Neighbor Newspaper Vol. 46

NEIGHBOR NEWS

Neighbor Program News Service

Vol. 46 April 8, 2024

March Updates

Land Acknowledgement

WE ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THE NISENAN PEOPLE ARE STILL HERE AMONG US TODAY, THOUGH NEARLY INVISIBLE. WE UNDERSTAND THAT WE ARE ON NISENAN LAND THAT WAS NEVER CEDED AND THE ORIGINAL TRIBAL FAMILIES HAVE YET TO RECOVER FROM THE GENOCIDE OF THEIR PEOPLE. AS A RESIDENT OR VISITOR IN NISENAN LAND, WE SUPPORT THE NEVADA CITY RANCHERIA NISENAN TRIBE IN EFFORTS TO STABILIZE THEIR PEOPLE AS WELL AS THEIR CAMPAIGN TO RESTORE FEDERAL RECOGNITION.

black excellence rawest forms

my black is so excellent that moonshine envies the way courage dances off of my soapy tongues found between altars and prayers that repentance may find me some other day because today

i am too excellent to seek forgiveness

no not from you ancestors but from jim crows who watch over me their black so excellent that omens of death feel like glimmers of hope for better days as they hold us like children who need to be supervised under watch for suicide but don’t worry

you’ll still get a chance because surveillance systems cannot keep you from violence and alter footage at the same time

so be free, within these bounds jump from the highest cliff you can find

oh you so excellent look at how you fly just like the crows

you must be learning and listening well and lying even better oh how it must feel so good to be that abyss of uncertainty that consumes us all you excellent black thing you entire universe of mass and tragedy that they cannot understand or control so they call it black

you darkened shell of misery fille with bullet holes you bloodless and lifeless wretched thing

please be proud of me new cause you can fly too just like me you can be excellent because you are black and beautiful and broken and gravity pulls you down to earth’s surface so black so beautiful so excellent in open caskets under six feet of approval and soil as black and sorrowful as me

make me an ocean

mel olugbala

make me an ocean

fill it with ancestors and dreams all things known ans unknown mix with death and destruction sprinkle of love and light

make me an ocean

find me a moon to talk to bring me cycles of living so i never get bored

make me an ocean of the tears you’ve shed that lead you right to me i’ve been learnign how to float and can teach you too

make me an ocean powerfully wise determinedly erosive moving and still

make me an ocean in case i wasn't one before in case there was ever a world where it wasn’t my home

shakurscholarship

we are leaders: confronting patriarchy in r/evolutionary spaces

ea our learners to choose one community agreement that they wan ter in reflectin ith th i d id d th t i d t ow int e leaders it’s w e t ough it is not a be izing and movemen time to do the l rep o readily conside , putting next step

as something to d

it’s funny because i think this pattern roots from the sa y revolutionaries so easily discount as oppressive the sam es a culture that says “wives, submit to your husbands as doing the work worthy of being submitted to the work that would elevate him to the same place as “the Lord,” and i’ll concede truthfully, show me any person who is doing that work and i will gladly reconsider my perspective. the material reality of the situation is, it has never existed. and i’m actually not mad at that because i believe that we all need each other and can take turns being in “submission” to one another given that, if a r/evolutionary can understand themselves as engaging with the material realities of the world (which they often do), then they must contend with the realities of the patriarchy.

we must contend with the realities of the patriarchy

that is, if we are being honest with ourselves. because when i am truly honest with myself and my lived reality as an Afrikan/Black womxn who holds space and tries to lead in r/evolutionary contexts, i can say: sometimes i fear the patriarchy more than i do white supremacy

maybe it’s because i’ve mostly been able to find places where i can hide from the every day threats of white supremacy (white people), but continue to find the violences of patriarchy (at the hands of men) hit way too close to home we’re seeing it in the news every day Megan & Torey, R Kelly, Bill Cosby, Diddy one million too many cases of Afrikan/Black girls and womxn experiencing severe physical and emotional damage at the hands of patriarchal performances of masculinity and then forced to hold the weight of the repercussions of the way she chooses to heal to agonize over the impact her choice might have on the collective the “greater good” all in service of uplifting the good of his material work “for all of us ”

