Arts Today vol 2 5

Vol 2.5 July 7, 2015

UrbARTS

VERBQUAKE

COMING EVENTS pg #116

CHEF INSPIRED

COOKING WITH LENA pg #102

JASON VASSER ESSAY AND POEM

View this and past issues from our website.

THANK YOU JOYE FORREST pg. #4

ACTRESS

BAILEY TIPPEN pg. #78

pg #86

IDENTITY...

MALAIKA HORNE pg.#135

IN THIS

ISSUE:

4

THANK YOU JOYE FORREST

6 OP / ED TBA

44

18 MONEY, SEX AND POWER DR. TRACEY MCCARTHY

MIS-EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO BERNIE HAYES

Dr. Tracy

The Art of Sel pg. # 6

140

108 ART OF INK BLACK PEARL

REVISITS REALISM JABARI ASIM

pg.

2

LIVE / WORK / PLAY NATE JOHNSON

8

12

THREE THINGS...

ARTIS KEITH

48

102

SOLOMON THURMAN 10TH STREET ART GALLERY

CHEF INSPIRED LENA O.A. JACKSON

“. . . for u, the sky’s the “unlimit”...”

Baba Sherman Fowler,

Griot and Poet

Established 2014 Volume 2.5 St. Louis, MO www.the-arts-today.com/ Layout/Design www.bdesignme.com

NOTE:

As the publishers of The Arts Today Ezine we take care in the production of each issue. We are however, not liable for any editorial error, omission, mistake or typographical error. The views expressed are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of their respective companies or the publisher.

Copyright © 2015 - All rights reserved.

COPYRIGHT:

This Ezine and the content published within are subject to copyright held by the publisher, with individual articles remaining property of the named contributor. Express written permission of the publisher and contributors must be acquired for reproduction.

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

In The News

Thank You Missourians

Dear Missourian, I can not thank you enough for your generous donation. With your support I was able to place in the top 15 at Nationals in Washington DC. If you ever need me to help with a charitable cause of your own, please let me return the favor. Again, thanks for all you have done.

My Sincere Appreciation.

Joye Forrest Miss Teen Missouri United States 2015 “Be courageous and stand up for what you believe.�

pg.

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offer events or programs with an emphasis on the arts and creativity.

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6

Dr. Tracy

The

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Matthew 25:34-40 NIV

We seek to impact the world with the love of Christ one life at a time!

Hopelessness and desperation are on the rise in a world where the greatest segment of the population possesses the least amount of resources.

We need your help! Please help us fight this epidemic by sending your tax deductible donations/contributions to: For His Glory Ministries of St. Louis P.O. Box 1942 Maryland Heights, MO. 63043 http://calvarychapelslc.com/homeless-ministry/ For other ways in which you can help please contact Pamela Ford at pamelaford98@gmail.com or 314-216-0744.

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

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3 things that Entrepreneurs should FOCUS on!

1.

2.

3.

Problem or Challenge that you want to address!

What is your Solution for the Problem or Challenge?...and why will your solution work Why are you the Right Person to solve this problem?

You’re hell bent on being an entrepreneur. You’re ready to quit your job, and give the risky world of business start-ups a try. You spend every waking hour thinking about the type of business that you want to create to make you rich and help you change the world. There is no doubt in your mind that you will be the next local billionaire with business ideas that are as massive as Facebook, Instagram, and PayPal. In your mind, you’re thinking ‘Bill Gates who?’ … slow down cowboy! You’re not there yet. You will probably be successful, but you have to crawl before you walk…and you need to plan before you launch. With all of that said, I would like to offer 3 things to reflect on before you begin to spend your savings on your first business opportunity.

1.

Consider the problem or challenge that you are attempting to solve, address, or enhance and attempt to identify a solution for it. People encounter problems daily, and become accustomed to dealing with them. Just about every product or service we use today was derived from a solution someone created to solve a problem. Alexander Graham Bell solved a problem that he personally had. He wanted to talk to people that were not even there, so he created a method to talk with people that were actually in other places – that is thinking out of the box. The great inventor, Garrett Morgan, observed confusion and accidents at intersections and decided he would solve this problem with traffic lights.

My point is simple! Identify a problem or a challenge that you or others encounter, and determine if you can mitigate or solve it with your idea, service, or product.

2.

Solving a problem is usually the beginning of your entrepreneurial path. A more important concern is to determine if the solution that you have created addresses a problem or challenge that many people consider a problem. Will your solution address someone’s pain or vanity and trigger their willingness-to-pay (WTP) for and actually use the solution you have created. Make sure the solution you create addresses a clear problem. Often, exploration of problems or challenges are best addressed through data collection and analysis to confirm that there is a shared interest in the solution for the identified problem or challenge. Make sure that you are solving an actual problem or addressing an actual challenge, and determine why your solution is best for this particular problem.

3.

Finally, why you are the best person to develop the solution for the problem. What is it about your knowledge, experience, and/or training that makes you the best person to create a solution for this problem. Remember that your experiences are uniquely yours, so if you focus on the skills that you have acquired throughout your young or not-so-young life and intensely concentrate on the problem, a solution should evolve.

Keep in mind that it is likely that many people have encountered the common problem or challenge that you are developing a solution for and will gladly welcome your idea, so continually focus on your why to help keep you on track to becoming an entrepreneur. When you develop solutions for the problem or challenge that you have encountered, then it is likely that many people have encountered the common problem or challenge and would welcome your solution. So focusing on all of the skills that you have acquired in your young or not-so-young life and focusing intensely on the problem, a solution should evolve.

Those three points should get your juices flowing. Identify the problem, create a solution, and determine why your experience is best suited to execute the solution for the problem identified. Once you have addressed those points, then you can begin to explore who your customers are and how you can make money with your business idea.

By ArtisKeith

MANAGED IT SUPPORT | DIGITAL MARKETING CONSULTING | QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS We help your business REDUCE COSTS and INCREASE SALES with Technology Solutions.

TURNGROUP.COM A. Keith Turner, President .networks .systems .consulting TurnGroup Technologies, LLC. .design .development .phone apps 2811 Locust St. St. Louis, MO 63103 DOMAINS.TURNGROUPtechnologies.COM 314.289.8734 :: Office Visit the link to register…

314.450.7059 :: Fax .domain names .shared hosting .dedicated hosting Keith@Turngroup.com .email hosting .website parking .website information Copyright © 2015 - All rights reserved.

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

Redefine the Life in Your Lifestyle I know that it’s been a while since I’ve e-mailed you, I truly hope that all is well!

I also hope that you’ve been able to stay up to date with all the happenings via Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Between my recent trip to Mexico and the latest additions at the Meditation Lounge, there’s been way more to share than there is time, but I do the best I can!

Healing Spa is Back!

So I want to tell you quickly that right after Journey Meditation this Sunday, the Healing Spa starts at 5:15pm! I haven’t offered this experience since October so I know that many of you are super excited about this.

If you haven’t yet been, it’s a beautiful experience...

You will be in a group setting with soothing, healing music to help you relax while you focus your intentions on the clarity or healing you seek. I’ll spend 15-20 minutes per person laying hands and sharing the spiritual insight that I receive for you.

Please Register in Advance Our standard classes no longer require advance registration, however due to the nature of this experience, I’ll need to limit how many people attend so advance registration is required in order to attend.

You can sign up online HERE or call 314-441-6929 to get signed up over the phone.

www.selenaj.com

Classes Offered 5 Days a Week In case you’re out of the loop, we now have meditation and yoga classes at the Meditation Lounge 5 days a week and our rates are still in the introductory phase! A single class is $10, but you can save by signing up for a Monthly Membership (starting at $35 p/m), or Pay-As-You-Grow Class Passes (starting at $40) - either way you save! Check out all of your options and view the class schedule and all of the services that we’re offering at www. selenaj.com!

I’m looking forward to seeing you in classes this Sunday!

Peace, Love & Light, SJ

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

LIVE WORK PLAY

Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

Nate K. Johnson ABR,CRS,GRI Broker/Owner Real Estate Solutions nate@livingstl.com www.livingstl.com

I hope that you are doing well. What a great month we have ahead of us! There is so much going on in St. Louis, that I am only saddened by the fact that I can only be in one place at a time. If you are looking for something to do, I have a few suggestions for you. Hopefully, you will join me at some of these great events in our great city!

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Local Events

JULY

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JULY

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If you missed the pet parade at the Webster Groves Community Days you might want to head over there tonight to check out some of the carnival rides and BBQ. Also on Friday evening, join me at the Grand Center Theatre Crawl, for a “tasting menu” of the best theatre in St. Louis! We will stroll to several Grand Center venues for 9 short performances by some of the best St. Louis theatre companies, for free! You could also check out the Contemporary Art Museum for their First Friday event, where you can have a drink while enjoying music from the live DJ while taking a tour of the current exhibition. Afterwards, join me in checking out the Fair St. Louis fireworks display in Forest Park .

Of course Saturday is Independence Day and in addition to Fair St. Louis and the floats, giant balloons, and the battle of the marching bands at the VP Parade in Forest Park, you might want to check out Ferguson Family Fun Fest , the Kirkwood Freedom Festival ,or the JB Blast at Jefferson Barracks. The St. Charles RiverFest will also have a carnival- complete with games, rides, craft vendors, and more at Frontier Park in the heart of Historic St. Charles. For live music on Saturday, The O’Fallon Heritage and Freedom Festival will feature Tonic, SmashMouth and Toad the Wet Sprocket while Tony! Toni! Tone’!, Kool & The Gang, and Morris Day & The Time will bless the stage at Fair St. Louis. No matter what you decide to do this weekend, make sure you celebrate The Fourth of July with family, friends, and fireworks!

On Sunday morning, you can head over to the Cafe Flora Brunch at the Missouri Botanical Gardens ,in the Spink Pavilion overlooking the Garden’s central reflecting pools. Later that afternoon, you can join me at The Day Party STL in Midtown, and 4Play The Day Experience in the CWE. Two great opportunities to kick it in the middle of the day, like it’s the middle of the night. Afterwards, you might find me at down at Ballpark Village watching the Women’s World Cup Final as USA takes on Japan! Also on Sunday night, the outdoor Brookings Quadrangle space at Washington University will host the Gateway Festival Orchestra St. Louis and their “Red, White, and Blues” concert featuring Charlie Brennan and clarinet soloist Emerson Shultz.

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

LIVE WORK PLAY

JULY

6

On Monday, complete your application, or invite someone else to Blog Out Loud, which is a TED talk / poetry slam style forum presented by the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network of St. Louis for the nonprofit groundbreakers of tomorrow to have their voices heard.

This coming Wednesday, the 8th, the Streets of St. Charles will be booming with excitement as Streetsfest will be in full effect! Bring your lawn chairs and enjoy the live music, dancing, and fun! Also on Wednesday, you can join me at The Missouri Botanical Garden for the Whitaker Music Festival! This week, one of my favorites, the Erin Bode Group will be blessing the stage. Food and drinks are available to purchase, or bring your picnic and enjoy this FREE concert with me!

1

On Thursday, the Contemporary Art Museum will be host to the Internet Cat Video Festival. While you are in Grand Center, you might want to learn how to do some African Dance & Drumming with Chief Bokulaka from Congo at the Kranzberg Arts Center. Later on Thursday, you can check out the R & B vocal styling of Jill Scott who will be on stage with Common at the Peabody Opera house . If you are in the mood for some comedy, Wyatt Cenac, who you may remember from The Daily Show, or the underrated movie Medicine for Melancholy, will be performing at the Firebird.

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On Friday, the Let Them Eat Art Fair, a whimsy Bastille Day will be in Downtown Maplewood and will feature live music, live art demonstrations, and a parade featuring some of the “STL 250 cakes” that you can find all around the city! Also on Friday St. Louis’ own The Urge will be performing at BallPark Village, featuring their hits “Jump Right In” and “Closer”! Another event you can enjoy on Friday is the STL Summer Fest block party at the MX District on Washington Ave. There will be St. Louis vendors, street performers, live music, and cocktails! Afterwards, you can head over to The St. Louis Art Museum for their Outdoor FIlm Series on Art Hill. Come down as early as you want to claim your spot, bring a picnic and there will also be food trucks, music, and the movie, Back to the Future will start at 9PM. On Saturday morning, join Trailnet, in partnership with Jazz St. Louis for a Jazz History Bicycle Tour! If you would rather walk, perhaps you’ll enjoy the Downtown Architectural Walking Tour which will start at the Old Courthouse in Downtown St. Louis. Afterwards, grab the kids, your swimsuit, an inner tube and head downtown to Slide the City where there will there will be 1000ft ... yes I said a 1000ft SLIP & SLIDE in Downtown St. Louis! Saturday night, check out the Union Avenue Opera for their rendition of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, or check out the last regular season home game for The St. Louis Surge, our National Championship winning Women’s Pro Basketball Team. Afterwards, check out Erykah Badu as she DJ’s and sings as Loretta Brown at the opening of Lux in Midtown.

On Sunday afternoon, the Stone Hill Winery will provide Cajun food, drinks, dancing, and music that will make you feel like you’re right on the Louisiana bayou at their Cajun Concert on the Hill. You might also want to check out the World’s Largest Catsup Bottle Festival and Car Show in Collinsville, IL. The Sweet Celebrations Ice Cream Social charity event will also be taking place in Maryland Heights. On Sunday night, you can join me and the rest of the Funkateers at the the District Rhythm Series featuring George Clinton at Fox Sports Midwest Live ! pg.

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Starting on Monday and continuing through Friday, you will be able to enjoy the Clayton Restaurant Week! if you’ve didn’t go last year this event features a summer menu and patio dining. There will be 16 different restaurants offering a three course dinner promotion for only $25 per person! The First Annual Bastille Week Celebration kicks off this week on Tuesday and continues through Sunday at the Vin De Set Rooftop Bar and Bistro ! They will host different events showcasing French cuisine in celebration of France’s Independence Day. On Wednesday July 15,The Missouri Botanical Gardenwill host theWhitaker Music Festival, where Loot Rock Gang will be performing their rendition of blues, country, jazz, and rock n’ roll. TheSt. Louis Public Library is the place to be on Thursday as they will be hosting theNOT SO QUIET! Concert Serieswhere they will be giving tribute toGreen Day! On Friday July 17, join me in experiencing multiple artists perform their versions of jazz and blues during the Music at The Intersection Festival at Grand Center. It is a free concert that offers beer tents, street art, food, and drinks! Definitely something you won’t want to miss! Also on Friday, Jungle Boogie will continue at the St. Louis Zoo. Griffin and the Gargoyles will be performing the Top 40 hits, so be sure to bring the kids for this outdoor party! Also Son Lux with Landlady will be performing at The Luminary

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Saturday July 18, Jawbone will be performing at BallPark Village. Get ready for a female dominated band performing everything from Janis Joplin to Vanilla Ice to Bruno Mars. Also on Saturday afternoon you can meet over at The Handlebar Lounge in The Grove for the World Naked Bike Ride.

On Sunday afternoon, you can join me and the babies as we head over to SweetArt in the Shaw Neighborhood for the OnSite Theatre Company’s performance of The Runaway Cupcake: A Play About Eating or Families Who Eat.

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

LIVE WORK PLAY

JULY

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On Tuesday, The Muny opens their new play Into The Woods, a musical that combines the plots of familiar fairy tales like Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, and Cinderella. Alternatively, the St. Louis Zoo and Macy’s are hosting Jammin’ at the Zoo, a summer lakeside party for all ages.

On Wednesday, the Maplewood Summer Concert Series will host The Jeremiah Johnson Band at the Ryan Hummert Park from 6-8pm. Also on Wednesday, World Chess Hall of Fame will have Tommy Halloran, Randy Newman, and Guerrila Swing all perform and pay homage to jazz with their vintage musical stylings.

Thursday, the University of Missouri- St. Louis and the Junior Chamber International will hold The Search For Human Dignity in The 21st Century, an event to provide insight on achieving social equality in St. Louis. There will be over 16 key-note speakers and an expert panel to discuss different topics and hopefully come to a solution to make our city better! It will be an educational experience where you can contribute in making a difference! Also on Thursday The Salvation Army will be hosting their 4th Annual Garbage Bag Gala, where St. Louis designers have the opportunity to showcase their skills by creating fashion using recycled goods like trashbags and duct tape.

On Friday, you might want to join Dance St. Louis as they welcome the Move: Live Tour at The Fox Theatre. Also, Cbabi Bayoc opens his “CBABI: Do You” exhibit at the SoHa Studio and Gallery. If you are looking for some more art, The Atrium Gallery is also having an opening for their summer show Works on Paper.

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On Saturday, you might want to take the kids off to Grant’s Farm for a fun and educational time. Of course, The St. Louis Zoo has opened the StingRay Exhibit at Caribbean Cove, where the kids can learn and pet the stingrays as they swim in the water, make sure to catch the new Sea Lion show too! As part of their Occupational Therapy exhibit, The Contemporary Art Museum is presenting Sanatorium where there will be an experimental couples role playing exercise to determine compatibility.

On Sunday, you can check out the 3rd Annual Labute New Theater Festival over at The Gaslight Theater. Later on Sunday, you can head over to Foam for their Sunday Spoken Word Series.

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On Tuesday The Carondelet Concert Series will be held at Fanetti Park and Sarah Jane and the Blue Notes will grace the stage with their “ Swingin’ Hot Jazz”. On Wednesday, the talented actors of . The Muny will open their performance of Beauty and The Beast. A musical version of the Disney classic, where a handsome Prince is cursed and turned into a hideous beast. On Thursday, you can check out Love Jones “The Band” down at BB’s Jazz Blues & Soups.

On Friday, the hills will be alive at the St. Louis Art Museum Outdoor Film Series as they will be playing the Sound of Musicin Forest Park on Art Hill. You can head over to the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum for their 4th annual Contemporary Night Out . Also on Friday, STL Live on Washington will feature live music on Washington Ave. in Downtown St. Louis!

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Yes, another beautiful month of things to do in St. Louis. It only gets better in August as The Festival of Nations and the St. Louis World’s Fare will be in full swing. Until then, please don’t hesitate to let me know if there is anything that I can do for you.

All the best. ~Nate

JULY

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

Money, Sex, and Power: Recovering from Pathological Paradigms of Predation and Prerogative

Money, Sex, and Power: Recovering from Pathological Paradigms of Predation and Prerogative Dr. Tracey McCarthy, Psy.D., DCFC, J.D., M.A. Psychologist/Attorney/Educator Legal Studies Department – Webster University www.drtraceymccarthy.com

“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” ― William O. Douglas Money, sex, and power pervade the psyches of those who rule the world and the minds of those who seek to reign. The current state of our earth, and our human relations, testify to this fact. We have been conditioned, as humans, to almost worship acts of exploitation, domination, and conspicuous consumption. So elevated in the mind of humanity are the ideas of money, sex, and power that the procurement (or simple denial), of money, sex, or power has caused many humans to lose all sanity and possibility for functional rationality.

Males, in particular, are deceptively conditioned to believe that the unbridled acquisition of money, sex, and power speak to their masculinity, their success as men, and their inherent human value. The fantasies associated with attainment of money, sex, and power are so compelling that many will believe and do almost whatever and whenever in their pursuit of such. However, no matter how circuitous the road, and how idyllic the scenery, the unreflective and unrestrained quest for money, sex, or power – and attendant supremacy and privilege - ultimately leads one down a road that necessarily ends in despair (regardless of how well concealed) for the hegemonic hunters and huntresses and those encountered along their life paths. The current allegations against Dylann Storm Roof and Dr. William (Bill) Cosby speak to this cautionary contention and eventual reality.

-The Challenges of CharlestonThe tragedy in Charleston, South Carolina has caused many to consider more deeply what was at the root of the terroristic massacre of a group of clergy and church members gathered for communal prayer inside of a house of worship, in a supposedly predominant Christian nation. What made a man assassinate a state senator, serving the people of South Carolina? What made a man, who burned the United States Flag, while flying the confederate flag, stalk church members and pretend to seek God in corporate prayer? What made a man enter a church and demand that a group of praying people turn their awe of God, and attention to God, away from God and, instead, direct such to a man wielding a 45 caliber handgun? What made a man believe that it was his moral imperative to spill blood in a house of God so that he could purportedly protect white women from supposed rape and shield the United States from supposed “take over” by non-white individuals? The answers rest in Roof’s beliefs about money, sex, and power and his entitlements to such based exclusively upon his external makeup.

