We Who Like
It Hot Call It ‘Black August’! The 2017 Update!
By ‘bro.
zayid’
It is the month when our oppressors have nothing to celebrate.
It is the month where the nature of our oppression and the boldest
expressions of our resistance to that oppression have been made most plain.
We who like it hot call it ‘Black August’…
As a concept of resistance, Black August has its beginnings in the mid 70’s
with the prison justice movement. It was inspired by the courageous legacy of
Black Panther prison organizer George Jackson, who was assassinated on August 21, 1971, one of the hallmark
dates for the concept.
Originally, the concept concerned itself with and confined itself to those
hallmark dates of repression and resistance for this month within the confines
of these bloodsucking united states exclusively.
We revisit this concept here in a more comprehensive Pan-Afrikan manner to
explore and to propose it having a broader Pan-Afrikan application.
Our ancestors first coming here ‘to work’…the ‘beginning of the end’ of
their freedom…can arguably be traced back to August 20, 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia. Although those first
ancestors were actually considered ‘indentured servants’ in that initial
moment, with the growth of that colony and England’s new stranglehold on the
slave trade in North America, the rights and privileges of Black indentured
servants were legally stripped within a generation and chattel slavery would
then emerge in full gear right from that citadel of settler colonialism! (There
is some new evidence that indicates that the Portuguese in fact brought the
first cargo of Afrikan slaves to what is now South Carolina in 1526).
In most recent times, and for the first time in decades since the bombing
of the Congo in 1964 under the so-called liberal rule of Lyndon Baines Johnson,
u.s. forces, demonstrating unchallenged New World Order military supremacy,
bombed our Afrika when they bombed the Sudan, the land of the earth’s oldest
civilizations, under the most bogus of pretenses, ‘CounterTerrorism,’ on August 20, 1998.
Ironic coincidence you think? This beast was trying to bomb us outta our
land, outta our minds and outta our hearts!… on the anniversary that brought us
here!...Hmmm!
Self-critically we should also acknowledge the recent betrayal of
Pan-Afrikan potential in Central Afrika too. Just as were gearing up here for
the heroic Million Youth March, the u.s. covertly sponsored an attack on the
recently liberated Congo on August 2,
1998, using Rwanda and Uganda as proxy forces. To the honor of our
ancestors, however, that betrayal has been checked and contained in a
Pan-Afrikan manner by a courageous union of forces from Zimbabwe, Angola and
Namibia…
An important recently declassified FBI memo detailing the scope and the
national coordination of a sinister covert operation, which would ultimately
destroy the Black Liberation Movement known as COINTELPRO,or ‘the
CounterIntelligence Program,’ was set in full ‘no holds barred’ motion against
the Black nation on August 25, 1967.
Many conscious of our history know that COINTELPRO was not only illegal,
immoral and absolutely off da hook in its making a mockery of democratic
rights. But have we truly assessed ‘how’ successful it was in disabling the
Black Liberation Movement? Have we truly assessed how that crippling of our
movement left our community wide open for the unprecedented violent social disintegration
we currently face, set off most insidiously by a heroin epidemic in the early
70’s and the hoodsplitting crack explosion blowing up in our faces in the awful
80s and the nasty 90s? The epic Million Man March was the beginning of an
answer, we hoped,…an answer for our times , but it wasn’t enough. And with
Black Panther/BLA political prisoners Albert ‘Nuh’ Washington, Teddy ‘Jah’
Heath and Bashir Hameed* recently dying in captivity after being locked down
for decades virtually unknown to the community they sacrificed their lives
trying to defend and with that same community in more disarray now than it was
when they were captured in the early 70’s, we think not.
By the way, the first of two vicious attacks against those defiant,
dreadlock-wearing pioneers of environmentalism, known to the world simply as
MOVE, also took place in Black August. It was on August 9, 1978 that 500 of Philly’s finest laid siege to the MOVE
home compound in Powelton Village in an attempted massacre. When it was over,
the world saw Delbert Afrika being brutally beaten on national television while
peaceably surrendering. He was beaten with a savagery that anticipated the
videotaped beating of Rodney King. James Rapp, a Philadelphia police officer
was killed from what we now call ‘friendly fire.’ Bro. Delbert and his
surviving comrades are now going on their 38th year of prison facing sentences
that go up 100 years for Rapp’s death!…Two of their comrades have died in
prison, Merle Afrika in 1999 and Phil Afrika in 2015.
