I AM TROY DAVIS

My life changed this time last year September 16, 2010 at 4:15 am. I was catapulted into a world so foreign to me it felt like an out of body experience, but so real that it was inevitable living and loving a black man in America. I came face to face with the Prison Industrial System. Never did I imagine it would be as dehumanizing as it is and financially taxing. It is a system designed specifically to beat the fight out of the most resistant spirit, and although it is not always successful its record is damn near impeccable.

I wrote a lot during that time, of course I was writing to him in jail, but I needed to capture for myself what all this meant, loving a black man. Because this is a reality for so many black women. This reality of not being able to hold and protect him from the evil snares of a beast hungry for his blood. I am often reminded of a short story I read in college (I can't remember the name of it or its author although it haunts me constantly) about a woman who commits infanticide because her brother was lynched by a white mob. She was so overtaken with grief (or possibly brought back to reality) that she could not allow her baby boy to be subjected to that level of hate. So instead she offered her son the greatest gift of love, death.

It feels like that sometimes. It feels like that alot. This helplessness, this unbearable feeling of anguish and pain, of not being able to completely trust that one day you will not get a phone call or visit from someone saying your son, your man, your brother, your father has been touched by this evil.

It is only the grace of God and the innocence of hope that we continue to breathe. Some breaths are shallow and rapid and others on rare occasions when he is safe in your arms are deep, full, and peaceful.

I am no longer with this black man whom I still love, but I am thankful for that experience and for opening my eyes and spirit to this long fight for humanity. During the last year I was connected to Mumia's case and all of the glaring evidence to his innocence. I read Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow. I began to see more clearly the unconditional grace and love of the Most High on my life. I have been changed by the last 12 months for it has prepared me for this moment in history where an innocent black man can be publicly lynched in 2011.

I Am Troy Davis because Troy Davis is all of us who descends from those forced to these shores for profit. I am "bone of the bone, flesh of the flesh" of those now cowering behind the veil.

This prison system can boast some level of success, although the war is not over, there does exist a major defeat to our fight for humanity. When we can allow the first black president to be let off the hook so easily for atrocities we would never stand for if perpetrated by any other, we have been dealt a significant blow, not a death blow just yet, but devastating none the less. It is our birthright to stand against evil and demand with love in our hearts and eyes that "evil you have no power here." You may imprison my body but you will not destroy my soul.

I stand, you stand, we stand together with Brother Troy Anthony Davis and the 1.7 million other political prisons behind those walls of enslavement and declare with definitive clarity that "Satan we gonna tear your kingdom down!"

On September 21, 2011 I recommit myself to standing on the side of right; standing for justice, QUALITY EDUCATION, QUALITY HEALTH CARE, and QUALITY LIVING WAGE JOBS!

I implore you, all of you, to do the same. If last night standing on the streets of Philadelphia demanding Troy Davis' freedom with hundreds of my brothers and sisters in solidarity, taught me anything, it taught me that there is still Power in and for the People.

Use your voice for good. Talk with your neighbors, your children, your spouse, your co-workers; remind them the fight for humanity is not over and it requires all of us to be involved. We no longer can afford to sit on the sidelines of history watching and waiting. You are required to earn your keep in the realm of humanity and represent the love of God through service to the people.

Power To The People!

Sunday Yoga Soul

There is little separation between soul music (rhythm and blues) and spirituals; it is literally one in the same. It is derived from the same origin within the core of Africans transported to the Americas.

This music is the memory of that passage; of that struggle through the terrain, to the dungeons, on to the sandy beaches, into the bowels, across the raging waters, amongst the stench of death, hearing the wailing cries, blindly walking upon the shores of this once sacred land now desecrated by greed. And in that music lives the faith of knowing peace and justics can, and will, prevail.

