LOOK...

Magnum Photographer Thomas Dworzak's take on Katrina.
click here

Gallery Talk with Renee Stout

Go check out what this DC artist (originally from Pittsburgh) has to say about her work....

I first became famliar with Renee, through the U Street Poetry scene, seeing her at Mangoes , The Kaffa House, or roaming U Street with the rest of the poets and artists. It wasn't until i saw this book, a collection of poems, called the Black Rooster Social Inn that i found out what Renee was doing hanging around all these poets, poemcees, musicians and other faces. She was collecting images and text to add to her work.

To me, Renee Stout's work speaks to a time on the U Street arts scene when artists were inspired by other peoples work, a time when critique of one's work was not only welcomed but expected, a time when the poets would take time writing a poem spend time with their words instead of "spittin" long jounral entires/rhetorically rhyming rants/cliche, cacophonous couplets/etc that never quite resolve themselves as devoloped poems...anyway.... Go check out Renee Stout at theHemphill Fine Arts Gallery (1515 14th St NW Washington, DC 20005 202.234.5601) here work is on the top floor. you won't be disappointed.

poetry by Suheir Hammad

SUHEIR HAMMAD: I wrote this poem after Hurricane Katrina and the victims of the rescue effort. The rescue effort victims of Hurricane Katrina were viewed on television for all of us, and they were called "refugees." This is a poem for all of the refugees in the world.

"Of Refuge and Language" -by Suheir Hammad

I do not wish
To place words in living mouths
Or bury the dead dishonorably

I am not deaf to cries escaping shelters
That citizens are not refugees
Refugees are not Americans

I will not use language
One way or another
To accommodate my comfort

I will not look away

All I know is this

No peoples ever choose to claim status of dispossessed
No peoples want pity above compassion
No enslaved peoples ever called themselves slaves

What do we pledge allegiance to?
A government that leaves its old
To die of thirst surrounded by water
Is a foreign government

People who are streaming
Illiterate into paperwork
Have long ago been abandoned

I think of coded language
And all that words carry on their backs

I think of how it is always the poor
Who are tagged and boxed with labels
Not of their own choosing

I think of my grandparents
And how some called them refugees
Others called them non-existent
They called themselves landless
Which means homeless

Before the hurricane
No tents were prepared for the fleeing
Because Americans do not live in tents
Tents are for Haiti for Bosnia for Rwanda

Refugees are the rest of the world

Those left to defend their human decency
Against conditions the rich keep their animals from
Those who have too many children
Those who always have open hands and empty bellies
Those whose numbers are massive
Those who seek refuge
From nature’s currents and man’s resources

Those who are forgotten in the mean times

Those who remember

Ahmad from Guinea makes my falafel sandwich and says
So this is your country

Yes Amadou this my country
And these my people

Evacuated as if criminal
Rescued by neighbors
Shot by soldiers

Adamant they belong

The rest of the world can now see
What I have seen

Do not look away

The rest of the world lives here too
In America

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poetry by Saul WIlliams

When the Storm is Forgotten -by Saul Williams

When the storm remains distant
We are heroes of complacency
Puffed chest and swollen pride
We hate ourselves in ways
Only the deepest love could recognize

When the storm remains distant
There is no such thing as us
There is only dollar and dynamite
Gunpowder and fiery God
The churches are filled with women and children
The men pray only in case of emergency
We worship a foreign truth
And only death will stamp our passport

When the storm remains distant
There is no afterlife
Most die unborn
Most live unloved
Disappointment takes on new names and costumes
The future is stillborn and disfigured
The womb becomes an airtight safe
Darkness swallows darkness

When the storm remains distant
Nothing is as is
Songs are opiates
Sleep is the burial ground of dreams
Happiness is a lie
Sex is where love is not

When the storm remains distant
We are unreminded and dare to forget
School is a fashion show
Violence is comfort food
Family is nothing
And nothing is real

When the storm remains distant
Niggas are free to be Niggas
Niggers, Black, you name it

Anything but one thing
Everything but nothing
Even with a shitload of platinum
Wrapped around his neck
Like a southern tree gone petrified
Screw face pearly gate-mouth
Tangled nectar of the stars

When the storm remains distant
Stars are retired drug dealers nicknamed God
Rapists with pretty voices
And anyone but anyone who shines

When the storm remains distant
The sun is flawless in its magnitude
The heavens reflect breath of angels
The people bask in themselves
The storm is forgotten

When the storm is forgotten
The waters, 'though they rise,
Fail to threaten
The people march backwards
from ashes to ashen,
Whiplash, car crash, Cash Money,
Some Niggas eat diamonds for breakfast
Pursue cheap labor, Enslave God

When the storm is forgotten
Poets are meteorologists
Behold, the farmers almanac
The sheep wake up and congregate
The litany begins

When the storm is forgotten
The struggle ends

May the storm never be forgotten.

