The “F-word”

My queer, class struggle, politics stem from my relationship with feminism and the radical challenging of power through confronting patriarchy. It is through a developing Black, Marxist, Feminist lens that I understand the material conditions of, not only my particular oppression, but the history of the various people who have existed in the world and confronted oppression and exploitation. Recently it has become very obvious to me that I am a bit of an oddity, in the sense that it is not common to hear of male feminist, even in the political Left. Often times my political position has been met with raised eyebrows, uneasiness, or dismissal of my opinions as being my own. Other men sometimes attribute my feminism to my relationships with womyn and while it is true that the source of my feminism comes from my upbringing/ close relationships with womyn, it is a bit inaccurate to speak of those connections as if I have been brainwashed by angry, butch, white womyn who refuse to shave.

Feminism came to me long before I was able to articulate, understand, or accept it. It was not something taught to me by a member of the intelligentsia, but instead by the womyn who surrounded me as I grew up. Looking back to my childhood, I can see feminist thought and action as something ever-present in my mother’s smile, her hands, her roar, her laugh, and her back. When she was a young womyn she ventured out into the world, and went to college in Michigan. This was forever and a day away from Washington DC, where she was born and raised. My grandfather, unhappy about one of his daughters venturing out so far attempted to raise all of hell to the surface. She lived, became a Black Nationalist, womanyst, dancer, poet, and finally a social worker upon graduation. I remember going through her old photos in my youth and seeing images of righteous afros, smiling men, homemade dashikis, glorious fists, forever cloths, and a life so wondrous and far away from mine.  All of this joy and eccentricity made it harder for me to understand how and why I found myself poor and unhappy in the ghettos of DC with the same womyn who’s smile emanated from those pictures. I didn’t know then that the world is a cruel place for Black people and especially Black womyn.  My mother, full of light, saw that for herself. Somewhere between the crack infested 80’s, Ronald Regan’s love letter to the Black ghetto, and ailing parents my mother found herself in a less sun filled position.

My youth is filled with memories of violent men, drugs, dignity destroying welfare, tear-stained food stamps and thunder screams. These were the realities that I observed my mother navigate. I saw firsthand the incredible power that lies in Black womyn and the strength that is necessary to re-enter, everyday, a world that chips away at your very life force. I also witnessed the power of community and the laying of hands that is womyn holding each other warmly and creating informal networks of support and trust. All of my mother’s friends were womyn that I looked at as aunts. They watched me, played with me, applauded me, and scolded me. Most importantly, they all imbued me with the strength, courage, and wisdom of a generation of Black womyn who had come of age in the post 60’s nightmare of America and lived to tell the tales of rape, joy, power, and loss.

They relied on one another so fiercely and loved one another fiercely, even in times of disagreement or betrayal. Many of the patriarchal, Black Nationalists, I’ve met, take issue with the fact that the racist capitalist system has exploited male/female difference, combined it with institutional racism and made it near impossible for the mythical “Black nuclear family” to exist. I have a serious problem with a generation of Black men falling by the waist-side due to White Supremacist, Patriarchal Capitalism and state sponsored terror.

However, I see Black womyn’s role as mothers to Black men as essential and I am not an advocate for the lessening of that by some reactionary “return of the Black male to his rightful place”. Often times that slogan has been code for female and child subordination through patriarchal oppression.

I see Black womyn’s oppression as my primary teacher and shaper. I see it as the roots of my radicalization and worldview. Queer or not, men are socialized through the patriarchal society and are people who have lived with those values as central parts of their lives. However, I found that that was something derailed by my upbringing in this community of Black womyn and seeing something powerful in radical womyn raising men. In addition to my developing queer identity, I began to analyze the society from the position of someone who was oppressed based my gender expression.

It is important to state, however, that my upbringing didn’t make me a feminist. It made me more understanding and receptive of and to feminism.

It wasn’t until college, when I entered a larger more radical community of my peers that I embraced the “f-word”. Being in struggle and solidarity with female comrades contributed to my understanding of patriarchy, under capitalism, and how the two beast feed off of one another’s destructive energy. As a queer person, my oppression is based in patriarchal thought. It is the thought that socializes men to see their needs as the most important, that breeds their violent culture, that reprimands their tears, that tells them everything that is masculine is so out of a negation of the feminine characteristics within all of us. So when we talk about battling patriarchy, we are talking, in part, about breaking down the socialization that contributes to the development of men and womyn semi-self realized human beings. We are talking about abolishing gender as such and that is essential not only to womyn and queers, but to the whole of the world. We are talking about ending a world that creates such a power dissonance between humans. We are not merely talking about getting people who wear dresses to join picket lines and call it feminist realization in class struggle.

