counties it is roughly 29 percent Black and is a Democratic stronghold, as is Cleveland, a majority Black major American city dealing with increased crime in the Black community and heightens unsolved murders of Black women.
Activists want more done as to the malicious prosecutions of Blacks and denial of indigent counsel to Black people by common pleas judges and the county.
The judges, say activists, are a huge part of the problem as to jail overcrowding and Blacks and others jailed illegally and they want to know what role, if any, the judges play as to heightened jail deaths since 2018.
One former jail inmate, speaking on condition of anonymity, said she has been jailed in the county at least three times for nothing by racist and wicked White judges and was allegedly told by inmates via the most recent time she was jailed that she would eventually be killed next and that police, crooked prosecutors, and some judges want her murdered to silence her when the time is right. They want to get it done without getting caught, she said.
Source: Memphis Police Department / Memphis Police Department
The “alleged” murder of Tyre Nichols was another soul-crushing example of how police treat the citizens that they swore to protect, especially the Black citizens. What makes this case particularly galling is the fact that all five of the “blue lives” that worked together to end Nichols’ are Black men. It really be your own people. In the aftermath of the viral killing, all five men, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin lll, and Taddarius Bean, and Desmond Mills (the bald man pictured in the middle of the above photo), were indicted for federal civil rights crimes in addition to Tennessee state crimes including second-degree murder.
According to KSL, Mills has formally entered a guilty plea to one count each of excessive force and witness tampering. In exchange for his guilty plea, the report states that Mills has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors which suggests that he will testify against his former colleagues in order to knock down his potential prison sentence from life to fifteen years. Tables turn fast when lawyers start throwing that four-letter L-word around.
Source: The Washington Post / Getty
Ubiquitous civil rights attorney Ben Crump and his partner Antonio Romanucci are representing the Nichols family and spoke on the gravity of Mills’ decision to cooperate saying, “This is a monumental shift in policing today, watching another police officer who will testify against his own,” according to Daily Memphian.
Source: The Washington Post / Getty
4 Ex-Memphis Police Officers To Appear In Court Together
Action News 5 is reporting that four aforementioned former cops will appear in Shelby County Court today Monday, Nov. 6 to answer for the state charges against them including the second-degree murder charge.
Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy, the lead prosecutor in the case, made it very clear what he expects from Mills if he wishes to dodge a life sentence in prison, via Action News 5:
“He is fully cooperating and we expect him to continue to fully cooperate, answering all questions truthfully, testifying to his role in the incident and what he saw the other defendants commit at the same incident,” said Steve Mulroy the Shelby County District Attorney. “And if he deviates from that, if he does not cooperate or he provides anything less than a truthful testimony than the deal is off.”
Not too often that a cop is willing to point the finger at his cop friends under oath. Hopefully, this will inspire some level of change and accountability amongst officers but we won’t be holding our breath.
Lisa McNair drove from her home in Birminghamto Alabama’s state legislature in Montgomery last yearfor a forum about “divisive concepts” legislation being pushed by state Republicans. The GOP bill would have severely limited how educators could teach about race and racism.
McNair believed the bill would force students to learn an inaccurate account of American history — and about the tragic incident that had devastated her own family.
When it was McNair’s turn to speak, she stood at the microphone with a picture of her sister.
“I, too, want to oppose that bill because I feel that that bill will inhibit the teaching of the life of my sister, Denise McNair,” she said. “Her story is not CRT or whatever that is, because I really don’t know, and I really don’t care. But it’s true history.” (CRT refers to critical race theory, a college-level academic theory about systemic racism. In recent years, Republicans have used the term to refer to any education about race, and have increasingly sought to remove such lessons from classrooms around the country.)
Sixty years ago, on Sept. 15, 1963, McNair’s sister, Carol Denise McNair, was one of four Black girls killed in a bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. The bombing of the predominantly Black church outraged the country and helped fuel the Civil Rights Movement.