i have found myself in this position one too many times in my work in my engagement in and outside of revolutionary spaces i have studied how it played out in our revolutionary histories (Martin & Coretta, the women of the Nation of Islam, Huey) i have a firm understanding and belief in the ways cointelpro works i have studied and taught the ways systems shape themselves in the most nefarious of ways to prey on and divide Afrikans i have an equally firm understanding and belief in the way histories, narratives and power work i have over 30 years’ experience + elder wisdom + TikTok stories for days on how men work – how easily they can devolve into the trappings of patriarchal masculinity when push comes to shove i have seen and experienced the ways in which r/evolutionary Afrikan women contort themselves to avoid the repercussions of being labeled liars or opps or to simply avoid being casualties of patriarchy, as we so often are

shakurscholarship

take Tupac’s “hit ‘em up” which i love way too much for someone who grew up on the east coast one thing i can’t always help but notice is how this man felt it so necessary to start the song with “that’s why i fucked your b**** ” but also, it tracks with a real lived experience for Afrikan girls/womxn/femmes in highly politicized spaces casualties of war from Ayiti to Palestine, we see how that manifests.

yet/and i am here An Afrikan femme womxn choosing to continue to identify as a r/evolutionary choosing to remain steadfast in work that i know has led, and may again lead me into spaces where i am at risk expanding my capacity to be braced to withstand another blow at the hands of patriarchy in my desperate attempt to escape the clutches of white supremacy, capitalism, colonialism and imperialism

i am in constant internal dialogue with myself about whether it’s worth it searching in the pages of books and in the eyes of my elders for answers at times questioning if this is indeed the house i want to build i am grateful to be able to allow that decision to ultimately be held by my spiritual practice.

in the meantime, i am here because i know what is currently going on isn’t working (see Neighbor Newspaper Vol 42, we show love and respect to our friends) i am here because i think (still testing this theory) we can help foster/teach a new way of doing things i am here because i know that malcolm was onto something when he said we should establish our own schools i know that many r/evolutionary & militant groups did establish such schools and that there are lessons to be learned from them i know that one of those lessons is: “revolutionary (or even just progressive) Afrikan/Black spaces many of which have been male-led have failed in actively confronting the ways patriarchy and heteronormativity plays out in our spaces ”

i know that writing this will anger some people.

i know that one lesson we’ve been teaching our babies and one i’ve been learning for myself is what it means to be a leader. i know that most of our examples of “leadership” exist through a patriarchal gaze of “masculinity ” that those same depictions of leadership are what make “violence” whether it be something as simple as lowering the bass in one’s voice or all out warfare the default/understood means of exercising leadership.

i also know that our team and our babies ground in with assata shakur every morning that we truly believe and practice that r/evolution is not about going to the mountains and fighting we will fight if we are forced to, but the fundamental goal of r/evolution must be peace

i believe that future building is for womxn and children and that everyone will benefit for it

i know that just like the BPP our babies encounter mostly womxn/femmes as leaders in our space and that still, every day we are working to battle the ways patriarchy is ingrained in their thinking and teaching them what it looks like to really respect leadership in all forms.

my leadership is soft it is slow and intentional it will hold space for someone else to grow and get what they need, even at my own expense it doesn’t like to hit or be hit it is soft-spoken and prefers not to raise its voice it will check in regularly and ask if you feel loved along the way it likes to laugh

it prefers to not make anyone do something that they don’t want to do

it affirms the things it sees people working on, even when there’s still a lot of work to be done it expects an apology for harmful actions it will always apologize for its own harm and it is willing to move on. to forgive.