According to writings alleged to have been composed by alleged United States terrorist Dylann Storm Roof, he massacred the church members and assassinated the senator simply because of the melanin content in his skin and the melanin content in the skin of the church members and senator.

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Simply put, the act of domestic terrorism, resulting in the massacre of nine human beings, grew out of Roof’s belief in a need to avenge what he saw as challenges to his supremacy prerogatives, based solely upon the color of his skin and his possession of a phallus.

“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?” ― George Orwell By burning a United States flag and committing mass murder inside of a church, Roof communicated the oft missed message of the “theology” of white supremacy which is that such is above the law and above God. Hence, Roof’s act of terrorism was, likely, a hate crime motivated by both racial/ethnic and religious hatred. He could have targeted any social group for his terroristic activities, but he strategically selected a very old, historically laden, Christian church, with non-white worshipers in attendance.

Many have a difficult time envisioning the acts as terroristic, as a hate crime, or as a hate crime rooted in both racist and anti-Christian motivations. This is due to the public façade that white supremacy is intricately rooted in right wing “Christianity.” Hate crime doubters offer the idea of the “Christian” Identity movement as proof that white supremacy is Christ-focused. It is not. Aside from rhetoric and coopting names like “Christian Identity,” there is nothing Christian in the philosophies of white supremacy or the practice of such. White supremacist groups, in fact, have an affinity for most things anti-Christian and most things anti-U.S. government - in word, writing, and deed. Dylann Roof’s actions and manifesto speak directly to this psycho-spiritual truth.

“In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People." ― Eugene V. Debs In the aftermath of Charleston, there has been much talk about white supremacy and the singular cancer that it represents in society. White supremacy, however, is but one symptom of a deeper, power-driven, psychological, spiritual, and social ill that saturates humanity.

While many publicly decry the tragedy of Charleston and demand an end to all things violent and all things permeated by white supremacist philosophy and representation (e.g. the confederate flag), many people are not really serious about their assertions or their demands. They are simply speaking and demanding without thinking or reflecting on the power-focused truth of the entire human matter.

White supremacy is but one of the many pathological and predatory claims of human supremacy, and such claims are not limited to persons of European descent. Contrary to popular belief, pathological paradigms of socially supremacy exist in every social grouping of which I am aware the world over. Across the globe, inhabitants are obsessed with the idea and maintenance of power structures and hierarchical social arrangements. Even those who decry discrimination and oppression the most often do so with the latent or manifest wish of simply turning the tables and becoming the

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

MONEY SEX POWER cont.

oppressor that the individual or group abhors and castigates. This is the case whether the issue is race, sex, age, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or any other demographic.

-The Iniquity of Inequity“Since mankind's dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We've seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.” ― Alan Moore Charleston has caused many to deeply question where we are as humanity and where we are going as a human collective. Will there ever be a time when some demographic group is not claiming supremacy over other human demographic groups? Will there ever be a time when systems and intimate social relations mired in inequity and iniquity will vanish completely from the earth as we currently know it? Will there ever be a moment when all human beings will see themselves as intricately intertwined, biologically related, and interdependent? Will there ever be a time when human groups will see the needs and the best interests of the whole of the human collective as more important that the fleeting egos, desires, and demands of individuals and relatively small group collectives? Will there ever be a time when there is no longer an oppressor and an oppressed on the face of the earth as we now know it? Will there ever be a time within the earth, as we know it, when hegemony and concomitant subjugation, bigotry, racism, sexism, and all other isms will be completely eradicated?

As hard as it may be for many to fathom and accept, this world that we have co-created appears past any point of redemption and there is absolutely nothing about the individualistic, predatory, and self-focused human soul or psyche that suggests any of the above questions will be answered in the affirmative in any foreseeable future.

Why, if so many are fighting for a more just world, does a completely just world appear as impossible? The answers lie in the past and current propensities of many of humanity.

We have co-created a global web of high power distance cultures, which are predatory and hierarchical in nature, rendering true social justice and pervasive humanitarianism largely out of reach.

While there have apparently been isolated world communities that have thrived in a spirit of harmonious and earth-compatible collectivism, such as the Andaman people, there are apparently more human beings on the face of the earth who thrive in a spirit of self–focused exploitation of both the earth and its inhabitants. Any talk of social justice cannot ignore this reality. “...it is not really the difference the oppressor fears so much as the similarity.”

“He fears he will have to change his life once he has seen himself in the bodies of the people he has called different.” ― Cherrie Morago The human inclination is decidedly in the direction of a deep predilection towards godcomplexes, greed, self-centeredness, external self-esteem appraisals, narcissism, and insufficient empathy. Many humans have a tendency to be driven by desires for power and control over more than self. Many humans tend to seek out, and deeply long for, special treatment and social reverence, whether individually or as part of social groupings. Many human beings have a penchant for competition 3

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and being seen as winners in the various games of life. Many human beings are partial to, and demanding of, social hierarchies where social groups exist like rungs on a ladder to be climbed. People on the various hierarchical rungs serve as stepping stones for the elevation of social climbers.

While most are, likely, fully aware that such are the human partialities of many, humans are also fully inclined to pretend that another reality is at work in our functioning and engagements, locally, nationally, internationally, and beyond the earth.

Many human beings, while talking a good game of collaboration and collectivism, are generally about competition, subjugation of others, and “winning” at all costs. If this means the dehumanization of our earthly brothers and sisters in the process, so be it. If it means pretending that others are not as worthy to fully live the life that God has breathed into them to be lived, then, so be it. If it means deceiving and presenting a false front to connive or mislead for flagrantly selfish ends, then so it is.

Everywhere one turns, there are hierarchies. Almost everywhere one turns, there are systems rooted in oppression and suppression of others. Almost everywhere one turns, there are individuals and groups in a constant battle to outwit, outnumber, outbid, outrank, outgrow, outpour, outplot, outsell, outgun, outcry, outbargain, outbrag, outspend, outclass, outdress, outproduce, outbreed, outscheme, outrun, outcharm, outmaster, outtalk, outscore, outspeak, outplace, outperform, outdistance, outsparkle, outwrestle, outthink, outclimb, outlast, outmatch, outreason, outfox, outrigger, outwork, outweigh, outbluff, outvote, outskill, outwar, and, otherwise, outdo - or be perceived as such.

When we are not trying to outdo, we are overdoing. We live lives marked by demands to overachieve, overburden, overconsume, overcrowd, overimpress, overreach, overspend, overwhelm, overexploit, overrun, overlord, overkill, overprice, overproduce, overcharge, overinflate, overassert, override, overburden, overcome, overtake, overflow, and overgrow. We are ever pushed and ever pushing towards lives, cultures, and countries of gluttony.

It is rarely enough to simply be one’s personal best, individuals and collectives are in a constant race to be “the” best and be revered as “the” best while on this earth. In being “the” best, the goal is apparently to also see those considered as “other” fall to their place as “the” worst for purposes of glorying contrast.

Even when selecting the words to describe external physical distinctions among human beings, the word “race” was elected to exemplify certain distinctions.

When one critically and reflectively looks around and considers the totality of human functioning in so-called “developed” countries, it almost seems that every workplace (profit and not-forprofit), every academic institution, every student, every community, every professional, every industry, every family, every husband, every wife, every sibling, every state, every race, every sex, every sexual orientation, every religious tradition, every political party, every individual, every competitive goal directed social faction, and every country is in a constant war to “best” the next or create the facile illusion of such.

For these reasons, one is challenged to truly consider the genuineness of deep social and political discussions, committees, classes, trainings, and seminars focused on how to eradicate white supremacy, male supremacy, and any other pathological social structures based upon the suffering and

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subjugation of others. One has to ask exactly how effective are diversity and inclusion processes at eradicating the causes, versus the symptoms, of social injustice and human dignity and rights violations.

-Pervasive Patterns of Pathology“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken.

Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” ― Carl Sagan While there is much recent suggestion that the United States suffers most significantly from gun violence and social injustice, the United States is not some westernized socio-political anomaly when it comes to the pathology of social supremacy and weapons violence. Suggesting that paradigms of pathological social supremacy are peculiar to the United States is an attempt to recreate the reality of such dynamics across cultures and across time. One need only look around the world in which we coexist and co-create to glean the global truth.

Thailand, for instance, is known for its rampant commodification of small child bodies for sexual consumption by sexually reprobate males, near and far. Additionally, the present day trafficking of Eastern European, Asian, and African females for sex slavery in Germany and England continues unchecked and is positively sanctioned. The pathology of social supremacy informs the patterns of relating between the Dominican Republic and Haiti and allowed for the ethnic cleansing “Parsley Massacre” of 20,000 Haitians by the Dominican Republic in 1937. There, of course, would have been no Haitians to massacre had their African ancestors not been offered up for the Transatlantic slave trade to gluttonous European nations by greedy African nations/tribes engaging in the pathological social supremacy dynamic of human trafficking for economic profit.

Social supremacy, and the power that comes with it, informs the creation and maintenance of the various social castes in India and the infamous bridal burnings. Social supremacy has historically allowed for legalized rape of married women by their husbands and the legalized beating and killing of children by their parents. Social supremacy paradigms inform the long standing history of kingdoms and serfdoms of Africa, Asia, and Europe, the pathological social ordering and dominance paradigms between various Caribbean Islanders, and the dominion of present day Israel over Palestine.

Even among countrymen and women of Jamaica, which is predominantly filled with brown individuals, the pathology of social supremacy is so profound that disdain for all persons and all things continental African and/or dark are frequently looked down upon and suppressed by the country’s plethora of brown citizens. This includes deep disdain for one’s own brown skin, which is frequently bleached. In present day Israel, social supremacy also dictates the disdain shown towards darker Hebrews from Africa and the Sephardim in general. In both instances, skin color translates to power and that power is, ultimately, tied to one’s abilities to obtain the corollaries of money and sex.

In every culture of which I am firsthand aware, humans even create pathological social supremacy within the sanctuary of the home, where countless individuals are subjected to tyrannical domination, physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, spiritual abuse, and death in the name of some pathological paradigm of social power.

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Every war that has ever been fought, civil or otherwise, has been about the imposition of supremacy and social power. Every border skirmish ever waged has been about the assertion of supremacy and power. Every religious crusade, jihad, and the like, has been about declarations of supremacy and power. Every land grab and ethnic conflict - from the Belgians in the Congo, to the Israelis in Palestine, to the Trail of Tears running through the United States - has been about claims of supremacy and the imposition of power. Every ethnic cleansing, and mass rape of ethnically diverse females, has been about claims of supremacy and the infliction of dominance.

Every death of a child from a parental beating is a contention of supremacy and power. Every enslavement of a people - and every structure and process put in place to marginalize and devalue - is an avowal of supremacy and power. Every quiet acquiescence, every willing execution, and every acceptance or inheritance of stolen goods and stolen labor from oppressed and abused people (including the American Indians and African slaves) has been a support of pathological supremacy and its sway.

We say we want to heal from the disease of pathological social supremacy and the social injustices that pervade us, but do we really? Are we honestly seeking to heal from our relationships with exploitation, domination, and conspicuous consumption? If so, what internal psychological and spiritual work have we really done to effectuate this healing within and without?

How do we overcome a sickness that we deeply embrace and one that is perpetually advanced from high places?

-Extremes of ExceptionalismGenerally, most want to be special, as being so equates to social power. Being special also often means that one has to watch out for others who are also trying to be special, in their own quest for power. This results in those with power structuring processes and systems to preclude the specialness, equity, or supremacy of others.

Think about it. We have entire award shows to showcase supremacy, to make sure that everyone knows who the best is. It’s not enough to simply be the best; we must endeavor to make certain that everyone knows that we are the best and, by extrapolation, let others know that they are, well, somewhat less than the best. We have deans’ lists, honor rolls, and employees of the month, year, decade, minute, and universe. Every little thing we do must be celebrated, if such indicates an iota of supremacy or uniqueness related to money, sex, or power.

We are obsessed with the notion of creating haves and have nots and being counted among the “haves.” We even go so far as to pretend to be a “have” when we are far from such a reality. Such pretention is seen in our clothing, our cars, our homes, our cosmetic surgeries, our vacation destinations, our skin and hair bleaching, our extended hair, our toupees, our girdles, our overblown job titles, our neighborhood selections, and our career choices. We have been led to believe that one person “having” necessarily means that another must “have not” and we are conditioned to conceive of ways to come out on top in the competition for perceived scarce resources.

There is, therefore, a constant public race to the top in all spheres of human functioning.

Everywhere we turn, there is a ranking of the best of something. The 10 best cars, the 10 best states for retirement, the 10 best foods, the 100 most beautiful people, the 100 best novels, the 100 greatest 6

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movies, the 100 best companies to work for, the top 50 colleges and universities, the 10 best careers and college majors, the 100 best barbecue restaurants in the United States, the 100 best Instagram accounts, and the best potato chips and pizza across the globe.

If something can be compared and ranked, humans are into it. The largest world army, the largest gross national product, the largest national debt, the largest oil wells, the highest income per capita, the highest murder rates, the top lawyers, the top doctors, the top hospitals, the top accountants, the top monetary contributors, and the top ad agencies. We glory in just about anything that creates a rank ordering.

We want to be the best, be among the best, consume the best, look the best, and feel the best.

We want the scarce commodity of anything, because it signals having the best and the power that comes with such possession.

Humans relish in special treatment and the receipt of benefits that are not equally distributed.

Many believe that possession of distinct objects and access to unique opportunities make a human being in receipt of such of higher human value. When human beings – usually females - are objectified, they are often considered objects with potential for possessory distinction, which signify a possessing male’s human value and masculinity. Males who are in possession of significant wealth and power may also stereotypically be seen as objects of acquisition, which serve to boost a romantic partner’s social standing and consumptive power.

We also take pleasure in the possession of grace and the social power that comes with the realization of such. Favor means receiving unmerited mercy, benevolence, courtesy, service, support, leniency, reprieve, dignity, indulgence, sympathy, promotion, aid, increase, partiality, approval, kindness, esteem, and preference. While people relish in unmerited favor, those who are considered socially supreme along any dimension are fond of claiming that favor is not favor at all, but an earned and deserved right for which they have worked diligently to receive. Living an illusion, they tend to forget that the “diligent work” tended to involve the individual and systemic degradation of those not in receipt of the special dispensation and the power that goes along with such.

When one is in a space of constructed supremacy, everything about the individual that can be elevated by illusion is done so accordingly. When one is occupying a space of social supremacy, one tends to insist that one’s way of being and living is the absolute best there is. Their customs are the best.

Their schools are the best. Their native tongue is the best. Their body shape is the best. Their skin color is the best. Their genitalia is the best. Their hair pattern is the best. Their children are the best. Their men are the best. Their women are the best. Their food choices are the best. Their neighborhoods are the best. Their desires are the best. Their family structures and practices are the best. Whatever they do, and whoever they are, are narcissistically the absolute best, according to them. Everyone else, by extension, is considered the worse.

Humans tend to believe that someone else being “less than” makes another, somehow, “more than” and we concoct very creative ways to create dynamics that signal “more than” and “less than,” although such may defy reality and reason.

Even young women of African descent within the diaspora (Caribbean, United States, Canada, Africa, and Europe), who have frequent cross ethnic interactions with each other, have been known to 7

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have heated debates regarding who is the “best” and who is jealous of whom in terms of physical appearance, intellect, and the ability to get and keep a man. Across the world’s cultures, the ability to “get and keep a man” is generally tied to notions of female sexual power and, stereotypically, to the acquisition of economic resources by females from males. Even though this female demographic has only one foot out of slavery and the other foot still mired in colonialism, their energy is focused on competing with each other for lower level supremacy and what they perceive as limited access to money, sex, and power.

This battle for female supremacy dynamic is fostered by pathological white and male supremacy paradigms wherein non-males and those constructed as non-white are led to believe they must wrangle with each other to achieve relevance and external validation of their humanity and acceptability.

In this case, the phenomena is also undergirded by discrete groups of brown males of African descent making highly public assertions, particularly via social media, regarding a maniacal brown male disdain for, and disgust with, brown females (who represent the males’ own brown mothers). These assertions are supplemented by professions of general misogyny, homoeroticism, and a bourgeoning romantic predilection for anyone other than brown females of perceived or obvious African descent.

These discrete relational dynamics have fostered a sense of increased competition among many brown females who believe they are in a market for access to a scarcity of money, sex, and power more readily accessible to white females in relation to white males. Such has also fed into many brown male illusions regarding the possibility of overcoming racial and male disempowerment through sexual triumph and through being a supreme “object” of female aspiration. This is the case, even when such males may be the brown equivalents of a white Dylann Roof.

-Saturated in SupremacyBecause of the power that comes with supremacy, many people will grab at any straw that points towards such. One power that grows out of social supremacy is the ability to structure facts and situations to support whatever supremacy fiction is created and to diminish any messages that challenge the vision of supremacy. Supremacy means that one gets to be listened to, normalized, glorified, and legitimized in the eyes of those who share in the supremacy, those who seek to usurp the supremacy, and those forced into social inferiority in support of the pathological supremacy. Supremacy means that one has a greater ability to influence, to acquire, to generate, and to control economic resources. It also translates into having greater access to sex and control over the sexuality and intimate social relations of others. Supremacy means that one has the ability to determine propriety, political agendas, social acceptability, and power structures and to demand that others act in accordance with these self-serving socially constructed determinations and creations of “truth.”

The dynamic of creating supremacy and “besting” never ends.

Not being supreme signals to many that death is imminent. Some humans will commit suicide, if they cannot come out on top. Regardless of ethnicity or socioeconomic status, simply failing to recognize a pathological male or parent’s claim to supremacy in a household has resulted in many deaths for countless children and women. A company that is not on top, will be called a dying and floundering company.

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Community Women Against Hardship Summer Jazz Concert

Charitable Benefit Concert Featuring

Marquis Hill Winner of the 2014 Thelonious Monk International Trumpet Competition

Jazz At The Bistro Sunday, July 19, 2015 6:00pm Doors open at 5:00pm Tickets $45

Jerome “Scrooge” Harris Drums Drums

“Tribute To Freddie Hubbard” 1938 - 2008

Matt Villinger Piano

Jeffrey Anderson Bass

Frederick Dwayne Hubbard, born April 7th, 1938, in Indianapolis, Indiana, was widely regarded as the most gifted jazz trumpeter of the post-bebop '60s and '70s. An exceptional talented virtuoso performer, Hubbard's rich full tone was never lost, even when he played dazzlingly fast passages. One of the greatest hard bop trumpeters of our time, he was perhaps one of the greatest technical trumpet players ever to play in the jazz idiom and arguably the most influential.

Chad Evans Saxophone

All tickets available via the Jazz St. Louis Box Office 3536 Washington, St. Louis, MO 63103 – (314) 571-6001 Mon. – Fri., 10am – 5pm and Saturdays, 2pm – 10pm Or online by visiting: www.jazzstl.org $1.50 fee added to purchases by phone or online All Proceeds benefit CWAH’s Programs and Services

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We even create supremacy in defeat and oppression and there is a constant battle for preimminence in perceived persecution and suffering. This is a particularly useful strategy for those seeking to maintain pathological supremacy and social dominance. A reading of Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”) by Adolph Hitler reveals that he was a master of manipulation in this arena.

Listening to the rantings of white male supremacists, Israelis against Palestine, nouveau “Black Consciousness Movement” males, married persons, and abusive parents, one will hear a barrage of how they have all suffered at the hands of their “oppressors” and the rationalizations for why they deserve special treatment in relation to these so-called oppressors. (The nouveau “Black Consciousness Movement” outside of Africa should not be confused with the actual and legitimate Black Consciousness Movement of South Africa and its assassinated leader Steve Biko.)

