President Obama Sings the Blues to a Blues People/ Are Black People in and Abusive Relationship with President Obama?

Dr. Cornel West and Tavis Smily continue to outrage the Black middle class and the Black elite by their critiques of President Obama's policy of governing from the camp and interests of the 2 percent American Plutocratic elite, as opposed to fighting for real change, and mobilizing the 98 percent of Americans, including the poor Black masses, who continue to free fall into the economic abyss, often ending up dead or in jail.


 In fact, civil rights lawyer, activist, and legal scholar, Michelle Alexander in her new book, "The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness" wrote,  “More African-American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began.”


But Obama continues to rephrase Ronald Reagan's "trickle down economics" with "the rising tide lifts all boats" 


Dr. West calls Black people a "Blues People" part of a deeply humanist tradition that created and used ways of being from walking to music, including spirituals and the blues, to survive and press forward during "the midnight hour" of slavery, Jim crow, etc., and who continue to do so.


So to me, it seems that when President Obama took the mic and serenaded the crowd with the Chicago blues anthem "Sweet Home Chicago", at a White House celebration of American blues music, joined by  musicians like B.B. King, Mick Jagger, and Buddy Guy, it was as if  President Obama, after ignoring the plight of the Black masses, sang yet another song to pacify a "Blues  People",  in lieu of actual public policy.  In my mind, the problem is that Black people are in an abusive relationship with their President. Abused publicly and politically to get white votes,  but when he needs us, he comes right back to "the hood" to sing to us as he did in Harlem, New York, at the historic Apollo Theatre, when he crooned the words from Al Green's song"Lets Stay Together". And like an abused spouse, we welcomed him back with open arms and wide grins, just so happy that he's come back home and is paying attention to us. 


And sure enough, the Black masses fawned over President Obama's singing as if he were Al Green himself instead of a moderate democratic President who like moderate democrats before him, side with corporate greed over our faces at the bottom of the well.

How liberals are really ruining the country

As the Obama money campaign churns into gear raising billions,  the liberal press is of course allowing itself to be used to blame EVERY BODY but Obama for HIS catastrophic policies that harmed so many poor, working poor and middle class people. This specious cartoon is an example and is actually also an example of white racist liberalism.The never portrayed Clinton as being so weak and hapless as this cartoon does to Obama.

 The truth is painfully evident and progressives should demand that liberals admit to being equally responsible primarily, as the republicans have done nothing that they have not attempted to any other president. The truth is that
 since Obama entered the white house gates, instead of demanding accountability, liberals looked the other way as he made one bad decision after another starting with who he appointed to managed the economy and who he selected for his chief of staff. Yet instead of demanding accountability which means admitting the truth that Obama made some really bad decisions liberals simply blame republicans and progressives as if Obama is a  victim being held hostage by the republicans. And now that some progressives are finally demanding accountability from our President, they get blamed as this liberal cartoonist is doing in the cartoon above. Democrats Politician will continue to betray us until liberals start demanding accountability, but sometimes I think they are too invested in this corrupt system to actually want change. Occupy Wall Street is America's only hope

Rapper Slim Dunkin was shot and killed during a fight over a five cent Fruit Chew candy in South Atlanta

Yea the same fruit chew they sale on the redline el a pack of ten for a  dollar wrapped in Saran rap

Good F*cking riddance. There is a war being waged in America. And on the front line are of course Black People as mere cannon fodder. And the great majority of us don't even know it as our communities fall down around us. But some Black people are fighting back by joining Occupy Wall Street or any other truly progressive grassroots (non neo liberal) movement, or  that one kid out there in the ghetto merely striving to stay in school and pull down a good grade, yea I see you! 

 But there are far too many enemies in our own camp and this "Negro" was one of them and I'm tired of these, 

a*s holes using rap to pollute and destroy the minds of the next generation,( while they get ghetto rich) when they could be using Hip Hop like Common, Nas, and The Roots to inspire Black youth to be visionaries to benefit the Black  Community. 


The Black community is better off with him gone and I hope they bury him in that platinum Gumbi chain he was so proud of. Think I'm being harsh?  Well just remember Martin Luther King, Malcom X,  Viola Liuzzo, Medgar Evers, etc, took bullets to the brain for this fool. And those four little girls, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Denise McNair were blown up in the 16th Street Baptist Church by the Klu Klux Klan in 1963 for fools like this. And look how he  returned it! I hope they bury him in his Platinum Gumbi Chain




Black Children don't need any more Slim Dunkin, they need more Nas ( minus the weed addiction, but at least he's being real about his addiction) 

"To my man Ill Will, God bless your life
To my peoples throughout Queens, God bless your life
My insight enlights vision
Words of wisdom, niggaz pay me intuition
To listen, to murder paragraphs of mysticism
Man plant seeds that brings forth multiple breeds
So many cultures in one planet but one culture's free
Son, I need weed to proceed
Change the flow speed and I'm getting vexed Guiliani and six six six"

-Nas The World is Yours( Original Remix)

Just When I Thought I Was Out!............

