Greetings in this new year.
Just weeks ago, I had the pleasure of traveling to Arizona to the EJUSA retreat that was so on time! Our team’s time together was a ray of collective light.
It came, however, against a hard background and reality…
Daniel Penny, the ‘unofficial’ killer of Jordan Neely, was cleared by a jury, as the system continues to reduce us to being ‘expendable,’ especially when our mental health is challenged.
To be sure, that skinny, hungry Black dancer’s life didn’t ‘matter’…
I came to Arizona from a press conference in Philadelphia on the sinister MOVE Bombing of 1985 where it was revealed that some of the remains from that incinerating hell on earth were not only passed around but also put on exhibit by University of Pennsylvania ‘researchers’ over the years, and that the remains of 12-year-old Delisha Africa are among the most recent — just ‘discovered’…39 years later…
That’s a rabid hole hatefully even darker than that!
On the 43rd anniversary of Mumia Abu Jamal walking into a bullet, a frame up for killing a cop, a death sentence, surviving death row, but only to still languish in prison even after exculpatory evidence around his case is now a matter of record…
And Trump is not even in place yet…
Just as I settled in, I learned that the drum had sounded for the great NIkki Giovanni, beloved poet of the Black Arts Movement, best known for her epic signifying poem ‘ego trippin’… a poem that celebrates the beauty and awe of the Black woman like no other…
In December 1977, just after stealing The Autobiography of Malcolm X in a drug transaction and trying to walk away from a dangerous life rhythm on my bullet-popping streets, one of the first books i came across seeking to ‘clean up’ my act — that i did not steal — was Nikki’s book Cotton Candy On A Rainy Day…a beautiful poem about the need for beauty and peace no matter our circumstance…
She was my soft coming out of a space time and rhythm that was deadly hot and hard. I would dare say that you can make a case for her being the Movement’s ‘soft’ to balance the hard and fire of our struggle and resistance…
It mattered to us then…
In the coming year, savor the intentionality of your own healing and rejuvenation. You need it…We all need it…And the people we serve, the hurting communities we come from and serve, they need it and need us at our best…so rest recharge rebuild…
Our communities need y’all at your best…
Reparations Now!
Love Honor Respect
Baba Zayid
