Topic: WC - Daily Practice
5:58pm Wednesday 17Jan07
I'm alive. I got rid of my cold but my energy level has been so pathetic I've been conking out way early.
Managed to drag my ass to a book launch Monday night. Only because I'd given my word that I'd go. It was good and inspiring and I want to find out more about Gary Freeman. I checked out the website about him, he is currently being held in jail fighting extradition to the United States for some assault charges against a Chicago cop back in the 1960's.
It's all pretty stupid when you look at it. The man has led an exemplary life here in Canada and has raised beautiful, educated children. He was a librarian for goodness sake! And he's being held in jail for close to three years now for assault charges from a time when the white American cops were more than a little shady and definitely racist and it was a time in American race relations where black men and women were being harassed and hosed and arrested on trumped up charges and murdered and and...
The best part of it all is that there are still charges against him. I learned recently that there is a statute of limitations (is that the term?) in the States on rape. After a certain amount of years have passed (not sure how many) you can't be charged for raping someone. And they're still chasing after Gary Freeman? The cop is alive. He probably went on to harass and scare and terrorize other young black men (Gary was 19 at the time). But boy oh boy mustn't let a nigger get away.
There has to be a time when the powers that be in Canada look at a situation, taking it all into account (civil rights violations, racism, police corruption, J. Edgar Hoover and the CIA) and say No, we're not going to let you take this person. He's in our country now, we'll keep him. And let him live his life and tell his story and remind us that it wasn't that long ago and all that much hasn't changed.
I'm going to read more of the website when I have some more time and less limited energy and write more.
George Elliott Clarke read some of his own poems at the book launch and reminded me of when I was in my early twenties and reading black writers for the first time and feeling alive and connected to my people that came before me and built a path for me to write on.
I have to admit that I've been coasting. Living my day to day life, not participating in the black things that made me feel good and aware and mindful of who walked before me and who is continuing to walk. I knew most of the names mentioned at the launch: Martin, Malcolm, Bobby Seale, Assata Shakur, Mumia. But there were some names I hadn't heard and if I'd been more diligent in my studies, i would have.
I guess I could say that I've allowed myself to forget. You get lackadaisical and lull yourself in to a false belief that if you're a good person that's enough. But it really isn't. There are still huge crimes committed against my folk around the world out of greed or an overall lack of caring and whatever else falls in between.
People are getting upset that Oprah built a school for poor little black girls in Africa and that there aren't very many white girls included. Fuck off! If Oprah could educate every little black girl in South Africa she still wouldn't scratch the surface. All those motherless and fatherless children and the poverty and the AIDS Epidemic. Fuck right off!
I woke up a couple times last night, turned on the lamp, and jotted down the words that woke me up. Words about Gary Freeman, words about slavery and the civil rights movement and the systematic ways that blacks continue to be kept down. This morning I talked into my digital recorder as I walked to work and I've come to the conclusion that I need to read and learn and figure out and ultimately write about what I learn and see. Not with a militant black anger but with a sense of calm and understanding and focus. All of our leaders that meant a damn were killed. It's time to remember that. Better yet, it's time to stop forgetting.
EY