As I am writing this, I think of the male organizers I know. I recently decided to celebrate my birthday with a drag party. I originally thought that the men would react very negatively to this, that they would outright protest. And indeed some of them did. Some had a problem with my minimum requirement of lipstick. It is incredible to think of the reasons and thought behind the aversion to men wearing dresses. What does it say about the culture when men who claim to be about revolution cannot bring themselves to wear a dress for one night? Many of my male comrades did come in dresses and that small act, while not a feminist revolution, made me smile a bit.

I hear the radio on in the distance and the discussion is of whether or not men should be able to have “man bags”. People are outraged and disgusted that the DJ would even propose something so horrific, that he would propose men degrade themselves by performing some act attributed to the opposite gender. It is heart breaking to think of the generation of men who cannot be themselves without the violent reinforcement of our culture’s hatred of womyn. I think I’m going to call in.

BYE GIRL! Moving beyond Capitalism & Gay Rights towards liberation.

Over here at “. . . or does it explode?”,  we take much inspiration from the radical queer militants and organizations of the past and seek to begin to expand upon the discourse around what queer liberation means in the context of the larger class struggle. As movement against the ills and oppressive regimes of White supremacist patriarchal capitalism picks up it is important to look at the contributions to people’s liberation made by those whose voices are often rendered silent by history: the womyn and the homosexual. It is in the spirit of Audre Lorde, The Combahee River Collective, Gay Shame, and James Baldwin that we submit the following post.

In light of the disheartening amount of queer teen suicides, it has become very apparent that organization of queer youth, in particular womyn and those of color, must be re-conceptualized.  The two groups previously mentioned were given special attention because they often find themselves directly under the heels of a society dominated by the many-headed beast known as capitalism. The gay rights movement has found itself completely out of touch and sync with the issues facing queers, especially queer youth. In fact, we would go so far as to say that due to the direction and composition of the leadership, the objectives of the gay rights movement are almost diametrically opposed to bringing about true liberation for queers under white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism. If it is true that the capitalist system is beyond reform then it must also follow that a movement that places the markers of its revolution, of its homecoming, at assimilation, cannot possibly succeed in the liberation of its people. It is thus the job of queer militants to bring into being a new proposition for queers and other oppressed people who are increasingly finding that rainbow flags and bumper stickers, made in third world sweat shops, proclaiming love and advocating for equal rights aren’t enough.

In the beginning stages of organizing amongst oppressed people it often becomes necessary to create safe spaces. These are areas that people can congregate away from the stress of daily harassment and degradation. Though they do not serve as a permanent solution they provide comfort and a temporary oasis. It is absolutely necessary that these safe spaces exist in order to create militants that are able to create revolutionary change. After all, if one doesn’t have some degree of self-confidence and support then it is near impossible for them to begin to take on the historic task assigned to us all: the revolutionary overthrow of the oppressive capitalist system. The Black Panther party often spoke of self-determination. It was a common theme in their rhetoric. This idea becomes increasingly important when we speak of those who under white supremacist patriarchal capitalism that face multiple forms of oppression, not only as the mules of the ruling class but also as the inhabitants of the lower stratus of the caste system: queers, womyn, & non whites. In these cases the oppression faced under capitalism is felt, often times, disproportionately harder and the level of struggle involves more than merely overthrowing wage slavery. For example: Black Liberation activist saw the need to battle not only capitalism but also devastating effects of white supremacy. This meant affirming the self and the race through pride and a re-establishment of the Black womyn and man as people with a history and legacy that went well beyond the Maafa. They saw the need to instill a sense of agency in the people who had known almost nothing but rape, murder and forced subservience (spiritual, physical, and mental) to whites. Their oppression was not just as workers, but also as “other’d” humans. In their affirmation statement The Combahee River Collective expressed the following:

The major source of difficulty in our political work is that we are not just trying to fight oppression on one front or even two, but instead to address a whole range of oppressions. We do not have racial, sexual, heterosexual, or class privilege to rely upon, nor do we have even the minimal access to resources and power that groups who possess anyone of these types of privilege have.

