Voices and Soul
BY JUSTICE PUTNAM, BLACK KOS POETRY EDITOR
In the economic warfare that has been raging for decades, the divisions of the economic classes have widened. The rich, though a small number, hold the majority of the wealth, the middle class is shrinking, the poor are increasing in numbers and are being kicked in the gut for it. But the poor are made to suffer a particular kind of suffering. One might even call it an exceptional kind of suffering, found peculiarly within the borders of an expanding American exaltation. Out of an ancient will to survive, the poor interiorize the suffering, feeling the sting of an icy winter blowing across the crowded hilly streets and the lonely flat plains of this Suffering Life. Yet as harsh and particular and exceptional the poor are made to suffer, there are some who refuse to bend to the whims of privlege, or to the false idols of capitulation. Ever.
you must be made of money. your parents
must have grown
on trees.
bet you’re black
tinged with green.
bet you sleep
on bags of it.
bet your barbies
climb it.
bet you never
wanted.
bet you never
had to ask.
bet you golf.
bet you tennis.
bet you got
a summer house.
bet you got
a credit card
for your 5th birthday.
bet you played
with bills for toys.
bet you chew
them up
for dinner.
bet you spit
your black out
like tobacco
that’s why you talk so
bet you listen to green day.
bet you ain’t never heard of al.
bet your daddy wears a robe
around the house.
bet his hands are soft as a frog’s belly.
bet your house is on a hill.
bet the grass is freshly cut.
bet you feel like a princess.
bet the police protect your house.
bet you know their first names. bet your house has a hundred rooms. bet a black lady comes to clean them.
-- Jamila Woods
"beverley, huh?"
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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In what is being termed a watershed referendum against “Trumpism”—just as the 2016 presidential election was about tapping into the racist tendencies of America, pushback against the political status quo—black people showed up and showed out in Tuesday night’s elections, giving Democrats several sweeping electoral victories.
This is not to say that only black people elected the mayors in the seven cities that saw their first black mayors last night; some of the cities—most of them in the South—did not have black majorities (or even pluralities). Also, at least one in the pack is a millennial and two are women; and the wins came in places as disparate as Georgia, Montana and Minnesota. Two mayors hailed from cities rocked by high-profile police shootings, but most ran on platforms of progressivism or inclusion.
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Millions of Puerto Ricans are again without power after a high-voltage transmission line that had been repaired by Whitefish Energy, a Montana contractor now facing an FBI investigation, failed.
The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority reported that power generation across the island plummeted from 40 percent to 18 percent on Thursday, a major blow to the island’s grueling recovery after Hurricane Maria struck 50 days ago.
That means that the vast majority of the island’s 3.4 million residents are again without power, extending what was already the longest power outage in US history. The blackout struck the northern part of the island, including parts of the capital, San Juan.
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a Kickstarter campaign was launched to fund "Slave Rebellion Reenactment," a performance piece imagining one of America's largest uprisings in contemporary Louisiana. ColorLines: Artist Recreates Rebellion of Enslaved People for New Project
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Multimedia artist Dread Scott partnered with New Orleans arts organization Antenna for an ambitious performance piece: a to-scale reenactment of one of the largest revolts of enslaved people in North American history. The team now seeks crowdfunding support via a Kickstarter campaign launched on Friday (November 3).
The project page for “Slave Rebellion Reenactment” describes it as “a community-engaged performance that will bring to life a suppressed history of people with an audacious plan to organize, take up arms and seize [the] Orleans Territory.” Scott bases the performance on an 1811 rebellion in the territory, which included much of what makes up contemporary Louisiana.
A 2016 article from Smithsonian Magazine traces the rebellion to Charles Deslondes, whose French enslavers took him to Louisiana when they escaped the Haitian Revolution. That uprising inspired Deslondes to plan another insurrection that would establish a Black republic in the Orleans Territory. He and more than 500 enslaved peoples seized the Deslondes plantation and marched toward New Orleans, aiming to liberate thousands of other Black people from bondage along the way. Their plans to occupy and emancipate New Orleans stalled after three days, when militias killed most of the soldiers before capturing and executing rebellion leaders.
The “Slave Rebellion Reenactment” Kickstarter page says the project will enlist “500+ Black people, many on horses, armed with machetes and muskets, flags flying, some in militia uniforms, others in 19th century French colonial garments, singing in Creole to African drumming,” to march along the militia’s original route for two days. This group, which Scott calls the “Army of the Enslaved,” will march to the outskirts of New Orleans. The performance rejects the bloody suppression of the rebellion by ending with “a celebration featuring a public commemoration of the enslaved rebels who sacrificed their lives, and a community celebration of Black cultural expressions of freedom through music and performance.”
Speculative artwork depicting the Army of the Enslaved in Dread Scott's "Slave Rebellion Reenactment," provided on November 7, 2017.
Photo: Provided to Colorlines by Dread Scott/Kickstarter
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At the Bong County Athletic and Social-Intellectual Center, soccer and politics have always gone hand in hand. Residents assemble most nights at this loftily named cafe in Gbatala, a market town deep in Liberia’s rainforest, to watch English Premier League soccer and set the world to rights. But as Liberians prepare for a presidential runoff election, talk of sports and politics is suddenly one and the same.