Lest we forget, it was on August 9,
1997 that Abner Louima was sodomized with a plunger up his rectum in a
supreme expression of police brutality by New York City police.
Starting on August 29, 2005, we
faced one of the greatest ordeals and calamities of this time. On that day, as
the bewildering winds of Hurricane Katrina came barreling down on New Orleans,
the world’s 1st Black cultural capital, the u.s.government decided to abandon
the people of that great chocolate city because the majority of its victims
were black and poor! This genocidal spectacle garnered international criticism
and outrage abroad, but here at home, the national media order just accelerated
what the late Charshee McIntyre called ‘the criminalizing of the race!’
It must be noted here though for the historical record, that just days
later, while many among our people felt helpless about trying to do something
directly, the New Black Panther Party, under the leadership of Attorney at War
Malik Zulu Shabazz, dared to launch ‘Operation Rescue’! Defying curfews,
roadblocks and government mandates, these brave men, armed with their God and
their gun, rolled into New Orleans, went into the devastated 9th ward in
particular and come out with several hundred of our people!**
Add the harrowing “Hands up! Don’t shoot” case of Ferguson, Missouri’s
Michael Brown, killed by Officer Darren Wilson in cold blood August 9th, 2014, to the
litany of oppressive abuses particular to this month. Brown was then left on the streets dead for
hours!...for hours!...as state forces sought to make a horrific example out of
him. To their chagrin, however, Brown’s slaughter triggered instead an
incredible surge in protest against police brutality all over the country!
Three new words were added to our protest lexicon in that upsurge…‘Black Lives
Matter’!
So we must also be very clear here…Black August is also a time of the most
heroic resistance to the hottest hell we’ve faced!
On August 11, 1965, a pivotal,
timemarking rebellion took place foreshadowing many more to come. It was the
Watts section of Los Angeles that exploded. Black youth, tired of police
brutality, boldly stepped off from their perceived limits of nonviolence and
went off!… Although casualties in this uprising were high, after six days of
supreme hellraizin, almost 1000 buildings were destroyed and most of those
destroyed were white-owned businesses. Out of the blood and ashes of this
rebellion emerged the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense! It is one of the
hallmark dates of this concept in its origins.
The other of course is August 7,
1970!...On this day, an incredibly fearless young warrior chose not to wait
on the white man’s courts for justice. He took it upon himself to liberate his
comrades! On this day, the immortal Jonathan Jackson, George Jackson’s
courageous little brother, walked into a Marin County Courthouse locked and
loaded and announced that he was now in charge and he would be leaving with his
comrades who were on trial! He also announced that the presiding judge would be
coming also to secure their exit! He was 17 years old! 17! It foreshadowed the
reemergence of the Underground Railroad in the collective persona known as the
Black Liberation Army! You wanna know why you have to be searched when you go into
a courtroom, you have pay homage to Jonathan for that!
On August 14, 1791, a fearless
Afrikan warrior queen named Cecille called together all the field slaves of the
French sugar plantation island of Haiti ( originally spelled ‘Ayiti ), to
convene the launching of the most successful of all slave revolts just eight
days later!…The Haitian Revolution!
A heartbreaking new Black August story must be told here too: On Sunday, August 14, 2016, Newark’s art and activist
community lost one of its most beloved young voices. Breya ‘Blackberry Molasses’
Knight, died after losing a courageous battle with diabetes.
She was only 29 years old!
I loved Bre’ like she was my own. She shielded her pain from me many times.