The psychological toll of being a Black woman and the difficulties this presents in reaching political consciousness and doing political work can never be underestimated. There is a very low value placed upon Black women’s psyches in this society, which is both racist and sexist.

The same can be said of queer folk, who are also oppressed not just as workers, but also as people perceived to be the lepers of the bourgeois family. Sexuality was something that was immediately policed in several societies by the European colonizer. One of the simplest explanations for this is because the act is not conducive to reproducing the workforce. In order for capitalism to develop it took not only a violent assault on the bodies and autonomy of womyn but also the rape of the African continent. Racism and patriarchy are at the very foundation of capitalism.

Queer safe spaces serve to create the community that queer folk (gay, Trans, etc. . .) are often violently forced out of. The binaries of gender expression and interpretation are laws written in blood. The society acts on these aberrations of the bourgeois nuclear family often with resounding violence and disdain. One has to look no further than the case of Duanna Johnson (the Black Trans womyn who became a national figure initially because she was viciously beat by police, with their hands wrapped with hand cuffs. After filing suit, she was found gunned down in the streets. Her murder is still unsolved.) to see a manifestation of the aforementioned point. Often times, people in more privileged positions in caste society, see these spaces as separatist and incongruous with creating change. While it is true that there is a huge potential for these spaces to devolve into reactionary separatism, which we will discuss a little later, it does not hold true that these spaces are in incongruous with the revolutionary project. They are in fact necessary parts of the blueprint.

Something that queer organizers, and others, should be conscious of, however, is the development of these spaces. For if they never progress beyond creating a space outside of the tyranny of white supremacist patriarchal capitalism, then they have in many, if not all, ways failed in their revolutionary task and have indeed become reactionary separatist spaces. If the coming revolution is truly about an organic coming together of those oppressed by the bourgeoisie then organizations whose end goal is separatist are indeed counter-revolutionary.

It must be made perfectly clear to queers and the larger class struggle is that they are in unity with one another. Does this mean that queers should fully immerse themselves into class struggle, giving up the politics of their radical queer roots? Hell No! These politics, which are in many instances grounded in feminist theory, are so desperately needed in the political Left at the current moment. It is, however an understandable fear by many that entering into the class struggle, as narrowly as it is currently defined, often means class reductionism. One of the reasons that the Left currently finds itself drowning in the muck is because the issues of race, sexuality  and gender have not been fully dealt with in a way that is respectful of both and the self-determination needed by people in those particular caste. Until these things are addressed then the Left is certainly doomed. Let us return to another part of the River Collective’s Statement:

We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy. We are socialists because we believe that work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and create the products, and not for the profit of the bosses. Material resources must be equally distributed among those who create these resources. We are not convinced, however, that a socialist revolution that is not also a feminist and anti-racist revolution will guarantee our liberation. We have arrived at the necessity for developing an understanding of class relationships that takes into account the specific class position of Black women who are generally marginal in the labor force, while at this particular time some of us are temporarily viewed as doubly desirable tokens at white-collar and professional levels. We need to articulate the real class situation of persons who are not merely raceless, sexless workers, but for whom racial and sexual oppression are significant determinants in their working/economic lives. Although we are in essential agreement with Marx’s theory as it applied to the very specific economic relationships he analyzed, we know that his analysis must be extended further in order for us to understand our specific economic situation as Black women.

If this is agreed upon and true, then we cannot merely spend our time fighting a class war under the loose banner of “unite and fight” we need to be in constant struggle with one another against the vestiges of the poisonous system that exist within ourselves and manifest in our organizing. It is through the lens of these politics that we may accurately see the role of the queer militant not as one that advocates for the inclusion of queers into broader activist spaces to argue for the inclusion of “queer rights” but expanding upon what queer rights and liberation mean overall.

