FILM OF THE MONTH: THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE

via IMDB

A treasure trove of footage that spans the length of the Black Power movement including film interviews with Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael, and other leaders is found in the basement of a Swedish television company. Director Göran Olsson and co-producer Danny Glover bring this footage to life, bridging the voices of struggle from the 60s and 70s with contemporary artists and activists. The Black Power Mixtape takes a crucial look at the development of the Black Power Movement.

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Decolonizing Culture

THE DECOLONIZER
November 2015

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TRACK THE MOVEMENT: NOVEMBER, 2015

#NoKXL

On November 6th the Obama administration publicly rejected the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. The proposed pipeline Stretching from Canada to Texas would cut through key indigenous territory protected by treaty. Indigenous peoples have beenorganizing protest and meeting with commissions for years. Yet, indigenous interest were largely omitted by Obama as a factor in the decision. Credit for the effort has been largely attributed to white environmentalist when indigenous organizing work was essential in putting pressure to halt the pipeline.

#ConcernedStudent1950

University of Missouri President Timothy W. Wolfe resigned from his position November 9th at an emergency Board of Curators meeting afterweeks of student protesting. Wolfe has been under fire for his failure to address racially charged issues on campus and his dismissal of student activist at the university's homecoming parade. UM students have righteously resisted at every level to push these issues to the national level. One UM student has staged a hunger strike, alumni had called for a walk-out, and UM football players have also vowed to strike.

#Bethlehem

Israeli troops reach new lows in Bethlehem early this November. On November 6th Israeli agents disguised as Palestinian stone throwers jumped on Palestinian protesters at gun point while plain-clothes Israeli soldiers shot at the crowd with tear gas canisters and rubber bullets . Other protesters were hit with live fire. Tactics such as using undercover Israeli agents have become routine in Bethlehem. At least twenty-six Palestinian protesters were killed in demonstrations last month.

#POC@IC

A massive walk-out was staged by Ithaca College students on October 27th. Numerous racially charged incidents on campus including repeated racial surrs directed towards an alumni panelist at the college's "Blue Skies" event and a racially themed white supremacist fraternity party have sparked an up-roar of campus resistance. #POC@IC has since lead numerous rallies, protest, and walk-outs against Ithaca College president Tom Rochon and the current administration.

#BerkeleyKKK

Hundreds of students from Berkeley High School in Berkeley, California walked out November 5th after the discovery of racist threats found on a school computer. The slurs include "KKK forever public lynching December 9th 2015" and "I hung a n***** by his neck in my back yard." It is estimated that over 700 marchers walked from the high school towards Berkeley City Hall.

#FeesMustFall

Cape Town students from over three Universities stormed the South African Parliament November 9th demanding that they speak to South African President Jacob Zuma. South African students have waged the largest protest in the country's history since Apartheid ended in 1994. The protests come after the announcement by many universities that tuition fees would be raised to over 10%, drastically affecting impoverished Black South African students who cannot afford the increase. The protest has since spread to over 10 campuses #FeesMustFall protesters are now determined to decolonize higher education in South Africa.

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Track the Movement

THE DECOLONIZER
November 2015

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ON THE FRONT LINES: #RISEUPOCTOBER #WHATSIDEAREYOUON

by Dubian Ade

As I enter the confines of Washington Square Park I am met with busy people hunched over, chalk drawing liberation into the concrete floor. The massive stone arch towers over them, adjourn with colonial European faces that seem to shrink at the sight of the people gathering increasingly at its base. At any second it seemed the masses would rise up in fury to topple the stone landmark. A woman stationed at the edge hands me a copy of The Revolution newspaper.

Another black woman yells "Get your buttons! Black Lives Matter, get your buttons." Another black woman follows alongside her selling black liberation flags. The sound of drums waters the space in rhythms synced with the beautiful chaos of the people organizing at every direction. Filled with sounds, conversation, movement, smells, tastes swirl behind a backdrop of words ferociously spoken from a microphone.

They are the families. Sandra Bland, Micheal Brown, Eric Gardner, Tamir Rice, the kind of testimonies that tear at the insides like swallowed rust nails. "Until you experience this you will never know my pain!" she rages as a loved one concerned, hurt written on his face reaches from behind the stage for her "No, no until they been through what I have experience you will never know!"

The microphone drops. It is a thud felt in the pit of a collective stomach.

