the bodies of Kisangani

watching Hubert Sauper's Kisangani Diary was tough. the bodies are too much. look like something out of a horror movie. they pick up a small boy that has been left for dead. he is too skeletal to cry out. lord help us.

i dont know what it means to starve. or to live in fear of being raped or killed. i dont know what it means to be truly poor. i feel guilty for being overly concerned with having clear skin and fashionable shoes while people are starving. damn im pampered.

the sight of starving people is harrowing.,the knowledge that they would soon all be murdered is unfathomable.

ignorance is bliss, once you are made aware you cant possibly live as if you arent? can you?

speak to me

i allow you to say nothing
when your sweat intermingles with mine
when limbs intertwine
when time passes by too quickly
such silences are laden with stories
shortcomings, fears, insecurities
all the things i need to hear than make
me feel you need me like i need you
however i will not allow silences
that are embolden by miles
miles that make me feel alone
you act like...
hmm

paris hilton walks

im not sure what the sheriff officials were thinking when they decided to let ms. hilton go. it sends a horrible message to society, reinforcing a common belief that if you have money you are in fact above the law.

what makes this situation worse is not only the class issues but also the race dynamics. a black girl or latina would not have received the same preferential treatment.

so paris is crying and is cold at night so she gets house arrest? give her a blanket for goodness sake. it jail! not the hilton.

i have some numbers for people to call to complain. she needs to go back to jail and finish her sentence.

LA Sheriff complaints - 323-526-5541 or http://lasd.org/contact_us/index.html

Board of supervisors of Los Angeles County:

Zev Yaroslavsky- 213-974-3333
Gloria Molina- 213-974-4111
Yvonne B. Burke- 213-974-2222
Don Knabe- 213-974-4444
Michael D. Antonovich- 213-974-5555

Mothers Against Drunk Driving 1-800-438-6233

stop snitching, so cam'ron can make a buck

so i was watching CNN last night and Anderson Cooper had a piece on 'Stop Snitching'. the same piece aired this past Sunday on 60 minutes.

the piece focused on how rap music encourages people not to snitch when they witness a crime. Geoffrey Canada was the voice of reason (thank God)! he commented on how the stop snitching mantra is undermining the moral fabric of the community.

tell me why they featured cam'ron (the rapper) and why was he ignorant as hell? Anderson asked him if he would call the police if he knew a serial killer lived next door and he said something like "no... but i would probably move"

it was so upsetting to see cam'ron so nonchalant and flippant. its as if he failed to see the relevance. although law enforcement has not been the fairest when it comes to communities of color that does not mean that we should not cooperate and in that cooperation try to change the system.

in the same piece, busta rhymes bodyguard was murdered and apparently busta witnessed it. but refused to cooperate with the police, because he didnt want to loose his street cred (credibility).

two things come to mind with this specific case. first, it encourages people to take the law into their own hands rather than let the police do their job. i dont know about you, but i would not want people running around shooting people who they believe are responsible for someones death. now the justice system may not be perfect, but its there for a reason.

second, i think it teaches our young men that they have to 'act hard'. im tired of seeing young boys eschewing their emotions. you know this belief that nothing can hurt them. these are the same young boys who grow into men one day but are unable to hold down jobs, relationships, etc.. because they dont know how to deal with their anger, authority figures, and/or conflict.

cam'ron is a millionaire. that means someone is buying his music. it makes me sick that so many of our rappers have this whack mentality, that seemingly allows them to divorce themselves of the consequences of their work. while they poison our communities with their violence, misogyny, and lack of morals they dont see THEMSELVES as the problem.

cam'ron closes with:

"I just think that rap takes way more slack than the video games and the movies. We don't make guns. Smith and Wesson makes guns," Cam'ron argues. "Like, white people make guns and bullets and all we're doing is rhyming and putting words together."

again. there is a failure to take responsibility in the rap community. own up to it dammit. you cant just say smith and wesson makes guns and leave it at that. yeah, they make guns but they dont force you to use it or idolize using them either.

i would add that just because your record label isn't appalled by your lyrics or maybe even encourages such lyrics... that does not mean you should write songs that boldly claim that snitches should be killed. where is your pride? apparently the money is too good. you would rather sell the whole community to earn a buck.

wake up black people. we have got opportunist amongst us. while we struggle going to school, working, raising kids these rappers benefit off prejudice and stereotypical images of us.

they make millions living grandiose, over hyped lifesytles while they kindle the fire that is slowly burning the fabric of our communities.

pay 'em fair

on pbs today was a documentary entitled 'blackgold' that followed the lives of Ethiopian farmers in a fight to get paid fairly for their coffee.

it was appalling how little these farmers were paid for their coffee. farmers are paid so little that they are unable to provide for their basic necessities.

one case was particularly disturbing. a man who had been a farmer for about 20 years
explained his decision to stop growing coffee and grow chat(khat/mira)(a narcotic that is illegal in many countries). this was especially disappointing to me, because prior to that he had explained that each coffee tree takes about five years to yield good fruit, and yet here he was uprooting his coffee because he doesn't want to die of starvation.

according to the documentary approximately 7 million Ethiopians are dependent upon foreign food every year.

also, Africa's share of world trade is 1%, which is totally shocking to me. they stated that if the trade would rise by another percentage point (1%) that it would equal 70 billion dollars which happens to be the amount the continent receives in foreign aid! aint that something.

i know a lot of us are poor students and or recent graduates. but we must be educated consumers. buy fairly traded products. write letters to the big corporations. in the case of coffee the documentary listed four major traders: kraft, nestle, proctor & gamble and sara lee. you can add starbucks to that as well.

this doc reminded me of another one on pbs about the garment industry in China. the workers were overwhelmingly underage and female. they were working crazy hours i.e. 12- 17 hours straight under very strict rules. companies were buying pairs of jeans for like four dollars. can you remember the last time you saw a pair of jeans for fifteen dollars (giving them 11 dollar profit)and not on sale?

after seeing that i feel compelled to shop at used clothing stores/vintage. i dont want to participate in slavery. which is what that is. lets make no mistakes about it. straight up modern day slavery.

