Day in the Life

Yesterday:

1. Helped organize a rally for Free Education. One of the best things about the rally was that its focus emerged spontaneously on the streets from our chanting. Our signs had a lot of different issues thinking locally and globally and connecting the dots about spending on the military and spending on education. We want jobs and housing at the same damn time. There was a silent part to the march/rally when we went into our college's library and computer lab where they have just instituted a fee for printing. It's important to note that the lead up to the rally was a hike in our local woods the day before where we heard the rain in the trees get closer and closer and then arrive.

3. Walked to the bank to get some cash passed the Big Daddy Kane show at NJPAC. Stopped in and there we all were dispersed in the crowd and dancing.

The Mighty Newark Anti-Violence Coalition March 7, 2012

The 137th consecutive week of protest by NAVC was at the intersection of South Orange Avenue and South 11th Street for Calvin Johnson a worker at Golden Pizzeria on South Orange Avenue where he was murdered on Saturday night.

We, as NAVC, show how we have power. Black Power. Power to the People power. The power to stop traffic on South Orange Avenue in protest against the violence. During rush hour. We made the Irvington Police retreat. The power of the people calling for Peace. On Our Streets.

There is a follow-up meeting for men. A young brother passed out the flyers. I am writing this with only respect for NAVC... I think it is a mistake to have the follow-up meeting only for men. I think it is important to have programs and events specifically for male empowerment, but a follow-up meeting for NAVC hosted by a council member should be open to all. I don't think the solution to Newark's problems is for "Men to take charge of our community." To what extent should we segregate around gender as we build community empowerment? We are all the leaders; we are all shapers and makers--that's the utopian vision that I am actualizing in the real. I would have loved to be invited to be part of discussion of street patrols, safe passage, soul sessions and more. When we know our sisters are also our soldiers, we should be included as central and essential to shaping our transformations. The change we demand is not just for us; it is through us.

Peace.

Newark Anti-Violence Coalition February 29, 2012

A rainy warm day, leap year, and I couldn't find my boots anywhere, and I left the house much later than I had wanted, and by the time I got to the corner of South Orange Avenue and West End Avenue the demonstration had ended. But I went there. It is something. The impact of our actions are not always visible or tangible or within our control or expectations.

Week 03 Afternoon of Activism

It is raining. I have been working. Um, I am going to stay inside today. Last I checked the location for the Newark Anti-Violence Coalition demonstration has not been posted. Also, already this week, I made flyers with students, and we started a blog. Tomorrow a few of us might go together to join POP and hold signs. If I created the commitment on my own, but I want others to join me, then I have to allow the commitment to be mobile.

POP February 23, 2012

After a busy day on another gorgeous day in February, around 5pm, I just want to leave and go home, but I know I have committed to my afternoons of activism, and if I missed everything on Wednesday, then I have to at least swing by on Thursday. So, I go, I hold the sign for about five minutes. I felt that I made a difference. I spoke to one person who rolled down the car window to ask what it is about. I explained that POP has been holding a daily demonstration for jobs. It still feels awkward standing there holding a sign trying to get the drivers driving by to honk, the hand and arm movement for "toot your horn" feeling strangely similar to the raise of the black power fist.

Week 02 Afternoons of Activism

The second week for the afternoon of activism had me feeling like I'm in Newark. I got to campus... I can't even remember what I did anymore. Oh, I had a meeting about a bunch of events I am part of organizing, and I swung by the screening of Slavery By Another Name a documentary on the decades following emancipation and the use of the prison system to supply cheap labor in the United States. The documentary includes reenactments and the star was Raymond Spencer who is currently a student at Essex County College. After the screening, the was a Q&A with Spencer.

I was critical because at the UII, nobody had reminded me of the event on Tuesday. I want to change that culture. I want us to be spreading the word and taking it for granted that we are going to need to be reminded. To see the event on a ticker outside the campus as I lock up my bicycle is not the same as someone, ideally this would have been Raymond, saying, hey remember to attend my screening. Nobody gave me fliers to hand out to my class and that is me as the current professor of the course on the history of african american cinema. But, as I said, I was feeling Newark this Wednesday, and it was probably on me to remember. No use in displacing agency. These are questions, I want to be asking.

At 3pm, I planned to head over the Military Park for the Occupy Newark General Assembly when I realized I had left my wallet at home. It would not have been too big a deal except later that evening I was attending a reading at Hunter and would need identification to get into the school. So, instead of going to my second afternoons of activism, I hopped on bicycle back home, found my wallet, and then returned to campus just in time to meet up with the UII Haiti focus group who was heading to the panel on Humanitarian Design at Parsons The New School with Dr. Margaret Stevens, ECC Associate History Professor and Director of the Urban Issues Institute.

I was able to stay for Dr. Stevens' presentation and another presentation and then had to leave to head up to the Sharon Olds reading at Hunter College.

En route, I learned that the best dollar pizza is at Essex and Rivington. I am still to check it out.