The conspiracy Theorists Cop pulled me back in!  Responding to a post I wrote last year! All up in arms  beef'n!  I hope I didn't cause him to beat down some brave protester at the Occupy Chicago Protest! I gotta remind him that only white cops can get away with that. Can you imagine if a Black cop had of maced that white women at the Occupy Wall Street Protest? And Big Shout Outs to all those protestors, Thank You!  And keep on with the keep'n on!

Any way, honestly I've been feeling bad about not following through on my commitment to do my little part to expose shit, that gets worse daily. And actually writing about it soothes the savage beast inside me.

But man, law schools got me shackled like kunta Kinte and J.J's Father, James Evans Sr. The solution? More shorter and concise posts along with relevant( in my own head) historical quotes. 

So this morning I got a mass email from CREDO ACTION ( More than a Movement)

that said "Dear [Spook] 

For years, Pat Buchanan has passed off white supremacist ideology as legitimate mainstream political commentary. And MSNBC continues to pay him and give him a platform on national TV to do it.

And he's at it again.

Buchanan has just published a book which says that increasing racial diversity is a threat to this country and will mean the "End of White America."¹ To promote his book, he went on a white supremacist radio show whose host has said things like "MLK's dream is our nightmare," and "interracial sex is white genocide."²

Buchanan should be able to say just about anything he wants. But MSNBC — a network that is now working to position itself as the progressive alternative to FOX News and CNN — doesn't have to pay him money and give him an international television platform to spread his racist lies.

Tell MSNBC: Fire Pat Buchanan! Click here to automatically sign the petition.

MSNBC President Phil Griffin considers the network "the place to go for progressives."³

But promoting bigotry and racism is anything but progressive. Buchanan's laundry list of unabashed white-supremacy includes downplaying slavery,⁴ writing a book in which he advocated shutting down our borders to maintain white dominance and espoused the genetic superiority of whites,⁵ complaining that confirming Elena Kagan would put too many Jews on the Supreme Court,⁶ and even defending Hitler. Repeatedly.⁷

If Buchanan wasn't paid money and given a powerful media platform, he'd be just another person with outdated, extremist ideas. But it's irresponsible and dangerous for MSNBC to promote his hateful views to an audience of millions.

Tell MSNBC: Fire Pat Buchanan! Click here to automatically sign the petition.

  

Thank you for standing up to hate.

Ali Rozell, Campaign Manager 

My response? Ali Rozell gets the "Get the Fuck Outta here Award"

 Pat Buchanan aint the problem and frankly I'm glade old Pat is letting Black People know exactly where he stands. And believe, Black folks need to see racism in bold, because it's not like they're paying attention to politics anyway, unless it has something to with their church. But least I digress. The older I get the more I understand  that it's not the Pat Buchanans of the world who are the problem, it's white liberals who practice a subtle and therefore more destructive form of racism and bigotry. And dig this happy crappy.  It was George Bush who actually coined the term  "Soft Bigotry" Of course Bush's definition was as racist as it was stupid. But the term itself is brilliant. So what do I mean?

Well here is a Chicago style example. The new Mayor, Rahm Israel Emanuel 

 is doing just what I predicted. Continuing Former Mayor ( who anointed him) Daley's ethnic cleansing programs aimed at Black people and anti poor programs aimed at the down trodden, broke and beat down.  And Are white liberals in Chicago standing up against him? Nope. Why, because not only did they vote for him, but their leaders like liberal darling Illinois Congresswomen Jan Schakowsky chaired his mayoral campaign.  Even the white liberal activists who worked agains Rahm adore Jan. Well Rahm Israel Emmanuel is doing far more harm as a hurricane of destruction to Black people than Pat Buchanan will ever be. 

Ali Rozell is just another poverty pimp, using Black folk's misery  to make money for a white run make work organization for the educated white liberal elite.  

Spook Out!

"And I might have to start slanin bean pies

and the bootleg t shirt of the month

With you can't touch this on the front"

O' Shea  "Ice Cube" Jackson-  Steading Mobbin 

Awakend by a Dream of A Foreign Land with Mississippi Hot Tamales

This morning around 5:00am a vivid dream awoke me.