The sorrow song, soul song, spiritual song of the African transported to Americas is where we reside. It is the safe haven of our ancestors' collective spirits. It is a song that cannot be replicated by anyone else. You can hear the very distinct difference of voice, tone, reverence, and emotion when sung by someone other than the ones who spirits crossed those seas just a few short years ago. Their renditions of these soulful songs are just standard and customary. For them it is a process by which to praise or acknowledge a lover.
But to the African in the Americas the soul/spiritual song represents our existence. It is more than a show or performance; it is the remembrance and storehouse of our humanity. These songs represent the promise of return; a return to a time and place where we were defined by world humanity, not as chattel, but as human beings.

When the voices sung "swing low sweet chariot, coming forth to carry me home" you can feel the tremors of the soul seeking refuge in a promised land. You experience the depth of their need to grasp a reality that they can only envision in their nightly dreams. You can know through that song that hope is more than an abstract perception, but a “faith in the ultimate justice of things... (where) men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins…”

Dr. W.E.B. DuBois writes eloquently in The Souls of Black Folks that the sorrow (spiritual) song “…stands today not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of the human experience born this side of the seas. It has been neglected, it has been, and is, half despised, and above all it has been persistently mistaken and misunderstood; but notwithstanding, it still remains as the singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro people.”

It is through this gift that I share the offering of yoga, Sunday Yoga Soul. During this practice, the sound of soul music will serve as the vehicle to liberation and truth, using the power of the breath to open you up to the unlimited possibilities of your ordained purpose. I invite you to join me in celebrating not just this music, but celebrating you, a recipient and benefactor of this legacy, unlocking the wisdom of yoga for your liberation.

Sunday Yoga Soul (Love's Revolt Yoga) is every Sunday at The Arts Garage located at 16th and Ridge.

I look forward to seeing you there,

Ase. Namaste.

oldie, but goodie (2005)

Psalms 73
Here sitting in the Praise House reading Psalms 73 has affirmed that I must praise and stay committed to the Most High in reference to the situation with my supervisor. I must trust God and know this experience is ordained. To see this young white woman use the liberation of African people as her footstool to her achievement mirrors Psalms 73 verse 7 "their eyes swell out with fatness, their hearts overflow with malice." But God says, (the Creator is speaking to me right now, affirming my next movement, when he tells me to Trust him,) "for lo, those who are far from thee shall parrish..." My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever."

This experience with my supervisor is ordained. I will have many adversaries like her who want to come and destroy the power of our children, and I must hone my skills against her so that I can be stronger when greater enemies come to eat at the flesh of African people's liberation.
I must learn now that at this time I must be in a spirit of Thanksgiving. I must know that "for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell all thy works," and give praises because God is in control. The revelation is coming orchestrating the next move.

Her spirit(supervisor) needs to be reminded or taught about the goodness of the Creator. Maybe she does not know God or recognize that she has an ordained purpose that is good. Her spirit would be free and she could experience true joy and happiness.

God use me to be an example of her possible goodness and if she is unable or chooses not to humble herself before you then I know, through your word, what her destiny will be"...then I perceived their end. Truly thou dost set them in slippery places; thou dost make them fall to ruin; how they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors. They are like a dream when one awakes, on awakening you despise their phantoms."

I must not succumb to the flesh because it takes me away from my spiritual connection to the Creator. I must deepen my spiritual attainment moving beyond the surface and delving deeper into the spiritual ocean of awakeness.
Ashe.

01-05-05

Found this on an old blog I wrote back in 2005!!!

Monday, March 14, 2005

Movement Building Notes

I need a strategy on how to mobilize the masses, the community, in becoming empowered and standing up for their freedom.

Freedom from:

inefficient mental health services
inadequate and false educational practices and implementation
terrorism in our community in the form of law enforcement
gentrification and the "smoking out"of African and Indigenous people from their homes and community.

Study the strategies from Greenwood, Ms 1963-64 (Freedom Fighters)

What are our pressing issues? What are the focal points of the people in the community, specifically with the women in the community?

their children
their children's education
their children's imprisonment
their children's quality of life.
Education and Imprisonment

children by the 3rd not reading at grade level have a stronger statistical connection to future imprisonment.

How do we educate and make aware to the community this information?