In the beginning of this piece I accused the mainstream gay rights movement of being assimilationist in character and I would like to bring the article to a close by elaborating on this point. Firstly I use the term “gay rights” instead of saying queer liberation because the current movement at best promotes an image of bourgeois gays as happy capitalists desperately begging for their seat in the imperialist coliseum. Secondly, I wish to re-label the mainstream movement as a bourgeois white supremacist patriarchal movement that prioritizes the politics of assimilation over true liberation. In the gay community pictured here we see no people of color, no Trans-folk, no poor people and scarcely lesbians (never mind lesbians with any of the other aforementioned categories attached). These people are only seen when the need arises to show false diversity, play on old stereotypes for scare tactics, make  sexual objects of, or add more validity to the existing claim of oppression. What we see constantly is middle class white men proclaiming their love for one another and for a system that in reality would rather them choke to death while going down on one another than be present in society. The unity and inclusion featured and promoted through the false images of international love and otherwise are just that: false! Gay Shame poses the following question on their website:

Where are the gay marriage “activists” when the INS is actively raiding and deporting whole families ?(such as it is currently doing just blocks away from the Castro in San Francisco’s Mission District).

Other struggle against oppression is only used in the service of strengthening the reformist dogma of “EQUALITY NOW!” It is also in this erasure of all things not white, privileged and male that we find the rhetoric of assimilation. It is shouted from the mountain tops. “WE’RE HERE WE’RE QUEER! “ “LET US MARRY!” “LET US FIGHT” “LET US ADOPT!” The ability to adopt, join the military and marry is treated as the final indicators of the “Great Gay Arrival” into American society. The problem with this line of thought is that it treats queer struggle as a.) something outside of the problems of the rest of society and b.) Begs for inclusion into the destructive culture that, at this moment, moves to annihilate the Middle East in its quest for profit and control, actively places disproportionately large amounts of Black and Brown bodies into the prison industrial complex, and seeks to privatize higher education. And these are just a few things. Are issues such as housing, healthcare, education, war, and the prison industrial complex not queer issues? Are they regulated to other sections of the population? THEY ABSOLUTELY ARE but cannot be discussed under the context of this bourgeois gay rights hokum.

Over at the Gathering Forces blog there was a post entitled: “Beyond Gay Marriage and Queer Separatists–The Call for a Working-Class Queer Movement” that called for a third tendency in the struggle for queer liberation, one that went beyond separatism and reform. We second that motion. When we speak of queer liberation we are speaking of the liberation of the entire working class from the chains of capitalism because in order for queers to be liberated they must confront and overcome the contradictions of allies but also amongst themselves as people who occupy one of the lower caste in society. It is through this revolutionary confrontation and work that the community of which we also speak may begin being built. Imagine a queer group taking on the issue of child care funding and working with mothers to develop a culture of militant resistance, while at the same time making the space into a place where dogma and stereotype may be challenged and done away with. It’s fantastical but very possible. Queer safe spaces (which they almost always must start as) must also go beyond their comfort zones and begin to intervene and dialogue with the rest of the working class. It is only through this work and dialogue can the two sides be made whole.  There must an alternative out there that rejects the push to pacify and young queers bourgeois by telling them to wait on a better life later on. A better life only comes through engaging in struggle that aims at breaking down the walls of this house. Only then will it get better. We have seen that the liberation of queers is dependent on the abolishing of capitalism and thus dependent on working class revolution. We have also seen that the working class cannot move towards liberation, and thus ending its status as a class of exploited laborers under the ruling class, unless it addresses the attitudes prevalent within itself that breed homophobia, racism, patriarchy, etc. This is the challenge that lays at the feet of the new Left in general and queer organizers in particular.

Affirmation.

“. . . African-Americans can make no such claim to land. They were brought over to the United States through slavery and have no material basis to lay claim to Africa. . .” – Huey Newton, Black Nationalism or Communism

This quote has always resonated very deeply within my spirit. I have always felt that in the African-American community there exist generational  trauma based on the fact that we were torn from the continent of our origin to be exploited labor for the European capitalist class. I believe that the concept of home and space provides people with a deep sense of balance and that returning to these places creates healing. Inside myself I have always felt two warring factions neither having full definition or form. What does it mean to be African? How do I embrace something I only know second-hand? What is American? Have I ever been truly American? I sure as hell have never felt that way. I grew up knowing one thing for certain: my people do not belong here.

Black people are not native to the West and we are reminded of that with the Bible, the bullet, and the gavel at every turn. This land has been nothing but pain. These are the lessons I learned in the ghetto, looking up at opulent white faces, these are the lessons I learned watching my mother, back near broken, sit on a couch counting her last tear-stained dollars attempting to calculate the rent.  I wanted out and was ready to cut my way through every white body I perceived in my way, but I had nowhere to go. I, like most Black Americans, had no where beyond the borders of this country to flee to.