I think it meant me no harm, and in fact was a positive harbinger

that also connected me with some history of my past and my culture.

But first, I'll start with the dream.

I dreamt I was in a country

some where in the tropics

walking through a heavily

populated urban area and
 came upon three men standing 

along side a broken metal fence.

They began speaking to 

me in friendly but ominous

voices and it became clear

that they were going to 

robe me.

I was worried, but calm as could be 
for an experienced, tested, and in shape

world traveler facing immediate danger, 
far from home. 
And although they were much bigger

and taller, they were also much

older than I.  And, although I was

in their country, they were still

Black, which gave me

the confidence of familiarity in

dealing with my people from

all branches of the African

Disporia.

Therefore, I felt I could handle

myself. I just needed to be careful

not to let them get to close to me 

But they began to follow me

while keeping the conversation

going. Somehow I convinced them

that I wasn't going to be their victim

and we began to speak easily and

 earnestly, as I do with Black folks

from other countries, about who we are

and how we came to be in this

space and time.

One of the men, the leader of the group

who was also the only one employed,

worked as a street vendor preparing

and selling meals on the street. He

began cooking the most popular dish

that he sales while talking to me

about the poverty of their country,

their traditions and how it relates 

to their food. 

In a huge rusted tin vat

over an open fire on the side of a 

busy and dirty street he prepared

some sort of spicy redish cabbage

while stirring( with a huge wood

paddle) in some round cylinder 

shaped yellow corn tamales

When it was done, he offered me some 

as a long line of hungry poor people formed, replacing the mangy stray dogs that had gathered around.

I didn't want any but ate 

some any way and

understood why it was

so popular, because it was

very cheap, filling, and some what 

flavorful.

When I awoke I remembered how my Mom use to serve those tamales to us for dinner, and how they were sold at every hot dog stand and fast food joint in the ghettos of Chicago

I always had assumed that they were of Mexican origin, even though I never see them in Logan Square

or at any Mexican restaurant.  And because I wasn't able to go back to sleep. I googled these tamales by first finding their picture online. I was surprised to find out that these tamales were not brought to Chicago by Mexican immigrants, but by Black folks around the turn of the century who migrated from the Mississippi Delta. This is why they're made from the same cornmeal as southern cornbread, as opposed to Mexican masa used in "standard" tamales. And in fact, the original roving tamale sellers in Chicago where actually Black men called "Molly Men"

These Molly Men were such a fixture in the Black North that several popular songs memorializing the "Molly Men" were record, including an early rag time one called " The Hot Tamale Man" published by Herbert Ingraham in 1909 and sang by Pearl Hunt.  Around that time Arthur Collins who was the most popular vaudeville minstrel actor of that time rerecorded a more uptempo version for Columbia and Victor Records.

"Just see the bucket steam'n

hear the folks screaming

here come the Hot Tamale Man

watch him charleston down the line

come on folks get your money

Tamale man needs shoesis for his honey

Here come the Hot Tamale Man!"

Then in 1928, Red Hot Ole Moses recorded the song "Molly Man" set in the cotton fields of the South

Molly Man comin, I hear his voice

He got mollies, and it's my choice

Don't wait too long

cause the mollies be gone

I judge by the way you act

Somebody around her had

a cotton pick'n feeling tired

sore shoulder.

Two for a nickel, four for a dime

white folks standing round spending

many dimes, 

so I can't wait to get mine

In 1936 Robert Johnson who first recorded and sang the famous song "Sweet Home Chicago, sang

 "They're Red Hot" about a Tamale Women. 

"Hot Tamales and they're red hot, 

yea she got em for sale, yes,  yea yea"

And This week in Higher Education! Snoop Doggie Dog assumes the Presidency of Southern Illinois University

When I first saw this "article",  I thought it was a tardy April Fools Joke or The Onion.

What could be a bigger joke? A Black Fraternity "Kappa Alpha Psi" sponsoring an event with the words pimps, hoes, and players, a university allowing this "tradition" to be held on it's campus, and the "university's" student paper actually spinning high schoolish PR for the event as if it were something other than a modern day minstrel show at the expense of women world wide ( the majority  of color) marginalized and forced into prostitution.

Adding insult to injury is that the Daily Egyptian( I suggest a name change for the paper), lists the numerous SIU students and grads( along with their college majors)  associated with this event as if they are actually doing something of worthwhile. As a tax payer I'm outraged that my tax dollars go to this institution. In fact, the only way that I will ever consider SIU a real university is if the student body en mass rise up( like Egyptians) to protests this "Spike Lee Bamboozel"  

The only thing missing is an announcement that Snoop Dog is going to replace the current president ( who should resign by the way) and take office after delivering the next commencement speech.