“Privilege is when you contribute to the oppression of others and then claim that you are the one being discriminated against.” ― DaShanne Stokes White male supremacists complain that black males are their ultimate oppressors, with white females coming in a close second in terms of white male subjugation. Israelis claim the Palestinians have long oppressed them with terroristic feats of subjugation and tyranny. Nouveau “Black Conscious Movement” males claim that they are being directly oppressed by black female agents of the government who are consciously colluding with white males to effectuate black male subjugation and oppression. Married people see themselves as oppressed by gays and lesbians who have fought to be legally married. Strangely, in every case of a claimed oppression above, each group of “oppressed” demands even greater right to dominate and oppress their so-called oppressors. They, in effect, demand even more special treatment than they currently enjoy in relation to their identified “oppressors.”

Oppressors who claim they are being oppressed are very revanchist in their thinking, believing that any fairness afforded an actual oppressed entity is an affront to an actual oppressor’s right to oppress and a patent unfairness to the oppressor. This is lunacy and pathological narcissism to an extreme.

-Magnates of Malefaction“I believe that there will be ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin...” ― Malcolm X White male supremacy is one of the most profound forms of pathological supremacy, and we live in a time where such can be mass produced, mass marketed, and pervasively distributed, even where no white males may actually be living. The mass dissemination of white male supremacy comes from the world’s banking moguls, political moguls, religious moguls, land moguls, and air and space moguls who, by and large, are white and male.

There is, of course, nothing inherently wrong with being socially constructed as white or male.

There is also nothing integrally amiss with being wealthy. There is, however, something patently wrong 9

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with creating and facilitating world systems and paradigms structured to foster human conflict, human exploitation, human degeneration, and human destruction. There is also something flagrantly in error with megalomaniacal functioning that involves operating under a God-complex that demands the world treat one’s human image as white and male as divine and supreme.

According to the global power broker supremacy paradigm, who they are is supreme. Who they are is the best. What they have is of the finest quality and the most desired. Whatever internal or external characteristics they possess are the ones to which others should aspire. According to the paradigm, the closer one is to such power magnates, the closer one is to social perfection and divinity.

Yes, “divinity.” Such a paradigm is a blatant con, yet a very effective one.

This is where being conceived of as a white person, as a male of any hue, or as a publicly performing heterosexual affords one gradations of perceived social supremacy and the attendant gradations of power that accompany such.

The world’s power brokers are largely white and male and money, sex, and power are their predatory calling cards. If one is constructed as white, the power brokers declare that one, like them, is supreme throughout the world and structure the lives and “realities” of the world’s inhabitants accordingly. If one is male, the power brokers assert that, akin to them, one is supreme in terms of sex classification and gender performance and they go about the business of structuring the lives and realities of the world’s inhabitants accordingly. If one is publicly heterosexual, the same power determination of supremacy exists, along with structures and processes that undergird this assertion.

-Reeling from RealityNot all whites and males, however, experience this idea of supremacy equally, including white males. In fact, much social pathology grows out of whites and males (of varying ethnicities) not experiencing themselves as privileged and as empowered as they believe they should be based upon both white supremacy and male supremacy paradigms. Thwarted ability to fully access white and male supremacy in the way that such has been sold, in fantasy, to all whites and all males often results in white and male fanaticism related to the acquisition of the just-out-of-reach supremacy and all of the toys that are deceptively promised to come with such.

Contrary to the absurdity advanced regarding white and male supremacy, such does not, in reality, translate into all who are white and all who are male living a life devoid of struggle. Supremacy does not unequivocally protect one from sickness, disease, divorce, death, or job loss. Whiteness and maleness do not come with an automatic goodie bag filled with hot dates, fast cars, yachts, mansions on hills, servants, nannies, and silver platters overflowing with bonbons. Hence, Dylann Roof.

Being white and/or male certainly has its perks and potential perks on earth, but not all white boys can grow up to be president. Likewise, in spite of the fact that the current president is African American, not all African American boys will be able to access a presidency in their lifetimes.

White and male global power brokers, however, mediate reality in such a way as to make whites and males believe themselves entitled to the same life amenities in which all global, white, male moguls are, themselves, in possession in terms of money, sex, and power. That pathological sense of supremacy and entitlement, which has been instilled in white and male populations the world over, is what tends to

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trigger fanaticism and violent responses when certain whites and certain males do not see the possibility of omnipotence just over the horizon, for themselves and those closely and demographically associated.

“The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone. As it is not so easy as the detective novels might lead one to believe, one generally relies on politics and joins the cruelest party. What does it matter, after all, if by humiliating one's mind one succeeds in dominating every one?” ― Albert Camus -Fantasy and FanaticismThe recent tragedy in Charleston demonstrated precisely the fanaticism and fantasies which may grow out of pathological notions of supremacy and inferiority. Nine people were terrorized and massacred in a most sacred human space by a depraved individual who touted himself as the martyring warrior on the battlefield for the preservation of whiteness and the dominance of white males.

Dylann Roof created enemies of pastors, a minister’s wife, a senator, and six women, in order to fight the supposed “good fight” to preserve the dignity of white womanhood and the primacy of white male potency. The sheer lunacy of his premise and his responsive actions are self-evident.

A reported underemployed, suicidal, illicit drug abusing, and 9th grade dropout had actually convinced himself that his socially constructed whiteness and maleness, alone, made him morally and socially supreme. In this supremeness, Dylann Roof waged an epic spiritual and racial battle in the sanctity of a church to reclaim his supposed lost dignity after a lifetime of victimization at the hands of the United States government, the Christian establishment, and oppressive, yet unwitting, African American women and men sitting in welcoming prayer. For this defective and diseased thinking, alone, he deserves the successful assertion of insanity as his legal defense.

Everything about Dylann Roof’s sociopolitical tirade was rooted in the money, sex, and power agendas that are integral to white and male supremacy paradigms. He allegedly massacred a group of people praying, who were majority female, because he fantasized that darker skin males were having sex with women he believed belonged to him. He assassinated a state senator and murdered a group of clergy and church parishioners, who were in the middle of worshipping God, because he felt it necessary to make a statement to the world about the sex and power he envisioned African Americans were taking from him. Terrorism, through mass murder, according to Roof, was the optimal way to avenge the perceived slippage of money, sex, and power through his entitled and pathologically narcissistic little hands.

Dylann Storm Roof’s philosophy is not novel. He has simply adopted and put into action the fanatical fantasies of many in lower level white supremacy movements who serve as puppets and pimped pawns in the larger world paradigm. If everyday, white, male individuals can be kept busy wrapped up in fanaticism regarding money, sex, power, and a Disney-like fantasy life, then such individuals will be disinclined to actually question their belief systems, our pathological societal structures, the herd-like systems of social bias and oppression, or the actual logic of their “righteous” indignation.

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Similar to Dylann Roof and other white male supremacists, many nouveau “Black Consciousness Movement” male pawns obsess about acquiring white females due to their fanaticism regarding sexual entitlement based upon their maleness. Such males reason that African American females are acting in collusion with world dominating white power brokers to preclude black male ascension to higher heights in terms of money, sex, and power. Accordingly, they conclude that white females serve as a ticket to their legitimization as males with power.

Listening closely to the manifest white supremacists and the latent white supremacists in blackface, masquerading as members of the supposed nouveau “Black Consciousness Movement,” it is difficult to ascertain exactly which presents as more cognitively and emotionally pathological. Neither group seems particularly inclined to reflectively interrogate their own reasoning related to supremacy and oppression and their fantasies of racial and sexual entitlement, which tend to be filled with misogyny and infantile narcissism.

-Manufacturing of Mayhem“And when you trust your television, what you get is what you got. ‘Cause when they own the information, oh they can bend it all they want.”

- John Mayer Actual human supremacy is a fallacy. It does not exist. Its illusion, however, can be creatively manufactured. Media makers, through film, music, art, advertising, and the like, plant abhorrent fantasies about supremacy, money, sex, and power in the minds of the masses and humans are programmed to act responsively. Once fabricated, disseminated, and assimilated, pathological powerbased supremacy schemas are not easily eradicated.

Inherent to the mediated supremacy images and messages are psychological communications regarding what it means to be “white,” “male,” and “other” in terms of acquiring and maintaining money and sex and the attendant power related to both. The mainstream media and social media diets relay that all things constructed as “white” are right and to be rewarded. Conversely, all things constructed as “non-white” are exotic and to be generally valued and rewarded based upon proximity to “whiteness.” No one can explain, however, where the white/nonwhite lines of demarcation rest.

Hence, there are even media messages that communicate that one can transcend race to become whiter in order to gain greater access to money, sex, and power. If anyone has children who are lighter, the parents presumably gain greater social access. If one is able to bleach one’s skin lighter, one is able to gain greater social access. If one is able to speak whiter, think whiter, or live according to white cultural norms, then one is able to gain greater access to all things wonderful in life, according to media messages.

Many media messages are on a subliminal level and speak to the unconscious mind. These messages are, therefore, indirect and highly manipulative. For this reason, one must be particularly prudent and literate regarding the consumption of mass media and the interpretation of messages regarding paradigms of pathological social supremacy.

-Obscured Oppressors-

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Pathological paradigms of supremacy proliferate so easily because those who are oppressed are manipulated into believing and spreading such life views. For this reason, white supremacy knows no true color lines; anyone can sign on to be a believer. In fact, in the African American, Caribbean, African, and European communities, there are numerous individuals and groups grounded in advancing white supremacy. Their unofficial “job” is to keep those constructed as Black in their place and/or distracted. Many of these individuals and groups support paradigms of light privilege and support the dominance of whiteness due to the social dominance conferred upon them by extension.

“Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back!” ― J.K. Rowling The Emmanuel A.M.E. Church of Charleston, South Carolina, itself, has been victim to black perpetration of white supremacy and such resulted in the assassination of one of its founders, Pastor Denmark Vesey. In 1822, Denmark Vesey, a former slave, planned a Charleston slave revolt and escape to Haiti. Three black and biracial males reported the plan for the revolt, however, to white officials, resulting in the hanging of Denmark Vesey and numerous men involved in planning the revolt.

The African American men involved in sabotaging the revolt were in collusion with their oppressors and facilitated their own subjugation and that of others. They bought into the paradigm of supremacy in which they were cast as inferior, subordinate, inadequate, and of contrastingly poor human quality, simply because they were categorized as black. They were not merely victims of white supremacy; they were white supremacists due to their ability to subject other black persons to the pathology of the paradigm.

The present day pathological embracement of white supremacy by Caribbean natives is what fosters both Cuban and Dominican dances with reality wherein many pretend to not know that both islands were populated from African slaves and most are the current descendants of such. The delusions are so great that lighter brown Caribbeans with straighter hair may even be referred to as white in contrast to darker relatives and citizens.

The internalization of pathological supremacy creates a paradigm where people become the very enemies of themselves. Such was at the root of the 1930s diabolical Dominican massacre of darker skinned Dominicans and Haitians in an attempt to lighten and whiten its population.

While such is rarely discussed when exploring issues of male supremacy, females play a significant role in male perpetrated sexism and sex related abuse. Women generally function as the primary caregivers for children throughout the world. Male children, therefore, start life learning what it means to be human and male from their female mothers. Women transmit to male children how they are to understand their masculinity and how such is best performed in society. Women have significant power to shape male children and, therefore, men into human beings who are mentally, emotionally, and physically healthy or maladaptive.

Mothers are capable of transmitting to male children a sense of personal responsibility, a sense of efficacy, a sense of morality, and a basic sense of adaptive purpose. While fathers model manhood for male children, mothers very clearly communicate to male children what is acceptable and unacceptable

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in male-female relationships. Where there is an abusive adult male, including a rapist, there is a past dysfunctional relationship with his mother.

Too frequently, the little man of the house is taught that he is supreme and, in his supremacy, he does not have to comport with standards of optimal functioning. He is also frequently taught that he is not bound by standards of decency in terms of relating to females and children. For instance, male youth are frequently encouraged to engage in indiscriminate relationships with young girls. If a young male impregnates a young girl, he is often given the distinct impression that the primary responsibility for childrearing belongs to the girl. As young males mature, they are also frequently sent the message that they should pursue multiple relationships, with multiple women, without a sense of propriety in these relations.

When men cheat or abuse spouses, romantic partners, or children, this is frequently overlooked by their mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, and female cousins, as these women justify that “men will be men” and “boys will be boys.” All the more, some mothers coerce abused and molested daughters into silence and often assert to a woman in an adulterous or abusive marriage that “a piece of a man is better than no man at all.”

Clearly, when a woman engages in an adulterous affair with a known married man, she is encouraging the pathology of male supremacy and serving as an active participant in a man’s abuse and neglect of his wife and, often, his children.

It is within the disposition of some women to even justify the rape of women by men, while bemoaning the adverse state of male-female relations and the injustice of male privilege. In this way, many women function to strengthen the very culture of rape. Women cannot have it both ways.

-Promulgating Pernicious PrivilegeThe promise of privilege is what motivates many people to support pathological supremacy paradigms.

Privilege means that one gets special treatment and consideration and that obstacles are removed or lessened. Those who are privileged along any dimension are, therefore, disinclined to uplift those who are not, because such would defeat the glorious idea of privilege. Would it not? If everyone gets the same special treatment and has obstacle removed or lessened, it takes away from our sense of specialness in areas in which we are privileged.

“What good is going to a ‘special’ school that everyone can attend?” the privileged ask. “What good is living in a ‘good’ neighborhood, if everyone has the opportunity to live in a ‘good’ neighborhood?” the privileged ponder? “What good is swimming in an ‘exclusive’ gated pool, if everyone is included?” the privileged question. “What good is residing in the Hamptons, if it is infiltrated

by Harlem before the Renaissance?” the privileged quip. “What good is exceptionalism…if everyone is held to the same standards, if everyone is subjected to the same suspicions, and if everyone is presented with the same obstacles in life from birth to death?” the privileged query.

The problem with privilege is that many aspects of privilege are really just basic human dignities that should be afforded all. Instead, some are disproportionately denied basic human decency, resources, regard, and mercy based upon arbitrary human determinations.

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WATCH NOW!

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Howard University Alumni Constituent Unit of St. Louis Jazz Brunch and Scholarship Fundraiser to support the

Frankie M. Freeman and Wayman F. Smith Scholarship Fund Saturday, August 1, 2015 10 a.m. - 1 p.m.

Hilton St. Louis Fronntenac 1335 S. Lindbergh Blvd, Saint Louis, MO 63131

Wayne A. I. Frederick, M.D., MBA Guest Speaker

17th President of Howard University

For more information, please contact Ralonda Jasper, HUAC - St. Louis Fundraising Chair at 630-697-9641 or rmjasper@sbcglobal.net

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MONEY SEX POWER cont.

Nothing on this earth really belongs to anyone, however. Everything is simply available for temporary use while we are here. Some individuals and cultures, however, have devised ways to create ownership, exclusive use, and possession of earthly resources. In a God-like fashion, many humans figure out ways to control the use of trees, land, water and even air. This equates to power.

Power over natural resources equates to control over the economics attached to the resources.

Human greed leads to an insistence on having imbalanced resource acquisition and dominance. It also fuels an insistence that others be left with inadequate resources to simply survive. The divide and rape of the African continent, its waters, and its vast and rich natural resources represent an example of such human gluttony. The usurpation of the land of the United States from native inhabitants is yet another example of such. There are, no doubt, countless other similar examples the world over.

Growing out of a less than optimal state of empathy for fellow humans, and an overblown and narcissistic sense of entitlement, many humans simply want it all and they are willing to do whatever and believe whatever to have it all. Sometimes, this involves illogical assertions of supremacy and privilege based upon race, sex, ethnicity, age, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, color, and economic wealth. At other times, it involves almost primal degrees of rapaciousness.

True supremacy, however, requires no introduction. It requires no demands for external acquiescence to its assertions. It requires no pilfering of the resources and lives of another. It requires no demands for subordination. It requires no repetitive comparison and contrast. It requires no requirement of emulation for legitimization. It requires no self-aggrandizement. It requires no finagling of reality and truth. It requires no self-delusion.

The fact is that pathological paradigms of supremacy are just that…pathological.

If someone stands to benefit from unearned privilege, or any paradigm of pathological supremacy, those individuals tend to be very myopic in looking at the dynamics that surround the issue of pathological privilege and supremacy. This is particularly the case when conversations, or assertions, call into question one’s possession of privileges or casts one in a less than flattering light related to privilege holding and using. This is due to pathological forms of privilege and supremacy being deeply rooted in narcissistic world views, where one sees oneself as of utmost importance in relation to others.

Such individuals do not believe they need to change, because they entertain the “just world hypothesis” that asserts we all get what we deserve in life. So, if a person espousing a supremacy paradigm is in possession of unearned privilege, or in a group that enjoys pathological social supremacy, such an individual is more likely to believe that they deserve all that they have and those who have not deserve to be in a state of lack, subjugation, and exploitation. (This belief persists, of course, until such time that privileged individuals are on the receiving end of hardship.)

It is an uphill climb attempting to convince many unearned privilege holders of the need for universal fairness and equity among human beings. Attempts at broaching such subjects tend to result in significant backlash by the unearned privilege holder. This results in unearned privilege holders resorting to pity parties and self-righteous indignation regarding the very thought of sharing, fairness, or human dignity for all.

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claiming that actions to promote fairness are, instead, efforts at some form of reversal of discrimination against the unearned privilege holder. The unearned privilege holder may very well assert that any attempts at social fairness are actually an injustice to the unearned privilege holder. The terms usually employed are “reverse sexism,” “reverse racism,” and reverse anything else that signifies an unearned privilege holder having to share their little privilege toys. This is nothing more than manipulative foolishness that should be responded to in accordance.

Simply put, many unearned privilege holders, regardless of the type of privilege, tend to be very defensive about their unearned indulgences and those who enjoy pathological supremacy often behave as toddlers having tantrums whenever their privilege is mentioned, let alone challenged. Such individuals are blind to the fact that most unearned privilege, growing out of pathological paradigms of supremacy, are merely crumbs from an unseen master’s table, which can be recouped as such meets the narcissistic economic and power needs of those in control of the puppeteering strings.

When all is said and done, those who need paradigms of social supremacy to legitimize their existence, or to imbue them with a sense of social power, are actually operating from a deficit in authentic self-esteem. To let go of such paradigms would mean letting go of what makes such individuals and groups feel inherently valuable. Hence, most will not “go gently into that good light.”

-And Justice for AllWe cannot effectively eradicate white supremacy, and its pathologies, without eradicating all supremacies. Since we appear nowhere near desirous of wiping out all forms of oppression, subjugation, exploitation, and subordination, we are nowhere near seeing the end of the white and male supremacy we have consumed and continue to consume hook, line, and sinker. When we finish removing the confederate flag, and stopping sales of such, and controlling gun sales, and creating tougher sentencing paradigms, and arguing over who should be entitled to marry, we will still have white supremacy, male supremacy, and other forms of pathological supremacy, because the issue is not a political one; it is an issue of the human heart condition. Until we have a complete overhaul of the health of the human heart, that which issues forth from it will be less than holistically healthy and optimal.

Regardless of demographic, healing requires an understanding that one cannot change those who serve as ultimate puppet masters of pathological paradigms of supremacy. Each individual person must, therefore, focus on singular healing from the pathologies of the paradigms while understanding that such is a lifelong process.

In an ideal world, pathological paradigms of supremacy would not exist. As a human collective, however, we have failed to come up with viable and concrete alternatives. While people talk about the need to eradicate white supremacy, most are hard pressed to show what that eradication actually looks like in practice. There even exist whole groups that pontificate about replacing white supremacy with “justice,” but such have yet to demonstrate how this “justice for all” operates. In fact, most of the arguments for “justice” seem to be nothing more than arguments for shifting to black male supremacy, with the same potential money, sex, and power pathologies already in play in the pathological white male supremacy paradigm.

“Power in the hands of the reformer is no less potentially corrupting than in the hands of the oppressor.”

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MONEY SEX POWER cont.