This last time was…so painful, it ultimately took her from us. Bre’ was an
engaging multi-dimensional artist who loved her people, who loved our young and
who loved her city, her Newark NJ! Best known as a young poet who challenged
young people on the edge to figure this s*it out and to use art like she did
help themselves, and who challenged her peers in performance to be about
community and struggle too. She created a collective of young artists called ‘The
Breathing Poets Society.’ She penned a book and a spoken word cd. She was also
a brilliant graphic artist, loctitian, and entrepreneur! She cherished her
political baptism from the Baraka family and political education from ol’ headz
like me…
For all of her fire, and I must add that she was also born on the same day Nat
Turner was born, Bre’ could be amazingly humble and respectful to those who
have ‘put it down.’
So I know the ancestors blew her powder blue and pink mind with an
incredible love and Alafia (Welcome dance)I know they greeted her with.
Born on October 2, 1987, the
same day nas the unconquerable Nat Turner, and left us on August 14th, 2016, the same day that the ‘Aytian
Revolution was launched…and it also happened to be this Black August baby’s
birthday.
I will never know a ‘happy’ birthday ever again…
I could on for days…Just had to my chil’ a Black August shout out, because
if there was ever a Black August child ever born, it was my Bre’…
Baba loves u, sweetheart…
Now speaking of Nat Turner…
On August 21, 1831, Rev. Nat
Turner launched his own prophetic answer to the Haitian Revolution when he led
a force of armed field slaves in Amerikkka’s most famous slave insurrection in
Southampton, Virginia. Before his capture, dozens of the overseer and slave
owner class were vanquished by those willing to pay the ultimate price for
freedom!
Last year, saw a powerful film done on him by Nate Parker, a courageous
film on several fronts…
First and foremost, the fact that it gone done and got in
the movie houses was huge!...Even though this incredible uprising took place
186 years ago, it unnerved the Amerikkkan order of white supremecy like no
other to this day! The fact that it got done and went that far without
dehumanizing him was an incredible feat. This is not to say that there weren’t
efforts to derail the project because there were. To be sure, Hollywood and the
nat’l media order had no problem with the villification of the filmmaker…unearthing
a terrible indiscretion that has its own problems and issues on its own terms
that should be dismissed. But that story was an ‘old’ story, brought up here
and now, not to condemn the damnable indiscretion…But to undermine the potential
of the volatile content of the film.
Second, he took Hollywood’s racist racial legacy head on and
turned it on its head when he dared name the film ‘Birth Of A Nation’! For
those that don’t know, one of the most unique contributions to global white
supremecy to come from these racist united states was the far-reaching, well
choregraphed, racist, demeaning and projecting of our very worst stereotypes to
promote the paramount value of segregation as a necessary tool of white
privilege. The first, and still for many, Hollywood ‘model’ cinematic
masterpiece was a film called ‘Birth Of A Nation’!...The film was done in 1915,
and it demeaned Afrikan people like no other with all of the most ugly and
grotesque stereotypes our people have faced, including necessarily, the worst of
all of its cornerstone stereotypes, the perverted ‘Black Buck’! The ‘nigger’
with an unquenchable, savage appetite for white women!...It demolished one of
the most democratic periods in Amerikkkan history…Reconstruction, and it
glorified and further sanctioned the terrorism of the KuKlux Klan!...The Nat
Turner film is not perfect…Many have some real problems with how it ended…But
the way this young filmmaker dared to take on Hollywood’s racist legacy in
service to our legacy of armed resistance with the making of the film is
something I particularly appreciate…
This is not at all to diss or to minimize nonviolent direct action; For on August 9, 1956, 20,000 Afrikan women
fearlessly took to the streets of Pretoria, South Afrika and defied the vicious
‘Passbook Act of 1956, which made aliens of Afrikans in their own land during
the obscene racist reign of Apartheid. It is from this defiant act that we get
the phrase “You have struck a rock.”
“Now you have attacked the women! You have struck a rock! You have
dislodged a boulder! You will be crushed!” rings the phrase from this heroic
expression of Afrikan women defying the bloody teeth of Apartheid.