"nappy headed hoes," say what?

i guess im the last person to find out about this. why did my mama call me and in passing tell me that some radio show host called the Rutgers team nappy hoes? at first i thought she said horses, and i had to clarify it by saying "the animal"? and she said no "like the prostitute"!

i saw it on youtube and couldn't understand don imus' rationale. he actually insulted the whole team by calling them nappy headed hoes. i don't understand why they aren't just nappy, but their hoes as well.

it upsets me that white people still go around saying ignorant things about us. it reminds my of high school, when classmates would be weirdly fascinated by my braided hair and ask me questions about how often i wash my hair etc. its like theres this disconnect about black culture. someone recently told me that white people don't have to worry about our culture because there the dominant culture and were not.

his comments also made me think of the hyper sexual characterization of black womens sexuality. i honestly cant grasp why they have to be hoes. i mean does he know them personally, each and every one of them? or is he just ascribing a term to them that society has deemed plausible. oh, they could be hoes because they are black.

hell ya, i think he should be fired. him and his homeboy talking about jigaboos? JIGABOOS? i couldn't believe my ears. on national tv? are they not ashamed? we have reached a day in age where we can say almost anything and then issue an apology the next day. remember michael richardson's n***** comments? didn't he try to apology the next day as well?

The other day I was flipping through the "news" channels (cnn, fox, etc) and was perplexed why they all kept on repeating news about anna nicole smith. it pisses me off for two reasons. first, i know there was other news they could have covered like the Africans killed off the coast of Yemen or the sewage break in the Gaza strip. second, you often hear pundits rattling off about how Americans like news about celebrities and such (while i do think Americans tend to be nonchalant about events occurring in the world)i dont believe that is entirely accurate. its appalling how they have screwed up the news, Americans dont have a choice unless you get your news online, or pbs. if i were a producer i would talk about every random story that occurred anywhere in the world before i talk about anna nicole smith. honestly, who cares about anna nicole smith. its a sad story, let her family and friends grieve for her. why does she have to be the main story-shes dead? its like cnn has become the new inside edition.

HIV vaccine trial in South Africa

i dont know about you but this trial bothers me. why do Africans have to be the guinea pigs? im not sure why Merck could not test the vaccine in America or China. it bothers me for two reasons. first, i feel like it will promote risky behavior. second, remember the recently canceled study for the hiv microbicidal gel in which 30 of the 1300 participants were infected with the virus.

i understand the importance of human testing. but i am concerned that some of the participants are not fully aware of the risks involved. i personally would be unwilling to participate in such a study, the risks are too high.

child abuse, sex, african men

i read an article about young Kenyan girls in Mtondia village who are pregnant or already mothers. one of the girls states, "I was 10-years-old when I got my first child - I was raped by some young men in our village,...Then two years later while I was going to a local disco, I was raped and that's how I got my second child."*

now while the rest of the community may ostracize them and feel that they brought this upon themselves, i am perturbed with the men and fathers. somehow in time the moral lines became blurred in regards to having sex with a minor. the young girl in the story above was ten when she says she was raped. child abuse is a major issue that needs to be discussed as a community. sometimes it is as if society has condoned it, sure people are angered by someone who molests an infant, but the same outrage and denunciation is needed for all underage children. for surely, a ten year old can not give consent. unfortunately even the courts have failed to properly punish those found guilty of child abuse. below are two cases in Kenya.

May 2002**

In May 2002, the public reacted with consternation after a Makadara trial Magistrate inexplicably handed a lenient non-custodial sentence to a man found guilty of defiling a four-year old girl. The convicted defiler got away with the unprecedented sentence of a 3-year probation. (The maximum sentence is a 14-year jail term). The then Chief Justice, Bernard Chunga, however moved swiftly to redeem the situation when he referred the case to the High Court for review and re-trial.

March 2003**

On March 18^th 2003, a Karatina court acquitted a suspected child defiler, even after the 9-year-old deaf and dumb victim had positively identified the accused, Mr. John Wachira Kiramba in a identification parade organized by the police. The magistrate gave the reason for his ruling as being that the child had not positively identified the accused person “within reasonable time!”

another serious issue with our men is the failure to understand that coerced sex is rape. it has been argued that sex between young adults of the same age can be viewed as consensual; however, research has shown that the majority of African girls report their first sexual experience as coercive.


sources:
* http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6296549.stm
**http://www.chambersofjustice.org/publications/monitoring_reports/key_findings.htm

women, culture, fgm

i wonder why people are able to present crimes against women as cultural significant practices. for example female genital mutilation is not a religious practice as claimed by some it is cultural. i cant understand why women would want to have their daughters circumcised. not only is it dangerous but its ethically wrong. why would any mother want her daughter to suffer so much in the name of culture.