Musing on Martin...On the 54h anniversary of his assassination...
by 'bro. zayid''
The memory of the evening of April 4th, 1968, still weighs heavy on those of us who remember that day, weighs heavy on us in a haunting way...
Upon its 50th anniversary, i came to nervously realize that i belong to the last of us who are old enough to remember that fateful day and to have some memory of Dr King still being very much with us.
With the stalking spectacle of the January 6th Insurrection, with the continued slaughter of Black and Brown innocents by police all over this county, with the failure of this country to do anything meaningful about it and ultimately betraying its 'George Floyd' moment, and with war hawks and oil barons saber rattling in a way that could trigger something that not even they and their priviiledge can comeback from, Dr King's assassination is weighing particularly heavy on me today.
I'm glad for what's left of my beleaguered psyche that i will be in the streets today fully present in a march spearheaded by a beloved comrade Lawrence Hamm and the People's Organization for Progress in Newark.
Yet i am deeply worried that not enough of us are.
April 4th, '68 meant this country going up in smoke. April 4th meant the 3rd and the largest exponential growth spurt of the Black Panther Party, immediately making them "the number one threat to the internal security of the united states," a price too many are still paying for, Sundiata Acoli, Imam Jamil Al-Amin, Kamau Sadiki, Veronza Bowers, Mumia AbuJamal, to name few, a distinction no one asked for.
So today, we come to this haunting anniversary with this country truly at a crossroads for its very future.
The forces or reaction who killed our beloved 'Drum Major for Justice'' have reorganized and are fully mobilized in ways we have not seen in a long time. How is it that this country can pass an AntiLynching Bill 140 years after its first call, 140 years later, but would not touch Voting Rights legislation to protect the ultimate reason lynching was once an recreationally accepted part of the american social landscape, fear of a mobilized and organzed Black vote, one that made a real difference in that short refrain of history that once was Reconstruction?
"Democracy is nothing but hypocrisy," i hear Malcolm in my head unapologetically. "I don't see any American dream; I only see an American nightmare," so he asserted in the epic presentation that he gave us that made the case for a fully mobilized and organized ballot...His searing 'The Ballot Or The Bullet'...
I mean what happens if we lose the congress this year and the white house again '24 to 'them'...
The architects, the participants, the cheerleaders of January 6th?...Those strapped with so much hate and the most toxic vitriol?
There are a lot of them. More than many of us care to know or see.
They appear to be more passionate and organized about their privilege, falsehood, racist and sexist hate, than those of us who are about hope, healing, reconciliation and restoration.
Do we realize that so much of this enormously fulfilling work that we are doing...this wonderful healing, paradigm shifting work that we are doing...will be targeted for elimination by 'defunding' or worse by targeting us and what we are doing as being unAmerican, or unPatriotic?
Some of us may even become new targets for repression as others of us become renewed targets of repression.
It's a dark, dangerous space.
It absolutely can happen!
Be clear about this also...They are sabre rattling because what we are doing is correct and the more we continue to break ground, the more that backwards violent place of privilege becomes isolated and put on the path to being defeated by our mutual 'love for the people'' using some Panther language.
So to my daughters and sons, my granddaughters and grandsons heartily riding yr precious waves of this transformative work that u are all doing and becoming, keep coming, keep doing it, but be clear, we all may have to fight for our right to do so and at times and places, maybe even for our very right to exist and to do so.
So train up. Use us battleborne ol' heads to the fullest to help u get ready.
Esu (eshoo) a spiritual force of our Ancestors' spiritual tradition is indeed telling us that we are at the crossroads. The question before is which way to do we go...On the shoulders of our Ancestors, and in the language of one in particular Kwame Ture,"Forward is the Motion"!
It is time for Violence Reduction and Social Justice to intersect, to connect like the healing hug and kiss of our grandmothers!
i so cherish u all!
Come 'Beloved Community'!
Come!
(c)2022
