Did I Really Just Read This?

I can’t read any more about Gaza. The “Hamas ‘thugs’ to Blame for Violence” article pushed me over the edge. And no, I’m not linking to it. You can Google it with ease.

Why is it so easy to rationalize away the killing. I hate it.

Leaves me speechless.

I’m just going to go and find a bunch of youtube videos to post, because this shit is too much. I’ll come back to it tomorrow, or after I’ve finished moving, or after I’ve finally got my mind back in a good place, whichever.

Am I Not Human?

On the 27th day of each month, several bloggers participate in the “Am I Not Human?” campaign, which highlights human rights abuses across the globe. That this month’s day of blogging for awareness of human rights abuses occurred on Thanksgiving is not lost on me. So, with that in mind, I offer a few blog posts that I found said things that need to be heard.

Nezua: Stolen Not Given

Professor, What If: Reconsidering Thanksgiving, Pt.2, Pt. 3.

Renee: Thanksgiving: A National Day of Mourning for Indians.

Thanksgiving is a difficult holiday for me. It is a holiday where you are supposed to get together with your friends and loved, and be thankful for all that you have. On the surface, that is dandy. I celebrate (if that’s the correct word) Thanksgiving with love and well wishes for everyone, but I cannot set aside the horror that is the origins of this holiday. I see no point in lying about what this holiday means.

I feel that Purple Zoe is on to something here.

Gratitude day is a meatless/green alternative to the genocidal roots of Thanksgiving, that we’ve celebrated for 3 years now (Gratitude day can be celebrated on the 23, 24, thru the 27th, and also as an alternative to other holidays with questionable roots).
As part of Gratitude day we enjoyed a meatless feast that was rather fly, and lit a candle in honor of the Divine, our Ancestors, and the ones who came before us seeding the world with light in general. We gave tremendous thanks for the freedom fighters.

It’s been a good day. Our household is very grateful for the honesty in our home, the sanctuary, and above all: the love.

And so, my wish is that your Thanksgiving was really a Gratitude Day, a day of honesty, sanctuary, and love.

I Am a Community Organizer

And I will be blogging on Monday, 8 September, along with blogs such as the The Young Black Profession Guide, The Electronic Village, The Jose Vilson, From My Brown Eyed View, The African American Political Pundit, Springer’s Journal, and Inkognero in honor of the great work that Community Organizers do.

Please join me, and ask your blogging buddies to do so as well. I’m not interested in stories meant to score political points (although I’m pissed at the political cynicism that would attack community organizing). I’m interested in stories about the grassroots, the community organizers out there that are doing their thing via blogs, social networking, real life organizing that doesn’t have a (D) or (R) following it. That’s what I’d love to hear about. Since Community Organizing has been brought into the limelight, I would love to hear how those involved are working for progress and transformation. Progress and transformation from the ground up. So, while a lot of this action day will be political in nature, I’d like to see some posts, comments, whatever springing from my own post that are more focused on grassroots, non-denominational progress.

If that sounds like you, please participate and please leave a link in comments so that others can find you.

In Memory of Aimé Césaire

On Thursday, 17 April, the Martinique poet, activist, politician, and post-colonial theorist Aimé Fernand David Césaire died.

Césaire was a central figure in what can be considered the French version of the Harlem Renaissance. While in school at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand , he helped found L’Étudiant Noir (The Black Student), a literary journal dedicated to the cultivation of black pride and which also birthed the Négritude movement, a literary and political movement that sought the “affirmation that one is black and proud of it”. His most famous works are his book-length poem, Cahier d’un Retour au Pays Natal (Notes From a Return to the Native Land), and the essay, “Negro I am, Negro I Will Remain.” Thanks to Professor Black Woman, I also found excerpts from his play, Une Tempête (adapted from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest), which you should most definitely go and read.

Truth be told, I had meant to post this on Thursday, but it slipped my mind until I read this,

I believe that there should be canonical works. I believe that those works should be just that, CANONS. Open salvos in ” battles”designed to literally grapple and destroy and rebuild them . Text that lives an breathes and is on it’s feet, on it’s back, on it’s toes. How we take theory and make art. And how that is CONNECTED eternally through performance and history.

Most importantly how that performance is SPECIFICALLY and practically located in POC bodies and there interactions with personalizing and culturing various artforms , both intentionally and SIMPLY BY THEIR PRESENCE.

which, by coincidence, I feel perfectly sums up the life that Césaire led.

And so, I take the sad passing of a great artist and activist and choose to make the most positive I can out of it. I choose to renew my commitment to art, activism, and the life of the mind (not that it ever went anywhere, it’s more like renewing one’s wedding vows). I encourage those so inclined to do the same.

From Cahier d’un Retour au Pays Natal

ma negritude n’est pas une pierre, sa surdite ruee contre
la clameur du jour
ma negritude n’est pas une taie d’eau morte sur l’il
mort de la terre
ma negritude n’est ni une tour ni une cathedrale
elle plonge dans la chair rouge du sol
elle plonge dans la chair ardente du ciel
elle troue l’accablement opaque de sa droite patience.

my Negritude is not a stone, its deafness dashed against
the clamor of the day
my Negritude is not an opaque spot of dead water
on the dead eye of the earth
my Negritude is neither a tower nor a cathedral
it plunges into the red flesh of the soil
it plunges into the ardent flesh of the sky
it pierces opaque prostration with its upright patience

[cross-posted at The Unapologetic Mexican]