― Derrick A. Bell The issue is much larger than our day to day interactions with each other, whether in the home, community, schools, or workplaces. While working to create universal fairness is an admirable goal, such will not be readily realized based upon our current interlocking global structures and systems, which are founded upon immeasurable megalomaniacal dynamics. Such will also not be readily realized due to the social and internal pathology that many humans embrace like a lifeboat after falling from the Titanic.

Individual and small collectives of humans must, therefore, turn as much attention as possible away from the global to the specific. This means working towards improving your individual and family emotional, social, and behavioral functioning, first and foremost. It means surrounding oneself with those who are striving to be healthier in all aspects of functioning. Such means avoiding, to the greatest extent possible, those entrenched in Ayn Randian philosophies of egoism and the “virtue” of being selfish. It also means working towards seeing things as they actually are, versus how we have been deluded into seeing things through interpersonal, mass, and social media.

-Singular SalvationsNo one can heal the Dylann Roof’s of the world, when we have yet to heal our own functional maladies. Dylan has to heal himself. Similarly, Bill Cosby will need to seek his own functional restoration.

Instead of asking how we can achieve social justice and liberty for all, we need to first seek to treat ourselves justly and liberate our own minds, bodies, and spirits from the shackles of supremacy that bind. When we work to free ourselves from the oppressive paradigms we have co-created, or ingested, we can be free to support the unshackling of all others, near and far.

“Mental slavery remains the biggest form of oppression till this day.” ― Unarine Ramaru The healing for all pathological supremacy paradigms, regardless of one’s socially constructed race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, religion, education, or political affiliation, is the same. The human heart must be healed, one human organism at a time, from the hierarchical top to the bottom, from infancy to the golden years.

We must heal from the self-ignorance of not knowing our inherent individual human worth that has been divinely bestowed. We must heal from the fallacy that we are more or less than any other human being. We must heal from constant comparison of what we have and what we are in relation to others. We must heal from individual envy that causes us to seek to destroy that which we are not or have not.

We must heal from failing to know who we are, our life purposes, and the best paths for living out our divine destinies. We must heal from irrational fears that preclude us from fully living life and that lead us down paths of contempt for those who are able to transcend trepidation.

We must heal from excessive pride, which leads destructively to arrogance, egotism, selfimportance, immodesty, and divisive vanity. We must heal from wrath growing out of our beliefs that we deserve more than we actually do. We must heal from a disposition of sloth that leads to a fallacy that others owe us their life’s blood and that we are entitled to the benefits of the exploitation of 17

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others. We must heal from believing that others should be subjected to our “right” way of thinking, believing, talking, and existing, which is at the root of much imperialism and ethnic colonialism.

We must heal from the consuming lust for power, sex, and money at the expense of all decency, morality, and sanity. We must heal from greed and covetousness of wealth beyond general survival and comfort. We must heal from the desire to deprive others of the means of acquiring basic needs for general survival and comfort. We must heal from believing that others owe us their lives, their allegiance, and their subordination, while contriving sick and slick processes to make such a reality.

We must heal from listening to the voices of others that do not edify our spirits, minds, and bodies. We must heal from consuming all media messages that reinforce pathological supremacy, whether we or others are presented as supreme, inferior, or neutral. (This includes music, film, news, advertisements, interpersonal media (verbal conversations, email, text messages, and general correspondence), and social media.)

(Pathological supremacy paradigms demand that humans be consumed with prosaic, entertaining, and delusional distractions to keep one’s mind from the reality of the pawn-like human reality. This is one of the reasons why soul and hip hop music overwhelmingly focus on romance, sex, drugs, consumerism, misogyny, false illusions of power, and any manner of mendacity. Regardless of how good such music might feel, such rarely directs one’s attention to things of ultimate import and such rarely edifies, challenges the status quo, or seeks to heal. With respect to hip hop, much of it, in fact, endeavors to destroy from within.)

We must heal from the notion that we have a God-ordained right to control the life and destiny of others or that anyone else has a God-ordained right to control our divine destinies and life purposes.

We must heal from the belief that the world’s precious resources are commodities to be enjoyed and controlled by those who exercise unrestrained pathological pilfering. We must heal from seeking power over others, when we have clearly not learned how to fully control, regulate, and positively direct our own beings. We must heal from our extreme need for external validation and elevation, and refrain from instilling such pathology in the world’s children.

We humans, on two legs, are not GOD. We must heal from believing ourselves on par with that which created the sun, the moon, the stars, the ocean, the air, and the very bodies we inhabit. If we are to heal, collectively, from all forms of pathological supremacy and unearned privilege, we must heal from the delusion that we, individually or collectively, are God or demigods. We must, ultimately, heal from self-idolatry and the worship of others who masquerade as that which is magnanimous.

“After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.” ― Assata Shakur One of the most powerful examples of recent healing from a pathological paradigm of supremacy - without the need for war, riots, new laws, or political lobbying - is the “natural hair movement” advanced by women who do not have hair that fits with the paradigm of straight blonde hair as the ultimate in feminine beauty. Though many have suffered backlash, these females have 18

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MONEY SEX POWER cont.

relentlessly embarked upon the journey of loving self-acceptance related to the politics of their bodies, through their hair.

This movement is simple, yet crucial, as it has resulted in women and girls opening their eyes to seeing things as they actually are. In this case, the things actually seen are the natural states of their coily, curly, kinky, wavy, or undefined hair, whether such grows out of the heads of women constructed as black, white, or brown. This is no small feat, as such individuals have had to persevere on their natural hair journeys in the face of opposition and ridicule. Such has come from romantic partners, family members, friends, employers, and strangers who hold onto oppressive ideologies regarding the politics of the female body, particularly those bodies constructed as non-white.

This natural hair movement, which is occurring across races, ethnicities, and even continents, is a perfect and potent example of turning one’s attention away from trying to change the world to simply liberating the heart and mind of the self, which ultimately changes the world.

Had Dylan Storm Roof been about the business of simply liberating and healing his own profane mind, spirit, and body, destroying the lives of others would not have been on his life’s agenda as an ultimate purpose. Had he been actually functioning supremely, he would have had no desire to impose his supremely destructive pathology on the world.

Had Bill Cosby been about the business of simply living the agenda he publicly laid out for those in the African American community who are devoid of the money and power he has enjoyed, violating the lives of others would not have been on his life’s agenda as a career function. Had he been functioning supremely, he would have had no desire to impose his supremely destructive pathology on the world.

If we all turn our energy and attention to simply liberating and healing our own minds, bodies, and spirits, the world, by extension, is bound to adjust and transform. We all have inherent power; the question is whether we will choose, moment by moment, to use such for singular and collective good or for evil.

“If you believe in things you don’t understand, you suffer.”

-Stevie Wonder

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Job Fair

Saturday, July 25, 2015 (10:00am – 2:00pm)

Caroline Mission Early Childhood Center 2828 Caroline Street St. Louis, MO 63104 Over 100 years of child & youth educational experience.

Neighborhood Houses was born as a settlement house in 1913 and over the years we have offered a wide variety of programs and services to children and families in need. Today we focus on three core services, all designed to strengthen children and families, helping them to reach their own magnificent potential.

We offer:  State-licensed and accredited early childhood care and education offered on a sliding scale for up to 88 children ages six weeks to five years of age.  Quality before and after-school programming for approximately 1000 children at 16 school-based sites.  A teen moms’ support group.  Magnificent Creations, a youth employment, social enterprise program.

For more information, please call:

(314) 383-1733, Ext. 338 326 South 21st Street, Suite 301 – St. Louis, MO 63103 www.neighborhoodhouses.org

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10-Minute Interviews will be done on-site.

Please bring resume.

AVAILABLE POSITIONS:  Full-Time Early Childhood Education Teachers ( D e g r e e d ) 

Part-Time Program Assistants ( S c h o o l A g e d

Experience Required)



Drivers



Quality Assurance Professional ( M a s t e r ’ s Preferred)

Only 

Degree

Accepti ng Resumes

Part-Time Grant Writer (Bachelor’s Degree Required)

Accepting Res umes Only

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

The Mis-Education of the Negro!

I want to focus on the Fourth of July holiday and the continuing miseducation of a people.

Hundreds of thousands of persons of African ancestry had their picnics and the air was thick with the smell of charcoal, and BBQ, and the sounds of fireworks, and crowds fought for a good position to watch a parade. It’s a national holiday. Everyone should enjoy a holiday, and I am not suggesting that you should not find merriment and celebrate among family and friends.

But for persons of African ancestry do you consider what Frederick Douglass asked concerning this holiday? He asked ‘What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.

To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.’

The recent massacre of nine Black church members of the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. is evidence today of what Frederick Douglas implied. Ferguson, Baltimore and police brutality and murders of Black people today is as American as mom’s apple pie.

Something we should remember is that 2015 marks the eighty-second anniversary of the publication of Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s book “The Mis-Education of the Negro”. It was first published in 1933 and what Dr. Woodson wrote 82 years ago is relevant to this day.

Amazon.Com. describing Dr. Woodson’s book says ‘The thesis of

Dr. Woodson’s book is that African-Americans of his day were being culturally indoctrinated, rather than taught, in American schools. This conditioning, he claims, causes African-Americans to become dependent and to seek out inferior places in the greater society of which they are a part.

He challenges his readers to “do for themselves”, regardless pg.

of what they were taught: History shows th not matter who is in power... those who ha learned to do for themselves and have to d solely on others never obtain any more righ privileges in the end than they did in the b

Dr. Woodson stated “when you control a man’s think not have to worry about his actions. You do not have not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his ‘prop will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the bac will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back cut one for his special benefit. His education makes i Dr. Woodson also noted “Negroes have no control ov education and have little voice in their other affairs p thereto. In a few cases Negroes have been chosen as m of public boards of education, and some have been ap members of private boards, but these Negroes are alw small minority that they do not figure in the final wo the educational program.

The education of the Negroes, the most important th uplifting of Negroes, is almost entirely in the hands o have enslaved them and now segregate them.”

A Woodson quote that is often referred to says “the t inferiority of the Negro is drilled into him in almost enters and in almost every book he studies. As anoth said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his b curse and that his struggle to change his condition is the worst sort of lynching”.

So, I hope that you enjoyed the 4th of July and had fu remember the foundation of the holiday and rememb decades that have passed since Dr. Woodson told us learn our own history, even if we have to educate our home.

We are not in control of our children’s education and we are partly responsible for their lack of knowledge history. Our story is ignored and distorted while Eur history is glorified and overhauled. Also, flash back a Frederick Douglass’ holiday speech. By the way, did y Juneteenth?

I hope you had a Happy 4th of July!

44

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ST. JUDE HERO 2015 NYC Marathon for kids w/ cancer

Need your help!

St. Jude and I just need 20 more of you to support kids with cancer.

HEY EVERYONE! I am running the 2015 New

York City Marathon for the second time in November.

I am raising money once again for St. Jude @ StJude, the great hospital for children with cancer.

I am very close to my goal of $3500, and simply need 20 more of you to donate $25 each as soon as you are able, and then I am done and can focus strictly on training for the marathon. Can you please take a few minutes today to make a $25 donation? It would really mean a lot to me. Thank you so much in advance, and here is the link to donate: http://tinyurl.com/nb7p3e3 And if you have previously donated

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

Kevin Powell Copyright Š 2015 - All rights reserved.

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Featured

Artist

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Submission

Solomon Thurman

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Solomon Thurman where he continues to work and live.

is an artist, researcher, and teacher, born in St. Louis, MO,

He received a liberal arts degree for Forest Park College in 1978 and graduated from Graphique Commercial Art Institute in 1980. He is a 2002 St. Louis Regional Arts and Webster University “Community Arts Training” program graduate (CAT) “ Fellow”. Painting for more than three decades, Solomon’s painting style can be categorized as conceptual realism and contemporary abstractions. His art interest focus primarily on the American experience with an emphasis on the African Diaspora. He has been featured in numerous oneman and group exhibitions in United States, Canada and Brazil.

Solomon was commissioned by the “Committee for the Aviation Mural Project Success” (CAMPS) to research and paint the historical contribution of African Americans in aviation. Working with his late partner, Spencer Taylor, they created the aviation mural, titled, “Black American’s in Flight” located at Lambert St. Louis International Airport. The eight feet high, and fifty one feet wide aviation mural, depicting the Tuskegee Airman, has been viewed by more than 100 million people, since it’s unveiling in 1991.

As executive board member of Propeller Gallery, located in Toronto, Ontario Canada, he restructured the gallery by creating an “artist collective gallery” model. Most recently in 2007, he co-planned and exhibited at the Black Fine Arts Show during the National Urban League’s 100 anniversary in St. Louis, MO. Solomon Thurman has received numerous recognition and indirect grants for his artistic projects, including St. Louis Regional Arts Commission (RAC), and Missouri Arts Council (MAC), “Black World History Museum”. In 2007, he was featured in Who’s Who’s in Black St. Louis.

Solomon continues to be active in the St. Louis area in annual community art related events; Picture of Music sponsored by St. Louis Symphony, Wallball, sponsored by South City Children’s Gallery, Wonders of the Outdoor World (WOW), sponsored by Missouri Parks and Recreation Department. Solomon has numerous public art projects located throughout St. Louis. Most recently Solomon painted a conceptual landscape of the St. Louis River Front for the Black World History Museum’s exhibit.

Solomon is a founding member and on the executive board of Creative Company, a St. Louis based visual artists collective. When not painting, researching, or lecturing, Solomon is a community outreach instructor or the Saint Louis Art Museum. In the past three decades, his body of work continues to be a journey of artistic growth. Solomon remains dedicated to bringing art, history and the community together.

http://www.solomonthurman.com For Additional Information Please Contact: Pat@10thstreetgallery.com

www.10thstreetgallery.com

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TheVillageCelebration radio show Thursdays at 5:30 p.m. on www.thevillagecelebration.com.

Call in at 1-855-525-5683

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Bailey Tippen

makes her mark in film and television

By Abari Sankofa (aka Renarda A. Williams) Editor/Contributing Writer, The Empowerment Initiative Online Newsletter News Flash Note: Sankofa shares his story about Bailey Tippen — originally submitted in his publication, The Empowerment Initiative Online Newsletter News Flash (TEION) — with Arts Today Magazine.

Since Rodney Allen Rippy, the adorable Afro-ed child star of 1970s Jack in the Box commercials and other TV and movie appearances, African American children in 20th- and 21-century show business have delighted audiences of all races. Rohson Fegan (Spider-Man 2), Keke Palmer (Akeelah and the Bee), Tyler James Williams (Dear White People), and Raven-Symone (Bill Cosby Show and Dr. Doolittle) are just some of the actors and actresses who have stood out.

Bailey Tippen is also making her mark in movies and television (The Watsons Go to Birmingham, Never Alone, and NBC’s Constantine) as well as commercials, theater, music videos and modeling.

An Atlanta native and current resident, Tippen lived in Little Rock for a few years. Her career began when she entered a contest with more than 1,500 performers. She placed in the top 40 performers at Artists, Models, and Talents for Christ (AMTC), a convention for new up-andcoming talent to be discovered. She later signed with J Pervis Talent Agency of Atlanta before signing with Discover Management in Studio City, CA. On June 11, Tippen met more than 60 of her fans for a Meet and Greet at a west Little Rock Starbucks. TEION took the opportunity to visit with her about the start of her acting aspirations; how her work encourages young people to make a difference in society; the things it takes to become a better actress; balancing school and acting; and her goals for the future.

Tippen said she became interested in acting while watching television.

“I did not know [the] people were acting ... until my mother asked me if I wanted to become an actress,” Tippen said. “I asked her, ‘What is that?’ She said it is what people are doing on television, and I said ‘Yes — I would love to do that!’ I continued to watch [TV] and fell in love Copyright © 2015 - All rights reserved.

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BAILEY TIPPEN cont.

with acting ... and I wanted to do that for life,” Bailey is enjoying what she is doing. “I am Tippen said. a tough mother. I will discipline her like any other [child], and treat her the same. I am not Tippen said she always wants her going to treat her different because she is characters to be characters that will a star. I, and everyone in the family, treat her encourage elementary, junior, and high like a normal child. She is very well-rounded school student to make a difference and level-headed. She is not ‘stuck up.’ She in society. She cites The Watsons Go to is real cool, laid back and knows who she is,” Birmingham, which was a 2013 TV movie. she stated.

“The movie was historical — and I wanted to encourage students to know more about our “I remind her constantly that this is a gift history,” she said. she has, and it is an honor” — an honor that could be fleeting, Latonya continued. “At The most important thing she has learned any moment, ‘it’s hot, and then, it might not!’ about becoming a better actress, Tippen I always tell her ‘You must have a Plan A — continued, is that “it takes a lot of hard College, and a Plan B — Acting.’ I also make work!” Difficult as acting may be, however, sure she has a normal lifestyle.” school comes first.

Latonya said she also instills self“I do school, and I do acting. This is what I do confidence in Bailey, so she’ll avoid peer everyday. School is number one and acting is pressure. “When people fall to peer number two,” she noted. pressure, they do not love themselves,” she concluded.

Tippen’s her main goal in life is continuing to succeed in this business ... and go all the Bailey herself is quick to say she won’t fall way to the top. into peer pressure.

“Acting is my passion,” she said. “One of my major goals is to win an Oscar one day. [Yes], I know it is going to take a lot of hard work and dedication. But I know one day I will win an Oscar!”

“I will never give in to people who ask me to do something I do not want to do,” she said.

“Stay true to yourself, and do what you love.”

Tippen’s manager, Debralynn Findon, believes Bailey just has the “it” factor Latonya Tippen, Tippen’s mother, said she’s needed to go far in the industry. Bailey taken steps to ensure her daughter will have sparkles not only when people meet her a happy, well-adjusted adulthood — and not in person, but also when they watch her fall into the trap many child stars suffer when perform. “You feel her passion for this they grow up. Latonya confirmed that she industry,” Findon said. always tell Bailey that school always come first, and acting second.

Findon’s company, Discover Management — which also consist of partners Korae And, Latonya added, she wants to make sure Patterson and Tim Schaffer — has overseen pg.

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BAILEY TIPPEN cont.

Tippen from the beginning of her career. They scouted Tippen at Actors, Models, and Talent for Christ. “Our team at Discover knows this is just the beginning for Bailey,” Findon says.

“She will continue to grow not only as a young talent, but ... as an adult.”

Findon lauds Tippen’s strong family foundation, which is what helps shape positive careers for child actors.

“Kudos goes to her mother Latonya for building a great foundation,” she said. “Bailey will stay in this industry as long a she’s having fun and loving this business.”

Tippen’s acting resume speaks to the success of her young acting career. Here are some of her past projects and awards:

Films The Watsons Go To Birmingham, Naomi, Director Kenny Leon.

Never Alone,Young Yolanda, Director Zoana Price.

Television NBC’s Constantine, Astra, Director Neil Marshal.

Commercials Belks, Daughter, Fizz City.

Belks, Super Hero Girl, Fizz City.

Elfs on a Shelf, lead character Eve Frost, Director Vikas Shah.

Bojangles Regional- Daughter.

Georgia Power, Daughter, Stillwell Casting.

Print Tyler Perry Studios, Model, Madea’s Tough Love, Casting Director Rhavynn Drummer.

Awards Never Alone (Young Yolanda), Director Zoana Price won Best Short at the Georgia Entertainment Gala.

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

Presents

Some of the Best of “Soul Radio”

Come and help us honor and commemorate the achievements, contributions, and triumphs of “Soul Radio” and the many African American personalities that contributed so much to the industry.

Saturday, August 15, 2015 *** 6:00 P. M. – 10: 00 P. M. *** Sun Theatre 3627 Grandel Sq. • St. Louis, MO 63108 For Ticket Info: (314) 837-3349, Hudson’s Embassy (314) 533-3070, Vintage Vinyl (314) 721-4096, Progressive Emporium Education Center (314) 875-9277 Sponsored By St. Louis Black Radio Hall of Fame You may make donations to the Soul Pioneer’s Fundraising Campaign by going to the St. Louis Black Radio Hall of Fame GOFUNDME account on Facebook.

Live Entertainment By:

Ruby Andrews

Roland Johnson

Otis Clay

Uvee Hayes

and The James Family pg.