Finally why is the "Kappa Stroll" eerily reminiscent of the "cake walks" that white masters organized for their own amusement by dressing their slaves in exaggerated costumes, ordering them stroll up and down a white chalked line in the street and then to dance wildly for cake. Something tells me that SIU isn't a school at which to learn history, let alone Black History.

Shame Shame Shame,

Momma Maria McCray has gone Home now, like a Shooting Star. "I am not going to die, I'm going home like a shooting star"-Sojourner Truth.

I can't believe you passed 
Your words on stage were as fierce as your spirit
You birthed and inspired thousands of poets 
so they called you, Momma.


Love Spook

As quite as it's kept, It's easy for Black folk to come up with all sorts of reasons to dislike and hate one another, dating back from the first time a slave was forced up onto the auction block in America.

 It's the reason why slave rebellions lead by the bravest of souls, like Gabriel Processer,  Denmark Vesey, and George Boxly failed, because of the betrayal of other slaves. This  syndrome is know as "crabs in the barrel" and  continues down through out Black history to African Colonialism all the way to the two Black people now living in the white house who promised poor Black folk change too, and failed to deliver, and continues forward in various vicissitudes and strengths throughout America.  Most Black people are just not honest about it.

Therefore I'll admit, that over ten years ago when I was sitting at the back of the ( now closed) Big Horse Tacqueria  and Lounge located in Wicker Park at a weekly Poetry Slam, the first time I saw Momma Maria McCray spit poetry, I didn't like her.  It was the way that the audience of mostly white kids, joined with the few Black, Asian, and Latino kids, and chanted "Momma! Momma! Momma!" as she stepped to and commanded the stage.  I was also uncomfortable with her combining the masculine stinging wise cracking truth telling and wit of Dick Gregory's "From the Back of the Bus" with stories of her wounds and vulnerability as a Black woman from the American South who on top of it all, served in the Vietnam War.  To listen to Mamma McCray was to be forced to experience her raw pain, when personally I'd fled from the South side of Chicago to run from mine.  I wanted to hear the far more common political rants of privileged kids, intellectualized from books ( therefore sterilized), and not connected to the open wounds of a rightfully angry, articulate, and brilliant older Black women soldiering it alone.  I didn't want to picture her riding on red line from the hard scrabble Roger's Park Neighborhood with her brown bag of poems.  And even worse, on those nights when she could not secure a car ride home, I didn't want to picture her, after connecting with her children, alone on that long train ride home looking out the window at Chicago passing by in the night.

Well Momma McCray passed two days ago. I didn't find out from WBEZ,  but from one of her children, a Black man from the South Side block that I lived on as a teenager. When I left the neighborhood for school on the east coast, he was the last person I expected to see again.  Actually, the last I thought that I  would ever hear about him being alive, was on Christmas Break as sophomore year, when I heard that my older cousin's best friend (Dark Mark) beat him down for shorting him on a bag of weed.  Years later after I returned back to Chicago, bowed, bruised, and bloodied, but armed with my degree by the skin of my teeth. I had picked myself  up and moved out from the segregated South Side, that defines most Black people in Chicago who live and die there, (some never even leaving) and moved to Bucktown/Wicker Park, a place that years ago reminded me of New York City.  There, I encountered the person Dark Mark beat down over a dime bag of weed.

Although his home will probably always be on the  South Side, he managed to "leave" the bad of the neighborhood enough to grow bigger than the south side as well.  Although his face still carries the beatings, he's changed his appearance from hood to urban bohemian, reads books, writes  poems, receives recognition as an artists and Chicago activist, and now goes only by his first name.  We don't cross paths often as he still lives on the South side and has a child, but I often listen to his progressive political radio show broad casted on a North Side college radio station and keep up with him because we are "Face book Brothers"

It was from his "face book update" entitled "I didn't get a chance to say goodbye.......damn" posted on Monday 7th at 11:14 p.m that I learned that Maria "Momma" McCray passed like the red line train she rode pulling away from the station for the last time. He was one of her children. And I guess I am one too, estranged, who has finally grown up enough to come home.


The only Thing I Miss about the South- 
By Maria McCray

I would dig dandelions from around Dad's headstone

......2Feet from Grands....2Feet from Great-grands
.....2Feet from Great-Great-grands...& brag, loud & long to

my captive audience father

about his never-knew grandchildern,

just past where, i find dignity in small gestures..

just Past