Tuesday, May 29, 2007

The Forgotten Holocaust: The Eastern Slave Trade

The Arab Slave Trade is the longest yet least discussed of the two major trades. It begins in the 7th century AD as Arabs and other Asians poured into Northern and Eastern Africa under the banner of Islam, either converting or subjugating the African societies they came upon. In the beginning there was some level of mutual respect between the Blacks and the more Caucasian-Semitic Arabs. Mihdja, a Black man, is said to be the first Muslim killed in battle while another, Bilal, is regarded as a "third of the faith." Dhu'l-Nun al-Misri, born in Upper Egypt near Sudan, is regarded as the founder of Sufism. Today Sufism's greatest stronghold is in Southern Egypt and Sudan. Islamic prosperity was based upon Black as well as Arabic genius.

The children of a stinking Nubian black---God put no light in their complexion!
Arab Poet, late 600AD,

But as Islamic prosperity grew, so did an air of hostility towards many Blacks, Muslims or otherwise. Some Arabs complained about having to work next to Blacks in high positions. After the Prophet's death, even the descendants of Bilal received negative treatment. Arabic writings became laced with anti-Black sentiment. This reaction of Blacks at the time to this can be seen in the writings of a contemporary 9th Century Black scholar in residence at Baghdad by the name of Abu 'Uthman' Amr Ibn Bahr Al-Jahiz. Al-Jahiz, to confront a growing tide of anti-black sentiment in the Muslim world, published a highly controversial work at the time titled, Kitab Fakhr As-Sudan 'Ala Al-Bidan, "The Book of Glory of the Blacks over the Whites." Al-Jahiz in his work contended that even the Prophet Mohammad's father may have been of African lineage.

These new attitudes towards Blacks by Arabs marked the beginning of African enslavement. Though not based solely on race, the Arab Slave Trade did focus heavily upon Africans whom Arabs now saw as inferior to themselves. At first these Arabs raided African villages themselves seeking humans for sale. This not being always successful, they soon enlisted the aid of fellow African Muslims or recently converted Blacks. Wrapping themselves within Islam, these converts rationalized the slavery of their non Muslim brethren as the selling of "unbelievers." At other times the Arabs would demand tribute in the form of human bodies from Africans weary of the fight against Arabic-Islamic incursions.


The Arabs took advantage of regional wars in Africa to buy captives from the victor. They also used the old divide-and-conquer technique. They worked one group against the other and took or killed the best and strongest.
S.E. Anderson, The Black Holocaust for Beginners
For more information, go to

Assata Shakur


My name is Assata ("she who struggles") Shakur ("the thankful one"), and I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the US government's policy towards people of color. I am an ex political prisoner, and I have been living in exile in Cuba since 1984. I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the U.S. government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one. In the 1960s, I participated in various struggles: the black liberation movement, the student rights movement, and the movement to end the war in Vietnam. I joined the Black Panther Party. By 1969 the Black Panther Party had become the number one organization targeted by the FBI's COINTELPRO program. because the Black Panther Party demanded the total liberation of black people, J. Edgar Hoover called it "greatest threat to the internal security of the country" and vowed to destroy it and its leaders and activists...


For more info go to www.assatashakur.org

Think!


Dream Raider


My luck travels on a beam of light,
That comes not in any shade of white,
But as black as starless skies,
As deep as the truth in the pupils of elders’ eyes,
And as tall as the African’s ambition,
Focused
Able to pierce like Japanese ammunition,
A conscious understanding,
Like intuition,
I see positioned
His black protruding eyes,
With lids maintaining themselves as connected horizons,
So if he was to blink twice within every second,
Then I live for two complete days
Sunrise to sunset,
Sunrise to sunset,
Because somehow the sun-rising
And we ain’t come off the phone yet
From since the 10:22 the night before,
Cuz every time we go to hang up it always have something more,
that either one of us forget to say,
I sometimes get lost and completely enveloped into his ways
That the thought of him stays
For hours on end.
So these two knees I bend
In prayer daily,
So that he will receive right guidance,
But the moment exists here
Within the silence
That we both fully understand.
For the stories of our lives have been written by the same hand,
And thus I do what I can
To maintain my sanity
In joyful hope,
In joyful hope.
So while he touches my face to calm me,
I excuse myself,
I plead you excuse me,
For I am unable to cope
With this surge of hormone-tainted,
Deeply frustrating adrenalin,
That his soul just extracted from my emotions,
Squeezing from them the useless potions
I tried to drug my conscience with.
So in the corner of my room I sit,
And I put my thoughts to rest with the turn of a page,
I put a silencer on the nib of my pen.
I put his spirit to rest by digging a grave with my two hands
Then I sealed it with needle and thread.
I took the fan off because this place is too cold for my existence,
I found myself in this place of hate, and so I treat love with strong resistance.
I switched the light back on, because the darkness began to scare me,
Then I prayed to sleep again, because my dreams couldn’t bear to come near me.
Who are you to bring truths to myths that I myself had made up?
Who are you to barge into my dreams to have my emotions unlocked?
Who are you as bold-faced as night time, yet as quiet as soft morning dew?
Identify the origins of your being,
I ask you again, who are you???