84

Jerome Lane

MEET MANY OF THE SOUL PIONEERS OF BLACK RADIO      

Gabriel Jim Gates Doug Eason Scotty Lawrence Gene “Gino” Norman Terry Houston

     

Randy O’ Jay Brooks Michael Tyrone Key Ronn Nichols Donn Johnson Bernie Hayes Edie Bee Anderson

  

Betty Thompson Lou Thimes Jr. Gary Stittum and others

Come celebrate with us as we pay tribute to:

The Sharpees

The Temptations

Joe Hinton

Wilson Pickett

Otis Redding

Solomon Burke

Tina Turner

Mel & Tim

Montclair’s

B.B. King

The Impressions

The Caesars

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

Vasser with Chief Bihai, III pg.

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Writings by:

Jason Vasser Essay: The Mirror Poem: Two Men Copyright Š 2015 - All rights reserved.

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

The Mirror

By Jason Vasser I’ve always been the groundnut in the company of Walnuts, and Brazils; but I was always a bit more 1Bambara than peanut. Becoming dehiscent as my wings grew, I left the nest full of something not easily explained, though internally felt. The discovery of learning more about my ancestry was a giant undertaking but I felt it was important enough to explore, so I began researching my lineage with many questions, as if I were finding an ancient artifact in an unfamiliar place, its darkness quiet and still. It is in the darkness of not knowing where my origin story began, that I gathered the energy to search for answers.

It happened for me while watching National Geographic one Saturday morning, Looney Tunes on the tube adjacent the den that in adolescence became my room, where I became fascinated to watch what the narrator called “Pygmies” dance in a circle around an open fire on a forest floor, which seemed lifetimes away from where I sat and wondered.

As a child it was customary to watch cartoons on Saturday mornings with my younger sister, Jada, a bowl of cereal in tow. I grew tired of watching the satire in Looney Tunes because subliminal messages began irritating me. Questioning why for instance, Daffy Duck was always portrayed in stark contrast to Bugs Bunny. Daffy’s character was obnoxious as was evident in how loudly he spoke. His ugly duckling persona negatively affected me as I got older, when I understood his persona as someone who was black. Bugs Bunny on the other hand was always depicted as intelligent, though cunning; his persona carried a certain swag in which he outsmarted all of the other characters, human and animal alike. Those subliminal messages also revealed for me that Bugs Bunny’s persona was that of someone who is white, and this epiphany further widened the contrast between him and Daffy, so I watched National Geographic instead. I enjoyed watching National Geographic and other programs which often appeared on the History Channel, because it felt good to learn and be entertained. Looney Tunes became less and less entertaining as I got older, and became the first instance in which I felt ashamed of my skin color.

As my sister laughed at cartoons, I sat in the den marveling at National Geographic. It didn’t matter to me what program they showed, it all interested me. There was one episode in which the researchers visited the Cameroon and while watching the “Pygmies” dance around, I became so interested that I left the cereal bowl unattended. They were doing research on a group of West African’s that lived in the forest. My mother, younger sister and I lived in what used to be a forest; remnants of it survived in the trees my mother often complained did nothing but bring more leaves. Born in October, I was fond of the fall. During this time in my life I already suffered loss, the death of my paternal grandfather, my parents’ marriage, and soon I would turn sixteen. I was confused about many things, the history I was taught, was teased at school for being short, and was frustrated by my overwhelming urge to become an adult so that I could leave and make my own decisions. Over the years, I had grown even fonder of the change in autumn, admired how deciduous maples could transform themselves, even if it was seasonal.

1

The plant originated in West Africa. Vigna subterranea ripens its pods underground, much like the peanut (also called a groundnut).

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To escape listening to my mother argue with my father on the phone, or be forced to entertain my sister, I took the bus to the Saint Louis Art Museum to get lost in the paintings and sculptures. Sometimes I would sit and stare at works of art until the tilt of my head reflected from the gloss that shined in the light. I would allow the anticipation to mount as I searched for the African Art, which was always down there, in the basement. It always made me ponder and imagine the hands that crafted what my eyes saw as art, as original as it was beautiful. For me, the items in the cases and the history I read on the labels, made all those episodes of National Geographic come to life.

So for years I walked back and forth in the basement of the St. Louis Art Museum, peeking inside the tombs of mummified Egyptians, admiring the soft texture of the canopic jars wherein their organs rested from years of life in the sand. The painted gold on their black bodies made me finger my neck for the rope that hung under my clothes; as I searched for me among the manipulated wooden faces. Walking back and forth in front of display cases for hours looking at wood carvings of masks, weapons and ceremonial artifacts, I finally passed one that was beaded red, white and blue. The mask was in the shape of an elephant, and was used at funerals in what’s known as “Africa in Miniature” – Cameroon. …

My father never went to college, but was convinced that I should attend a community college instead of a university, he didn’t believe in my ability to succeed at that level. My mother, who taught at my high school, handpicked all of my teachers and so I felt sheltered from the experience other students shared. I felt alone. By the time I enrolled at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (SIUE), I was sheltered, unprepared, but away from the nest; so I partied, hard. I met a young woman and became very accustomed to life as an adult. Due to my high school experience, I was given remedial courses. I felt as if those courses were beneath me so I didn’t take them serious. Even though I had to take those courses, I decided that I would take something that I liked as well, so I took Introduction to Anthropology as an elective and fell in love with the subject matter. What also kept my interest was that my professor was an African American male; I knew then what I wanted to spend my life doing, and it was teaching and doing research.

Interestingly enough, my distressed relationship with my parents forced me to seek out my own path in life. As my studies continued, I came to appreciate the research of Clifford Geertz, the leading anthropologist who studied symbolism and meaning. Both symbols and meaning meant a lot to me, which is in part why I decided to pledge, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated while at SIUE, because out of all of the historically Black Fraternities, theirs was the only one whose symbol was the Great Sphinx of Giza which to me meant that their purpose was far greater than partying. Since my parents thought that all I was doing at SIUE was partying and having sex, which I did a little of both, they withdrew my funding and I was forced to drop out of school, just when I became interested in anthropology and culture. So I dropped out of college, but with every intention of finding a way back in.

Soon after I left SIUE, I became I member of AmeriCorps, because I wanted to get teaching experience while also giving back to the community. Of course my parents believed I was doing nothing with my life, had never heard of AmeriCorps and when they asked me, my response was discredited because to them I was a college dropout at least that was my feeling.

2

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THE MIRROR cont.

Forced to live with my father in Chesterfield, I would recite the poems I remembered while becoming a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, murmuring them to myself as I walked to the bus stop. I would wake up every weekday at 5:00am to catch the bus which took me to the MetroLink station in Washington Park Illinois, where I’d walk from the platform to Wyvetta Hoover Young Middle School to volunteer by 8:00am. After serving two years mentoring and tutoring in an urban setting with AmeriCorps, I received an education award to go back to college, which I used to enroll at the University of Missouri – St. Louis (UMSL) to continue studying anthropology. Through this ordeal, I kept the reason I wanted to study culture alive, remembering National Geographic and my fascination with the museum, while still pondering of my ancestry. …

While on the fraternity’s website one day, there was an advertisement from African Ancestry: The Pioneers of ancestry tracing for African Americans, endorsed by members of our fraternity such as Dick Gregory and other prominent members of the African American community. One of our fraternity slogans is Respect your Roots, so it made since that this was the brotherhood for me. While studying the cultures of the world, I thought it necessary to do further research of my own. It was after receiving a refund during my second year at UMSL that I purchased the PatriClan DNA test, which traces the Y chromosomes and yields results that offer DNA matches for people living in modern day countries of the world. This purchase did in fact impact my learning, because I was able to use what I learned inside the classroom and apply that knowledge to my life. It was unsettling to find that paternally I shared ancestry with people living in modern day Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, and Great Britain, especially considering that the Portuguese initialed the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, soon before Spain followed suite. I felt that I was a spade in the game most valued for helping the conquerors win the wealth and influence that has saturated the world; manipulating the books we read. I had learned that the legacy of the Trans – Atlantic Slave Trade lived on in my body, and that sickened me, yet I continued to do research on my ancestral background.

My father’s surname is Vasser, and as I learned more about my ancestry, I came to understand the prominence that name held in the Netherlands. The name originated in Holland, and is thought to be noble. Descendants of the Vasser name have hence moved to France, changing er to an ar, in an effort to reinvent themselves in a foreign land. This same line of Vassers, built the city of Manhattan, then a small liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1861. After learning all this, I felt that it was fitting to reinvent myself as well, and that someday I would.

My parents didn’t begin taking me serious as an adult or student until I was near graduation, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Anthropology and a certificate in African Diaspora Studies. What they struggled to understand is how I managed to pay for school. Reminding them of why I served in AmeriCorps helped to put my future into perspective. Nearing my tenure as an undergraduate student, I purchased the MatriClan DNA test from African Ancestry and as I had done with the PatriClan test, submitted saliva samples to the lab and waited for my results.

Weeks later, I received the black shiny envelope from African Ancestry with my results enclosed and I froze at the sight of it. The package leaned between the screen and front door of my home. I was alone when I collected the mail and sat everything on the kitchen table and 3

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stared at the package, afraid to open it. For years I had wondered, studied culture, surrounded myself with likeminded individuals who shared with me the importance of learning one’s ancestry, but I did not have members of the fraternity to help me through the process of opening the package. I had spent over four years of my life studying under caring faculty the works of Clifford Geertz, Franz Boas, Zora Neal Hurston and others, but at home there was only me and the package. I grabbed it then quickly dropped it on the table. Took a few paces. Opened a bottle of Petite Syrah and poured a glassful of the contents into a nervous hand holding a flute. As if it was Kool-Aid, I took the wine back then took one final look at the package, grabbed it, then peeled back the perforated edge, revealing my past. The certificate read that I shared ancestry with the Bamileke people living in modern day Cameroon. Staring intently at the results, I began to cry silently. My heavy tears nearly dampening the proof of my existence beyond the confines of what I knew for so long. I was an African. I am an African. I am from Cameron. I am Bamileke. …

The Bamileke, as I have learned, migrated from Egypt (Kemet), to evade converters of Islam, yet embraced Christianity in what was then the Bight of Bonny, because before colonization, they too only worshipped one God. There, in the forests and the grasslands, the French seized one side of Cameroon while the English seized the other. Soon Germany had its way and even now the country is divided by years of forced assimilation and conquest. But despite the history, the ability to reclaim part of my identity that was taken from me makes me proud to be who I am.

In my ancestral home, “The People Down There” as they are called, communicate in French and English though few speak Ghomala, one of the many indigenous languages spoken in the region. How fitting it is that their (our) masks are in the basement of the museum? As if our identity needs to be preserved before time erases it. The Bamileke comprise of eight kingdoms, each with their own identifying characteristics, Baka Pygmy being one of them, who are the original ones who helped carry on their traditional ways. The Baka are short in statue and stocky.

They are known as the keepers of the culture and when I see myself in a mirror, I envision a past that isn’t past at all. I Binged, the pictures of our king, whom we refer to as Fon, and he is often seated in red, white, and blue regalia and leopard skins, with elephant tusks at his feet. The images I saw of the Bamileke made me think, and opened my mind to conceive an alternate reality for myself. This fundamental part of my ancestor’s identity was taken and it has taken all of these years to reclaim something as basic as the hand of which I write.

Meanwhile, here at home away from where my ancestors danced in circles around fires, I work toward a dream that often leaves my sheets ripped from the boogie men who have taken children from families, who haunt me with their burned faces from crosses that have caught wind at their attempts to intimidate, but the face is an amazing feat of nature. Even twins and triplets have subtle variations and as we get older, we get to grow handlebars and beards, or wear makeup to cover the truth. In art, some choose to remove parts of the face, like the noses revealing the phenotypic traits of the Pharaohs. There is proof, however, in the monoliths history ignores in its text, there is a perception from the emic point of view that is written off by the victors. How permanent is history when we look at the structures, the reliefs, or in the buildings in which the Madonna is true to form? At the museum, the artifacts are as pristine as they can be, allowing the truth to permeate the façade of what’s beautiful. Within the many wings, in the halls 4

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

THE MIRROR cont.

of the art museum, there are depictions of what’s considered beautiful made from the hands that created from the earth, reflections of themselves.

Hands are interesting, important things too, because they wear age in their blue rivers and valleys; and the raised mountains of scars that have healed tell stories. There aren’t many ways to hide trembling, or the loss of a digit. Like the demography in trees, hands tell stories that are often raw and ugly yet can be soft and beautiful. Hands built ancient structures and are used to tear them down. Fingers are pointed in judgment or can provide direction; they are even used to convey messages from person to person. I’ve used my hands in all of these ways, but when I prayed with them something felt arbitrary in the gesture. I learned to pray as most children do, by kneeling and placing both palms together, but have recently found more spiritual gratification in allowing them to be open. When my palms are open I am able to receive, and when I do they are cool from the freshness of God’s voice breezing over them.

The Saint Louis Art Museum is a fascinating place; its structure is a stunning building with marble fixtures and gold casings. The paintings on the walls, the sculptures and even the rooms are modeled as they were in the 18th century, are more than just items collecting dust. The pieces of art throughout the museum have voices in them and if you listen, they speak. I remember walking past a painting by Faith Ringgold of a quilt, depicting Josephine Baker in France and Henri Matisse’s Harmony in Red was just behind her in the painting. As I looked closer, the notion of painting a quilt in itself spoke volumes to the reason art exists in the first place; to bring harmony to what otherwise would be idol. The staircases are even artistic in their marble; each step visitors make naturalizes the stone. All over the museum are lessons in textiles, paintings, sculpture and the opportunity for strangers to ogle a piece of art and depart from it acquainted.

One afternoon, I visited the St. Louis Art Museum, and I sat consumed by the elephant mask, reserved for the Fon, or some other high ranking Bamileke individual, and found myself speaking to the glass. I was alone in the gallery and in the quiet, my whispers were loud enough to hear from across the room, and I knew I only had a few moments of privacy to be alone with my elders. I peered into the display case for a few solemn moments and began to whisper questions of why. Knowing I had done nothing wrong, I apologized for whatever my ancestors did that led us here, through the middle passage, the cotton fields of Aberdeen Mississippi, and the struggle. I spoke of generations of my family that had no desire to learn, and then thanked my ancestors and God for instilling something in me that others lacked. For some reason, I felt that I was not allowed to forget where I came from, was not afforded the luxury to be complacent in my western ways. While I confessed my sorrow, the tears ran warm from both of my slanted eyes, and the hair on the nape of my neck stood as I faintly heard a reply from the beaded mask, behind the glass, that suddenly seemed to show emotion.

He whispered to me that it was ok and that she is smiling on me for not forgetting. I sat and looked deep into the eye sockets of the elephant, past the black void reserved for windows of the soul. Leaning in, I continued to listen and felt comfort in the warmth that overcame the chills on my face and hands, and suddenly I didn’t feel so small, but naturally built to withstand and continue on. I felt colossal as I arose from the bench to leave. It was autumn and I knew that the leaves outside were slowing changing and after crying, I smiled knowing that I was slowly changing too.

5

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

Two men There are two men at odds in my head moving the furniture knocking over stacks they kept fighting after my whispers echoed the halls to stop.

There are two men at odds in my head one fighting for a star gold in the center the other fifty both for a cause.

There are two men at odds in my head each waving a flag unity in one’s center states in the upper left of the other - all white blue behind - above stripes.

There are two men at odds in my head pulling at either end with enough force to stay in the middle of my vast with equal reasons why I should be both halves standing in the blood soaked grasslands in the land of the free.

pg.

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

John Jennings Associate Professor Visual Studies SUNY Buffalo tumblr: http://jijennin70. tumblr.com/

pg.

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

Inspire...

There is an opportunity for parents to help theirs children explore more learning options and build vocabulary over the summer. When students are engagng in academic and fun learning camps over the summer they broaden their horizon to keep their minds focused on learning.

The building of character, vocabulary and continued focus of education. When students engage in summer camp activities on college campuses this helps them to gain more information about college, careers and learning for the next grade level.

It has been proven that students who take summer academic and enrichment camps retain more of what they learned during the school year. This has been part of an experiment I did with my own child. He was enrolled in the Gifted Resources Council Camps during the summer of the 4th grade.

The camp focuses on academics of mathematics, science and reading through utilization of creative topics like Space, the Stock Exchange and creating businesses. I noticed after that summer that my son became an honor roll student.

After that summer my son was involved in programs each year. The program’s included the Bridge Program at UMSL, Junior Engineering Programs at Saint Louis Community College and Junior Chef Programs. Encourage spelling of cities and recognizing capitols when traveling during the summer. Any little game that encourages learning can be fun.

Parents should check with the school counselors, community civic centers, boys and girls clubs, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, YMCA and YWCA. Also, the school districts offer some summer enrichment or transition programs in addition to summer school therefore, always look for projects that can enhance your child’s portfolio before the enter high school. When they arrive at high school they will have an impressive 9th Grade Resume.

Younger students are encouraged to read aloud 15 - 30 minutes daily. The reading builds confidence in speaking publicly and vocabulary. Please continue to find ways to invest in improving your child’s education while they are away from school. Therefore, when they return, it will not seem like they took a vacation from learning.

Thanks for listening about learning!

Joy South pg.

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r e m m Su G N I N R A E L

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

S.L .A .M.

St. Louis Art Museum

ART COLLECTIONS

EXHIBITS

EVENTS

Admission to the Museum is free every day.

Hours:

Tuesday–Sunday, 10:00 am–5:00 pm

|

Friday, 10:00 am–9:00 pm

|

Closed Monday

w w w. s l a m . o r g One Fine Arts Drive - Forest Park, St. Louis, MO 63110-1380 314.721.0072

pg.

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

ART OFOF FOOD ART FOOD

CHE Inspired

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So May this year was a crazy month for me…part of the reason why you didn’t see a submission from me. I quit one of the best jobs I’ve ever had, packed up my apartment and moved from California back to St. Louis! In the midst of all of that stress and chaos, I got to take a small vacation. My little cousin and god-brother was graduating from Columbia University and there was absolutely no way I was going to miss him walk across that stage. Besides it was time to get back to New York and have a small family vacation.

EF d

There were only 3 things that I absolutely just had to do during my trip, besides spend time with family…make sure I got my tickets to The Chew, see my idol Brandy portray Roxie Hart in Chicago and visit Chef Marcus Samuelson’s new restaurant Streetbird. Well I got to do 2 out of the 3. I got tickets to The Chew but somehow they overbooked and they couldn’t let my aunts & I in for the taping. However meeting and seeing my favorite singer of all-time slay the Broadway stage and bring her own flavor to a classic character, more than made up for what I “missed”. If you get the chance to go to New York by August 22nd, I strongly suggest that you see the amazing production of Chicago.

I can honestly say there are very few chefs that I follow, look up to & am inspired by…

Chef Marcus Samuelson, is one of those few. About a year ago I remember going through my Instagram one night and he was posting pictures and talking about his new Harlem restaurant, Streetbird. Ever since then it’s been the one place I’ve been looking forward to eat at. The very first thing my mom and I did after we got off the plane was grab an Uber and headed straight to Harlem! By far it was one of the best culinary experiences of my life.

Streetbird is by far the funkiest restaurant I’ve ever stepped into. From the names of the menu items, to the décor, atmosphere, music, structure, wait staff and (Old School) HipHop theme….it’s simply the flyyest! Some of the menu items: The Fly Girl, Grace Jonezz, Cuppa Rice, the Bruce Leroy, and Sho’Nuff Noodles. My mom ordered the “New Jack Fried Rice” with Catfish, I got “Mama Said Wok You Out”, & we shared the Bevy. The Bevy is a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie with more melted chocolate chips topped with toasted marshmallows!!!! Pure foodgasm! It was the most amazing taste ever, I mean EVER! We fought over the last bite. The “Mama Said Wok You Out” was a crispy chicken stir-fry with broccoli, peanuts, sesame seeds & jasmine rice…but it was the sauce that made me fall in love with it in the first bite.

I hate that I waited so long to attempt this recipe. For the simple fact that I honestly cannot remember what the sauce on the crispy chicken tasted like. (Horrible, I know!

