Poetry

A letter from Ms. Barbara’s Caring Circle – BARBARA SMITH CARING CIRCLE

When I was a teenager (18/19), I didn’t know anything (relatively speaking) about the liberation struggle but I did know a lil about black feminism and the reason for that was because of the work of women such as Barbara Smith and books such as Homegirls – a Black Feminist Anthology.
A circle is an embrace and Barbara Smith deserves to be encircled. (TMC)

 

Source: A letter from Ms. Barbara’s Caring Circle – BARBARA SMITH CARING CIRCLE

Drafted and Shafted

Everyday, the street sweepers’ contempt
swept us, nothing and nobody exempt.

The whites of their eyes forecast doom
in their matrix soundstage of a room.

They insisted on incising my rights
with a language full of curses and slights.

You won’t catch me on the front line
being one God says is all mine.

It’ll be prison time you’ll reap
or on this floor, your blood will seep.

Either way I’d be gone, nonexistent
so I chose the path of least resistance.

For the first time, the gun in my hands is legal
which surprised me into feeling regal.

I wanted to swagger around like John Wayne
but everyone treated me like Major Payne.

To make sure I was constantly outdoors
They sent me on senseless missions to explore.

When my grumblings became a roar
MP’s dropped me in the real war.

One day their bombs blew my body apart
destroying my will to depart.

Black Co-ops Were A Method of Economic Survival | Grassroots Economic Organizing

He [Du Bois] said in one of my favorite speeches that “we unwittingly stand at the crossroads—should we go the way of capitalism and try to become individually rich as capitalists, or should we go the way of cooperatives and economic cooperation where we and our whole community could be rich together?” He was afraid that we were choosing the wrong path – individualism.

Source: Black Co-ops Were A Method of Economic Survival | Grassroots Economic Organizing

George Washington Quote

I am currently finishing up the research phase for my 4th book and I came across this quote from George Washington:

“For my own part, I shall not undertake to say where the Line between Great Britain and the Colonies should be drawn, but I am clearly of opinion that one ought to be drawn; & our Rights clearly ascertaind. I could wish, I own, that the dispute had been left to Posterity to determine, but the Crisis is arrivd when we must assert our Rights, or Submit to every Imposition that can be heap’d upon us; till custom and use, will make us as tame, & abject Slaves, as the Blacks we Rule over with such arbitrary Sway.” Source

The part that “triggers” the creativity for this soon-t0-be book is not the derogatory way he describes the enslaved people who made him wealthy but the phrase “we rule over with such arbitrary sway”. Arbitrary means what it means and when coupled with enslavement, it says a whole lot about the white privilege of the colonial era and what that white privilege gave birth to…Manifest Destiny.

What does this quote mean to you?