-Arielle John. copyright 2006

Monday, May 28, 2007


1994 Rwanda...
Never again???

STOP GENOCIDE IN SUDAN NOW!!

www.GenocideIntervention.net


We Dream, we live.


He collects my beliefs into the crest of his palms
And pulls them into his chest,
He sees me as one close enough to him
So I help put his spirits to rest.
But Blessed
Is He, who can understand the royalty of Afrikan subjects,
Who all have been cursed at the hands of a world
Which prefers to see us as objects
Of a prolonged exploitation.
But just as these heavenly bodies
Move correspondingly in rotation,
And even with his eyes open
He dreams of revolution,
I dream it also…
Uhuru Daima.
-Arielle M. John. copyright 2007

Sanctified Sleep


I bless his dreams every night
By uttering quiet words
Expressing my love
Across into his semi-conscious drift,
When his mind is too weak to sift
My speech
Of its reason.
For we have welcomed a season
Where our emotions blossom
And ripen
Sweet tasting to my lips,
For the fields of his thoughts are
Mine to harvest,
Reaping the blessings
Of countenance
Gathering the graces of providence,
All collected as fruits of
Our labours combined.
For it is with him I find
My Peace
Again.
- Arielle John.
copyright 2007.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Untitled


Finding my basis between the trappings of a rock and a hard place,
Straining to smile with a semi-contorted face,
After having to endure living in a space
Like this
When it’s as if
The blindness of those around me
Already didn’t fit
The description of sound righteousness,
The sympathy invoked by their short-sightedness
Leaves me exhausted almost daily
But maybe
(and I say maybe)
One day they would see it
And not only see it
But one day believe it,
Cause though we’ve been hit-
Hard
By this spell of ignorance
I plead one day that they would get a chance
To come to realization.
Cause real eyes are occasioned
With blessed opportunity,
One day they will see the value of Black unity
And one day we will restore our Black community
One day
Some day
Some time to be.



Uhuru daima.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Headache




My head slowly turns in a languid orbit
Balancing my thoughts on cerebral density
Trodding on echoing pulsations of fluid
Pain administered in a building intensity.
Hair strands I let loose left to flow over
The smoothened cliffs of these rounded shoulders,
Plunging downward to penetrate the air,
My thoughts mimicking the sound of crashing boulders.
My head laying lower than my hand on this page as I write,
Reason for poetic verse has guided my pen for the night.

Lotus


I sent this lotus adrift while stooping at this bank and
I left it to float away
From hands that never did delay
To limit the boundaries of your scorching flame.
Like a cascading thought you came
Making yourself a seat in my mind,
So I took my finger and signed
This earthen floor with my touch,
Its potentialities I never rendered as too much
For none is impossible with the Father.
But how many of these flowers must I gather
To bury my emotions with
To calmly and steadily send adrift,
Across this expanse that separates us.
A cone of peace to enshrine your red passion,
So I send you this lotus.
-Arielle John copyright. 2007

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Backyard Blessing

My heart beats together with the earth’s biorhythms,
My back against her soil and my hair is interlocked in- this grassy surface.
I look fearlessly up at the skies but the blue bewilders me and so shrinks my eyes,
But only to behold it better.
For today I received a letter
Written with the penmanship of water,
Dotting my face, falling from my mother’s flower bucket.
I inhale the green, the overpowering freshness, of this
Paradise in my back yard.
Where these suns set stages for birds that glad-ly and so effortlessly
Call the evening to its close,
And my clothes are made into passage ways for these evening breezes.
For when she breathes it’s- The very air of life
That stifles the day,
to usher in the night.
This air that now creates a chill and its constant flow sometimes is spilled
Into my nostrils, filling my senses with her essence.
Mother is here and I feel her presence.
Only Naturally.

-Arielle John