Let's recap yesterday's important events that might be on the minds of devotees of a musical genius who has often and passionately sung about brotherhood, freedom, racial issues...


Anniversary of March on Washington - 8 posts/5 participants

3 sluts swapping spit on TV - 100+ posts/many participants

I'd be too pissed to sing to y'all right now, as well.

I never even saw a thread for it. In which forum is it?

Where's the topic on the sluts?

Women kissing---we haven't discussed that since yesterday

Moonbeam said:

Politics and religion (probably no one goes there...)

BTW, how do you post a shortcut to jump you to another thread?

<---retired from P&R forum...place gave me an ulcer

:ROLL:

jackflash said:

http://www.prince.org/msg...&tid=59875

like this

teller said:

I oughta get smart and never, ever go there again.

But Stymie it's fun everyone gets so moody so quickly it perks me up

stymie said:

everytime I set foot in there I run screaming...

I spend so much time in my day discussing 'serious issues' that I come here for fun, for a release...I can rarely be bothered to go very deep in here

teller said:

I believe it; once those religious guys get started, you can't stop 'em. I think that some of those posts are just cut and paste jobs of the same psychotic leaflets they hand out on street corners.

jackflash said:

Maybe a bit like people going on and on about the repression of the "black" man. I always thought that repression of any kind was crappy
[This message was edited Fri Aug 29 9:14:10 PDT 2003 by mdiver]

jackflash said:

There's your answer! I never go there anymore because people are ruthless!

In P&R, everyone talks (or shouts) and no one listens. It's like being on CNN's crossfire or something. It's horrible.

mdiver said:

Methinks you didn't get the allusion in the title of the thread - next time I'll be less cryptic.

Admittedly, people do go on and on about many topics, but for shits sake, it's more interesting when you think about stuff and write it as a directed response rather than just uploading gobs of prewritten text.

What ruined it for me was this...one day I posted a topic that was neutral. It applied to anyone on the political spectrum...but because of my pro-capitalist reputation, the usual suspects jumped on me and disagreed, not even realizing that what I was putting out there was neutral. It made me realize that most of what goes on in there is just knee-jerk reaction, not thinking.

mdiver said:

Doesn't take much does it?

To get more on the topic of the thread, jackflash, I haven't posted to either of these topics. Madonna and her antics bored me long ago. As far as how I feel about the anniversary, I don't really care to share my feelings about that here with my words getting picked apart as they do. It was a very historic moment in time and ALL people need to reflect on Dr. King's specch.

stymie said:

I respect your wish to keep your feelings private; nonetheless, I'd hate for this place to degenerate into what Rolling Stone magazine has become over its lifespan: relevant-->superficial.

Anyway, have a good weekend.

teller said:

Some people do listen, they just don't agree with some assessments. I love debate so my ass will always be in there. I'm not afraid...

I was surprised that the thread in question got all of 8 replies. It is such a monumental issue and I would have thought it would have been the hottest topic of the day. Oh well, at least I contributed to it.

teller said:

Both sides have knees you know...

August 1791 The begining of the Revolution in Hatti.
Aug. 21, 1831 Nat Turners Rebellion.
August is also the month that Harriet Tubman began The Underground Railroad.
"BALCK AUGUST" has been celebrated for 24 years letting the masses know of the strife of Political Prioners past and present (they do still exist)
R.I.P. and Props to;
Johnathan and George Jackson, Khatari Gaulden, James McClain, William Christmas, and Ruchell Cinque Magee to name a few.


5/9 edit
[This message was edited Fri Aug 29 22:59:32 PDT 2003 by TheBORG]

mdiver said:

I assume your nasty response is due to you being a "religious guy". Not very Christian really to deny that black repression exists... tsk tsk

teller said:

and thanks to you ...i can say i have never been there...

thanks for the tip

The concept, Black August, grew out of the need to expose to the light of day the glorious and heroic deeds of those Afrikan women and men who recognized and struggled against the injustices heaped upon people of color on a daily basis in America. Black August represents the defining of socialist economics and ethics as applied to transforming the decadent social values of capitalist America and the people who suffer under and from the ill effects of these destructive values. The OGs (original guerrillas) who initiated this annual tribute to our fallen comrades became known as the Black August Organizing Committee, many of whom are still active today.

One cannot tell the story of Black August without first providing the reader with a brief glimpse of the “Black Movement” behind California prison walls in the ‘60s led by George Jackson, W.L. Nolen, Hugo Pinell, Kumasi and many other conscious, standup brothers.

As George Jackson wrote: “(W)hen I was accused of robbing a gas station of $70, I accepted a deal ... but when time came for sentencing, they tossed me into the penitentiary with one to life. That was 1960. I was 18 years old. I’ve been here ever since. I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels and Mao when I entered prison and they redeemed me. For the first four years I studied nothing but economics and military ideas. I met black guerrillas George “Big Jake” Lewis, and James Carr, W.L. Nolen, Bill Christmas, Tony Gibson and many, many others. We attempted to transform the Black criminal mentality into a black revolutionary mentality. As a result, each of us has been subject to years of the most vicious reactionary violence by the state. Our mortality rate is almost what you would expect to find in a history of Dachau. Three of us (Nolen, Sweet Jugs Miller and Cleve Edwards) were murdered several months ago (Jan. 13, 1969) by a pig shooting from 30 feet above their heads with a military rifle.”

