Sitting watching Wedding Crashers on a Friday night in Late December in the Year of 2013
Through the Comical outbursts from the scenes in this movie
I manage to start reflecting on the past memories that have completely redirected my energy
The memories that have brought me far and held me close to innerstanding
This world never fails me though as I'm interrupted by the friction of moor unwanted energy...
As sisters we have to start loving each other in a respectable way
Our words ought to be as soothing, uplifting and inspiring as humming birds
Pitches that stick in your thoughts carrying you with IT as IT travels through the winds
We are precious gems knee deep in this sh**
Fertilizing the earth we are made in...
Love and Light to each one of you
WE REIGNING!
-MoorReasoning
January 4, 2014
January 1, 2014
Live From Death Row... Mumia Abu Jamal
Once a Peabody Award-winning radio reporter, Mumia Abu-Jamal is now in a Pennsylvania prison awaiting his state-sanctioned execution. In 1982 he was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner after a trail many have criticized as profoundly biased. LIVE FROM DEATH ROW is collection of his prison writings- an impassioned yet unflinching account of the brutalities and humiliations of prison life...
John Edgar Wideman introduces a clear and precise vision into the mind of Mumia Abu-Jamal that any reasonable being ought to solely agree with...
He doesn't split his world down the middle to conform to the divided world prison enforces. He expresses the necessity of connection, relinquishing to no person or group the power to define him. His destiny, his manhood, is not attached to some desperate, one-way urge to cross over to a region controlled or possessed by others. What he is, who he can become, results from his daily struggle to construct an identity wherever his circumstances place him...
The power of his voice is rooted in his defiance of those determined to silence him.
The voices are always there, if we discipline ourselves to pick them out. Listen to them, to ourselves, to the best we've managed to WRITE and SAY and DANCE and PAINT and SING.
Africans [in America] culture, in spite of the weight, the assaults if has endured, may contain a key to our nation's survival, a key not found simply in the goal of material prosperity, but in the force of spirit, will, communal interdependence.
Mumia Abu-Jamal's voice can help us tear down walls-prison walls, the walls we hide behind to deny and refuse the burden of our history.
Mumia points out that Thurgood Marshall, the first person of African descent appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, admitted, just hours after his resignation from the Court, that "I'm still not free."
In another essay, Mumia calls our attention to Nelson Mandela. Released after twenty-seven years in South Africa's jails as a hero, leader, and liberator of his people, universally acknowledged to be the most powerful man in his country, its best hope for peace, possibly its next president-still didn't possess the right to vote.
Mumia Abu-Jamal's writing insists on these kinds of gut checks, reality checks. He reminds us that to move clearly in the present, we must understand the burden of our past.
The following insert is for all brothers and sisters that have been strangled at the hands of prison systems...
For all of our youth that has been subjected to improper solutions for apparent problems...
For the families that have to endure the pain of losing a loved one to THE GAME...
Actin' like life's a ball game
March 1994
...The man, whom I'll call Rabbani, was tall, husky fifteen-year-old when he was arrested in southeastern Pennsylvania for armed robbery. The prosecutor moved that he be judicially certified as an adult, and the Court agreed. Tried as an adult, Rabbani was convicted of all charges and sentences to fifteen to thirty years in prison, for an alleged robbery with a CO2 air pistol...
For those critical years in the life of a male, from age fifteen to thirty, which mark the transition from boy to man, Rabbani was entombed in a juridical, psychic, temporal box branded with the false promise "corrections". Like tens of thousands of his generation, his time in hell equipped him with no skills of value to either himself or his community. He has been "corrected" in precisely the same way that hundreds of thousands of others have been, that is to say, warehoused in a vat that sears the very soul.
He has never held a woman as a mate or lover; he has never held a newborn in his palm, its heart athump with new life; he hasn't seen the sun rise, nor the moon glow, in almost fifteen years- for robbery, "armed" with a pellet gun, at fifteen years old.
When I hear easy, catchy, mindless slogans like "three strikes, you're out," I think of men like Rabbani who had one strike (if not one foul) and are, for all intents and purposes, already outside of any game worth playing.
The following insert is a Father's attempt and success (in my eyes) to show his daughter the LOVE he has for his people and HER while restricted, confide, and denied of LOVE and JUSTICE for himself...
The visit
November 1994
...Tiny, with a Minnie Mouse voice, this daughter of my spirit had finally made the long trek westward, into the bowels of this man-made hell, situated in the south-central Pennsylvania boondocks. She, like my other children, was just a baby when I was cast into hell, and because of her youth and sensitivity, she hadn't been brought along on family visits until now...
"Break it! Break it!" she screamed. Her mother, recovering from her shock, bundled up Hamida in her arms, as sobs rocked them both. My eyes filled to the brim. My nose clogged.
