Thursday, June 28, 2012

Last Stand / Call to Action Broadsides - Day 3

"The New KKK is Kids Killing Kids." I heard this quote as I drove in this morning. It was timely because we will write broadsides that are deeply steeped into our agendas. One of the most difficult questions for young African American males to respond to is, "What is the agenda?"

Agenda is defined as a list or program of things to be done or considered.

Without an agenda, we are at the mercy of swaying winds that may not blow in the right direction. Historically, Brother Authors used their pens intentionally to shape agendas. They used their pens to appeal to others. Today, you will make your appeals in your final writing piece of this week. Be thoughtful! Be serious! Be unapologetic! Be fearless! Become part of the swaying winds!

I wrote the following call to action broadside to remind us of the need to find the right words to sustain a young man's hope before it becomes a young man's hate.

Empty Slots

Alfred W. Tatum

Mailboxes ripped from their slots

A few kilometers from the liquor store

Confuses the retired police officer

Who raised his sons to be righteous?

But failed to talk to the young boy visiting his neighbor

He only told his son to watch out for boys like him

Trouble's weathervane

The boy looked at his dirty socks

And whispered to himself

Trouble you see

I guarantee its reality

Damn you old man and your son

I will be back at your doorstep

To claim what you own

Mailbox and all

Only if you knew what to say to the young boy with hope

Before I became a young man with self-hate

Writing as agenda-building, deals not only with the present, but is grounded in a vision for the future. Part of my agenda is identifying the the missing architects to join me in the jungle. I tried to capture this in the following piece:

Missing Architects

Dr. A.W. Tatum

June 30^th, 2011

9:25am

More than a million speeches and conference proceedings

focused on the intersection of my blackness and dangling manhood

They talk about me in hotel lobbies and national newspapers

I am thought about by think tanks

I am scorned in the comments section following a news article about me

I have even become profitable in the worst way

They are given vouchers and federal dollars to save me

From what, is not clear

Church leaders have profited

I have made a lot of careers at top universities by folks who “address” my need in print

without addressing me

They don’t even have my address or telephone number

No one has ever called my cell

There are too many architects at the drafting board

without a clue

without my blueprint

all leading to unintended consequences

yielding the same image

My blueprint may help to make sense of it all

One line, one scribble at a time

I am also calling on young African American males to build platforms of progress that stretch the boundaries of our existence and speak boldly (i.e., prudently and unapologetically) to protect the new platforms.

The Black Male Questioner
by
Alfred W. Tatum
June 28, 2012
9:47 am

The questions people ask me are imprisoned by smallness
that fail to capture the complexity
of son, brother, citizen, human
the questions are confined by a false imagination
influenced by a kindergarten coloring technique
that instructs one to stay within the lines
but my life and the lives of my brothers are not contoured that way
we stretch beyond the narrow boundaries
of our sex organs
of a crisis narrative
of pain
boundaries others are not able to capture with their questions
Thus, the need to build our own platforms without apology
and speak boldly.

This type of writing is guided by at minimum two questions:

1. What do my people/children need to understand?

2. What do I tell my people/children?

The spirit of these questions is grounded in the black prophetic tradition.

Today, I am asking you to be prophetic.

Post your last stand / call to action broadsides below.

Remember, writing is an intellectual exercise that demands knowledge and care.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Kinship Broadsides Informed by Facts - DAY 2 June 27, 2012

One of the Brother Authors provided powerful thoughts that were barely audible during our first day together. Whispers, I would say. He inspired the piece that follows that focuses on finding collective voices to offset an enforced or accepted silencing.

Negotiated Whispers

Alfred W. Tatum

June 26, 2012

9:57 pm

Silenced by an iron muzzle

Strapped to the back of our heads

Speaking with our eyes as our chests throbbed

Fourteen tongues tied together

Trying to negotiate a new language

The head bob said, “What’s Up Brother.”

Our first whisper of rebellion

Strengthened as we learned to move beyond whispers

That had little chance to echo

Beyond the small space that consumed us.

This broadside was informed by facts. See the information and image below:

When persons being held as slaves were accused of insubordination they might expect to be fitted with an iron muzzle. In his autobiography, Olaudah Equiano described his first encounter with such a device in the mid-1700s. . .

Kinship through language among African American males has a long history. Today you will pen kinship broadsides informed by facts. Post your kinship pieces below.

Monday, June 25, 2012

POETIC BROADSIDES - DAY 1 JUNE 26, 2012

Welcome, Brother Authors! You are part of a growing legacy of Brother Authors who have come before you. You are expected to be FEARLESS with your VOICES this summer. Enter the jungle to remove the darkness that erodes hope. Resound your intellectual and emotional trumpets to preserve the integrity of a people. Allow your words to move beyond the shadows to protect the next head for the setting maul that has the potential to infect your contemporaries with the "poison of nothingness." Let the writing journeys begin.

Today, you will pen a poetic broadside that is powerful enough and serious enough to create a stir in the national imagination or the consciousness of someone else.

I wrote the following poetic broadside to capture my place within the power of the jungle.

Calling All Jungle Brothers
by
Alfred W. Tatum

Dark and light whispers
Hoovering over ten-year-olds

Preyed on by the memories of older brothers
Who became their new art teachers
Black is the dominant color
It wipes out all other colors
It even wipes out Black in the Jungle
Where the rhythms of life
loses its beat
until the new drummers
wake up the sleeping giant
with sounds that rattle the earth
at its deepest core
where blackness is the beginning, not the end.
I am a Jungle Brother in search of the core.