The 16th Street Baptist Church, as seen on Sept. 11, 2023.
McNair told HuffPost she saw state Sen. Jabo Waggoner, one of the 12 Republican co-sponsors of the bill, tear up after hearing her testimony. She gave him a T-shirt with Denise’s face on it after the forum.
The legislation would have prohibited students and employees of Alabama schools, state agencies and universities from learning any “divisive” concepts, including that “fault, blame, or bias should be assigned to a race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin,” or that a student or employee should “assent to a sense of guilt, complicity, or a need to apologize,” due to their race or national origin.
The bill never made it to the state Senate for a final vote.
Republican lawmakers made a second attempt to pass the bill in June, but they weren’t successful. Despite meeting McNair, Waggoner still supported the legislation and sponsored it a second time. His office did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Alabama Republicans are discussing reintroducing the legislation again, Republican sponsor and state Rep. Ed Oliver said this summer. (Oliver’s office did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment on the legislation.)
“I do believe me being there that day helped them to think differently about voting for that bill,” McNair told HuffPost. “You have to come in and talk to people where they live. You have to put a human face on it, and that is why you have to be in front of our legislators and state senators — because they work for us.”
McNair is happy Alabama hasn’t yet adopted a “divisive concepts” law, but for her and other survivors, it was a brutal reminder of how far the U.S. still has to go.
“It is hard to believe that 60 years later, we still are having such major racial issues,” said McNair, who was born a year after her older sister was murdered. “We never will forget what happened to Denise and the other girls. It was a turning point in our lives. My parents, that was their only child. They did not have any other children at the time. It never left them. They grieved for her till the day she died.”
Three Minutes
Carol Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robinson all died after four members of the Ku Klux Klan set off a bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church at 10:24 a.m. that September day. McNair was 11 years old; the other three girls were 14.
Thomas Edward Blanton, Bobby Frank Cherry, Robert Chambliss — and, it is suspected, Herman Cash — planted at least 15 stacks of dynamite with a timer under the steps of the church. An anonymous man called the church, and a teenage Sunday school secretary answered.
“Three minutes,” the caller said, then hung up.
One minute later, the church exploded. At least 22 people were injured during the bombing, including Collins’ 12-year-old sister, who had pieces of glass implanted in her face and was blinded in one eye.
In this Sept. 15, 1963, file photo, firefighters and ambulance attendants remove a covered body from the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, after members of the Ku Klux Klan set off a deadly explosion.
At the time, Birmingham was one of the most racially segregated cities in the county. It even became known as “Bombingham” because so many Black residents’ homes were bombed by white supremacists.
By the start of the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement was underway,with Martin Luther King Jr. largely leading the charge in the South. He worked closely with Fred Shuttlesworth, a minister in Birmingham, to establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Birmingham Campaign, an effort to bring national attention to the mistreatment of Black people in the city.
Following the Montgomery bus boycott, where King and other members protested segregated public transportation, King wrote his now-famous letter from Birmingham jail in 1963 — just five months before the church was bombed.
On May 2, 1963, thousands of children left school and gathered at the church to march in downtown Birmingham against racial injustice. The protest became known as the Children’s Crusade. They were met violently with water hoses, police dogs, beatings and arrests.
Many of the tactics were provoked and influenced by the racism of Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor, who served as Birmingham’s commissioner of public safety. Despite the police brutality, the children proceeded with their demonstration. It prompted the Department of Justice to intervene and influenced then-President John F. Kennedy to express his support for civil rights legislation.
Lisa McNair talks to a group at the 16th Street Baptist Church about her sister Denise McNair, who was killed during the church bombing.
Activists also blamed then-Gov. George Wallace, a loud segregationist, for inspiring the racist acts. The same year as the church bombing, Wallace proclaimed in his inaugural address, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” He also hired Asa Carter, the founder of a local Ku Klux Klan chapter, as his speechwriter during a campaign in which he often blamed integration as the reason for an increase in crime.