I’ll just have to go back to Streetbird and order it again ;-).) So since I can’t remember, I combined two different recipes for the sauce and added some extra spices to it.

There are plenty of alternatives for this recipe. For instance, I used fresh chicken tenders instead of chicken breasts. Chicken tenders are already the perfect size, so there’s a lot less cutting needed. If you’re too scared or pressed for time to make the sauce from scratch, just buy some Sweet & Sour Sauce. This way all you have to do is heat it up and add the spices and whatever else to it, to get your desired flavor. Also instead of double breading the chicken, simply add a ½ C of cornstarch to the flour and spice mixture.

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CHEF INSPIRED cont.

Honey–Orange Garlic Crispy Chicken Yields: 4 servings

For the Chicken: 3-4 lb Skinless, Boneless Breast (or Tenders) chopped into (medium) bite-sized pieces 1½-2 C All-purpose flour 4 tsp Salt 4 tsp Black Pepper, ground 1 tsp White Pepper, ground 3 Tb Ginger, ground 1 Tb Nutmeg, ground 2 tsp Sage, ground 2 Tb Paprika 1 tsp Cayenne Pepper

Egg Wash: 3 6 Tb 1 Tb dash

Whole Eggs Water Sesame Oil Salt & Pepper

For the Sauce: 3 Garlic Cloves, minced 3 Tb Vegetable Oil Finely grated zest of 1 small orange ¾ C Honey 1/3 C Rice Wine Vinegar ½ tsp Salt ½ tsp Ground Black Pepper 1 tsp Chili Flakes ½ tsp Sesame oil 1½ Tb Soy Sauce 1½-2 Tb Corn Starch (rounded, not leveled off) ¼ C Water

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1. Combine the flour, salt, black + white pepper, ground ginger, nutmeg, thyme, sage, paprika & cayenne pepper. (*You will have extra mix leftover, you can the save unused mixture for a later date.)

2. Make an egg wash by whisking together eggs, salt, pepper, sesame oil and water.

3. Working in batches: season the chicken chunks with salt & pepper, then dip the meat in the flour and spice mixture. Dip the chunks into the egg wash and then a final time in the flour/spice mix, pressing the mix into the meat to get good contact.

4. Heat a skillet on the stove with about 1 inch of oil covering the bottom. You will want to carefully regulate the temperature here so that the chicken doesn’t brown too quickly. (Just below medium heat works best.)

5. Drain on a wire rack or paper towels for a couple of minutes before adding to Honey Orange Garlic Sauce. Serve with your choice of rice or noodles. *I recommend using Jasmine rice.

To make the Honey-Orange Garlic Sauce 1. Begin by adding the garlic & oil to a medium saucepan over medium low heat.

2. Sauté for a couple of minutes until the garlic is softened but not browned, then add the remaining ingredients except the water and cornstarch.

3. Simmer together slowly for about 20 minutes or until the volume is reduced by about half. Skim off any film that may come to the surface.

4. Mix together the corn starch and water. (This is called a slurry.)

5. Pour slowly into the saucepan stirring constantly to thicken the sauce to a glaze-like consistency. Boil for only another minute and remove from the heat.

6. Coat the chicken chunks with the sauce before serving. Add your choice of your favorite vegetables, i.e. broccoli, green beans, peppers, snap peas, etc. For extra presentation, top with non-salted peanuts, sesame seeds & chopped green onions.

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Doré

Bon Appétit,

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The

Art

Ink of

BLACK PEARL Pearl Gallery Studio

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Roland Sato Page Jr aka Yung Ro, had to step into his father’s shoes to which he guided Black Pearl tattoo shop to a higher level. He was once a independent rap artist who charted Billboard music charts twice. He traded in one craft for another to continue the ink legacy. He always been around the tattoo business so it was second nature for him. “He made me proud even training my youngest son, Robert Jiro Page, to assist him” said Roland Page, Sr. Twenty years ago, Roland Sr. created one of the first culturally diverse shops in the midwest which was a great achievement in itself, “but watching my sons carry on my legacy is a more prouder achievement.”

Black Pearl/Pearl Gallery now offers tattoo removal with discounts for military recruits and gang tattoo removal. Yung Ro always says “Body Art is a legacy for my family. The passion is embedded deep in our DNA”.

---------------------------------Black Pearl/Pearl gallery Studio 2008 Olive St. Louis, MO 63103 314-621-1020

http://www.itsmyurls.com/yungro http://www.twitter.com/tokyocertified

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ART OF INK cont.

“

Body Art is a lega

The passion is embed

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”

acy for my family.

dded deep in our DNA

http://www.itsmyurls.com/yungro Copyright © 2015 - All rights reserved.

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Art of Healing

Your Ad or Article could be here!

Contact us if you have a contribution to the ART OF HEALING. pg.

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UrbArts

to Send VerbQuake to Brave New Voices

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On April 18th, 2015, Northside-based nonprofit UrbArts awarded Kirkwood’s High School poetry slam team K-Word with a second VerbQuake team championship during the organizations fourth annual youth poetry slam tournament. K-Word scored 112 points out of 120 possible.

Unlike previous champions, K-Word will represent the St. Louis region at an international youth poetry slam entitled Brave New Voices Festival to be held in Atlanta, Georgia this July. Joining the team champion will be Erielle Jones, a senior at Hazelwood West and VerbQuake’s 2015 Indie Championship, and Charles McGill, a senior at Jennings High School who placed second in the Indie Championship Final.

K-Word poets Euphone’, Anna, Ronnie, and Mary comprise the team’s core. Given the regional composition, VerbQuake will serve as the name for the Urb Arts sponsored youth team.

The VerbQuake team performed at the 2015 African Arts Festival among other events in preparation for Brave New Voices.th and at the Word X Fest following the 4th annual Spoken Word Expo in Old North on July 11th.

Two members of the team experienced their first radio interview on the KDHX Literature for the Halibut podcast at KDHXtra.

K-Word’s sponsor is Kirkwood High School’s Dominic Pioter. Poetry slam veteran Freeman Word served as their coach. Both will accompany the VerbQuake team to Brave New Voices.

Jennings High School’s Misfits placed second, scoring 111 points. Hazelwood West’s Slamcats placed third, Grand Center Arts Academy’s Poetic Soulz placed fourth, Carnahan High School of the Future’s Déjà Vu placed fifth and McCluer High School’s McWord placed sixth.

Grants from Missouri Arts Council, Regional Arts Commission, and Deaconess Foundation funded VerbQuake Youth Poetry Slam for the 2015 season.

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Kwansaba for Poet Norman Jordan (1938-2015)

Natural/astral like “Ankh” Dumas, Norman piloted Extra Sensory Poetics, parted waters of history to undam/n our hurts & WHOLES (ala Langston, Gwen, Trane). Dug, exhumed, assumed preancient Nommo stances, drum-trances. His “Muntu”hoodoo vessels--voice-evoked--choreo’d, soulo’d & & Leo’d line-ages of village love.

Eugene B. Redmond

Texto y Contexto. Fall 1969: Painter Oliver Jackson, poet Quincy Troupe & I left the Middle Mississippi Valley (East St. Louis, IL & St. Louis, MO) for Ohio where we met Cleveland poet Norman Jordan (playwright-in residence at Karamu House). Common thread of this quartet: Black Arts/Black Power Movement & writer Henry “Ankh” Dumas (1934-1968), with whom Jackson & I had taught at ESL’s Experiment in

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Kwansaba for Poet Norman Jordan (1938-2015)�

Natural/astral like “Ankh” Dumas, Norman piloted� Extra Sensory Poetics, parted waters of history� to undam/n our hurts & WHOLES (ala� Langston, Gwen, Trane). Dug, exhumed, assumed pre-� ancient Nommo stances, drum-trances. His “Muntu”-� hoodoo vessels--voice-evoked--choreo'd, soulo'd &� & Leo'd line-ages of village love.� Eugene B. Redmond�

Texto y Contexto�. Fall 1969, Cleveland: Painter Oliver Jackson, poet Quincy Troupe & I met Norman Jordan (Karamu House playwright-in-residence).� Common thread: Black Arts/Black Power & writer Henry “Ankh” Dumas (1934-1968). Jordan (“Destination: Ashes”), other “Muntu” poets like� Russell Atkins (“Freelance”) & Bill Russell, Karamu (Langston's favorite space) & poet James Kilgore (Cuyahoga Community College) helped drive� Cleveland's BAM.�Epilogue:�Oft-published (“Black World”/Hughes's “Poetry of the Negro”), the award-winning Jordan & I last met in 2012 at� Emory University in Atlanta when he attended my poetry reading/interview conducted by Richard Long (1927-2013).�Ayibobo!�

Photos (from Noel E. Wines, the Jordan Estate & EBR) are courtesy of the Eugene B. Redmond Collection: Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville (�eredmon@siue.edu�)� To view or donate go to: http://www.siue.edu/lovejoylibrary/about/digital_collections.shtml� Copyright © 2015 - All rights reserved.

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Walking the Blue Line: A Police Officer Turned Community Activist Provides Solutions for the Racial Divide

By Terrell Carter Bettie Youngs Book Publishers

$15.00 paperback

“As I recall my experiences, I find it incredulous that people in law enforcement honestly believe and say that a racial divide and racial profiling don’t exist. An officer’s mind is divided: first, between the police and the general public and second, between the police and minorities.”~ Terrell Carter Walking the Blue Line follows the author’s experiences growing up as a black child in St. Louis, MO, a racially charged city still trying to overcome its divided past, and his five year journey as a law enforcement officer which led him to reevaluate his views on citizens and police alike. Readers are taken on a compelling journey as he details personal stories of the challenges of navigating this new world, including how he had to testify against a former partner for falsifying a major drug arrest.

Terrell details the thoughts and tactics of police officers based on their training in the police academy and lessons they learn on the streets and how this information can help citizens better understand why officers do what they do while still holding them accountable for protecting and serving their communities.

Walking the Blue Line can be ordered from www.terrellcarter.net, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and traditional booksellers.

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For Immediate Release

July 1, 2015 | St. Louis, MO For further information, contact: Khatib A.F. Waheed, Co-Organizer Phone: 314. 721-0557

A March to Promote Peace: A Call to Action to Reduce Family, Community & Police Violence St. Louis, Missouri– The Demetrious Johnson Charitable Foundation, Places for People, St. Louis Public Schools, St. Louis Initiative to Reduce Violence (SIRV), Ethical Society of Police-St. Louis, Ald. Frank Williamson (D-26th Ward) and numerous other organizations, elected officials, human service agencies, professionals, activists, youth, and cultural/grassroots organizations will be convening a March to Promote Peace, Justice and Healing: A Call to Action to Reduce Family, Community and Police Violence on Saturday, July 25, 2015.

The March to Promote Peace will begin early Saturday with a rally from 8:30 a.m. - 9:00 a.m. and the march from 9:00-10:00 a.m., at the Demetrious Johnson Charitable Foundation, located at 724 N. Union Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63108. Participants will mobilize to show their support of children, families and adults who have witnessed and/or been traumatized by: physical abuse and domestic violence in their homes; bullying, assault, and murder in their neighborhoods and schools; and excessive force by certain law enforcement personnel and agencies in their communities.

Following the March to Promote Peace, educational panels will start at 10:30 a.m., to address the following topic areas:   

“Recognizing and Addressing the Effects of Trauma, Violence and Toxic Stress on Child and Family Well-Being” “Improving Child Serving Agencies and Developing Youth Leaders” and “Next Steps for implementing the Citizens Oversight Board.”

Individuals and families who have lost a loved one to a homicide in the City of St. Louis, and who plan to attend the educational seminars, can receive an update regarding the status of that investigation between 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. All interested persons, are asked to contact Khatib A.F. Waheed at (314) 721-0557 to make arrangements by Friday, July 10, 2015.

Throughout the day, starting at 10:30 a.m., children will be entertained outdoors with fun-filled activities including face painting, street games, pony rides and a huge inflatable bouncer. For more information contact Khatib A.F. Waheed at (314) 721-0557.

#

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March to Promote Peace: A Call To Action

March to Promote Peace, Justice and Healing: Reducing Family, Community and Police Violence WHEN: Saturday, July 25, 2015 8:30 am – 5:00 pm WHERE: Demetrious Johnson Charitable Foundation 724 N. Union Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63108 RALLY: 8:30 am - 9:00 am MARCH: 9:00 am -10:00 am Fun-Filled Children Activities 10:30 am -5:00 pm (outside)

Fun Pony Rides Fun Huge Inflatable Bouncer Fun Street Games Fun Face Painting

Call To Action Educational Panels 10:30 am - 5:00 pm (inside)

Next Steps With Citizen Oversight Board Addressing Effects of Trauma/Toxic Stress Improving Child Serving Agencies & Developing Youth Leadership Well Being & Healing

Individuals and families who have lost a loved one to a homicide in the City of St. Louis, can receive an update regarding the status of that investigation between 1:00-4:00 pm All interested persons, please contact Khatib Waheed at (314) 721-0557 to make arrangements by Friday, July 10, 2015.

Grief and Trauma interventions will be available upon request.

Co-Sponsored by the Demetrious Johnson Charitable Foundation, Places For People, St. Louis Initiative To Reduce Violence (SIRV), St. Louis Public Schools, Ethical Society of Police-St. Louis & Ald. Frank Williamson, D-26th Ward For more information contact Khatib A.F. Waheed, Co-Organizer @ (314) 721-0557

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

21st Century

Identity Struggles 21 st Century Identity Struggles

The masculine mucho-macho, testosterone-driven man is here to stay, think actor and former athlete, The Rock, aka, Dwayne Johnson. The ultra-feminine girly girl won’t go away either; Kim Kardashian might be the picture in your head. But what’s being increasingly realized is that humans fall along a continuum between ultra-masculine and ultra-feminine.

So we’re increasingly thinking and acting outside the binary box.

Films such as Some Like it Hot, Tootsie, Mrs. Doubtfire and To Woo Foo flirted with the idea of men dressing and acting like women. But they were mainly depictions of transvestites or cross-dressers with little-to-no attention to gender identity struggles.

Caitlyn Jenner, formerly known as Bruce Jenner, is unique, despite the hubbub about her self-identifying as a woman. For one, there’s a class component; her wealth and celebrity serve as buffers against discrimination, hostility and even downright violence. Those less similarly situated are not faring nearly as well. For example, a study by the National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that in the U.S. and abroad there’s “an unparalleled level of suicidal behavior among transgender adults.” In fact, in the U.S., the attempted transgender suicide rate is nearly nine times the national average. About one percent of the U.S. population feels like a woman in a man’s body or like a man in a woman’s body. So the jury is still out whether the reality TV star and former Olympic track and field champion, will blaze a trail.

Still, Jenner’s announcement of his new gender has mostly received rave approval with so many endorsements and appearances she can barely keep up. The decathlon athlete can be

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seen on June’s magazine cover of Vanity Fair posing like a sexy starlet in off-white satin lingerie, bust size 36D. In fact, he broke President Obama’s recent Twitter record, amassing more than one million followers in four hours.

For the time being, she may’ve also trumped her former wife, Kris Jenner, the media-mogul.

The momager has distinguished herself many times over with reality TV shows, endorsements, high-fashion runway model daughter, Kendell Jenner, the public’s obsession with daughter Kim Kardashian West as well as other members of her unlikely famous tribe.

But Caitlyn is a force to be reckoned with, from acquiring the title of the “world’s greatest athlete” to the “most famous transgendered person in the world.” This is no small feat.

There is a normative ethical dimension that should be explored regarding the public’s histrionic reaction, particularly with men deciding to be women. Like handwringing parents being confronted with their teenage son sashaying in as a girl, the public is still reeling from what many view as bold and outlandish behavior. Caitlyn has definitely spurred a national dialogue questioning this heretofore-unconventional behavior. To pose it another way: Are we transitioning into accepting a new world gender order? Not just male, not just female, but everything in between. This is not new, but just newly accepted, as there’ve always been individuals, from cisgender, bigender, gay, lesbian, androgyny, third gender, pangender, etc.

In the Kama Sutra, an ancient Indian Sankrit literature on the art of love and sexual technique, Hijra or transsexuals, are prominently noted. For many years in Southern India there’ve been all-Hijra communities. Some activists have lobbied for their official recognition as the third sex, neither male nor female. Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India,

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IDENTITY STRUGGLES cont.

recognizes them by law. In 2014, The Indian Supreme Court followed, recognizing their existence. Therefore, this is not just a national phenomenon, this is happening in places around the world.

Transgendered men are being accepted into U.S. women’s colleges. Some universities are making unisex restrooms and gender-neutral dorms. Policies to protect their identity have also been fashioned. Opening up the floodgates will most likely affect the fundamental character of a culture, including it’s underlying attitudes, beliefs and practices about what it means to be a man or a woman, hastened by social media, cable and 24-hour news cycle.

We marvel over the Wonders of the World, from the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Great Wall of China to the Taj Mahal. The ingenuity, resourcefulness and sheer genius of humankind have always been a source of wonder, astonishment and pride. Of late has been a gender identity awakening perhaps not quite on such a grand scale as the Wonders of the World, but social acceptance of gender reassignment must have prior generations (resting in peace) now spinning in their graves.

Unlike passing, when Blacks made a calculated decision to pass as Whites, they were trying to escape discrimination to enjoy White-skin privilege. Passing is indeed a conundrum and makes no sense, because (based on race as biology) if you look White you should be classified as White. Similarly if you look Black, you should be viewed as Black. But what may escape one’s attention is race as an age-old and contorted social/political construct that by law proclaimed that if individuals had one-sixteenth of a drop of Black blood, they were Black, even if they had Nordic features. Remnants of this insanity remain.

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seen on June’s magazine cover of Vanity Fair posing like a sexy starlet in off-white satin lingerie, Harlem bust Renaissance size 36D.author In fact, Nella he Larsen broke President in her novel, Obama’s recent Twitter arecord, amassing Passing, considered masterpiece of more than literature, one million followers in fourwho hours.

American is about a woman looks White but is classified Black. She marries a prominent but avowed racist White man and is miserable but enjoys all the material wealth For timetobeing, shethat may’ve also trumped her former wife,film, KrisPinky Jenner, the media-mogul. and the access privilege Whiteness can bring.

The 1949 , starring Jeanne The Crain, momager Ethel Barrymore has distinguished and Ethel herself Waters, many is about times aover nursing with student reality TV played shows,

by Crain who is passing for White.

Her mother is Ethel Waters, the Black maid.

These the woes of the endorsements, high-fashion runway model daughter, Kendell Jenner, the are public’s obsession with tragicdaughter mulatto,Kim whoKardashian according toWest this outdated as well asthinking, other members does not offit her into unlikely either famous world. tribe.

But Caitlyn is a force to be reckoned with, from acquiring the title of the “world’s greatest athlete” The latest to all theover “most thefamous media transgendered is a real-life account personofinRachel the world.”

Dolezal, This until is no recently small headed feat. the NAACP Chapter in Spokane, Washington and professor of Africana Studies at Eastern There Washington is a normative University. ethical She’s dimension under firethat forshould lying for beyears explored aboutregarding her racialthe identity. public’sHer histrionic parents recently reaction, outed particularly her, saying withshe’s menWhite deciding nottoBlack. be women.

The city Like is also handwringing investigating parents if she being violated confronted their ethics with code their in teenage applyingson forsashaying the Spokane in asPolice a girl, Oversight the publicCommission is still reelingthat from she what chaired. manyInview a statement as bold and released outlandish by the behavior.

NAACP, itCaitlyn said the haschapter definitely is respecting spurred aher national privacy and standing by her, as venerable organization has historically In fact, dialogue questioning thisthe heretofore-unconventional behavior.

Tobeen posemulti-racial. it another way: Are many of the civilinto rights group’sanational leaders have been White. we transitioning accepting new world gender order?

Not justSubsequently, male, not just Dolezal female, but everything resigned from in between. the rightsThis group is not andnew, frombut thejust police newly commission accepted, as and there’ve she noalways longerbeen works at the university. individuals, from cisgender, bigender, gay, lesbian, androgyny, third gender, pangender, etc.