After all, I was not African. What is does Africa mean to someone who’s has never seen the continent, never touched her shores? It was really only a fantasy. I knew that some time ago slaves had been brought here, that they were Black like me. I knew that there was a culture that existed before, that in some places on this wretched soil it still bloomed in the hearts of stolen Africans but that the West was making every attempt to erase it from memory. And like many Black children I felt lost and unable to articulate my rage. I felt unable to speak to the fact that there was a pain in my heart when I heard children say their families were from here and there, all the while my mind’s eye went black. A part of me was missing. A part of me is missing. It’s absence fuels me to push forward. To learn more and to use that as a core to power my need to struggle for people’s liberation. This is why when people ask me to define myself politically, I now say “marxist in method and african in spirit”. This current definition, like all labels we attach to ourselves, will change as I do, but in this moment it is how I feel.

I had a profound moment in class today as I listened to African artist Masankho Banda speak. He stated to the class the following:

“It is not about knowing definitely where you come from.It’s about acknowledging where you come from, that you have ancestors and that where you come from helps you to stand where you are now. And that it is all a cycle. You are now a child and an ancestor.”

I felt my eyes sting as tears formed. It was as though he was speaking directly to me. The trauma of years rose to the very surface of my being. In that moment I saw many things. I saw the radiant sun, I saw my grandfather, I saw chains, I saw my great aunts house in the south, I saw my uncle’s harmonica and I saw myself standing in a doorway and I began to cry.

For years I have dealt with this dual nature: being of Africa but not feeling African. I don’t say this with the intention of romanticizing Africa and it’s people to the point of perfection but with the intention of expressing a profound loneliness I have felt in the under the foot of white capitalist America. Oh recent I have felt a rebirth of spirit, through my art and through my personal mission to understand themes and philosophies of African cultures; things that have been stolen from me.

One of the things that I have taken and made a serious effort to apply to my life is the Yoruba concept of “ubuntu”, which means I am because we are”. The concept of community is something that has been over used and vulgarized by non-profits and leftists alike. However, I am personally committed to making this idea of community truly manifest. If we as revolutionary minded people are as serious about our historical task as we claim then it is our duty to battle the bourgeois ideal of individualism that has rendered us strangers from one another. We must see one another with our hearts again, this is something that can be studied and found through African philosophy. As life in the imperialist West brings us further and further away from our emotions, it is our job to resist. This is class struggle. The changing of thought is just as important if not more than that of material conditions.

As a Black male I was socialized through fists, and television screens to treat my emotions as alien. It is something that carries on to this day. Displays of emotion for a while were uncomfortable for me. I felt my chest tighten with each hug or utterance of the words “I love you.” no matter how honest the gestures were. In the back of my head the rhetoric played loud and clear: “Man up!” “Put some base in your voice” “Real niggas ain’t faggots”. Often times when we talk about the effects of patriarchy, under capitalism, on society we leave out the ways in which men are damaged. How generations of men are socialized not only to dehumanize womyn but to also remove themselves from key aspects of their own humanity. It is this removal of intimate emotional connection, through socialization, that fuels violence against womyn. This is one of the many things I have began to understand about the nature of patriarchy in my life and how it all fits together under the alienation from ourselves we face as humans under capitalism.

I feel that my primary tool for fighting this oppression lies in the wisdom of my ancestors and the traditions of African people. African people, like many people of the world classified as non West, posses a communal spirit that has the power to over come the rugged individualism that fuels capitalism and this spirit combined with our practice of the marxist method holds the key to liberation for me. Of course I am still in the beginnings of understanding all of what I am writing but it feels promising and powerful. It feels good, I feel good.

 So what am I going on about here? Is this just romanticized ethnic chauvinism? immaterial babble? No. It is experience and exploration. It is a radical reclaiming in the service of revolution. Taking back what has been stolen and using it to build as we break with capitalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, and the other poisonous “isms”. It is affirmation.

In My Backyard. . . Poverty in D.C.

The following is an assignment we had to write for class. We were to think about poverty in the neighborhoods that we come from and write a loose three pages on it.