How did they (Freedom fighters 1960's) do this?

Their tag word for hooking the community was VOTE, and through that they were able to open the community to their own empowerment to tackle the other atrocities that were strangling their existence.

Highlander School

What did they teach?
What was their focus?
Who did they target?
Find out their timeline and when they peaked with their work in civil rights.

Oxford, Oh - place where they trained the Freedom Riders and interns for Freedom School.

Who were their trainers?
Were these trainers students of Highlander?
How did they break down the issue of voter registration or how did they connect their everyday life with the issue of voter registration; ie how do you make a sharecropper understand or connect with the fact that they don't have a right to vote and their need to have a right to vote?

originally scribed January 2005

Enjoy the Breath

If you are anything like me, being satisfied with where you are at the moment is not a top priority of your "Things To Do" list...

- send this proposal
- plan that workshop
- make an appointment for this waxing
- don’t forget to pay those parking tickets

Nothing on this high priority list suggest just breathing, enjoying the moment that you exist in right now. Why is that? What is it about being present that can be so challenging or even, if I’m bold enough to admit, so scary? Where do we learn not to be satisfied, content with what is before us?

I can speculate to so many things, and one in particular (and I won’t get on my soapbox) is media.

We are constantly bombarded with the next best “It” thing that we must have to find contentment or satisfaction with ourselves. If you do not have it, you can barely consider yourself human let alone worthy to be in the mist of those who do possess the latest trinket or toy.

We are forever inundated with the thought that "you are not enough" or "the potential is there, just keep striving."

Well I am going to be audacious and say “Fiddle Sticks!!!”

In this present moment, in the span of time it takes for you to inhale fully and exhale completely, is a gift from God! A love offering that says because you are so worthy, so divine, so beautiful, so ordained that this blessing of breath is yours.

Because we are made in the likeness of the Most High God, we are ordained with its divine energy of love, peace, contentment, and joy. There is no need to chastise yourself for past experiences that were had to make you the person you have come to be, or become anxious of what is to come in the future.

All things work for the good of those who love God, and in order to love God authentically, you must be able to love yourself and others around you. This love is full of power and confidence, and sanctifies your ordained worth. This is a love to be acknowledged and celebrated in every breath.

Be present in this breath and affirm that this is God’s breath, not given out of pity or angst, but bestowed with love, revolutionary love.

Ase. Namaste

Revolutionary Love

I feel so heavy, full.
I am swelling with this uncontrollable urge to let go
I just know that the urge to stay confined has lost its appeal and has been replaced with this demanding need to break free, let go, trust, fly without wings, and live the life not that I envisioned but what God has destined.

I am so heavy, overflowing.
There can no longer be a time in which we exist on this planet and not live in harmony
You are meant to manifest the glory of our Heavenly Father.
Live with love, love only.
Imprint in your daily activities the one and only commandment Jesus requested of those who believe in him and His Father, love your neighbor as you love yourself.

I am so heavy, saturated.
I drip love everywhere I go, in everything I do.
I leave remnants of praise in the tiny corners of despair.
I forgive the cruelty of ignorance.
I open my spirit, heart, mind, and body to you
I give thanks for you

I am so heavy, and with this weight I place myself firmly in the mist of the storm anchoring humanity with the strength and fortitude of the most perfect love, that revolutionary love. The love where a man lays down His life for a friend. It is with this love that I invite you to quench your dehydrating thirst of this world, and drink from the living waters of eternal life.

I am so heavy with revolutionary love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf_zz8Ezdhg

Love Sucks.

Why would you say that?

Because it does. Name one relationship you know where the two people would die for one another in love and they are either 1) having problems or 2) not still together. The relationships I know intimately that express that type of love is experiencing those two options.

Hell my own relationship has succumb to the latter.

Why do you think that is so?

Love sucks.

No, lets be a bit more reflective and mature.

Love is hard; is that better?

Much. Explain a little more.