The March On Washington of August
28, 1963 must also be acknowledged for Black August in spite of its obvious
co-opted limitations. Not because it was a high point for the legacy of Martin
Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement; We must acknowledge it here because
we understand that the state saw that on its own terms, the scale of the
mobilization made it too successful for their interests and then
marked ‘The Drum Major For Justice’ for death! Declassified government
documents are very clear. COINTELPRO operations escalated against our movement
after that march and escalated against him in particular! Let the ‘Dreamers’
speak to that!…
On the eve of that march, the sun set on one of the immortal pioneers of
PanAfrikanism. WEB DuBois died in Ghana at age 97 in service to Ghanaian
independence and PanAfrikanism in Black August on August 27, 1963.
Another March on Washington note…Malcolm was not the only Black voice on the
‘national’ scene warning America of the limits of our people’s commitment to
‘Nonviolence.’ James Baldwin, who warned of The Fire Next Time, was
banned from speaking by the white liberal overseers of the March after having
been originally invited to do so!...Baldwin, another fearless legendary literary
‘son of Harlem,’is also a Black August baby, born on August 2, 1924.
We absolutely must also acknowledge why the date was chosen for that march.
On August 28, 1955, a young man from
Chicago visiting his family in Mississippi, was made missing and viciously
lynched. His face and body was so savagely ravaged by his killers that his
mother decreed to have her son’s funeral with the casket open so the whole
world could see what lynching looks like! That young man was Emmitt Till. It
was our people’s last straw under the terrorism of Jim Crow!
Fannie Lou Hamer bum rushes the ‘64 Democratic National Convention in
Atlantic City, NJ with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and boldly and
eloquently ‘questions’ Amerikkka on August
22, 1964!
On August 13, 1926, a man was
born who would lead the most enduring revolution against u.s. imperialism to
date! That man is Fidel Castro. That revolution of course is the heroic Cuban
Revolution. No nation, anywhere in the world, has done more for Afrika, for the
PanAfrikan idea, than the Cuban Revolution under the leadership of the ageless
Fidel!
We would lose Fidel after 90 long, hot, heroic years on November 25th!...
It was under Fidel’s stewardship that Cuba became, and still is, the world’s
most generous and heroic nation. A country not rich in oil or any of the other
precious raw materials to drive the machinery of an international order, Cuba’s
wealth is and has always been its people and their legendary example of ‘internat’l
human solidarity’! No other nation in the world has given the world more, especially
the Afrikan world more, than the Cuban Revolution! From putting their entire
stability and security on the line going ‘back to Afrika’ to fight in Southern
Afrika against Afrika’s military superpower, the Apatheid Regime of South
Afrika, to sending legions of doctors and medical professionals checking an
Ebola epidemic just two years ago, from providing sanctuary to the oppressed resisting
neo-colonial terror in their own countries from all over the world, to training
over 10, 000 doctors from some of the poorest sectors of the world for ‘free’
in Cuba under the condition that they return to their countries to serve the
most impoverished among their people, Fidel showed us all what ‘human
solidarity’ looks like like no other!...
Que Viva, Fidel! Que
Viva!...Que Viva, la Revolucion! Que Viva!...
On August 26, 1966, one of the
most underappreciated recent people’s victories on the Afrikan continent was
launched in earnest when SWAPO launched the armed struggle to rid Namibia of
the dual scourge of Apartheid and colonialism!
We already mentioned George Jackson’s legacy and assassination. We must
also acknowledge that he was also an original revolutionary thinker who also
penned two classic seminal revolutionary works, The Soledad Brothers and Blood In My Eye.
For those of us who want to see Black August used in its fullest terms, the
ceremonial and ideological center of Black August is, of course, the birth of
Marcus Garvey on August 17, 1887 in
Jamaica. On that same date in 1920, in a packed Madison Square Garden, Garvey
and his Universal Negro Improvement Association gave us our own flag!…A flag
for all of us no matter where we be on this earth!…The Universal Afrikan
Liberation Flag!…The Red, the Black, the Green!…
And you wonder why the state of Pennsylvania sought to execute Mumia
Abu-Jamal on August 17, 1995?…Is it
a coincidence that they used the birth date of the Black nation’s first modern
political prisoner to attempt to stage this freedom fighter’s lynching?…We
think not.
On August 16, 1959,
underappreciated Garveyite Carlos Cooks convened a special Afrikan Peoples
Conference in Harlem, which formally called on our people to drop the term
‘negro’ and to instead use either ‘Black’ or ‘Afrikan’ to refer to the race.