shakurscholarship

some may view this as more feminine way of being i would definitely agree that there are some maternal elements to it what’s for sure is that it exists so far outside the realm of how patriarchy embodies leadership and, finding myself at my wits end when it comes to the ways i’ve played a contortionist my whole life, i eventually decided to stop to refuse to embody the patriarchal masculinized ways of commanding power/attention but to work on commanding power/attention based on my practice and my work fully in my r/evolutionary soft girl era as the minister for education at mxa, it is something i hold myself to embedding within our pedagogy i am a leader for a group of babies all being socialized into their own gendered experience who i am accountable to and so i am working to step more fully into leadership in the way that i do by no means is it an easy task. because historically, i have experienced violence in response to my attempts to step into leadership i have had many men work at “putting me in my place ” witnessing the babies at mxa learn and grow and navigate this world has given me a bit more resilience for them, i have been practicing asking to not be interrupted by my male counterparts out loud i have been actively pointing out when the learners lose focus and shirk off instructions when they come from womxn i have been shifting my orientation towards men i have been less compromising in my decision-making i have finally taken the time to write this down

this piece has been living in my body for years and it finally felt ready because i can now unequivocally say that the movement for Afrikan/Black liberation can do better don’t get me wrong, i will continue to identify as a patri/heteropessimist for the foreseeable future but/and i now have some proof that we can do better that we can, in fact, confront the violent realities of imperialism without offering up our “weakest links” (womxn, femmes, queer folks, children) as collateral damage that we can be openly and honestly accountable to the harm we’ve done to womxn, femmes, queer folks and children without jeopardizing our good work or burdening them with the shame of our demise that rather than blame a womxn for her voice and her healing men can (and should) take full accountability for the harm they cause and acknowledge the ways they have put the movement at risk that we can learn to sit down together and talk a bit about a little culture that we can all learn to grow and love and protect one another

what i’m speaking to is unfortunately an outlier so i’m also gonna talk my shit and challenge those reading to start doing that self and organizational work putting it on the agenda, hosting international women’s day panels and reading claudia jones every so often are lightweight efforts chalking every instance of patriarchal violence up as set-ups or cointelpro is both foolish and a spit in the face of our r/evolutionary ourstories and futures to dismiss the material implications of structural violence of any kind (homophobia, patriarchy, ableism) as mere casualties of this work reveals the places where we are unprincipled, unstudied and careless

we are r/evolutionaries and, if we are to survive in this world, we must be willing to evolve when i brought this content (patriarchy and heteronormativity) to the babies at mxa as curriculum, they gave me feedback that “this week is hard ” considering the fact that all of our babies have a better understanding of what imperialism is and how it works than most adults i know, i found it difficult to believe that “hard” was the issue so we talked about it:

why something as basic as “show love and respect to ALL AFRIKANS” (except pigs and genocidal imperialists) is so difficult and has been such a hard concept for us to grapple with for so long how we all are living in this world every day with different bodies and experiences that are all deserving of love and respect how our own inclinations to shut down when challenged to combat certain systems of oppression is telling of where we are as a collective. and how we could deepen our commitment to confronting all forms of oppression in our spaces

as always, i write with love and intention and in hopes to be heard mel

If you are interested in learning more about MXA fill out the interest form through the QR code

Arts&Culture

coverage from M

get tickets for Malcolm X Day 2024

another music project from minister of programs Jordan - under the artist name J.Phin, documenting our time on 33rd and our transition from the Shakur Center on 4th to the Shakur House on 33rd and our recent move to the Shakur Center on Broadway

use the QR code to listen

mxaminiessays

We Show Love and Respect to Our Friends

Dejay Bilal

This is the first piece in a series of mini-essays on Malcolm X Academy’s (MXA) community agreements At MXA, our team of learning guides developed the nine community agreements during one of our earliest meetings back in the summer of 2022 We knew that we needed a set of guidelines that would help both the learning guides and the students clarify the expectations we had for each other as community members in a shared space These agreements have become a central part of MXA’s liberation pedagogies and, beyond that, they have become an integral part of each school day on the MXA campus. There have been days when I was teaching at the school and, as the learning guides, we got rushed through our morning routine and forgot to do our daily recitation of the community agreements On days like this, one of our six-year-old scholars was always quick to remind me, “Mr Dejay! We didn’t do our community agreements ” In those moments, we would drop everything we were doing to join together in a calland-response recitation of the agreements This is how every morning circle at MXA started: deep breathing, community agreements, and a grounding check-in question For this mini-series, I want to reflect on each one of MXA’s community agreements and help us gain an understanding of why they are so important to everyone who calls MXA home