Two of the men behind the bombing, Blanton and Cherry, were not sentenced to prison until nearly 40 years later. Chambliss wasn’t tried and convicted for the death of McNair’s sister until 1977. And Cash died in 1994, having never been indicted on any charges.
McNair believes that if the “divisive concepts” bill had been enacted, it would have not allowed the tragedy of the bombing to be told in detail.
“[The bombing] is the story of our shared American history, and it needs to be told,” McNair said. “Little white children, and all children, need to know, because this is what happened.”
No Regard For Humanity
A white supremacist rally was supposed to take place in Birmingham on Sept. 15, and white teenagers Larry Joe Sims and Michael Lee Farley were among those who planned to attend. But the rally was canceled due to the bombing.
So the two boys bought a Confederate battle flag and attached it to a scooter as they went into a predominantly Black neighborhood. They carried a .22-caliber pistol they had purchased three days earlier. They saw a young boy, Virgil Ware, and his brother riding a bicycle. Farley told Sims to shoot the gun and scare them.
Sims ended up shooting Ware in the chest and face, killing him. An all-white jury convicted Farley and Sims of second-degree manslaughter and sentenced them to seven months of jail, but the cases were suspended by a judge and changed to two years of probation.
Donnell Jackson,13, left, and Shirley Floyd, right, hold up a portrait of Virgil Ware as members of Ware’s family stand behind it during a memorial ceremony for Ware in Birmingham, Alabama, on May 6, 2004.
Dale H. Long, a lifelong Birmingham resident who also survived the bombing, remembers the bombing and Ware’s killing the very same day, as well as the police killing of another Black boy, Johnny Robinson.
“That is what critical race theory is about. They don’t want people to know, they don’t want their kids to know [about other tragedies],” Long told HuffPost. Sims used Ware “as target practice,” he said.
Long’s parents used to tell him not to go outside for any reason, especially when demonstrations were happening in the city. Black kids weren’t allowed to attend pools with white people, let alone use the same bathrooms or drink from the same water fountains.
“We did not have the luxury of traveling a lot and enjoying the amenities of the local museum. A lot of the activities took place at church,” Long told HuffPost.
Long, who attended Sunday school and played in the orchestra with Denise McNair, lived two blocks from Shuttlesworth and remembers the minister’s home being bombed. “We knew it, because it shook ours,” Long recalled.
Moving Forward
McNair says there is a “sadness” that 60 years later, America is still having major issues with race. While she wishes the country would take more steps forward, she remains optimistic.
“I just wish that we weren’t in this place and that we should be further along. That is part of what I think. I hope that we will try to do better. I like to think so many more of us don’t want racism and will stand up against it,” McNair told HuffPost.
Lisa McNair speaks with attendees during a book signing at the 16th Street Baptist Church.
“But I still see people voting for politicians who espouse racist ideals, and it is hard to believe so many people would vote for a politician who espouses these ideas and not see them for who they are.”
Last year, she spoke to civic leaders in Pensacola, Florida, about her family’s experience. But one local school canceled her separate speaking engagement and another cut her speaking time short to avoid discussions related to critical race theory, according to McNair, which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has aggressively railed against.
Long also said he’s worried by DeSantis’ actions, particularly after the governor and presidential candidate said recently that Black people benefited from slavery.
“They are taking away our history. They find something wrong with teaching Black history,” he said. “You can talk about the Revolutionary War or Boston Tea Party, but they don’t want to talk about slavery because it makes them look bad.”
With the ailment blamed for many of the problems in the country, The Onion asked Americans what it is like to live with the Woke Mind Virus, and this is what they said.
Corey Wainwright, Gaffer
“I caught it from my son after he went to a school that hadn’t burned all their books.”
Matt Cohn, Social Media Specialist
Matt Cohn, Social Media Specialist
“I wake up naked every night inside a Planned Parenthood, unable to remember how I got there or what I was doing.”
Grace Klein, Pastry Chef
“Now anytime I wear blackface, my skin burns.”