Her unspoken words echoed in my consciousness: "Why can't I hug him? Why can't we kiss? Why can't I sit in his lap? Why can't we touch? Why not?" I turned to recover. I put on a silly face, turned back, called her to me, and talked silly to her. "Girl, how can you breathe with all them boogies in your nose?"...
I reminded her of how she used to hug our cat until she almost strangled the poor animal, and Hamida's denials were developed into laughter... before long our visit came to an end.
Her smiled restored, she uttered a parting poem that we used to say over the phone: " I love you, I miss you, and when I see you, I'm gonna kiss you!"
Over five years have passed since that visit, but I remember it like it was an hour ago... They haunt me.
John Edgar Wideman introduces a clear and precise vision into the mind of Mumia Abu-Jamal that any reasonable being ought to solely agree with...
He doesn't split his world down the middle to conform to the divided world prison enforces. He expresses the necessity of connection, relinquishing to no person or group the power to define him. His destiny, his manhood, is not attached to some desperate, one-way urge to cross over to a region controlled or possessed by others. What he is, who he can become, results from his daily struggle to construct an identity wherever his circumstances place him...
The power of his voice is rooted in his defiance of those determined to silence him.
The voices are always there, if we discipline ourselves to pick them out. Listen to them, to ourselves, to the best we've managed to WRITE and SAY and DANCE and PAINT and SING.
Africans [in America] culture, in spite of the weight, the assaults if has endured, may contain a key to our nation's survival, a key not found simply in the goal of material prosperity, but in the force of spirit, will, communal interdependence.
Mumia Abu-Jamal's voice can help us tear down walls-prison walls, the walls we hide behind to deny and refuse the burden of our history.
Mumia points out that Thurgood Marshall, the first person of African descent appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, admitted, just hours after his resignation from the Court, that "I'm still not free."
In another essay, Mumia calls our attention to Nelson Mandela. Released after twenty-seven years in South Africa's jails as a hero, leader, and liberator of his people, universally acknowledged to be the most powerful man in his country, its best hope for peace, possibly its next president-still didn't possess the right to vote.
Mumia Abu-Jamal's writing insists on these kinds of gut checks, reality checks. He reminds us that to move clearly in the present, we must understand the burden of our past.
The following insert is for all brothers and sisters that have been strangled at the hands of prison systems...
For all of our youth that has been subjected to improper solutions for apparent problems...
For the families that have to endure the pain of losing a loved one to THE GAME...
Actin' like life's a ball game
March 1994
...The man, whom I'll call Rabbani, was tall, husky fifteen-year-old when he was arrested in southeastern Pennsylvania for armed robbery. The prosecutor moved that he be judicially certified as an adult, and the Court agreed. Tried as an adult, Rabbani was convicted of all charges and sentences to fifteen to thirty years in prison, for an alleged robbery with a CO2 air pistol...
For those critical years in the life of a male, from age fifteen to thirty, which mark the transition from boy to man, Rabbani was entombed in a juridical, psychic, temporal box branded with the false promise "corrections". Like tens of thousands of his generation, his time in hell equipped him with no skills of value to either himself or his community. He has been "corrected" in precisely the same way that hundreds of thousands of others have been, that is to say, warehoused in a vat that sears the very soul.
He has never held a woman as a mate or lover; he has never held a newborn in his palm, its heart athump with new life; he hasn't seen the sun rise, nor the moon glow, in almost fifteen years- for robbery, "armed" with a pellet gun, at fifteen years old.
When I hear easy, catchy, mindless slogans like "three strikes, you're out," I think of men like Rabbani who had one strike (if not one foul) and are, for all intents and purposes, already outside of any game worth playing.
The following insert is a Father's attempt and success (in my eyes) to show his daughter the LOVE he has for his people and HER while restricted, confide, and denied of LOVE and JUSTICE for himself...
The visit
November 1994
...Tiny, with a Minnie Mouse voice, this daughter of my spirit had finally made the long trek westward, into the bowels of this man-made hell, situated in the south-central Pennsylvania boondocks. She, like my other children, was just a baby when I was cast into hell, and because of her youth and sensitivity, she hadn't been brought along on family visits until now...
"Break it! Break it!" she screamed. Her mother, recovering from her shock, bundled up Hamida in her arms, as sobs rocked them both. My eyes filled to the brim. My nose clogged.
Her unspoken words echoed in my consciousness: "Why can't I hug him? Why can't we kiss? Why can't I sit in his lap? Why can't we touch? Why not?" I turned to recover. I put on a silly face, turned back, called her to me, and talked silly to her. "Girl, how can you breathe with all them boogies in your nose?"...
I reminded her of how she used to hug our cat until she almost strangled the poor animal, and Hamida's denials were developed into laughter... before long our visit came to an end.
Her smiled restored, she uttered a parting poem that we used to say over the phone: " I love you, I miss you, and when I see you, I'm gonna kiss you!"
Over five years have passed since that visit, but I remember it like it was an hour ago... They haunt me.
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