That’s because an international soccer star, the former Monaco, Paris Saint-Germain, and AC Milan striker George Weah, has emerged as the front-runner to replace Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female head of state, who is stepping down after two terms. Weah won 38.4 percent of the vote in first-round elections last month, more than any of the 19 other candidates. Now he is set to face off against Joseph Boakai, Sirleaf’s vice president, who won 28.8 percent in the first round.
The runoff was scheduled for Nov. 7, but the country’s Supreme Court ruled at the last minute to delay voting until after the National Elections Commission investigates allegations of fraud brought by last month’s third-place finisher. When and if the runoff goes ahead, tiny Liberia will have the chance to write political history once again — this time becoming the first country ever to elect a former professional soccer player as head of state.
“I’ll vote Weah,” said 33-year-old James Youtee Mace, the cafe’s owner, who, like many of his customers, already reveres Weah for putting Liberian soccer on the map. “It’s time to see how someone else can do after 12 years under Sirleaf.”
Senator George Weah greets his supporters during a campaign rally in Monrovia on Oct. 8. (Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images)
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The U.S. administration is ramping up military engagement on the continent but ramping everything else down. Other countries are already filling the void. Foreign Policy: Trump’s Dangerous Retreat from Africa
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An Africanist Donald Trump is not. Unlike his two immediate predecessors, who had signature initiatives on the continent, the U.S. president has shown little interest in Africa and had minimal contact with its leaders. At a lunch he hosted with nine African heads of state on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly in September, he repeatedly referred to the southern African country of Namibia as “Nambia” and startled those in attendance by celebrating the extractive potential of the continent. “I have so many friends going to your countries trying to get rich,” he said. “I congratulate you — they’re spending a lot of money.” Trump made no reference to human rights or strengthening democracy in Africa, usual themes in presidential remarks about the continent.
But the deaths of four American soldiers in Niger and the inclusion of Chad, a key U.S. counterterrorism partner, on the latest iteration of Trump’s travel ban have made Africa increasingly difficult for the administration to ignore. These events have also exposed the administration’s startling lack of expertise when it comes to the continent and its reticence to tap the knowledge of career diplomats and analysts in the executive agencies — missteps that have already cost the administration and which could have additional consequences down the road.
Trump’s disinterest in Africa appears to be shared by many in his cabinet, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who at an hour long meeting with State Department employees on Aug. 1 embarked on a “little walk … around the world” that did not mention Africa and its 1.2 billion inhabitants — roughly 17 percent of the world’s population. The administration’s political point person for Africa seems to be U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who had little foreign experience prior to her appointment. Last month, she visited Ethiopia, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the most senior Trump administration official to have set foot on the continent thus far.
Making matters worse, the Trump administration has shown little respect for the expertise that resides at the departments of State and Defense, within the intelligence community, and within the academic and policy communities. Important African diplomatic posts remain unfilled, and domestic positions concerned with Africa have been filled only very slowly. For his meetings with African heads of state on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly, career State and Defense officials were not invited to be present.
The Trump administration’s freezing out of State, Defense, and intelligence community expertise predictably results in mistakes.
The most costly to date was the inclusion of Chad — a major U.S. ally in the fight against terrorism — on Trump’s travel ban, which also targets travelers from seven other countries. Not long after the latest version of the ban was announced on Sept. 24, Chad shifted troops from Niger, where they had been involved in operations against Boko Haram, to its border with Libya. A reported upsurge in jihadi activity followed the troops’ departure.
The travel ban blunder may yield additional negative consequences that are difficult to predict. The current chairman of the African Union Commission is Moussa Faki Mahamat, a Chadian. And to the extent that the travel ban is interpreted as a Muslim ban, it’s not just Chad that the administration risks alienating. Islam is the majority religion in some 22 African countries, 13 of which are in sub-Saharan Africa. In certain parts of Africa where the rivalry between Muslims and Christians is acute, some Christians, especially of the Pentecostal tradition, are welcoming and exaggerating what they see as the Trump administration’s anti-Islam policy. If African elites perceive Trump’s immigration and refugee policies as part of a larger “war on Islam,” then a general hostility to the United States is likely to grow.
(Left to right) Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta, Guinea's President Alpha Conde, U.S. President Donald Trump, African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina, Nigeria's Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn on May 27 in Taormina, Sicily. (Jonathan Ernst/AFP/Getty Images)
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Over the weekend I binge-watched 3%, a dystopian sci-fi Netflix original set in Brazil. The plot was rife with quirks and unexpected turns, but the biggest surprise of all was that the diversity in the show reflected the diversity in Brazil. The cast featured myriad shades and races, absent the stereotypical casting, such as the confinement of black and brown actors and actresses to supporting characters with botched, surface-level backstories.
This is what accurate representation looks like. This show reminded me of other shows on Netflix, like Sense8 and Black Mirror, whose colorful casts and stellar ratings demonstrate that diversity works. So what’s wrong with the rest of Hollywood?
I grew up on fantasy and science fiction, devouring books, television shows and film built under their umbrella. I stood in hourslong lines at bookstores waiting for sequels to be released, finishing thousand-page novels before the sun came up the next day. I went in full costume to midnight premieres, tickets in hand that I had purchased weeks prior. I wrote elaborate fan fiction and spent hours online moderating forums for people like me.
I wasn’t just any groupie, a random passerby stopping in to look—I was a buff. I was ride-or-die. King Kong didn’t have anything on me, because to me, a black girl at an all-white school, these genres that celebrated difference and rooted for the underdog were my safe haven.
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