I was okay that I missed my participation in the demonstrations. I am learning how much my body can physically handle. Right now, it is Friday night, it is raining. I have decided to stay home and not go to the event Women Writing the World at NYU. I need to rest. I have two things to prioritize, the afternoons of activism and writing my dissertation. I feel like the energy, excitement, and fun that I had going out and about in Newark and New York will sustain me for a while. For when I do too much, that is when I can forget my wallet at home, which makes it difficult to follow through on my commitments. It is a challenging process to find a good balance between engagement in the social and nurturing the personal. To follow through on my commitment to activism, I promised I would hold a sign on Thursday and rethink how much I can handle during a week. For me, I realize that commitment to the dissertation keeps me grounded, and I am planning to try to find a balance between the afternoons of activism and the dissertation, which means I think I need to let go of my involvement with the poetry community in New York City for now.

HOT TEXTS and SMALL BEAST Monday, February 20, 2012

Another gorgeous day had me riding my bicycle into Brooklyn (via PATH). I had to pick up some tax documents from the house and swing by the Food Coop to check on my status, which is non-responsive.

After watching the sunset from my perch in the living room, I headed to the Way Station on Washington Avenue. I don't like walking into a bar for a poetry reading in the neighborhood that I grew up in but cannot afford to live in and being the only other black person in the bar. Truth be told I hate it. It makes me wonder about the ethics of my poetry community:

Curated by local poet activists Krystal Languell and Emily Skillings-HOT TEXTS is a reading series in Brooklyn, New York that celebrates innovative writing rooted in the body, desire, sexual politics and the erotic sphere. HOT TEXTS is an extension of the Belladonna* Collaborative, a feminist, avant-garde event series, collective and publishing venture.

I wonder what Languell and Skillings mean by "local poet activists." I wonder if there are any neighborhood bars left in my neighborhood. Or, I have to accept that the face of the youth in my neighborhood has changed. I wonder if it is a responsibility of local activists to deal with the recent history of displacement that enables their presence.

All of that ranted, I was very excited to be going to the reading. I think it is important to be critical of the communities of which we are part. It encourages debate, which encourages critical thinking, which animates the possibility of systemic transformation. I will forever be uncomfortable entering spaces that have been enabled by the criminalization of the black body. ...but I am getting ahead of my research, which exists right now just as a question: what are the relationships between gentrification and the alarming rate of incarceration of black and brown youth?

I couldn't have been happier at the Way Station sitting in the raised red booth joined by friends old and new and listening to a reading by Rachel Levitsky, Christian Hawkey, and Erin Moure. The reading was standing room only. For me the highlight was Hawkey's poem about the color blue which was collaged from mentions of blue in a poet he was translating. The introduction of Moure which was stream-of-consciousness notes while reading which described how Moure expands time. And always, just being in the same room as Levitsky.

After the reading, I bicycled over to SMALL BEAST at the Delancey in the lower east side. Because the Lower East Side is not my neighborhood, and also it has consistently been a home for experimental art, and the bouncers were tattooed white guys, I wasn't thinking too much about gentrification. The spot was pretty empty. I ordered a cranberry and tonic with a lime in a cocktail glass. The bartender told me it was free refills. Score. I will return. The band I heard was Nigel. It was the first performance (and rehearsal) between Flo, on vocals and pedal, and Pete, on drums and computer. It was awesome. By the end, there was some good stuff happening. Micheal Park, our musical curator for the evening, danced throughout the set. At the end of the set, Pete gave me postcards, and Flo filled one out in blue sharpie. I still need to get a label to send it to the MAP Gallery.

I wanted to stay and listen to more of the bands, but it was getting late, and I still had a ride on a PATH and then bicycle ride home, so I left into the unusually warm February evening. If you think that this warm weather has nothing to do with the rise of industrial factories beginning in the 1820s, you are wrong. To not think about the weather in the context of global warming as a result of the industrialization of the earth is irresponsible.

Veterans: Regional Conference for New Jersey

Another beautiful February day has me getting up early to attend a regional conference for veterans with the NJ Division on Civil Rights & the American Legion.

This one feels deep. It was an education on the relationship between state and federal offices and how laws and legal definitions mediate and animate our relationships. And how they work to create and protect our civil rights.

It was a beautiful group of panelists. I learned a lot about the processes of ending discrimination and the diverse organizations that can accept and address claims.

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The N-Word Remixed at Weequahic High School

A gorgeous Friday afternoon in February I hop on my bicycle and head to the N-Word Remixed at Weequahic High School, Newark. The focus of the panel is to discuss and debate with community activists, journalists, history scholars, teachers, and students the reasons why some people in the Hip Hop community and in America argue that the n-word is a term of endearment; despite the historical fact that this word was born out of racism, slavery, and the oppression of African Americans.