Grant Wheelan, Engineer
“My wife got it, but she was totally fine after I chained her up and locked her in the basement for two weeks without food or water.”
Sarah Batts, Copywriter
“I just wish there were a vaccine for the woke mind virus that I could have refused to take.”
Sarah Collins, Veterinarian
Sarah Collins, Veterinarian
“We’re just hoping that someday, someone holds George Soros responsible for doing this to us.”
Mason Hudson, Interior Decorator
Mason Hudson, Interior Decorator
“The woke mind virus caused a tiny Ibram X. Kendi to burst out of my colleague’s chest after devouring his insides for sustenance. It then jumped into my mouth and I was so frightened I accidentally swallowed it. I’m afraid the same fate will now befall me.”
Isla Menendez, Warehouse Worker
Isla Menendez, Warehouse Worker
“I got it from a Chick-fil-A sandwich, go figure!”
Josh Doyle, Director
“Oh, you know. I start the day with a woke shower and then eat some woke eggs and woke potatoes. Then I put on my woke pants and woke shirt and hail a woke taxi to job shooting woke pornography.”
Dylan Holland, Registered Nurse
Dylan Holland, Registered Nurse
“I want to yell racial slurs, but every time I open my mouth, ‘Fight Song’ comes out instead.”
Ralph Busco, Podiatrist
“Well, for one, I’m gay now. Granted. I was before, too. The woke mind virus apparently doesn’t really have an effect on your sexuality, funny enough.”
Bryce Gibbs, Sales Manager
Bryce Gibbs, Sales Manager
“There is a tattoo of Kamala Harris where my penis used to be.”
Marcie Hawkins, Statistician
Marcie Hawkins, Statistician
“Frankly, I don’t know how long I have left. My insurance doesn’t cover woke mind virus.”
Liam Cote, Arcade Owner
“I spent $150,000 replacing my eyeballs, tongue, face, and nose so I look like a giant hardcover copy of White Fragility.”
Travis Pendant, Electrician
Travis Pendant, Electrician
“I think I only got a mild case, because I still call anyone who doesn’t go on a date with me a whore.”
Kelsey Jamison, Seamstress
Kelsey Jamison, Seamstress
“I beg for death, but I cannot die. I’ve jumped off a 10-story building. I’ve tied cinderblocks to my feet and jumped in a lake. I’ve shot myself in the head. Every time, I come to on a liberal college campus in a women’s studies class.”
Vincent Rodriguez, Catholic Priest
Vincent Rodriguez, Catholic Priest
“The impulse to molest is luckily stored in a different, unaffected part of the cortex.”
Janet Knight, Makeup Artist
Janet Knight, Makeup Artist
“I hallucinated that I was in a committed, long-term relationship with Rosie O’Donnell, and I liked it.”
Ben Thompson, Grocery Store Cashier
Ben Thompson, Grocery Store Cashier
“I develop a new symptom every day, it’s honestly a frustratingly incoherent illness.”
Liza Andres, Administrative Assistant
Liza Andres, Administrative Assistant
“It spreads through a cursed, tattered copy of We Should All Be Feminists that keeps showing up on your doorstep, no matter how many times you throw it away.”
Marissa Schlagel, Waitress
Marissa Schlagel, Waitress
“I think Black people should be able to vote. Goodbye. I can’t keep living like this. These will be my final words.”
Paul Klein, Pilot
“An immigrant carried it over! An immigrant from elsewhere! Elsewhere has the woke mind virus, and the immigrant, who is of course unclean, brought the woke mind virus from the elsewhere and it now has infected my whole family!”
Armie Hammer, Actor
“Hello. Can I be woke?”
Theresa Lamb, Software Developer
Theresa Lamb, Software Developer
“I am unable to see the American flag.”
Dan Menchin, Videographer
Dan Menchin, Videographer
“Is the woke virus the thing where you turn into a goat whenever there’s a red tide? And you have to roam around eating grass and tree bark with the other goats until the red tide pulls away? If so, I have that, yeah.”