WHO WILL SURVIVE AMERICA?

ZELLA ZIONA

Zella Ziona was a 21 year-old trans Black woman who was killed on October 15th in Gaithersburg, Maryland. She was approached by four or five teenagers in an alley way. After a dispute with 20 year old Rico Hector Leblond, Ziona was shot in the head. Leblond has been charged with first degree murder. She is at least the twenty-first trans woman killed in the United States this year.

COREY JONES

Corey Jones was a 31 year-old cis Black male who was shot and killed by a plainclothes police officer on October 18th in Palms Beach Gardens, Florida. Jones was on his way home when car troubles forced him to pull over on the road side of interstate 95. Officer Nouman Raja, an on-duty plainclothes officer in an unmarked car pulled up to investigate, believing that Jones' car was abandoned. Raja confronted Jones believing he had a gun and opened fire.

AMONDEREZ GREEN

Amonderez Green was a 18 year-old cis Black male who was shot and killed during a confrontation with police on October 28th in Normandy, Missouri, only two miles away from Ferguson. Ferguson police officers have admitted to being on the scene and eyewitnesses say that Ferguson police officers shot Green in the face. The statement released by the St. Louis County Police Department claims that Green was suicidal, shot at police multiple times with a silver revolver, and then shot himself in the face. However, a video released on twitter shows a woman out of frame screaming "don't shoot my baby" and a male voice shouting "don't kill me, oh god."

REST IN POWER

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Who Will Survive America?

THE DECOLONIZER
November 2015

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ARTIST OF THE MONTH: EMORY DOUGLAS

Emory Douglas was the minister of culture for the Black Panther Party beginning in 1967 until the group dissolved in the 1980s. His artwork was featured consistently in The Black Panther newspaper and he was the art director, designer, and main illustrator for the publication. His iconic images represented the struggle of the Panthers as whole. His posters and flyers brought the revolution to people and allowed them to visualize resistance. A comprehensive collection of his work can be seen in the book Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas.

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Decolonizing Culture

THE DECOLONIZER
November 2015

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ON VIOLENCE

by Dubian Ade

We have lived barely. Our naked bodies
clothed with thinning patience. Kept
warm between chapped hands rubbed
together, pealed at the cuticle smell of
deferred dreams
in Chicago it gets so cold.
In New York it gets so cold.
It takes the cold to realize that
maybe these buildings could make a good bonfire.
We watched in front of the TV screen the
night Baltimore made a name for its self.
Broadcast to the colonized the possibility
of exploding cars, molotov bottles, state
troopers who had soiled their uniforms
and will hang them up on cloths pins to
dry tomorrow.
I curl up underneath my rage to keep
warm and live out my vengeance through
the TV screen, my aggression vicarious,
extended outward.
My blood boils. Bubbling underneath the
skin like Fanon's Leukemia.
It is the possibility of the thing.
To be beaten in the streets and not roll over to
die. To respond with anything lying within
reach. A plank, a bat, a machete.
To be resurrected from police custody.
Freddie Gray's ghost poring gasoline onto
garbage cans. Sandra Bland throwing
hands with lieutenants. Water for the
martyr lamented.
Some of us are too young to remember
Watts. Killing us with white fragility we
forgot the possibility. Of the people giving
birth each second they destroy.
You misunderstand us. So we speak in
the language of now and borrowed
tongue. A violent system can only
understand violence. There is nothing
reasonable about occupation. There is nothing
reasonable about racism. There
is nothing reasonable about rape.
You misunderstand us. So come, let me show you:
There are revolts beneath my tongue and
under my eyelids. I did not put them
there.
Who put them there?

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Dubian Ade

THE DECOLONIZER
November 2015

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A NORMAL LIFE

This poem was originally published in a print anthology of the 9th World Poetry Festival in Kolkata, India.


by Sophia Terazawa

For a woman to write history
is an old way of telling time,

yet she is not ancient

but a girl who stares into the barrel of a gun.


I do not imagine myself in a tunnel.

I do not imagine a helicopter,
 even I
do not imagine the diary of Ho Chi Minh,

for then I must imagine myself inside a jail cell,


and for a woman to be in a jail cell

when her body is already a prison,
I ask
 the historian to imagine the impossibility
of writing time
 through her black, infinite eyes.

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Sophia Terazawa

THE DECOLONIZER
November 2015

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