
With the current wave of uprisings across England … and the insurgence of flash mobs across the United States … it is appropriate to call on the history of rebellions by our people. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once stated, riot is the language of the unheard; and so it comes as no surprise that the language of our underclass is of the same dialect that it has been for decades and even centuries …

It has been one year since Oscar Grant was brutally murdered by BART policeman Johannes Mehserle. The power of the people of Oakland and the Bay Area has ensured that he is standing trial for murder and not getting away unscathed as is the normal practice in police killings and brutality of our community members.

Next month the most important item on my agenda is Maafa Commemoration Month to reflect on the legacy of slavery and how everyone benefited from this human rights travesty except those who did the work. We began Aug. 30 with a successful Maafa 2009: Hurricane Katrina Fundraiser and Reportback, thanks to all the poets and the visual artists who donated art for the silent auction and of course to Tess and Yeme, the proprietors of Shashamane Bar and Grill.

George Jackson said, “If terror is going to be the choice of weapons, there must be funerals on both sides … And let the whole enemy power complex be conscious of that!” Or, as Brother Imam Malik Khaba (formerly known as Jeff Fort) put it: “Ain’t gone be no killing, without killing.”

The report that went around the world was that over 300 businesses were destroyed; the actual damage was 40-45 windows smashed and a couple of dozen garbage cans thrown into the streets.