We show love and respect to our friends While this community agreement may seemingly speak for itself, we all have different interpretations of what love and respect can look like in practice At MXA, these conversations occur daily When students are showing love and respect, learning guides are quick to use positive reinforcement by emphasizing the exact action the scholar took to show love or respect to another person in the community When scholars are not showing love and respect, learning guides would often challenge them by asking critical-thinking questions about their actions What happened? Why did you choose to do that? What were you feeling when you made that choice? How would it make you feel if someone did that to you? How would we handle the situation differently in the future? What are ways you can show your friends love and respect next time? If you were to spend a day at MXA, you would see how every interaction throughout the school day is used as a learning opportunity; the learning guides are quick to turn moments of conflict or disagreement into an impromptu community circle so that everyone can reflect on the situation that occurred. By doing this, everyone in the school community is invited to collectively analyze and reflect on high-risk situations that occur throughout the school day. When scholars at MXA make mistakes, this was never used as a way to shame them, but rather, as a demonstration of what community accountability can look like in real time. If a scholar isn’t showing love and respect, their friends will be quick to join in on the conversation and give them advice on how they can change their behavior next time At MXA, scholars take it upon themselves to help each other and their learning guides maintain the school's community agreements

Black amerikkka Has A Problem

Jordan McGowan

At a time when talks of “civil war” grace u s mainstream media, it would serve us as Afrikan/Black people inside of amerikkka to understand the politic and psychological warfare being waged on our people here within the empire. It is my earnest opinion that this warfare is being waged primarily through what I’ve written about as the Black Elite, a group of neo-house niggas whose primary job is to keep the rest of the Afrikan/Black population in line by glorifying a life of the best of what amerikkka has to offer. a freedom that can be purchased, and displaying that we can also work for what they have “earned”

Diddy was a major player in the Black Elite stratosphere, and yet we still see Diddy catching the wrath of the empire’s forces I am an abolitionist and hate the pigs, but if I’m being honest there was still a little human satisfaction out of fact that diddy is being exposed But again diddy is a kkkapitalist, and there is no such thing as a good kkkapitalist It doesn’t matter if he is Afrikan or not, a kkkapitalist is a kkkapitalist and that is an enemy of Our People! But until recently, Diddy had been propped up by the empire, he was given awards and titles and revered by millions of followers on social media But membership in the Black Elite comes at the cost of your soul It comes with turning your eyes to all the evils of kkkapitalism and our kkkolonizers because well, the money is worth it

Is that why can’t you look our people right in their eyes?

These house niggas have been telling us who they are aligning with And I admit, at one time, I too was naive; but damn yall are we really willfully turning a blind eye to what these people are doing in the world? I personally cannot. I cannot continue to support an artist who I know is ACTIVELY working against our people This may cause a massive issue but YALL’S QUEEN IS AN OPP! BEYONCÉ IS A HOUSE NIGGA! Her and her unkle ruckus ass husband are HOUSE NIGGAS! And if you have smoke for me please let me hear it because I would love for you to explain to me how she brought so much pride and joy and dignity for Black Womxn, Femmes and non-cis folx through her music that it doesn’t matter that she has historically not paid fair wages and salaries for people in those same communities? Or how her cos-playing the Black Panther Party at the Super Bowl outweighs her draping herself head-totoe in the bloodiest flag known to human history Stoically holding the flag of a genocidalimperialist empire that has been charged with and convicted of GENOCIDE? A flag of a government responsible for the harassment, terror, surveillance, infiltration, sabotage, destruction, framing, murdering and exiling of our people’s movement for freedom? Responsible for the danger and paranoia my family, my komrades, and myself live under daily?