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The current situation of the Black population in the United States is a dire one. Black people in this country constitute one of the most impoverished and oppressed sections of the society, it has been the story since their inception into this country as exploited labor used to build the foundation of the world power. Over 400 years later the status of Blacks representing a large source of free labor still remains the same. The only difference is that in the present situation the brutal system of slavery has been replaced with the prison industrial complex, of which Black people, men in particular, make up between 43 -50%. Many may assert reasons, such as a “criminal culture”, as to why this staggering statistic is in existence but most fail to satisfy logic. Blacks make up 12% of the United States population, and thus for there to be such a clear disproportionate amount of African Americans behind bars seems unexplainable to most until they take into account the other factors that govern the lives of African Americans, such as their positioning in the society. Blacks, due to a specific historical development which includes tremendous racism supporting capitalist exploitation, make up an overwhelming part of the excess labor in this country. This means that Black Americans find themselves more vulnerable to the repressive arm of the state for a number of factors, including but not limited to participation in the informal economy, and police racism. The governing body’s neglect is also blatant and serves to continue to impoverish and demobilize the Black community of D.C. No where is this more visibly seen than in Washington D.C, which has been deemed by many Black leftists as “A Piece of South Africa on the Potomac”. Washington D.C. is a microcosm of the plight facing Blacks in the inner cities of the United States.

The city of Washington D.C. is plagued with many problems all due to a lack of concern and attention shown by the governing body of the area. This all contributes to the criminalization of Blacks, especially youth and their often oppressive encounters with the state. In order to properly talk about the issue of state violence and imprisonment one must first start with some of the reasons why the African American population come into contact with the courts and police in the first place. This leads us to the education system. In D.C, 51% of the adult Black population holds high school diplomas and 2% of the school age population is truant, which is a high percentage. This may be jarring to those who remember that D.C. spends 11,269$ per pupil, among the highest in the nation.  However, the notoriously lax enforcement of truancy laws, rapid closing of public schools and changes in the personal lives of lower income students, due to various reasons for unstable households, leads to a rather significant truancy rate. We know, based on the research done on “tracking”, those children who are less successful in school on average have the spectre of the prison industrial complex looming in their future. However, school is not the sole factor in the increasing tensions and clashes of the Black population, which makes up 52%, of D.C. and the city’s law enforcement.

D.C. is also a city, like most in the country, which is undergoing a large amount of gentrification, meaning that a lot of public housing is being removed and the land is being sold to private contractors. In many cases, these spaces are filled by expensive condominiums. This translates to the rapid removal of the vibrant, predominantly Black, working class of D.C. Often times these new settlements of young, mostly middle class whites, professionals come through the collaboration between government and business. Adrian Fenty, recently ousted mayor, approved  100 million dollars in city contracts without the approval of the city council. This was in addition to the Housing Authority making a 6 million dollar deal with Banneker Ventures which is owned by Omar Karim, a fraternity brother of Fenty. This is all relevant when you look at the severe number of Blacks moved out of the city, about 2500 per year by last estimate. This all has an adverse effect on the lives of African Americans in the district, especially youth, whose lives are in a state of chaos. Couple this with the rising unemployment rates, of which Blacks make up 51%, and you have a perfect storm brewing. Alienated and ousted, many Black youth don’t find themselves with the opportunity to be able to fit into the romantic image of the teen with a steady job on their way to becoming a decent citizen.

In large, the Black citizens of D.C. make up a surplus of labor, meaning that many Black people are not working to reproduce profit for the corporations or city and cannot work because they find themselves out of the pool of eligibility, either through qualifications, or racism. This makes them more vulnerable to the one place that can extract profit from them; the prison system. The criminalization of the Black residents of Washington D.C. is something that is constant. One thing that most Black youth in D.C. can count on is the fact that they will encounter the police at least once in their adolescent lives, with the encounter usually being negative. The D.C. police department, which led the nation in the 90’s in murders of residents, has a long history of abuse. Most recently, police chief, Cathy Lanier, led the department on into direct confrontation with the community through the “All Hands on Deck” program. This program had nearly the entire 4,000 person department on the streets serving warrants, questioning residents, and patrolling the streets. To those unfamiliar with the long history of violence done to the Black community at the hands of the police, this may seem like a great idea to curve seemingly random, unreasonable violence. However, the antagonisms between the predominately foreign, in the geographical sense- most of the police serving in the D.C. area are from neighboring states, white officers and the oppressed Black populations have often spilled over into more senseless violence. Recently, the parents of 27yr old Kellen White have filed suit against the DCPD for shooting Kellen 12 times at a traffic stop, parents allege that he was unarmed. This incident highlights the common phenomenon of police brutality. For those who do leave these encounters with their lives, the court system is the next stop.