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Negro National Anthem - James Weldon Johnson

Lift every voice and sing,

'Til earth and heaven ring,

Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;

Let our rejoicing rise

High as the listening skies,

Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,

Let us march on 'til victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,

Bitter the chast'ning rod,

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;

Yet with a steady beat,

Have not our weary feet

Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,

Out from the gloomy past,

'Til now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,

God of our silent tears,

Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;

Thou who has by Thy might

Led us into the light,

Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,

Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;

Shadowed beneath Thy hand,

May we forever stand,

True to our God,

True to our native land.

An Earlier Patriot - U.S. Marine

BRIDGEPORT -- Shortly after graduating from Central High School in 1943, 17-year-old Lavell Lynch heard African-Americans could join the U.S. Marine Corps. He figured he would try it out. "I was an adventurous type of young man," he recalled.

Lynch's parents didn't know their 5-foot-7-inch, 130-pound son had enlisted. "My father had a fit," Lynch said. His mother simply said, "Let him learn for himself."

On Tuesday, Lynch, now 85 years old, will receive a Congressional Gold Medal in Washington, D.C., for his service as one of the first African-American Marines in the country.

Black Unemployment Rate in Chicago

Black unemployment in Chicago is third highest in the nation, report finds

July 3, 2012

By: Niala Boodhoo

At 19 percent, African-American unemployment in Chicago ranks the third highest in the country, according to a report published this week by the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute.

Between 2010 and 2011, the jobless rate for Chicago's black workers increased 1.7 percent. In contrast, nearby Detroit had similar rates, closer to 18 percent, but with a 7 percent decrease in the black unemployment rate during the same time period.

The report's author, Algernon Austin, said he thinks the better numbers for Detroit's black workers reflects Michigan's economy.

"Recovery might be too strong of a word but we're seeing improved circumstances," Austin said. "It's likely due to the return of the auto industry, and that's reaching in and benefitting black workers."

In contrast, Austin says Chicago's segregation weighs heavily on local African-American jobless rates - especially compared to other metropolitan areas in the report.

IN THE NEWS

High Court Bars Mandatory Life Terms For Juveniles

ALI FRICK and NINA TOTENBERG

text size A A A

June 25, 2012

The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down state and federal laws that impose a mandatory sentence of life without parole on juveniles convicted of murder.

By a 5-4 vote, the court said that juveniles may still be sentenced to life without parole, but that to do so automatically, without allowing the judge or jury to consider the defendant's youth, whether he was the triggerman or an accomplice, and other factors, would violate the constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The court threw out the sentences given to two 14-year-old boys convicted of murder. One, Kuntrell Jackson, followed his friends into an Arkansas video store to rob it, and when his friend shot and killed the clerk, Jackson was convicted of aiding and abetting the murder and sentenced to life without parole. The other, Evan Miller, beat and killed a neighbor in Alabama after a night of drinking and drug use. Both boys were tried as adults, and then given the mandatory adult punishment of life without the possibility of parole.

'Children Are Different'

The court's decision built on two earlier decisions. In 2005, the court invalidated the death sentence for juveniles, and in 2010, it held that states could not impose life without parole sentences on juveniles convicted of non-homicide crimes.

Brother Authors 'Quotes

Each day, the temptation to quit looked easier and easier. BA 7

Whatever my mother said looked good for God, was good enough for me. BA 10

The church pews are daunting things, like comfortable firing blocks. BA 10

He always considered the best medication to be relaxation, especially for someone with a plethora of social anxiety disorders. BA 10

Come back and death has open arms- BA 4

Unaided I am weak, but together there is no force that matches us – BA 9

We let the darkness consume her - BA 10

Someone tell me who I am – BA 14

And shows their true inner brother – BA 1

Broken souls lamenting on justice’s errors – BA 7

Living grim reapers roam the city – BA 4

We’re so defiant
Blind
We don’t know that we sparked war – BA 12

A stand must be taken, whether it’s for better or worse – Keelun

You can feel the ground vibrate but harden to the sound
of innocence
and cracks like the badlands.
An apology unheard from the bullets – BA 10

Now we waltz along sea-side street corners,
to ease the pain.
We will call it destitution.
Giving our lives meaning by tangoing with the
trigger.
Force fed by the idea that identity is found
through syringes and sex.
To keep the mortality rate low – BA 10

While we listen as Society tells us a bedtime story

About who we are and how we came to be

We are fed the expired box lunch of what media has served

But that can no longer be healthy for us – BA 1

Tired of seeing this rigged game of Monopoly.
193,000 Brothers need to see books instead of bars.
The youth is brainwashed – BA 9

Scared of the government because they have big guns.

I have a Big mind that I'm not scared to fire. - Zack

Schools should be looked at like cathedrals - Will

We must show the world our real beauty through our pain -

Black Writers

Awareness of being black is the most powerful and the most fertile single inspiration for black writers in America. It is ironic that blackness, for so long regarded as a handicap socially and culturally, should also be an artistic strength… All writers arrive at a reconciliation of a sense of tradition and a sense of difference. For nearly all black writers in America that sense of difference was the recognition of blackness. For nearly all, but not all. Being black was less important for Charles Chestnutt than it was for James Baldwin. But for most, blackness was the spur, the barb, or the shirt of pain that moved the artist to achieve distinction. (Davis and Walden, 1970, p. 13-14)