Beyoncé and Jay-Z, just like Diddy (and so many others) are part of the Black Elite class designed to keep our people’s hopes and dreams tied into amerikkka’s continuation Although any worthwhile study of liberation struggle should indicate to us that there is no way to become free without resisting the forces keeping you from that freedom surviving kkkolonialism will take resistance, and that means actively working towards the destruction of the amerikkka, not propping up the amerikkkan flag on your new cover art But again the Black Elite are here to keep the Afrikan/Black masses in line with the plantation’s production plan And the Black Elite will continue to take many different shapes and positions during the next few years as the u.s. empire fights to hold onto some sense of global power It will most effectively target hiphop and popular afrikan/Black music; take Beyonce and J Cole for example Beyonce went from gettin us in formation to return to the Continent and reminding us that “Black is King '' , to proudly supporting amerikkka and isntreal in just a matter of a few years Early Cole reminded us to embrace our scholar-poets, traditional Afrikan shit right But new Cole? This nigga sounds like he had Future writing his bars The substance just seemed missing, and maybe that because the Black Elite are changing their methods of relating to us

Which could be a reason why we are seeing an influx of Black mayors in major cities; almost always simultaneously timed up with more money for the pigs and genocidal policies How can policies like Sacramento’s Measure O, Spotshotters in Sacramento and Baltimore, and kkkop cities popping up all over the u s empire, be concealed without the protection of these house niggas that will allow our people to keep our focus on fitting in and becoming part of massa’s house and sitting at massa’s table. But again, all of this should be clear evidence that sitting at massa’s table only can bring about your destruction as an Afrikan You see, no matter what you want to call yourself, how you identify, where you want to live and how you feel about our people - these europeans know EXACTLY who you are: nigga. Ubuntu - I am what I am because of who we all are. So there is no sitting at their table, without losing your soul And so Black amerikkka has a problem As the ship that is the u s empire begins to rot, the unuseful house niggas will be the first to get thrown overboard - in order to preserve the valuables Black amerikkka is scrambling to still be relevant and needed by the u s empire, because once they are no longer able to keep the masses in check, they are no longer protected and liable to be thrown away So please take a critical look, because Beyonce was rightBlack amerikkka does have a problem

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to all who contributed their time, labor, effort and work to this February issue of Neighbor Newspaper

Thank you to Nicole Crawford, mel olugbala, RaiiN Ali, Dejay Bilal, Shane Williams, the MXA babies, Mama Kim, Community Movement Builders and EVERYONE working towards Afrikan Liberation!

Afrika WILL Unite!

Community Agreements

By MXA (@916MXA)

We show love and respect to our friends - Tunaonyesha upendo na heshima kwa marafiki zetu

We communicate with our friends - Tunawasiliana na marafiki zetu

We know being here is enough - Tunajua kuwa hapa

We honor our ancestors - Sisi ni heshima ya mababu zetu

We are leaders - Sisi ni viongozi

We breathe when we have big feelings - Tunapumua tunapokuwa na hisia kubwa

We keep our space clean - Tunaweka nafasi yetu safi

We try hard things - Tunajaribu mambo magumu

We eat together - Tunakula pamoja

10 Point Program & Platform

1 WE WANT freedom We want power to determine the destiny of our Afrikan and Indigenous Communities

2 WE WANT full employment for the people

3 WE WANT an end to the robbery by the kkkapitalist of our Afrikan and Indigenous Community domestically and globally

4 WE WANT decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings

5 WE WANT education for our People that exposes the true nature of this decadent amerikkkan society

We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society

6 WE WANT the abolition of the Military-Industrial Complex

7 WE WANT an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of the People

8 WE WANT freedom for all Afrikan People held in federal, state, county, and city prisons and jails

9 WE WANT abolition! We believe the carceral system is inherently racist and that there are better alternatives to reduce harm

10 WE WANT land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace And as our major political objective, a new world where radical love for human beings is found and the land is given back to its indigenous People

Peace, Love, Freedom, All Power to the People AFRIKA UNITE!!!

The 10 Point Platform & Program was written by Huey P Newton & Bobby Seal in 1966 & was the guiding ideological base for the Black Panther Party. Neighbor Program has adopted the 10 Point Platform & Program & edited some language based

the people's victory.