In what has been described by witnesses as a setup, eight White prisoners and seven Blacks were sent to the yard in Soledad Prison, whereupon the Whites attempted to take the basketball court from the brothers already on it. Nolen was known as the Marvin Hagler of the prison system. Fearless and skilled, he was rarely challenged one on one. But on this day, one of the Whites attacked him and before Nolen could even hit back, he was shot. When Miller and Edwards tried to aid him, they were likewise shot by the lone White tower guard and left to bleed to death from wounds they could have survived.

The Black Movement prisoners demanded the guard be tried for murder but were met with resistance. Upon their continued insistence, the administration held a kangaroo court, and three days later, the Monterey grand jury returned a verdict of “justifiable homicide.” Shortly after this was announced on the prison radio, a White guard was found beaten to death and thrown from a tier. Six days later, three prisoners were accused of murder. They became known as the Soledad Brothers.

“I am being tried in court right now with two other brothers, John Clutchette and Fleeta Drumgo, for the alleged slaying of a prison guard. This charge carries an automatic death penalty for me. I can’t get life. I already have it.”

On Aug. 7, 1970, just a few days after George was transferred to San Quentin, his younger brother, Jonathan Jackson, 17, invaded Marin County Courthouse single-handed, with a satchel full of handguns, an assault rifle and a shotgun hidden under his raincoat. (We have since learned he was not supposed to go it alone.) “Freeze!” Jonathan commanded as he tossed guns to William Christmas, James McClain and Ruchell Magee. “We’re taking over.”

Magee was on the witness stand testifying for McClain, on trial for assaulting a guard in the wake of a guard’s murder of another Black prisoner, Fred Billingsley, beaten and tear gassed to death. A jailhouse lawyer, Magee had deluged the courts for seven years with petitions contesting his illegal conviction in 1963. The courts had refused to listen, so Magee seized the hour and joined the guerrillas as they took the judge, prosecutor and three jurors hostage to a waiting van.

To reporters gathering quickly outside the courthouse, Jonathan shouted, “You can take our pictures. We are the revolutionaries!” Operating with courage and calm even their enemies had to respect, the four Black freedom fighters commandeered their hostages out of the courthouse without a hitch. What they failed to anticipate was the state’s willingness to sacrifice its own people to stop the escape. Jackson’s plan was to use the hostages to take over a radio station and broadcast the virulent, racist, murderous prison conditions and demand the immediate release of the Soledad Brothers.

But before Jonathan could drive the van out of the parking lot, the San Quentin guards had arrived and opened fire. When the shooting stopped, Jonathan, Christmas, McClain and the judge lay dead. Magee and the prosecutor were critically wounded, and one juror suffered a minor arm wound. Magee survived his wounds and was tried, originally with codefendant Angela Davis. Their trials were later severed, and Davis was eventually acquitted of all charges.

Magee was convicted of simple kidnap and acquitted of the more serious kidnap-for-extortion charge by a jury whose acquittal was buried. Magee has challenged this cover-up for decades with a notarized declaration from the jury foreman, Bernard Suarez. He is also challenging the California Department of Corrections regarding parole. After 40 years of unjust incarceration, he wants nothing short of discharge so he can return to his home state of Louisiana.

“International capitalism cannot be destroyed without the extremes of struggle. The entire colonial world is watching the blacks inside the U.S., wondering and waiting for us to come to our senses. Their problems and struggles with the Amerikan monster are much more difficult than they would be if we actively aided them. We are on the inside. We are the only ones (besides the very small white minority left) who can get at the monster’s heart without subjecting the world to nuclear fire. We have a momentous historical role to act out if we will. The whole world for all time in the future will love us and remember us as the righteous people who made it possible for the world to live on. If we fail through fear and lack of aggressive imagination, then the slave of the future will curse us, as we sometimes curse those of yesterday. I don’t want to die and leave a few sad songs and a hump in the ground as my only monument. I want to leave a world that is liberated from trash, pollution, racism, nation-states, nation-state wars and armies, from pomp, bigotry, parochialism, a thousand different brands of untruth, and licentious, usurious economics,” George Jackson wrote in “Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson.”

edit 5/9
[This message was edited Fri Aug 29 23:00:13 PDT 2003 by TheBORG]

Moonbeam said:

i didn't see it. i usually just jump around from the newest topics page and hottest topics. and honestly, i don't usually check out politics and religion. i'm interested in both, have strong, committed beliefs which i freely vocalize and debate in my "real" life, but I come here to blow off steam and have a bit of a distraction.

2 each his own.

jackflash said:

It is amazing isn't it? Maybe this is why most people here are so naive to the sensitivities of racial issues
as they relate to Blacks.

5/9
[This message was edited Fri Aug 29 23:00:50 PDT 2003 by TheBORG]

teller said:

teller, that's not entirely true. for the most part, I have listened to you. we just disagree.