Jane Ginsburg, Attorney
“The woke mind virus killed my mother, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”
Howard Campbell, Tech Executive
Howard Campbell, Tech Executive
“You’re not going to like this, but the only antidote is Joe Biden’s semen.”
A Florida man who kidnapped and murdered a Black Lives Matter student activist and a retired state worker will face life in prison, after taking a plea deal confessing to the two women’s deaths.
Aaron Glee, 52, avoided the death penalty last month after he pleaded guilty to the kidnapping and murder of Victoria “Vicki” Sims, 75, and Oluwatoyin Salau, 19, as part of an agreement with prosecutors.
Oluwatoyin Ruth Salau and Victoria Sims.
Tillman Funeral Home Tallahassee and Tallahassee PD
State Attorney Jack Campbell told the Tallahassee Democrat that his office weighed several factors and spent time with the victims’ families as they considered how to best serve justice.
“We’re not in any way suggesting that he doesn’t deserve the death penalty for what he did to those women,” Campbell said. “But at the same time, those are serious conversations, and in this decision, I think justice was served.”
According to Glee’s probable cause affidavit, on June 6, 2020, Salau reported to Tallahassee police that she’d been sexually assaulted by a man after he offered her a ride to his home and a place to stay.
That same day, in a now-deleted Twitter thread, Salau, a community college student, shared what had happened to her.
“I was molested in Tallahassee, Florida by a black man this morning at 5:30 on Richview and Park Ave,” Salau wrote. “The man offered to give me a ride to find someplace to sleep and recollect my belongings from a church I refuged to a couple days back to escape unjust living conditions.”
At the time, police determined that Salau was a victim of battery, but she wasn’t immediately able to identify for officers the home where the crime took place. That afternoon, after making her report to police, she met Glee at a bus stop, and he offered her a place to shower and sleep.
According to the affidavit, Salau’s mother reported her missing two days later, on June 8, prompting a search by local activist groups and police.
On June 11, according to a search warrant, one activist group searching for Salau received a threatening message from someone who claimed they were holding Salau hostage and would kill her.
“All I need is your cooperation and you will get her back safely! I am dangerous don’t joke with this,” the message read. “Killing is nothing to me… she will be dead soon! Be warned.”
Salau’s body, along with Sims’, would not be found until days later.
According to the probable cause affidavit, Sims was reported missing on June 13, 2020, after a family friend requested a wellness check on her because they hadn’t seen her in two days.
Officers who arrived at Sims’ home said it looked as though a burglary had taken place, and her car was missing from the driveway. They began to search for the 75-year-old, and cellphone data showed that her phone was at Glee’s home.
Investigators learned that Sims had often prepared and delivered meals to Glee’s home and would occasionally provide him with transportation, the affidavit said.
At Glee’s home, officers found Sims’ car outside covered in mud. On the property, they found her dead, with her hands and feet tied behind her. They also found Salau’s body. She was wearing the same clothes she’d worn when she spoke with police on June 6.
Aaron Glee Jr. in a police booking photograph on June 14, 2020.
Orange County Corrections via Reuters
Glee, who’d purchased a Greyhound bus ticket, was arrested in West Palm Beach, where he was taken to a local hospital after complaining of difficulty breathing.
At the hospital, Glee admitted to meeting Salau on June 6, when she told him she’d been sexually assaulted and did not have a home, authorities said. He admitted to taking her to his home, where he imprisoned her, bound her and sexually assaulted her multiple times for three to five days, police said.
Glee initially pleaded not guilty, but entered into the plea agreement on June 8 of this year. He is scheduled to be formally sentenced in September.
Salau’s disappearance and death sparked conversations about the violence that Black women face. Her friends mourned her death online, honoring her legacy as an activist and noting the many injustices she’d contended with.