This Kama indeed Sutra, a teachable an ancientmoment, Indian Sankrit as specialists literature hadon anthe opportunity art of lovetoand educate sexualthe public.

In thewas technique, For example, Hijra among or transsexuals, Blacks, there areare prominently all colors, from noted.blueberry For many Black years to in cotton Southern ball White India there’ve and all colors been all-Hijra are accepted communities. and most families Some activists are multi-hued. have lobbied There for remains their official a slight recognition preference for as the lighter thirdskin sex,and neither straighter male hair, nor female. althoughBangalore, dwindling.the What Silicon wasValley formerly of India,

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IDENTITY STRUGGLES cont.

referred to as: “The lightening of the race.� Not just in the U.S., but in such places as the Caribbean, Brazil, parts of Africa and India.

When Michael Jackson transitioned from dark skin to light skin and from wide nose to narrow, he became the object of national scorn, not to mentioned his gender-neutral look.

Sammy Sosa, a Dominican retired professional baseball player, made a similar skin color transition and again, perhaps not as vociferous, but palpable were criticisms and cackles.

Of course, people are always changing their looks. Hair is an obsession. Men and women dye, straighten, curl, cut, shave their heads to be bald; men wear toupees, women wear weaves. Some change their eye-color with contacts. Makeup works wonders. Cosmetic surgery is an enormous industry, with 15 million surgeries in 2014. Breast augmentations are very popular so are rhinoplasties or nose jobs; also less invasive procedures such as Botox injections. More people in the U.S. undergo plastic surgery than anywhere else in the world. The top five countries with most plastic surgery per capita are: South Korea, Greece, Italy, Brazil and Columbia, respectively.

Yet, nothing seems to rile like snipping off a penis to make a vagina. (Jenner says he as no plans to do this, although he’s had other work done.) Apparently, nothing also riles like a White woman who claims to be transracial.

Holding firm has been the gender line since time immemorial, never to be crossed. Yet now there is a rethinking, apparently the gender-line was drawn in the sand on the beach and

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seen on June’s magazine cover of Vanity Fair posing like a sexy starlet in off-white satin not in concrete. As the high tide in the sea is beginning to wash it away, there’s seemingly a lingerie, bust size 36D. In fact, he broke President Obama’s recent Twitter record, amassing heightening of awareness and perhaps a reconstruction of gender. more than one million followers in four hours.

Needless to say, gender struggles are not over and continue. The 1970s Blaxploitation film For the time being, she may’ve also trumped her former wife, Kris Jenner, the media-mogul. genre was not only an assault on White patriarchal masculinity, particularly in light of the The momager has distinguished herself many times over with reality TV shows, social conditions of the era, it was a reaction to the demasculinization of Black male endorsements, high-fashion runway model daughter, Kendell Jenner, the public’s obsession characters in film, TV, radio and other media, typically portrayed as meek, lazy and with daughter Kim Kardashian West as well as other members of her unlikely famous tribe. dominated by women. Take Stepin Fetchit (Lincoln Theodore Perry), reviled by Blacks, But Caitlyn is a force to be reckoned with, from acquiring the title of the “world’s greatest who played this role over and over again. athlete” to the “most famous transgendered person in the world.” This is no small feat.

Performers in many rap videos convey the image of hyper-masculinity, such as 50 Cents, There is a normative ethical dimension that should be explored regarding the public’s with additional drug trafficking street creds of surviving being shot nine times and bad boy, histrionic reaction, particularly with men deciding to be women. Like handwringing parents Tupac Shakur. These Black macho images endure for a number of reasons -- primarily to being confronted with their teenage son sashaying in as a girl, the public is still reeling from gain control of Black images and bodies that have been hijacked by commercialism. Yet what many view as bold and outlandish behavior. Caitlyn has definitely spurred a national metro-sexuals such as Pharell, even Kanye West, are increasingly popular. dialogue questioning this heretofore-unconventional behavior. To pose it another way: Are we transitioning into accepting a new world gender order? Not just male, not just female, but Rarely superheroes in media including comic books were anything other than White males. everything in between. This is not new, but just newly accepted, as there’ve always been This is beginning to change. Therefore, groups, particularly Black men, still struggling with individuals, from cisgender, bigender, gay, lesbian, androgyny, third gender, pangender, etc. controlling their own images may not be ready just yet to let go of the strong, rugged, stonecold lady’s man. Shall I say Richard Roundtree’s Shaft?

In the Kama Sutra, an ancient Indian Sankrit literature on the art of love and sexual technique, Hijra or transsexuals, are prominently noted. For many years in Southern India It appears that Black transgender actor Laverne Cox of Orange is the New Black or the there’ve been all-Hijra communities. Some activists have lobbied for their official stunningly attractive RuPaul, creator of the TV series, Drag Race, may have less difficulty recognition as the third sex, neither male nor female. Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India,

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IDENTITY STRUGGLES cont.

being accepted by the dominant culture and more difficulty by Blacks because of this historical construction of Black masculinity.

Not to ignore the female gender. Black women continue to be stereotyped as overly domineering, loud and masculine, i.e., a defeminization. Although one could assert that this is the woman of the future, western culture has portrayed this image with disdain. In regard to the media representations of Black men and women, this is where the unpacking of the intersection of race, sexuality and gender starts; a collision that has yet to be completely sorted through.

For example, tennis superstar Serena Williams is being criticized for her lack of femininity, particularly from a White male perspective. Social media postings, many beyond the pale, complain that she’s too muscular, too manly and even grunts on court. In reality, she dominates the game, has confidence and power, so she couldn’t be a woman. They therefore find her very unattractive, including making nasty comments about her Negroid features. Obviously, they haven’t been paying attention. There are many women over the ages that don’t fit their narrow gender construct. It goes without saying that both Serena and her equally talented tennis pro sister, Venus, are gorgeous.

Despite recent media frenzy, the gender-line between masculine and feminine (as of late) seems to ebb and flow. Asked whether Caitlyn will make a difference, Sally Ebest, PhD, director of Gender Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, responded: “I think so because for the last few years, everything has been LGB (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual) with no

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attention paid to the T or Transgender. So the public has not gotten the degree or understanding of awareness and acceptance. Caitlyn will definitely raise awareness.”

Last November, the UMSL Gender Studies Program, partnered with The College of Education and the College of Arts and Sciences to put on The Transgendered Spectrum

Conference. Another conference will take place this year at UMSL, November 6 – 7. The aim is to educate participants about a wide range of transgender issues.

Learn more, go to: http://transgenderspectrum.edu

Malaika Horne, PhD is an academic writer and journalist.

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John Jennings Associate Professor Visual Studies SUNY Buffalo tumblr: http://jijennin70. tumblr.com/

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Jabari Asim Revisits Realism

While reading the uncorrected page proofs of Jabari Asim’s Only the Strong: An American Novel (Chicago: Agate, 2015), I take a break to suggest to a poet who knows St. Louis intimately that he might like this novel. He might like how the novel minimizes those stereotypes too often taken as givens when some writers depict contemporary life and the city. Only the Strong avoids parading its characters as if they were ads for a famous brand of American beer; the story doesn’t pander to readers who are in a hurry for a fix. Asim, as I later informed one his fellow first-novelists is not selling the designer drugs of urban literature.

Asim wants his readers to have the equivalent of listening to Jerry Butler’s 1969 recording of “Only the Strong Survive” and Butler’s 1971 duet with Brenda Lee Eager of “Ain’t Understanding Mellow.” Popular music of the 1960s is a crucial element in the novel, and astute readers will take advantage of the aesthetic pleasure that audio memory of the golden oldies provokes. Asim’s take on realism is neither magic nor social in the sense that traditional criticism would use those variants. His realism is real in the sense that Roberta Flack would force you to compare to what.

People from the inner circles of American publishing want to compare Asim to Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, Raymond Chandler and Edward P. Jones. And there’s more than a grain of precision in doing so for the purposes of marketing. On the other hand, Asim is savvy about levels of publishing and is smart enough not to invite his readers to confuse what is reportedly pathological and correctly stereotyped with what nuanced fiction refracts about what is “normal.” He writes with just the choice of diction and careful use of allusions to enable Only the Strong to survive in a vortex of complicated reader responses. Many a first novel is so busy with its story that it forgets its language. That is not the case with Asim’s work.

Asim’s novel does echo some typical features of how Himes dealt with the urban condition; it has some very tender reminders of how Killens handled the truth of relationships between women and men in ‘Sippi. And something provocative might emerge from using geo-spatial software to text-mine Only the Strong. The characters, regardless of their moral vices or virtues, do “represent” what went down back in the day across the river from East Boogie. Asim is very clear that those who survived then and those who continue breathing in the non-fictional present will have scars. No one with the probable exception of Reuben Jones’ youngest son survives Gateway City without a scratch. Like music, baseball as played in the Negro League is a crucial structuring device in the novel; every time you think you know what’s coming across home plate, Asim throws a curve you did not anticipate. The ending of the novel skates on some thin ice and threatens to fall into Lake Melodrama, but Asim maintains his cool, his ceremony of poise” throughout the four main segments ---”Leg Breaker,” “Tenderness,” “Trouble,” and “The Storm.” He knows just when to insert motherwit from the laughing barrel and when the text can bear Mozart or the seductiveness of Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” monologue.

One of the best novels published so far in 2015, Only the Strong repays a patient reading. Asim’s affection and respect for St. Louis and some of the people who lived there in the 20th century signal that African American literature thrives.

Jerry W. Ward, Jr. June 28, 2015

For an older generation that lets John A. Williams, Alice Walker, and John Oliver Killens set bars for good fiction, Asim does not disappoint. If asked what is good about his work, a few of us elders will reply, without apology, “It

is good for the purpose of assaulting your postmodern ears that have been theorized to be deaf.” It is good to remind us that

humanity does not willingly inhabit a zoo of correctness. As a novelist, Asim earned the respect that in an imagined past he would have got from Ralph Waldo (either Emerson or Ellison; take your pick). Writing about St. Louis as a lifescape named Gateway City, Asim moves the plot along smoothly by using subtle indirect discourse as well as sympathetic authorial control. His characters are truly characters more than they are social types. If you can dig what President Obama preached in his eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinckney, you can dig the amazing grace of Only the Strong. Do not confuse grace with perfection. Grace has just those slight flaws that rescue us from “a will to historical forgetfulness” and confirm that our consciousness “is a product of our memory, sustained and constantly reinforced by events, by our watchful waiting, and by our hopeful suspension of final judgment as to the meaning of our grievances” (I just stole the quoted words from Ellison’s essay “The World and the Jug,” The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison [New York: Modern Library, 1995, p. 171] ). If you know Jack, you know what Ellison proclaimed and what Asim delivers is the real thing. pg.

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Copyright Š 2015 - All rights reserved.

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

Portfolio Fundraiser Moves to Artist's Studio

Janet Riehl's "Women & Wardrobe: The Riehl Collection" exhibit has finished it's successful run at The Portfolio Gallery and Education Center. It brought in $2,000 to help with much-needed building repairs. Many people went home with framed ($150) and unframed ($50) prints they love, and a good time was had by all.

Folks have said they would have loved to have seen the show, and were sorry they missed it. Janet has decided to host At Home evenings on Wednesdays from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m. so you can! Come visit, enjoy the work, and of course buy whatever calls to you.

Any profit realized will continue to benefit Portfolio Gallery.

If you'd like to come, please contact her at janet.riehl@gmail.com.

Janet and Robert Powell, director of Portfolio Gallery and Education Center appeared on Fox 2 news. http://fox2now.com/2014/07/29/women-wardrobe-and-art-on-a-cell-phone-atportfolio/# Janet and her art was featured in the Alton Telegraph. http://www.thetelegraph.com/news/home_top-lifestyle-news/50095336/Artists-workmakes-Riehl-results#.U-Tbf1Ao7qC

Come on out! Meet some new people and enjoy some playful, colorful, and sensuous art inspired by African Women.

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AfroWorld is an African-American owned and operated cultural and fashion center located in St. Louis.

It was founded in 1970 and has been a space where the community can come to learn, share, and shop! In 2015 we are proud to celebrate our 45th year of service to our customers.

AfroWorld needs your support so we can continue to have the funds necessary to market, operate, and sustain high quality cultural education programs that support our network of authors and artists who participate in our ongoing community empowerment series. We also want to purchase computers and materials to increase the efficiency of our outreach efforts, educate the next generation of community entrepreneurs, and upgrade the tech equipment used to produce our events and programs. Your financial commitment allows AfroWorld to continue its legacy of bringing people together in a space that celebrates and uplifts the African-American experience.

Please help us reach our goal today!

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The

New African Paradigm

Study Group (NAPSG)

is an organization dedicated to the empowerment and education of our community through book study and our lecture series. We have brought many African scholars to St. Louis to awaken our people and to get on one accord to face the challenges in our community.

The NAPSG is in need of your help so we are currently seeking new members to help us continue to be able to meet the demands of our lecture series and our study group.

Our study group meets every 3rd Sunday at Sabayet, 4000 Maffit, St. Louis, MO. at 4:00 p.m.

Please join us on our journey for knowledge of self, our gods, and our Ancestors.

Contact James Steward at (618) 977-8191 for more information.

Also, Like us on FaceBook.

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

Gianis LalSandhu, Realtor

Alexander Realty | St. Charles, Missouri | ph: 636-669-1717 | 314-437-8576 The first of a two part article for renters who want to become homeowners.

Everything First-Time Home Buyers Need to Know You Can Not Afford To Procrastinate: BUY NOW! Buying a home costs money. Lots of money. There’s the down payment and the monthly mortgage payment and the maintenance and taxes and the insurance and… Are you overwhelmed yet?

It might seem like so much that you just want to put off the house hunt and sign that yearlong lease with your landlord (even though he upped your rent 25% and will likely do the same next year).

But this is going to blow your mind: Even with all of those costs, you still stand to save more than $200,000 over the next 30 years if you buy right now.

purchase Postpone for one year, and you’re losing out on an esti mated $18,672 in savings. Delay for three years, and that figure jumps to $54,879.

“We’re at a critical juncture: Rents, home prices, and mortgage rates are all expected to rise significantly over the next several years. No matter how you slice it, you can’t deny a few key facts that make the case for buying: Nationally, it’s cheaper right now to buy than to rent, home prices are expected to appreciate, and, while renting is subject to inflation, homeownership costs are locked.

“But that’s over the course of 30 years!” you say. “I’m thinking about my money right now!” you say.

Well, get this: Wait just one year, and you throw nearly $19,000 in savings down the drain. The penalties are so high because mortgage rates are forecast to increase and because home prices are rising quickly, according to real estate industry chief economist, Jonathan Smoke.

Don’t be mistaken! There is definitely a financial benefit and, similarly, a financial penalty—for every single day you pay your landlord instead of your mortgage company. At a national level, the 30-year financial benefit of owning today is $217,726, according to our economic data analysts, who crunched the numbers to determine the relative merits of buying vs. renting. This analysis does not consider qualitative advantages such as more control over your living situation, flexibility with pets, and, generally, more options. These are all things that potential home buyers, especially first time home buyers consider important when deliberating whether to

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FE PR AT OP UR ER ED TY

Alexander Realty St. Charles, Missouri | ph: 636-669-1717 | 314-437-8576

AU CT I O N 11534 ROSARY LANE,

LAST BID: $278,000 (REJECTED)

Saint Louis, Missouri 63136

QUALIFIES FOR

$1,000

BUYER PURCHASE CREDIT

5 Beds 5 Full baths 5,588 Sq. Ft. Property ID 5060620 DESCRIPTION: Spacious all brick two story home in lovely Francis Farm Estates. This brick Colonial has 5 bedrooms, 5 full baths, a 4 car side entry garage, and 5,588 square feet of luxurious living. The 2 story grand enter center hall separates the formal living room from the formal dining room. The huge kitchen has a large center island with seating for 5, custom counter tops, custom cabinets, spacious pantry, and ceramic tile flooring. The breakfast room allows for additional seating and has a built-in desk, and more custom cabinets. The master bedroom suite has a coffer ceiling, huge bedroom with a jacuzzi tub with a separate shower, a walk-in closet with custom organizers, a gas fireplace, and an adjacent office that could double as a nursery. The master bedroom overlooks the beautiful backyard that is a park-like setting. ***SPECIAL INCENTIVES: 1) Buyer will receive a purchase credit of either $1,000 or 3% of the final price.

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“Acting White”

Share your Story Dear friends: I have been asked to write a chapter in a book that will address colorism in education. My chapter will focus on “acting white.”

Specifically, when I was growing up, I was a “smart” student. My top performance in school, doing homework, raising my hand to answer questions, etc. often drew the accusation from my African American classmates and friends that I was “acting white.”

Now, I know there are psychologists out there who say this is not true and does not exist. But alas, it was absolutely true for me. I have written about this in past works. I will do so again for this new book. I do know that many young folks today who continue to have such allegations hurled at them so feel free to share this email with whoever and have folks email me directly.

I did a survey on this very question about 7 years ago and the results were consistent with my experiences decades ago. I’d like to update my earlier survey. I would love to hear from anyone out there who has a similar/related story either involving yourself or someone you know. I would like to include your story in the chapter. I will conceal your identity if you request.

Do you have a story to share? If so, please email to me at: norwood@wulaw.wustl.edu.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Margaret Mead Kimberly Norwood , Professor of Law | Washington University School of Law Copyright © 2015 - All rights reserved.

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

Distress Calls and the

Black Arts MOVEMENT Bracey, John H. Jr., Sonia Sanchez, and James Smethurst, eds. SOS --Calling All Black People: A Black Arts Movement Reader. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014.

In discussions of literary and cultural periodicity, there is no consensus regarding the beginning and ending points of the Black Arts Movement. At best, one can say the enterprise occurred between 1960 and 1980. It persuaded significant numbers of Negroes (colored people) to call themselves Blacks, Afro-Americans, or African Americans. Adopting new terms of identity was not a total erasure of the marker “Negro” or the more imprecise marker “colored people,” because the NAACP didn’t swiftly become the NAAAA or the NAABP. The change was psychological, not a merely cosmetic substitution of racial markers. Some of the positive attitudes and values forged by the BAM can still be found in certain manifestations of hip hop ideologies.

The change was at once political, cultural, and social. It strengthened resolve to work more assiduously for the realization of political aims implicit in the long struggle for human rights called the Civil Rights Movement, an actualization that confused desegregation with integration. For some Blacks, the establishment of Black Power was of greater importance than changes in law that adjusted interpretations of the United States Constitution and gave birth to new legal remedies and policies. It encouraged a stronger embrace, for some but not all Black Americans, of the social science fiction of cultural unity (the Black Community or the Black Nation), and it produced indelible changes in conception of the primal myth of the American Dream and its systemic entrapments; it sponsored recognition of the Amerikkkan Nightmare, a horror that had (and still has) a racialized impact on the everyday lives of American citizens.

Thus, the Black Arts Movement warrants comparison with the radical abolitionist and nationalist activities of the 19th century as well as the “enthralling/charming,” cultural expressions of the New Negro Movement and the Harlem Renaissance. Study of the Black Arts/Black Aesthetic Movement is too important to be confined to the whims of higher education and to imprisonment in the pedagogy of oppression. The movement did not begin in any classroom discussion of literary theory and culture, although it was defanged by the reconstruction of instruction and ostracized by the politics of new aesthetics. The editors of SOS do not say that directly. They do not have to repeat what the dedication to Amiri Baraka (1934-2014) and the allusion to his poem “SOS” (1969) articulate for people who have resisted becoming post-whatever robots bereft of historical consciousness. The anthology itself asserts that it belongs to discussions in prisons, in homes, among groups that assist young people to recognize their options in a selectively “democratic” society, in community centers where immediate local problems and local remedies are debated, and in seminars at non-American universities where scholars and students are not encaged by versions of white hegemony that have apoplexy when Baraka’s “Somebody Blew Up America” (2001) is voiced. In short, SOS merits being used “in the tradition.”