Saul Williams
www.saulwilliams.com

CBC Report Card

While some of you will be out getting your CBC party on here is something to think about.

The Black Commentator has just published a report card of the CBC. Apparently this is the first time "an African American group has graded the Congressional Black Caucus’s legislative performance on a curve that reflects the Black Political Consensus."

So while you rubbing elbows and shaking booties with the CBC, think about whether they have your best interest in mind.
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Although I may not totally agree with all of the grades i think it is valuable that a group African Americans are taking it upon themselves to evaluate the work (or lack thereof) and effectiveness of the CBC with respect to issues that specifically concern African Americans. I think that it is this type of work that, while only a beginning, can be very meaning in aiding African AMericans to hold our elected officials (local and national) to a higher level of accountability and to increase our engagement in political issues.


Read the Report Card here
Also go here to see the considerations that went into the report card grading http://cbcmonitor.voxunion.com/

Happy Birthday Trane

John Coltrane was born on September 23, 1926 in Hamlet, NC.

I cannot even begin talk about how i love this man's work and the process by which he went about creating it. His discipline and vision in trying to accomplish what he saw as his mission and purpose in life is paralled by only the greatest of the greats.

Straight No Chaser films news

big ups....

Big ups to my man Tyehimba Jess on the publication of his book of poetry Leadbelly (Verse Press). I just got my copy from Karibu Books the day of the BLACK L.U.V Festival. So far the poems are amazing! Jess is dope. period.

this has got to be a joke

A Big White Lie
For 26 years, Dave Myers was told he was white. Learning the truth, that his father was black, sent him on a quest for his identity and leaves him estranged from his family.
Jeff Kunerth
Sentinel Staff Writer

September 18, 2005

Every family has its secrets. There are things parents never tell children. There are lies that become family legend. There are stories that were never meant to be told.

Judith Hartmann's secret, when she married Bill Myers in 1959, was that she was pregnant by a black man.

When the baby born to two white parents came out black, the secret became a lie.

Throughout his childhood, David Myers was told that his skin color was a disease called melanism. He was lucky, his mother said, because the skin discoloration was all over his body, instead of just splotches of brown like most people had.

So despite his dark skin, Myers grew up in white, middle-class neighborhoods in Ohio and New York believing he was white.

"For many years I thought I was white. I thought like a white kid. There was a feeling in me that I didn't want to be associated with blacks. I wanted the story to be true," says Myers, a 45-year-old Orlando tennis teacher.

The secret shrouded in a lie lasted 26 years. Keeping it hidden all those years would turn Judy Myers into a hard, angry, unhappy woman, her family says. It made Dave Myers a defiant, rebellious, hostile child who would grow estranged from his parents, sisters and brother.

Learning the truth would send Myers on a search for identity. And it would convince him that his story is the story of America -- a white America that has been lied to, a black America oppressed and discriminated against, and a society unable or unwilling to discuss race. Click here to read more

More Horrible Than Truth

More Horrible Than Truth: News Reports

DISASTER has a way of bringing out the best and the worst instincts in the news media. It is a grand thing that during the most terrible days of Hurricane Katrina, many reporters found their gag reflex and stopped swallowing pat excuses from public officials. But the media's willingness to report thinly attributed rumors may also have contributed to a kind of cultural wreckage that will not clean up easily.

First, anyone with any knowledge of the events in New Orleans knows that terrible things with non-natural causes occurred: there were assaults, shots fired at a rescue helicopter and, given the state of the city's police department, many other crimes that probably went unreported.

But many instances in the lurid libretto of widespread murder, carjacking, rape, and assaults that filled the airwaves and newspapers have yet to be established or proved, as far as anyone can determine. And many of the urban legends that sprang up - the systematic rape of children, the slitting of a 7-year-old's throat - so far seem to be just that. The fact that some of these rumors were repeated by overwhelmed local officials does not completely get the news media off the hook. A survey of news reports in the LexisNexis database shows that on Sept. 1, the news media's narrative of the hurricane shifted. Click here to read more