How so many of at this late date are unable to see ourselves as being nothing
more than ‘niggaz’ is a serious expression of how far we’ve been setback.
Several nations of the PanAfrikan world stepped forward in this month.
Trinidad, Burkino Faso, Chad, Gabon and Cote ‘d’Voir, each stepped out on their
own and declared their ‘independence’ in Black August.
He was just getting into another gear on the electoral front when his drum
was sounded in ‘The Land of the Ancestors’ in 2014, but he lived and died
always looking to break, fresh, new ground in struggle…Pioneering New Afrikan
Independence Movement leader and Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, the now
immortal Fannie Lou Hamer Democrat Chokwe Lumumba was also born on August 2, 1947.
Edward Wilmot Blyden, an important forerunner of critical Black nationalist
thought who literally was the bridge between 19th and 20th century Afrikan
nationalism, was born in Black August on August
3, 1832 in Virgin Islands as was Civil Rights legend, Reparations pioneer
and champion of international human solidarity, the late Rev. Lucius Walker in
1930!
One of the important things to emerge from the recent renewed interest in
Black August is practical support of our freedom fighters, our political
prisoners, the real flesh and blood targets of COINTELPRO! One such freedom
fighter, organizing legend Dr. Mutulu Shakur was born of August 8, 1950. Get his address from his website (www.mutulushakur.com) and send him some love! Another is of course the true ‘Maroon’!
Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoatz is also a Black August baby! Born on August 23, 1943, this ‘Maroon’ of the Black
Panther Party and the revolutionary underground had to endure 33 years in
solitary confinement!...33 years!...Before winning his legal battle against
being in solitary forever, this incredible man penned his searing, unapologetic
memoir Maroon, The Implacable! In prison since 1975, the time has definitely
come to free ‘Maroon and of his comrades! Go to his webpage (www.RussellMaroonShoats.Wordpress.com)
and become a part of the call to free ‘Maroon and ‘free’m all!...
Speaking of political prisoners and solitary confinement, Hugo Pinell, the
legendary Panther political prisoner, was assassinated on August 12, 2015, just after getting out of solitary confinement
after 46 years!...46 years!...He was 71 years old!...He shouldn’t been locked
up like that after all these years anyway!
There is no Panther in the land of the living or the land of the ancestors
closer to me and my heart than the incredible Safiya Bukhari!... I am a proud ‘cub’
of this incredible Black woman!...Working onThe Black Panther Party Newspaper under
her watch, yes, we had it back out in the early 90s, was my favorite ‘cub’
experience!...She left us for the Land of the Ancestors on August 24, 2003 after her ocean-sized heart gave out!
148 years after Gabriel Prosser was going to scorch plantations before
being betrayed, Black Panther organizing legend and martyr Fred Hampton was
born on August 30, 1948.
Black Belt swingers Charlie Parker, Count Basie and Lester Young, giants of
a music which brought us international respect, were all born in Black August.
May all of our Augusts be fiery hot and holy with resistance!
Keep marching!
All Power to the People! Black Power and Free The Land!
©2017 all rights reserved
‘bro. zayid’ kazi angaza kikongo muhammad
*Since this
was originally written, the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army
lost two more political prisoners in captivity, Abdullah Majid and Mondo Wa
Langa!
**Since this article first appeared, Malik
Zulu Shabazz, to the disappointment of many, went delusional with his ego. He
personally triggered an ugly split within the New Black Panther Party, trying
to hijack their nat’l elections in order to impose his ‘crew’ on the nat’l body
while still ‘calling the shots.’ He then unceremoniously ordered a physical
attack on Black Panther legend Dhoruba Bin Wahad at their so-called ‘nat’l
summit’ in August 2015, claiming he survived an ‘assassination attempt’ by Bin
Wahad…
‘bro.zayid’ is the
press officer for the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee, the media advocate for
the Newark AntiViolence Coalition and a well known cub of the legendary New
York chapter of the Black Panther Party…He can be reached at babazayid@yahoo.com...
973 202 0745...
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