The court system in Washington D.C., which by default is a federal court system with appointed judges and prosecutors due to D.C.’s lack of statehood, prosecutes hundreds of Black residents a day. Most of these people are here because of non violent drug offenses. Many of these lives fall forfeit to the will of the court which more often than not shows little to no mercy to them. Many Black lives are lost to the prison industrial complex. Once inside the belly of the beast, many Black inmates still find themselves fighting for survival. D.C. inmate deaths usually double the normal average of those in the nation with the national average being 145 deaths per every 100,000 prisoners. D.C. inmate deaths usually average around 315 deaths per every 100,000 prisoners. Even more disturbing is the fact that these inmates mostly die from illnesses such as HIV/Aids. In 2008, Washington D.C. reported to have some 15,120 residents living with the virus and of that number 81% were African American. One can assume this number is so tremendously high because of inadequate education, social stigma around homosexuality and a lack of accessibility of medicine. Thus for many, these prisons also serve as a final stop.

We have seen in epic fashion the failure of non-profit organizations when it comes to organizing serious class resistance in the face of severe state oppression. As crisis deepens and the Black population in D.C, both employed and not, see new levels of exploitation and gentrification, the old workings of the non-profits seem all too irrelevant. This is not to say that the non-profits at work in the District are waste. Quite the contrary, in lieu of strong revolutionary organizations that are capable of supporting the people’s needs, the non-profits do good work for the people. The limitation comes in the funding and theoretical base of the organizations. By their very nature non-profits are instruments of the state because they depend on the state to exist and are thus used by the state in times of crisis to pacify the population and feed children bourgeois dreams. In Oakland California, many have criticized the non profits, in the area, of stagnating youth militancy and criminalizing the elements of the Oakland youth who seek channels of struggle that go beyond one day rallies and speak outs about the very real fact that they are being murdered in the streets by the dogs of the state; the OPD (Oakland Police Dept.). In D.C. the rhetoric of being a “good citizen” is dogmatically applied by the mostly after school program based non-profits. Images of youth Black children with “kept” hair (meaning no afros and if you’re boys no hair at all) in suits permeate every flyer or glossy poster, directly attacking the self worth and value Black youth have in their natural appearance and their neighborhoods. This intersection of race based and class oppression hit home and serves to begin the self-demonization of the Black child.

At first look, the sheer amount of obstacles that stand in the way of the oppressed, in the task of creating for them a better existence, seem to be too much to surmount.  However it is necessary to know and understand your conditions before you can make any attempt to change them. When looking at the issues that plague the Black community of Washington D.C. one thing becomes all too clear; organizing to combat these issues cannot come through the same oppressive state apparatus that oppresses the organizers. It is necessary for the people to build their own independent organizations that are committed to education and action. There are plenty of examples of communities organizing independent of the state in order to affect change. Two shining examples that come to mind are the Young Lords from New York and the Black Panther Party based in Oakland, California. Both groups worked with and in the communities they came from to build dual power structures that could challenge the oppressive politicians and businessmen. In addition to that, not all of the Black population of D.C. is completely removed from the working class. There is still a solid base of Black workers in the city that can effect further change through workplace action. Walk offs and strikes have proven to be amongst the strongest tools in the arsenal of working people.

For many African Americans in Washington D.C. the governing body and police force represent manifestations of oppression and exploitation. The population is rendered politically helpless by the lack of political power within the Black community. Blacks in D.C, like many other places in the United States represent a large part of the population that is excess labor and thus, under capitalism, an obstacle to the functioning of the machine both because of the lack of profit being generated and the time this section has to sit and reflect on their positioning and grow more militantly discontent. This is where the violent arm of the state comes in through incarceration. We exist in a profit driven world where the accumulation of capital comes first and people second. However, there is hope in the fact that people can and will always organize against the oppression they face daily.