protect history

So I am sitting in Utopia after leaving Bus Boys and Poets last night after the L.U.V festival and I was talking to a friend of mine about one of the last assaults on African American history, culture, etc. I first read about it the Washington Post Express sometime last week (I forgot what day). Apparently, a "scholar" out of University of Maryland seems to be leading the charge in the attempt to discredit Olaudah Equiano's claim that he was African-born.
Olaudah Equiano if you are not familiar wrote one of the most famous narratives and accounts of being brought (and bought) to America through the Middle Passage. It is a foundational document in many regards, significant not only for African Americans specifically, but to all Americans. First of all the Equiano's book was for the most self-published in 1789 and was also published BEFORE even Benjamin Franklin's biography.
I guess some of you might be reading this and saying, "So what?" (In your best Miles Davis raspy voice). The problem, as Hari and I discussed, is that this type of not-so-subtle-pretending-to-be-subtle attacks on early African American scholarship and intellectual self determination in academia that is not only a long-standing trend, but also reflects a Jim Crow academicism that sometimes goes unaddressed.
This book (Equiano's narrative ) in many regards represented the beginning of a new type of historiography particularly as related to African Americans, not only as documentarians and teller of our own stories in print but also in leaving artifacts for others to discover years later to get better understanding of they (Early African Americans) might have lived.

Anyway, I know this post may seem a little rushed and undeveloped, but it was on my mind and I wanted to share it with y'all, but I respect y'alls intellect enough to know that if I post some links up here you will all go and fill in the many blanks I may have left in you are interested...

anyway read below!!!!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/09/AR2005090902079.html
http://ghw.wordherders.net/archives/004790.html
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/culture/articles/030210/10slavery.htm
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/001179.html
http://www.brycchancarey.com/equiano/nativity.htm
http://hnn.us/readcomment.php?id=54060&bheaders=1
http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i03/03a01101.htm

Come Down George, Come on Come down....

The Legendary K.O, with lyrics by Big Mon and Damien (aka Dem Knock-Out Boyz) did a timely remix of Kanye's single, let's call it the "George Bush diesn't care about black people" mix....LOL anyway got to breath of life to listen to it and some other dope music

BLACK L.U.V Festival September 18th 2005

National BLACK L.U.V Festival

Some interesting reading

I think these writers are making some interesting points, but one thing (among many is still glaringly absent) is still lacking and that is critique aimed at Govenor Kathleen Blanco ( oh the irony of that last name!), however I have heard MANY critiscism of the the African American (Creole) Mayor Ray Nagin. I find this odd because they are both Democrats, I fully expected to conservative wind and spin machine ( not to be confused with the liberal wind and spin machine) to get in line to talk about how the Democrat party continues to fail poor, disenfranchised African Americans.
1.Read
2.Read
3.Read

katrina resources

A partial list of Hurricane Katrina and disaster relief information available on the Web:
Investigate before you donate: http://www.give.org/news/disaster_tips.asp


National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/


National Weather Service: http://iwin.nws.noaa.gov/iwin/graphicsversion/bigmain.html


Hydrologic Information Center (river flooding): http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oh/hic/index.html


Federal Emergency Management Agency: 1-800-621-FEMA; http://www.fema.gov/


Louisiana Homeland Security: http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/


City of New Orleans: http://www.cityofno.com/portal.aspx


Louisiana Governor's Office: http://www.gov.state.la.us/


Mississippi Emergency Management: http://www.msema.org./index.htm


Relief Organizations:


Red Cross: 1-800-HELP-NOW or https://http://www.redcross.org/


Episcopal Relief & Development: 1-800-334-7626 or http://www.er-d.org/


United Methodist Committee on Relief: 1-800-554-8583 or http://gbgm-umc.org/umcor/emergency/hurricanes/2005/


Salvation Army: 1-800-SAL-ARMY or http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/


Catholic Charities: 1-800-919-9338 or http://www.catholiccharitiesusa.org/


FEMA Charity tips: http://www.fema.gov/rrr/help2.shtm


National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster: http://www.nvoad.org/


Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals: http://www.la-spca.org/

A Listing of Non-Profits serving the victims of Hurricane Katrina

American Red Cross
http://store.yahoo.com/redcross-donate2/

AmeriCares
http://www.americares.org/

Catholic Charities USA
http://www.catholiccharitiesusa.org/news/katrina.cfm

Church World Service
http://www.cwserp.org/

Federal Aid
http://www.wwoz.org/

Food for Life
http://www.ffl.org/

Habitat For Humanity International
http://www.habitat.org/

MAP International
http://www.map.org/

Mercy Corps Hurricane Katrina Fund
http://www.mercycorps.org/index.php? sections_id=4&subsections_id=114

MissionFish
http://www.missionfish.org/

North Shore Animal League America
http://www.nsalamerica.org/

Operation Blessing International
http://www.ob.org/

The Salvation Army
http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/www_usn.nsf

Samaritan’s Purse
http://www.samaritanspurse.org/

United Way
http://national.unitedway.org/

USA Freedom Corps
http://www.usafreedomcorps.gov/

World Emergency Relief
http://www.worldemergency.org/