Before Salau and Sims’ murders, Glee had been arrested and charged with battery in connection with an incident where he allegedly kicked another unhoused woman in the stomach after she rejected his sexual advances on May 29, 2020.
“[The woman] told him no so Glee became angry, shoved [her] to the ground and began kicking her in the abdomen,” court records said.
Superior Court Associated Judge Neal A. Kravitz also barred the extremist group and its leaders from coming near the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church or making threats or defamatory remarks against the church or its pastor for five years.
The ruling was a default judgment issued after the defendants failed to show up in court to fight the case.
Two Black Lives Matter banners were pulled down from Metropolitan AME and another historically Black church and burned during clashes between pro-Donald Trump supporters and counterdemonstrators in December 2020.
The destruction took place after weekend rallies by thousands of people in support of Trump’s baseless claims that he won a second term, which led to dozens of arrests, several stabbings and injuries to police officers.
Metropolitan AME sued the Proud Boys and their leaders, alleging they violated D.C. and federal law by trespassing and destroying religious property in a bias-related conspiracy.
Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, of Miami, publicly acknowledged setting fire to one banner, which prosecutors said was stolen from Asbury United Methodist Church.
In July 2021, Tarrio pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor criminal charges of property destruction and attempted possession of a high-capacity magazine.
He was sentenced to more than five months in jail.
Tarrio and other members of the Proud Boys were separately convicted of seditious conspiracy charges as part of a plot to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a desperate bid to keep Donald Trump in power after the Republican lost the 2020 presidential election.
One year ago, Brooklyn Hough was a cashier at Tops Friendly Market, located on Buffalo’s east side. She was 22 years old and working to support her two children. Hough was just going out for her lunch break on a typical, quiet Saturday.
Then Payton Gendron arrived at the store. He carried out a racist shooting spree that would shock the nation and traumatize the city.
Hough heard gunshots and then screaming. At first, she thought the store was getting robbed. She fled through the back of the store.
“I did not see the killing, but I did see the bodies,” Hough told HuffPost.
She tried to call her boyfriend but his phone was dead, so she called her mother. Her mother could hear other people screaming, too.
Gendron murdered 10 Black people and injured three others. In his 180-page manifesto, the 18-year-old said he was fighting back against the “Great Replacement,” a dangerous white supremacist ideology that claims the government and Democrats are deliberately replacing ethnic Europeans with non-Europeans to gain political and cultural advantage.
Brooklyn Hough, 23, is pictured in Buffalo, N.Y., Saturday, May 13, 2023. Hough was a cashier at the Tops Supermarket when the massacre that killed 10 people happened last year, and survived.
Heather Ainsworth for HuffPost
In February, a state judge gave Gendron 11 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. Right before the judge handed down his sentence, a family member of one victim berated the shooter and another man lunged at him, which temporarily halted the proceedings.
For Hough and others in Buffalo, the shooter’s calculated acts of violence caused pain that will exist for generations in the community. The May 14 shooting is remembered by local activists as “514.”
The grocery store shut down after the killings, though it’s now open. Hough had to find other ways to pay her bills and support her young children, so she took another job working as a cashier elsewhere. Along the way, she became a part of a support group with local activist Myles Carter and others that discusses demands on behalf of the massacre survivors and help for their predominantly Black community.
Hough and Carter both remember when President Joe Biden came to town in the days after the tragedy. He talked with the family members who lost loved ones and the people who were injured, though Hough wishes he had met with other people who were in the store, too.
Ten days after the shooting, another 18-year-old went to Uvalde, Texas, and fatally shot 19 children and two teachers inside a school. Seventeen others were injured but survived the attack. National attention quickly turned to Texas.
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden visit a memorial near a Tops grocery store in Buffalo, New York, on May 17, 2022.
NICHOLAS KAMM via Getty Images
Carter says that Black people and Black communities have been terrorized for years — and that locking up the killers, while necessary, isn’t enough.
