->COVER -> RADIOACTIVE
OAKTOWN, CALI - Every twenty years or so, when Black folk heard one too many "Yee-haahs!" from White folks (and, depending on the time in the century, seen too many lynchings, or been beaten down by too many cracker cops, or is just sick and tired of living in fear and with hatred) there is a big mass migration outtah there. Folks say things have changed Down South, but you sure couldn't prove it by anybody I know.
Those same people who are proud to be rednecks and carry shotguns in they rifle racks are also still proud to defend "the honor of the South" by waving the Confederate flag over the state house in South Carolina --- which it took 'til now for them to move --- and still use words like "niggrah" all these years after the Civil War.
It don't seem to bother them none that Black folks was denied the vote again! in Florida in this recent presidential election.
It don't seem to bother them that a Black man was dragged to death behind a pickup truck in President-elect Bush's state of Texas.
And it sure don't seem to bother them that lots of Black folk down in Louisiana, where my kin migrated from, are still share-croppers --- one step up from being a slave...
But what we found when we migrated north, or west, like my folks did during World War II to work in the shipyards out here in Cali, ain't no picnic neither.
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They may now, but they didn't then.
As the popular story now goes there was Negroes lined up all over the coast of West Africa, linin' the shores, waving like crazy. "Hey! Dutch trader! Come on over and take me!"
PLUS, hey! You got kids of all races, all over America now, buddy, dressin', actin' and trying to pretend like they are Black! What are you complainin' about?
You're right.
I just don't know.
It couldn't be that you are building more high-tech prisons to send brothers to while the schools in our 'hoods is crumbling to the ground, coast to coast. Why should I wannah complain about that?
It certainly wouldn't be ya'lls President-elect pickin' a flat-out bigot as the next Attorney General of the United States. Why should that bother me?
And the last thang I would want to say anything about would be that the legal system in this republic no longer looks only biased and questionable, but that now we see ya'll can do what you want, when you want and expect millions of people ---- half the damned country, if need be! --- just stew in they juices.
NOPE! That shouldn't bother me one little bit.
The word on the street is that it don't mean nuthin'.
I got this theory, Homies. It goes like this: every form of tyranny, every empire, has eventually fallen and been replaced. It has always happened.
The impulse for freedom has always endured.
Those two facts keep me going, despite all the indignities and injustices.
For centuries, "great powers" have tried to subdue the human spirit while at the same time trying to dominate the human mind and body.
Where are they today? Why are we street-level folks so ornery?
Why don't racks, cudgels, Iron Maidens, thumb-screws, bullets, whips, ropes, stocks, police brutality, "smart" bombs, tax liens, nuclear missiles teach us unruly peasants that we need to get back, get down, surrender?
"And will you get them to stop that damnable singing, Boss Boy! It gives me a headache."
Well, there it is: the singing sustained our souls while it challenged your conscience.
I believe a time of reckoning is coming...
You know, Bob Marley used to sing about the fall of Babylon. My Moms told me Dr. King went to the mountian top. Nostradamus looked out across the ages, and even ancient myths say a time must come when humanity is allowed to get up off of its knees.
There is something in me, listening to the voice of The Man, that tells me that we got to get back into laughing them down. They take themselves so seriously, those "powers," that the last thing they can handle is folks laughing at their frontin'! Look at what OTPOR did in Yugoslavia. (Another reason I'm glad to be at this magazine. I learn stuff.) Look at the brothers and sisters in the Ivory Coast and the people on the street in Taiwan. There is no way to stop the power of people on the street. The word on the street is that maybe we can laugh them down.
That will be easier here in the Snakes, of all places, 'cause we got a man his own Momma might laugh at.
And while I'm sharing my theories with you, Homboys and -girls, let me give you a look at another one. You know them UFOs? Well, I got a feeling the reason the those little green men has decided not to make contact with us is this:
I think maybe time is more stretched out for them than for us. I been thinking maybe their lives goes on for thousands of years, the way ours goes on for decades. I been thinking that they might have decided just to chill out until we go ahead and inevitably just wipe ourselves out. Then they'll come down and make first contact with a more intelligent species, like maybe the dolphins or the whales.
I mean, when you think about it, those creatures been carrying on their cultures for thousands of years along side ours, without building a single city or fighting a single war. Their domain is much bigger than ours, and they lead much more happy and sane existences --- when we don't intrude on their world-spanning paradise. After we gone, their worst problem is solved. If I was a little green man, I'd wait around to make my treaties with them...
Ever notice how them dolphins is laughing all the time? Maybe it's 'cause they got all this figured out. They just bidin' they time waiting for us to be gone. Funny thing, whales out there singing up a storm all the time, dolphins laughing and enjoying sex., swimming around the world just watching and waiting, Homes...
Meanwhile, we fight and kill, pillage the very ground under our feet and each other, spread hate so fast love has to struggle to get in--- and for what? If someone could just tell be for what we go on letting other folks starve or be tortured and for what we willin' to go to war over resources and land that nobody but God really owns --- which means we should share and share alike --- I wouldn't get as angry as I do sometime. But you ever met ANYBODY who could tell you for what all this meanness is being done? I ain't.
So I say, before it's too late, a reckoning must come. We must laugh them down.
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