Is it enough?
For the body held in tension
The aesthetics of revolution and liberation seem to be more pleasing than the work itself. Somehow the energetics of Black liberation has turned into an expression, instead of an embodiment. You have to change your mind before you change the way you’re living and the way you move Gil Scott-Heron—what i believe Gil was referencing was a holistic approach to how we begin dealing with ourselves. It starts with self interrogation that forces us to call into question all that we thought we knew, and what and who we value, and how our lives reflect that. But it don’t stop there, the thing you calling into question forces you to look head on at the ugly thing, coming face to face with it, and you sit with it in all your unease. The question is: who will you be after, and how will you respond?
Did you know freedom is a skillset?
How many times do you gotta remind folks that you pay with your life for revolt?
How you calling yourself a revolutionary, when was the last time you wrote a political prisoner? -Brother Frank, N.E.P.P.C
Damn, am i being too hard on folks again?
Choices.
Too much exposure to living side by side with our oppressors has warped the mind. When the desire to idle in whiteness becomes your soft place to land.
Whoever said navigating this mental hellscape wasn’t part of the self-liberatory work? Who said that disentangling every part of yourself and slowly mending yourself back stitch by stitch wasn’t the radical work that would shatter you, bringing you to your knees, rendering you senseless?
I’m going to reclaim my Afrikan mind.
Choices.
Mutulu died 7 months after release
Assata died in exile
Jamil Al-Amin died in state custody
& Mumia’s still state captive after 40+ years…
The state correctional departments, our national government, and the media have systematically attempted to “disappear” prisoners from the nation’s consciousness (Noelle Hanrahan, All Things Censored, 30). Mila said it right the first time, when the lives of political prisoners are in your consciousness something about your life and the way you think becomes different.
my spirit witnesses
my stomach stays in knots
i pace over hardwood floors
grief won’t leave me alone
is it enough?
The U.S. legal system is designed to ignore on the one hand “legal” oppression, and on the other hand the right of the oppressed to resist that oppression. The era that saw the New African liberation struggle resisting COINTELPRO is now becoming a fading memory. It’s our responsibility to not let that happen. (Mutulu Shakur essay Toward Truth & Reconciliation Commission for New African/Black Political Prisoners, Prisoners of War and Freedom Fighters)
If revolution is a love inspired act, then remembrance becomes a weapon of deliverance, a salve for the soul. To remember is medicinal. To remember is the resistance needed to combat the conditioned, widespread amnesia. To remember is how we keep the internal flame burning.
& If i must become a menace to my enemies then forgetting is not an option.
The ugly thing i can’t turn away from…
Signed,
Nubia Lateefa, Negress down yonder
So on time. I just listened to a podcast about Paul and Essie Robeson and what the U.S government did to them and also the erasure of the memory of his career. I always get angry then feel sad. I’m learning to alchemize the anger. Thanks for this reminder.
I'm glad to be introduced to you through this piece of mind. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. This is actually action.