“For us, Peyton Gendron is the person who injured us. But Peyton Gendron is a foot soldier in the sea of white supremacy. We don’t have any real justice here because he is one of many. And you can see it happening in history over and over again,” he said.
Racism existed in Buffalo long before Gendron — he wasn’t even the first killer to target the city’s Black population.
Four decades ago, a serial killer preyed on Black men in the city, despite residents’ pleas for police to connect the dots and stop the violence. Beginning in 1980, a man named Joseph Christopher slayed men with a .22 caliber pistol, seemingly at random except with regard to their race — they were all Black men.
Local Black leaders called on city officials to investigate the killings as a conspiracy, but members of law enforcement were still working to draw connections between them.
The killings caught the attention of national civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson at the time, who was working with his Rainbow PUSH Coalition. Jackson came to Buffalo to meet with more than 600 Black residents in the area.
During the funeral for one of the victims, a carload of white people drove by showing a mannequin with red-painted head wounds and threw red paint on the victim’s funeral hearse.
Christopher was ultimately arrested for killing a 14-year-old Black boy and three men, though he was suspected of many other murders, including those of some Black men who were mutilated or even had their hearts ripped out.
A chalk figure shows where the body of Ernest Jones was found in Tonawanda, New York, on Oct. 9, 1980. Jones, 40, was the second black male killed and mutilated in the Buffalo suburb in two days and the sixth murdered in the prior month.
Dennis Floss/Associated Press
To this day, the city is plagued by instances of racism, including some emanating from the Buffalo police. In 2006, a Black officer named Cariol Horne was fired from the department and lost her pension after she stopped a fellow officer from choking a Black man while he was handcuffed.
Fourteen years later, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, Buffalo would adopt what would become known as “Cariol’s Law,” which requires officers to intervene if another officer is using excessive force.
More recently, Buffalo Police Capt. Amber Beyer was named in a lawsuit and reassigned within the department after Black staff said she went on a racist tirade. The suit describes Beyer launching into a 20-minute rant and saying that Black men were all unfaithful to their wives and that Black people commit more crime than white people.
“White officers get PTSD from working in Black neighborhoods — like the East Side of Buffalo — but Black officers do not because they are used to violence and Black people commit more violent crime than White people,” Beyer allegedly said, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also alleged that Beyer discriminated against Black employees by offering overtime hours to white officers with the least seniority to attend conferences and events.
Beyer was reassigned within the department and admitted to violating its rules and regulations after she received a 30-day unpaid suspension. She took implicit bias training following an internal affairs review.
Buffalo, N.Y., local activist, Myles Carter, stands in front of a memorial wall dedicated to the victims of the Tops supermarket massacre, located across the street from the supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., Saturday, May 13, 2023.
Heather Ainsworth for HuffPost
Carter himself is suing the city’s police department after police tackled and arrested him while he was being interviewed by a local television station in June 2020 amid protests following the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The video went viral and Carter was charged with obstruction of governmental administration and disorderly conduct, though those charges were dropped the following month.
Carter does not believe there was any change in his city after the mass shooting. “The people who are dealing with the tragedy of 514 are still locked in their houses and not working,” he said.
Carter and Hough want financial and mental support for survivors, reimbursement for purchases made at Tops on the day of the shooting and support for self-defense training.
While Hough was working at Tops, the state increased the minimum wage to $13.20, but it still was not enough to make ends meet. She would like Buffalo Public Schools, the school district from which she graduated, to get much more attention and money.
Five city schools were recently included on a list of underfunded and high-needs schools in the state, according to a report from the New York State Education Department. (In March 2021, Democratic New York Rep. Brian Higgins announced Buffalo schools would receive $814 million plus an additional $232 million from the American Rescue Plan.)
From left, Brooklyn Hough, 23, and Myles Carter, are pictured in Buffalo, N.Y., Saturday, May 13, 2023.Hough was a cashier at the Tops supermarket when the massacre that killed 10 people happened, and survived.
Heather Ainsworth for HuffPost
Meanwhile, Hough harbors a deep worry that more young white males are being influenced by racist mass murders.