Adhering to the clock of cp-time, I left the house round when the debate was starting. I was late but got to catch the Q&A with the audience, which in Newark is often the best part. To me, later-comer-as-I-was, it seemed that those in favor of using Nigga won the debate. It seems to me that the NAACP did indeed succeed in burying the N-word, nigger, in the funeral they held for the word several years back now. From the ashes, a new word has risen, a word with the power of uplift, this is as my brothers and sisters eloquently debated in their high school, that word is nigga, with an "a." As one sister broke it down for us, Nigga, as negra, as black, as beautiful. She calls her friends niggas because we are black, and we are beautiful. As a young brother broke it down for us adults, why are we so worried about the n-word, when there are so many negative words that we are using, why aren't holding debates about bitches, and fuck, and hos?

There did not seem to be disagreement on the importance of understanding the historical lessons of the word nigger. We need to know that history. We need to still be thinking about the legacy of slavery as a lived-experience in our present. As one brother said, it is no longer physical slavery, it is now mental slavery.

What do you think, when you call your brothers and sisters nigga, in what ways is that part of our mental slavery? in what ways is it an act of resistance? in what ways is it an act of love?

The panel for the N-Word Remixed program consisted of Dr. Akil Kalfani, Chairperson of Essex County College’s Africana Institute; Larry Hamm, State Chairman of the Peoples Organization for Progress; Mark Diionno, weekly columnist for the New Jersey Star ledger newspaper; Hakim Green, Hip Hop Artist; and student leaders of Weequahic High School. History teacher Bashir Akinyele moderated the event.

Toi Derricotte Reading February 15, 2012

The final stop of the first AA was Toi's reading at the New School. I was supposed to go with a group of students from the UII, but as one dropped out the rest fell off like dominoes. Except for Tyree. So Tyree and I headed out to take the PATH into the Village. We stopped as he bought a father and daughter two servings of chicken and rice and gave the father the change for bus fare. On the way home, he bought Charlie, one of our country's homeless vets, two gyros and invited him to come to a meeting at ECC on Saturday at 9:30am. The American Legion is going to report on the services available to veterans.

The reading was beautiful. It felt like being home.

Toi said that diversity of form in her book, The Undertaker's Daughter, is a type of resistance. Diversity as resistance. Multiplicity as resistance. The book is about transformation. It is possible.

Monica Hand was selling the books but also had some out the trunk copies of her book. She gave me one. With a Nina Simone collage by Krista Franklin on the cover. Turns out Monica is from Newark, so we are going to try to organize a reading with her at ECC and her alma mater Arts High School. I also want to try to organize a taping of City of Poets with her and maybe also have an interview. It would be good to have Patch or the Star Ledger cover her visit. And to work with the Humanities Division to organize the event. Maybe I will see if some of the area colleges would like to cosponsor the event.

POP February 15, 2012

It felt good to be back and holding a sign encouraging drivers to honk their horns for jobs. How many evenings I have sat in my office listening to horns of the protest but not joining? It felt good to say that I will be back. It is hard right now; I feel self conscious holding the signs trying to get drivers to honk. But then it feels good when they do. When we have some sort of conversation through smiles and gestures and the honks of horns.

I wonder why I haven't been through more often. I wonder how to create a culture of swinging by for even like five minutes or two at least once a week. I think that is what Hamm might have been talking about in his keynote address to ECC for MLK Day this year. They have all these signatures of support from organizations but there is still not a mass movement. As a professor, I can bring this up to my class as something we can talk about. I can also talk about this in the UII Open Houses that are part of the Afternoons of Activism. How to build a commitment of individual participation?

Occupy Newark Wednesday, February 15, 2012

I was not the only one who thought the General Assembly was scheduled for 3pm. Showing up at a park right after eviction hurts. The GA is going to be at 7pm. I am not going to make it as we are going to the poetry reading at the New School.

I met the other folk who had also showed up for 3pm including a gentleman whose name I can't remember, but I am sure I will see about. We spoke for a little while about the progressive movement in Newark. A member of POP, he thought the demonstrations happening at the intersection are not going to work to inspire a movement of activism. I told him I disagreed. I think what POP is doing is powerful and is going to inspire a movement.

Afternoons of Activism

Hey. So, I am starting a new project or maybe I am continuing a current project. This new project is called Afternoons of Activism (AA). It may be an extension of MAP. Where MAP is the global; AA is the local.

AA starts today in Newark. I have chosen to use this blog because this is the blog that I use and really I don't have time right now to create a new blog; I only have time to write a post.

Schedule for today's Afternoon of Activism:

Leave Urban Issues Institute (UII) at the back of 3pm to get to

Occupy Newark General Assembly in Military Park for 3pm ish

4:30pm POP demonstration at Market and Springfield Ave.

Then we switch it up for the first AA and regroup at the UII at 5pm to head to the New School for a Toi Derricotte reading.

I don't feel like doing this today. I just want to stay at home working on the dissertation. It feels emotionally safe here in my basement bedroom. But, I believe in the project, and I believe in following through with commitments. These ideas, among many additional ideas and details, I will elaborate upon in the coming posts.

Wish me luck... and peace.