The anthology has five major sections: 1) theory/criticism; 2) statements of purpose; 3) poetry; 4)drama, and 5) fiction/narrative, and these are framed by the editors’ diplomatic introduction and three very challenging “afterword” essays by James G. Spady, John H. Bracey, Jr., and Audre Lorde. The mission of the anthology, the editors assure us, is to remedy problems associated with “ideological, aesthetic, and geographical breadth” (10), difficulty in obtaining access to essential documents, and contextualization. The first two aims of the mission are satisfied as well as any collection might, but it is wanting in providing crucial identifications and contextual information. The very good bibliography sends readers to primary BAM texts and Post-BAM scholarship and anthologies, but SOS would have been enhanced by information not contained in the section introductions by A. B. Spellman, Sonia Sanchez, Haki Madhubuti, and Eleanor Traylor. The editors and their publisher must bear the onus for shortcomings. The book lacks an index. It provides no notes on contributors, as if the juju of the Internet should be invoked to figure out who were or are Sam Cornish, Ronald Milner, Louise Meriwether, Tom Dent, Ebon Dooley, Joe Goncalves, Carolyn Gerald [Carolyn Fowler], James G. Spady and Ahmos Zu-Bolton, The source information for section 2 is spotty ---who formulated the by-laws for the Southern Black Cultural Alliance?---and the acknowledgements (courtesy of specifying indebtedness) demanded by copyright law are nowhere to be found.

This is surprising. The University of Massachusetts Press and the editors do know the protocols to be observed in responsible publishing. Those protocols were faithfully observed in Smethurst’s The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005) and in the two-volume African American Mosaic: A Documentary History from the Slave Trade to the Twentyfirst Century (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2004), edited by Bracey and Manisha Sinha. Better s.o.s (standards of scholarship) ought to have been observed in preparing SOS. Picky readers demand assurance that the Black Arts Movement is accorded due symbolic respect.

Aside from these shortcomings, SOS does, as Arnold Rampersad remarked, “add immeasurably to our ability to understand and teach a crucial aspect of modern African American and American literary history.” Rampersad’s “our” has exclusionary force when potential readerships for the anthology are imagined. If “our ability” is most immediately attached to the desires of people who teach in academic institutions, the phrase overlooks a large number of non-academic activists who still believe it is their duty to use products of the Black Arts Movement in addressing the social and cultural conditions of contemporary life. They are not excluded from the discourse focused on literary history, but their desires will be different in kind and degree, more related to acquiring utilitarian literacy. One of the great lessons of BAM was how and what pg.

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words do not mean in non-academic enterprises. The point must be stridently emphasized, so that the BAM messages will continue to be fresh grapes rather than raisins.

Readers, especially adolescent readers, may care little for literary history and care a great deal for cultural history which does not apologize for its political dimensions, for the American cultural history anchored in both the liberated and the commodified funk ontology of hip hop’s evolution in the vast territory of African Diaspora. Younger readers have excellent reasons for processing the contents of SOS in contexts described in Robin D. G. Kelley’s Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional (1997), Tricia Rose’s The Hip Hop Wars (2008), and Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow (2010) and the special segment of Foreign Affairs (March/April 2015) that is devoted to “The Trouble With Race.” It would be good if social activists really did help young people to read and critique SOS and to make practical connections. Ideas provided by Spellman, Sanchez, Madhubuti, and Traylor should be lifted from the page and used in everyday speech.

If a few subversive teachers opt to deploy ideas from Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed as they work through the 666 pages of SOS, they and their history-challenged students might discover such assisting and seminal works as Toni Cade Bambara’s The Black Woman: An Anthology (1970), Joyce A. Ladner’s Tomorrow’s Tomorrow: The Black Woman (1971), Carolyn Fowler’s Black Arts and Black Aesthetics: A Bibliography, 2nd ed (1981), Vincent Harding’s The Other American Revolution (1980), Tony Bolden’s Afro-Blue: Improvisations in African American Poetry and Culture (2004) and his crucial essay “Theorizing the Funk: An Introduction” in The Funk Era and Beyond: New Perspectives on Black Popular Culture (2008), and Larry Neal’s Visions of a Liberated Future: Black Arts Movement Writings (1989). Readers who are less ambitious can sit on the ground with their friends and discuss the contents of SOS in concert with the daily saturation from social networking and mass media. What laidback readers have in common with more ambitious readers is arming themselves with critical consciousness.

LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka spend a lifetime preparing materials for the practices of everyday life by those willing to answer the call to “come in,” and pragmatic use of SOS is a proper way of honoring his blazing work, his Black Fire!!!. Allowing praxis as it can be guided by Black Arts Movement insights to dominate theory as such in 2015 is still an option in the vortex of implacable, global disorders.

Jerry W. Ward, Jr. June 24, 2015 Copyright © 2015 - All rights reserved.

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

The Prison Industrial

COMPLEX

Did you know that individuals incarcerated by the Federal Court – U.S. District Court for felony offenses send individuals to prison for drug possession or conspiracy to distribute drug charges and do not have enough money to incarcerate them? According to The Sentencing Project, half of the prison population are there because of a drug conviction. Most of these individuals hhad no prior criminal record or violent offense. One in three black men during their lifetime will be imprisoned. The real bottom line of these incarcerations is that a felony conviction results in the loss of an individual’s voting rights. Today, it is estimated that 5.8 million Americans are not able to vote because of state felony disenfranchisement laws.

So, the 1,516,879 dollars question is if federal and state governments are spending $58 billion annually on incarcerations why are families of incarcerated people spending their money to put on the books of their incarcerated relatives so inmates can buy food to eat and clothes to wear in prison? That example gives you the best definition of what the prisonindustrial complex is – it is about money. In 1971 President Nixon ran on law and order and declared a ‘War On Drugs’ and subsequently the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 during President Reagan and ‘Three Strikes and you are out’ during President Clinton in the 1990’s has put us where we are. Many of these prisons are operated by corporations with companies listed on Wall Street. One entrepreneur who owns the GEO Group made $6 million last year and has made $23 million in stock trades. Both political parties have participated in this tough on drug policies and it is clear that the people must challenge these policies going forward and eradicate them especially for first time offenders with no previous convictions of any kind.

Do teachers know how their pension funds are being invested in the prison industrial complex? According to NASDAQ, many retirement funds are being connected to the prisonindustrial complex. We are just beginning to understand what is going on and if you do not know how your pension funds are being invested you should start dismantling the prison industrial complex by telling your financial advisors to take your money and invest it someplace else.

According to the Drug Policy Alliance in New York, punishment for drug violations go beyond the time these first time offenders experience once they have served their time which was highly questionable in the first place. When they get out they are dogged by a parole system which extends incarceration beyond the time they have already served.

As was mentioned they lose voting rights, many are denied child custody of their children, as felons they cannot get employment, denied business loans, student aid, public housing, and trade licensing. These lifelong penalties are creating a society of permanent second-class citizens disproportionally affecting blacks and Latinos. Even though you may not be able to see it, America is in a transformation.

America is in a transformation every 4 years especially when we come to presidential elections. All of a sudden, people who have been so righteously indignant and unaccommodating and just say no to everything can come together and solve problems.Please understand the power of your vote and the ability for us during a presidential election cycle, we have the power to tear down this wall of the Prison Industrial Complex.

Join the coalitions in St. Louis who are organizing and putting forth meaningful change proposals on this issue. Let’s dismantle the Prison Industrial Complex and work with and among: the Coalition to Abolish the Prison Industrial Complex, the Peace Economy Project, and the Ethics Project. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. told us that he understood the bigots and the people who continue to fight the Civil War because they are always very noisy, but he could not understand the appalling silence of the good people. So get up, and speak up and vote up and shut up the noisy noise with a crescendo of change – ‘Yes We Can, Again…’ ~Pierre Blaine pg.

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Kwansaba: With Poets Brigade at SF's Art Internationale 2015Đ

Dancing with griefs, battle-knit poets reprize� Maya, Amiri & Edward Dorn. A saxy� alto phones Miles & a high-octave� Argentine sings love's vigil lance. More bardic� yawps, dances, griefs. More cities quick-sanding� into racial “chaosmos.” More poetrees lining streets� of San Francisco, East Boogie & Charleston.� Eugene B. Redmond�

After the Second Annual Sacramento Black Book Fair, June 5-7,� friends (Maasai & Lori Jean Hatten) & I visited with the� Revolutionary Poets Brigade at Art Internationale in San Francisco.� Hosts Dorothy (Dottie) Payne & Jack Hirschman encored an evening� we shared in 2012. June 8 performers: poets Neeli Chercovski, Hatten,� Gary Hicks, John Landry, Sarah Menefee, Payne (“Birthmarks”)� & Robbie Suggs; & saxophonist George Long & tenor Claudio Santome.�

Photos courtesy of the Eugene B. Redmond Collection: Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville (� eredmon@siue.edu� ).� To view or donate go to: http://www.siue.edu/lovejoylibrary/about/digital_collections.shtml�

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Kwansaba: With Revolutionary Poets Brigade at SF’s Art Internationale 2015 Dancing with griefs, battle-knit poets reprize Maya, Amiri & Edward Dorn. A saxy alto phones Miles & a high-octave Argentine sings love’s vigil lance. More bardic yawps, dances, griefs. More cities quick-sanding into racial “chaosmos.” More poetrees lining streets of San Francisco, East Boogie & Charleston.

Eugene B. Redmond

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

“Realing” from the tall daze--& gaze--of the Second Annual Sacramento Black Book Fair, June 5-7, I rode with friends, Maasai & Lori Jean Hatten, to San Francisco onJune 8, where, after dinner overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Lori & I performed with the Revolutionary Poets Brigade at Art Internationale. Painterpoet Dorothy (Dottie) Payne (“Birthmarks”) & RPB’s Jack Hirschman (author of over 50 books) had recently returned from Cuba. In 2012 they’d hosted the East St. Louis (IL)-based EBR Writers Club at AI. Among June 8 performers: poets Neeli Chercovski, Gary Hicks, John Landry (former Poet Laureate of Massachusetts), Sarah Menefee, Payne & Robbie Suggs; & saxophonist George Long & tenor Claudio Santome. Hirschman is U.S. Representative to the World Poetry Movement founded in Medellin, Colombia in 2011.

Photos courtesy of the Eugene B. Redmond Collection: Southern Illinois UniversityEdwardsville (eredmon@siue.edu). To view or donate go to: http://www.siue.edu/lovejoylibrary/about/digital_ collections.shtml

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

Kwansaba cum Haiku: Sacramento Annual Black Book Fair 2015

Reading is as important as eating.

--Ralph Ellison

Once Black Books were wrought

by Oak Park’s School of Afro-American Thought “Brickhouse” & “Underground” soular spots witness polyglots testify “Straight Out”--“writin’ is fightin’”--as Halifu Osumare, Bill Strickland, Marvin X, Denise Nicholas, Diane Pinderhughes, S. Pearl Sharp, David Covin & Charles Blackwell scribe like Ishmael’s “reeds.” Rudy Martin’s whisper unfurls fictive/spoken whirls & pearls. The nerve of words!

Eugene B. Redmond

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Ritual ground known as Oak Park hosted the Second Annual Sacramento Black Book Fair June 5-7 with dozens of w/riters, thinkers, filmmakers, musicians & visual artists in nine venues--& hundreds of children & adult attendees. Mind mining panels, literary & spoken word performances, autograph parties, receptions & walks near historic sites such as the Women’s Civic Improvement Club and the former Oak Park School of Afro-American Thought (of the 1970’s: thanks James Fisher & Marie Collins!) were among the rich offerings. Few other collectives in the nation are as threaded into their communities as the SBBF which boasts scores of supporters, sponsors & partners. http://www.sacramentoblackbookfair.com/

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

Way

Black In Time pt . 5

COMING THIS WEEK!

Animated Web Starring The Black Archaeologist.

http://blackarchaeologist.com/ pg.

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Follow us @ArtsTodayez

#artstodayEZ Copyright Š 2015 - All rights reserved.

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- Forest Park Copyright Š 2015 - All rights reserved.

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OPPORTUNITIES

CLICK HERE TO VIEW AD

The Bernie Hayes Show Talk and interviews about affairs of the day with a St. Louis slant.

The Bernie Hayes Show can be seen: Friday’s at 9 A.M. Saturday’s at 10:00 P.M. Sunday’s at 5:30 P.M.

PUT SOMETHING CLEAN ON YOUR TV! Copyright © 2015 - All rights reserved.

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Closing in on my goal for “Fire this Time” - if everyone would do two things 1) support the making of this film with just a $20.00 donation and 2) encourage 2 of your friends to do the same - it will allow me to license some additional footage and photos - you can donate now by going here: http://www.cmt-tv.org/#!join-the-team/c1195 CMT-TV.org is a 501c3 non-profit organizations thus your donations are tax deductible - thank you - the making of this film will help me attract more resources which will allow real community filmmaking in STL -Phillip W. Johnson Producer of the #Ferguson Film Fire this Time

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

Join us

for The Cowry Collective Summer Social!

Sunday

July 19, 2015,

2 - 6 pm at Tower Grove Park @ Humboldt South Pavilion

Last summer we enjoyed great food, a music circle, games and children’s activities. Come out and help us make new memories this year!

Earn cowries for attending, bringing a potluck dish to share, games, instruments, family and friends!

Active members pick up your new Cowry Collective button!

pg.

174

The Cowry Collective is a Beautiful Solution Strengthening community through TIMEBanking Blog | Facebook! | Join: www.thecowrycollective.org Copyright Š 2015 - All rights reserved.

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

CAREERS

CURRENTLY

ENROLLING!

Building Union Diversity

A training program for individuals with previous or no experience in construction trades.

Minorities and Women are Welcome!

The Building Union Diversity (BUD) is a training program for individuals with previous or no experience in the construction field and who are interested in pursuing construction careers in sewer occupations. The classes will be taught by nationally certified and U.S. DOL-approved apprenticeship training programs. The training will provide hands-on experience in participating trades, namely Construction Laborers, Heavy Equipment Operators and Carpenters.

TO ENROLL, INDIVIDUALS:

PRE-APPRENTICESHIP TRAINING FOCUS:

• Must come to SLATE, 1520 Market St, 3 rd Floor, St. Louis, MO 63103 or the St. Louis County American Job Center, 26 North Oaks Plaza, St. Louis, MO 63121, from 9 am. to 4 pm., Monday – Friday.

• Complete an application and assessment.

RECOMMENDED PARKING: Kiel Center Garage, situated immediately behind our building, at the corner of Clark & 16th. Fees: $1 per hour.

• Career awareness in various participating construction trades • OSHA standards • Identifying one trade that best suits participant’s interests and abilities.

ASK US ABOUT APPRENTICESHIP AND JOURNEYMEN TRAINING!

Training program is subsidized by the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District in partnership with SLATE.

SLATE is an equal opportunity employer/program.

Auxiliary aids and services are available upon request to individuals with disabilities. Missouri Relay Services at 711.

STLCC NO-FEE, HIGH-VALUE

TECHNICAL JOB TRAINING PROGRAMS These high-value training programs are grant-funded and are offered for limited periods of time at no cost to qualified students.

AVIONICS (Aviation Electronics) An accelerated 8-week practical, hands-on, non-credit course.

AVIATION MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY

Prepare for Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Airframe and Powerplant certifications.

YOU PAY NOTHING for these courses if you qualify.

For more information or to get started visit WWW.STLCC.EDU/MRTDL. St. Louis Community College is committed to non-discrimination and equal opportunities in its admissions, educational programs, activities, and employment regardless of race, color, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, age, disability, genetic information, or status as a disabled or Vietnam-era veteran and shall take action necessary to ensure non-discrimination. Sexual harassment, including sexual violence, is also prohibited. For information or concerns related to discrimination or sexual harassment, contact Bill Woodward, Associate Vice Chancellor Student Affairs, 314-539-5374.

This workforce solution was funded by a grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration. The solution was created by the grantee and does not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of Labor. The Department of Labor makes no guarantees, warranties, or assurances of any kind, express or implied, with respect to such information, including any information on linked sites and including, but not limited to, accuracy of the information or its completeness, timeliness, usefulness, adequacy, continued availability, or ownership.

pg.

176

AMEREN MISSOURI, STLCC LAUNCH FREE PRE-APPRENTICESHIP TRAINING PROGRAM TO CREATE JOB OPPORTUNITIES December 03, 2014

Ameren Missouri is partnering with St. Louis Community College again to offer a five-week lineman pre-apprenticeship training program at the college’s Florissant Valley campus.

Ameren Missouri is making the training program available at no cost to participants. Upon successfully completing this accelerated pre-apprentice training program, graduates will have an opportunity to go through the application and selection process for an apprentice lineman position with Ameren Missouri.

STLCC currently is accepting applications for the program that begins in March at Florissant Valley, 3400 Pershall Road. Up to 30 pre-apprentice students will be selected for the training program.

“We are committed to creating opportunities and investments in the communities we serve,” said Dave Wakeman, Ameren Missouri, senior vice president of operations and technical services. “This pre-apprentice training program opens the door for people in our community to learn more about the work being performed at Ameren Missouri and then apply for quality positions within our company. We are seeking to hire individuals who are dedicated to providing our customers with safe, reliable power in the St. Louis metro area.”

Ameren Missouri’s commitment to STLCC and the community includes funding for curriculum development, STLCC is partnering with Ameren Missouri to offer a fiveinstructional delivery and all necessary equipment. This week lineman pre-apprenticeship training program. includes 30-foot poles, climbing equipment, fall protection harnesses, and other personal protection equipment so that students can safely train on the Florissant Valley campus. Students also will review math, physics and mechanical concepts to prepare them for a potential future position in Ameren Missouri’s apprentice lineman program. In 2009, Ameren Missouri offered this specialized pre-apprentice training program in partnership with STLCC and was able to hire 13 former student participants into the company’s apprentice lineman program.

“This initiative serves as another example of St. Louis Community College’s commitment to connect curriculum, programs and instructional delivery modes to meet the needs of employers in the region,” said Steve Long, STLCC associate vice chancellor for workforce solutions. “We are pleased to once again partner with Ameren Missouri to provide training that will give participants an opportunity at meaningful employment.”

Nationwide, as many as 18,300 new electrical line workers will be needed by 2022, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The utility industry employed 249,400 line workers in 2012. In May 2012, the median annual wage for electrical power-line installers and repairers was $63,250.

For more information about the pre-apprenticeship training program or to apply, email wsglineworker@stlcc.edu or call 314-539-5988.

Copyright © 2015 - All rights reserved.

STLCC NO-FEE, HIGH-VALUE

TECHNICAL JOB TRAINING PROGRAMS These high-value training programs are grant-funded and are offered for limited periods of time at no cost to qualified students.

TRUCK DRIVING JOBS TRAIN LOCALLY TO EARN YOUR

Class-A Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) • • • • • •

Over-the-Road Truck Drivers are in High Demand!

No prior experience necessary.

Five week program.

Experienced staff, low student-to-teacher ratio.

44 hours of drive time on 2011 International Prostar trucks. More practice equals a greater chance for success!

Entry Level commercial truck driving jobs average $35,000 yearly.

Job Interviews upon successful completion of program.

For more information or to get started visit www.stlcc.edu/TruckDriving.

To qualify: Minimum age 21 years old with a good driving record. DOT Physical and negative Drug Test Required.

WorkKeys Assessment Level 4 or higher required.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

St. Louis Community College is committed to non-discrimination and equal opportunities in its admissions, educational programs, activities, and employment regardless of race, color, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, age, disability, genetic information, or status as a disabled or Vietnam-era veteran and shall take action necessary to ensure non-discrimination. Sexual harassment, including sexual violence, is also prohibited. For information or concerns related to discrimination or sexual harassment, contact Bill Woodward, Associate Vice Chancellor Student Affairs, 314-539-5374.

This workforce solution was funded by a grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration. The solution was created by the grantee and does not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of Labor. The Department of Labor makes no guarantees, warranties, or assurances of any kind, express or implied, with respect to such information, including any information on linked sites and including, but not limited to, accuracy of the information or its completeness, timeliness, usefulness, adequacy, continued availability, or ownership.

www.the-arts-today.com

Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015

pg.

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Volume 2.5 July 7, 2015