“These kids are getting these ideas that they don’t like Black people. There are evil people in this world waking up and wanting to kill people. Taking mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and uncles from their family. And it is happening too much,” Hough said.
She said that if people make it out of Buffalo, that is an accomplishment. She and other survivors and activists are calling for more work opportunities for Black people.
“If you get out of Buffalo and you are successful, kudos to you,” Hough said. “I feel like the state and government designed Buffalo to be like this; no one is motivated to try to make it.”
And she is still waiting for the government to do something about gun violence in the country.
“This is America, this is what they do. Before this, there was another one and another one. And it is the same cycle, nothing being done for people and nothing being done for gun violence.”
A memorial stands in front of the Tops supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., Saturday, May 13, 2023.
Saturday Night Live’s season premiere this past weekend saw Megan Thee Stallion use the platform as a call to action. During the performance of her hit single “Savage,” the Houston rapper briefly veered from the song’s braggadocious energy to bring attention to a real issue.
Through no fault of her own, Megan has indirectly become the face of violence against Black Women. She was the victim of gunshot wounds to both feet after attending Kylie Jenner’s pool party in July. In August, she revealed that it was Tory Lanez who shot her allegedly. Her accusations on Instagram Live were a cause for speculation. There had been rumblings on social media that Tory was the shooter, but now Megan’s credibility suddenly came into question.
Megan’s situation is a recurring narrative that exists in Hip-Hop. Black women have had to bear the brunt of misogyny and disrespect at the hands of their male counterparts. In the form of abrasive lyrics, the presentation of women as objects in music videos, and failing to use their male privilege to act as advocates, Rappers have also perpetuated the disregard for the safety of Black Women. This attitude, like most of Hip-Hop culture, is the spawn of a much larger societal issue.
According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 41.2 percent of Black women have experienced intimate partner physical violence in their lifetime. An estimated 51.3 percent of black adult female homicides are also a result of DV. Megan and Tory didn’t publicly admit to being in a relationship. But the way they kept each other company before the shooting and with Tory ambiguously referencing the situation on his latest album, ‘DAYSTAR’, a romantic connection isn’t too far fetched.
Black women are often the subject of hate and ridicule when the focus is on their craft as well. Over the summer, Megan and fellow femcee Cardi came under fire for the salacious song and visual to their collaboration “WAP.“ The response to “WAP” saw Cardi and Megan labeled as deviants and smut peddlers instead of talented, successful women embracing their sexuality.’While some defended Cardi and Megan’s right to showcase their “assets” unapologetically, Many felt that their display was the end all be all to moral decency.
Black women are also victims of being mocked for their identity and style, only for them to be praised and mimicked when taken on by women of other races. The term “Blackfishing” has become a topic of discussion in and of itself. Non-Black women pretending to be Black Women to gain access to predominantly Black spaces has become a growing trend; Rachel Dolezal and Jessica A. Krug are two examples. Dolezal’s misrepresentation led her to become a chapter president of the NAACP, while Krug’s perpetrating left both her students and colleagues at George Washington University hurt and confused.
Megan’s message from her SNL performace was further amplified in an op-ed she penned for The New York Times titled “Why I Speak Up for Black Women”. Megan covers a myriad of topics from the plight of Black Women in America to fans and critics trying the pit her against other rappers who share the same gender. She goes on to highlight how it’s ridicoulous that the phrase “Protect Black Women” is “controversial”. “We deserve to be protected as human beings.” Megan writes “And we are entitled to our anger about a laundry list of mistreatment and neglect that we suffer.”
“Protect Black Women” isn’t a rallying cry for the sake of performative activism. It’s a statement that encompasses the overall need to defend Black Women in every capacity. Whether it’s an ER technician from Kentucky or a platinum-selling rapper, the guardianship of Black Women’s safety needs to be a priority. Their contributions to pop culture and civilization are vast and priceless.
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