Conversations in the park

She was like the city itself, broken from a lifetime of struggle, barely standing. Yet, there was still a fire there, still a spark of revolution in her eye. As she spouted pseudo Black nationalist rhetoric, mixed with a tinge of astrology and conspiracy, I was overcome with a strong sense of grief. It was obvious that she had been using some kind of substance, that the ills of Reagan’s final blow to Black radicalism were flowing through her veins. Still, there was a fiery determination in her speech, a need to educate and liberate, a need to get free. Like the city, itself, she was broken and devastated from waging a battle against the state and yet, despite loosing, she soldiered on. She was Oakland.

Oakland is a city shaken from struggle. The increased pig presence reminds the onlooker that there is a deep fear of the population. This is the city that spawned the Black Panther Party, after all. This is the city that dared to stand against the fascist and demand liberation. The people of Oakland stand on the legacy of the Panther’s war with the White capitalist state apparatus. And though they were ultimately defeated there is still the residue of struggle here. It’s in the air. The children know they stand on hallowed ground, and every pseudo revolutionary from Riverside to Richmond VA is dying to come set up shop in the former base of the revolution. This is the city whose ports were shut down by the militant longshoremen in protest of Apartheid in South Africa, this is the city where the last general strike in US history was held, this is Oakland. And sadly like many sites of former battle it has walking wounded.

This womyn brought out both pride and grief in me, simultaneously. She was the perfect example of what happens when one gives their all to an organization believing that their every move is bringing revolution closer, only to have the rug yanked violently and suddenly from underneath. Like many rank and file ex-panthers she probably succumb to the onslaught of drugs in the 80′s and without enough focus on developing the rank and file theoretically by the organization, fell into confusion and disarray after the party’s destruction. But still, equipped with her pamphlets and rhetoric, she marches on, an army of one. Not all of the heroes from the 60′s can be found photographed on the shiny pages in the middle of long self-important autobiographies. Many of them are walked past daily, many found singing songs of revolution to themselves on the BART, asking for change. This system may have won the battle against them, stripping them of public dignity, but the spirit of revolution still burns bright in many of them. Still yearns to get free and set the world ablaze.

I have lived in the Bay Area for 5 years and Oakland for a few months and it has been one of the richest experiences of my life to be here, to develop politically here, to experience love, loss, struggle and strife here. There is no place like it. This meeting, although filled with mixed feelings, affirmed that for me.

Gayface.

CAN WE NOT?!?!?!

Can we not?! I am so disgusted right now I find it hard to speak. I know, I know that I am ignoring what I always say about no part of society being separate from another but I am still dismayed by the video above. The proposed show “Hollywood Houseboys” aside from being obviously staged is a so sickening to me because it is just another in a long line of stereotypical portrayals of queer Blacks as nothing more than snap happy, drama crazed, fashion obsessed, shallow, beings. I am fully aware that there is nothing wrong with being naturally flamboyant, I enjoy snap queens, HOWEVER, the overload of this particular image verges on sickening. In the same way that I am tired of seeing Blk womyn as crackheads or welfare queens, I am tired of seeing Queer Black men as these shallow creatures. There is much more to us than this. In addition this “reality” show looks like it was made by the main person (“Ryan” aka the messiest queen on the show) We do not need to engage in the same foolishness that is flooding the television screens. To hell with what this does for the image of Afro queers in the larger society, I am upset at this being visible within our community. We need to move with purpose, this is just a mess. And I am not even going to go in on the Trans Womyn who is allowing herself to be the center of the degradation.

At least one person feels me. Get into Ms. Aeon Farr, who has her own opinion of the show.

 

Legends of The Ball VII: Tracy Chapman

* This week’s “Legends of the Ball” segment is coming to you guys early because I have to be out of town and don’t know if I’ll be able to post while I am away all weekend, so I gotta bring it to you now. As a side note, I am very appreciative of all the love this space has received, thank you so much. Please stick with us and spread the word. And aye! hit up the comment box when the spirit moves you, this should be a breathing space that we can all be apart of.

She is a travelling light. A wandering story-teller, authentic and spiritual. When she sings, there is something humble and honest about her lyrics and delivery. Tracy Chapman is truly a gift from the ancestors. She brings us face to face with ourselves, her music serving as a mirror. From the first strum of “Give Me One Reason” Tracy let it be know that she was not here to brag, not here to show out, or even entertain, she was here to be honest, to speak to us in the langauge we needed not that which we wanted. Thank you Tracy.