Well, through my journey in yoga I've learned that struggle is not a bad thing, in fact it is good and necessary. It helps to refine and define you. Struggle is meant for good, but unfortunately our culture and society tell us the opposite. Avoid it as best you can. You definitely don't wanna get yourself caught struggling; not a pretty picture. But is it?

The birthing of a baby is not a pretty picture but one of the most beautiful things ever witnessed. Our perspective of things that are hard have greatly been influenced by the opinions of those who seek to remind us that you are not enough and in order to be fulfilled you need to buy this. If we constantly were not being bombarded by images and words telling us that happiness looks like having the latest Steve Jobs invention and happiness sounds like being told how great your ass looks in those jeans, and happiness taste like what the rich folk eat, and happiness feels like chinchilla fur...we could very well find enough breathing space to say happiness for me is seeing a smile on my baby's face, happiness is knowing that even after we've called each other every name in the book, his is the only arms I want to be wrapped up in at night.

Love does not guarantee that all the expectations you set for yourself as a child are going to be met by the one that makes your heart skip a beat. I'm convinced, especially after this one that I love, that you don't consciously chose the one you love. I have become even more confident in the knowledge that the Holy Spirit is real; there are other forces operating in the universe that influence our decisions. Beyond the power of the breath, it is that lifeforce, that ase, that aum, prana, chi, how ever you choose to describe it, that is ordained by God influencing the love we experience during this human journey.

This does not mean it will make sense to you all the time, but it is purposeful. The task for you is to seek clarity because I would have never chosen this boy to give my heart unconditionally, but I am so thankful that I did.

He taught me so much about myself. He forced me to look at all the preconceived ideas I had about love and sharing my life with someone. In that introspection I was able to know for myself what my non-negotiables are, even if the price of them is the man I love. I learned that I can handle alot, like standing by my man even when very little people would stand with me. I learned, too, that if my intention is to submit to my mate then he too must submit to me. Even if the one you love identifies himself in an unconventional way, you must decide, collectively and honestly, how you will both consciously navigate the turbulent waters of this thing called love.

It does not always work out; the hardest thing can be the collective agreement or even the wisdom of submission. Love definitely sucks when this understanding is missing. But oh how good it is just trying to figure it all out.

The beauty in watching love unfold is very much equivalent to the bursting forth of new life from the womb. It is painful, you want it to be over, chastising yourself for ever putting yourself through this situation and vowing, publicly, never to do it again, but when the pain subsides, and you look into the eyes of the one you love you know that you would die a thousand deaths to experience the exquisite joy of one more of his kisses (heavy sigh)...

Sometimes we don't possess the power or faith to let the good times be a balm over the bad times. We get scared and seek security in what we are told we are suppose to have and know. We end of finding someone else to love, but realizing instantly that the heart does not easily forget as quickly as the head. Not that love can never exist again, but we all know the truth. The older lady I met that day waiting in the visitors room at HOC reminds me daily that if he ever called me again I will drop everything and everyone to come running to experience just one more time the power of that undeniable life force called love.

So no, love does not suck...but sometimes I do.

Peace and love.

Lil Wayne and Jay Z???

Okay, let's get it together people, seriously.

Well, let's start with you. What have you been doing? Seems like you have been waiting for someone else to do the work or at least start it, so why come down so hard on everyone else. Remember four fingers are pointing right back at you.

You are right. Touche'. What am I doing? I have had this blog at least since 2009 (and really it's been way longer...) and now today I get back on. What have I been doing? What am I doing now?

Why start this back now? What are your plans? Have you created lofty goals for yourself in gaining exposure for your writing? Or are you bored? Is it because you are at your wits end that you even start typing letters in the URL spelling out lovesrevolt...?Or is enough, enough?

Can you not take anymore of this complicity, this silence. This deafening silence covered up by distractions??? Is it becoming too much?

HELL YEAH!!!!! I mean really, what is going the freak on????? How is it that in 2011 we are seeing this all out warfare against black people!

SERIOUSLY and we say nothing?

Okay, okay, let me explain. So Michelle Alexander put out a book last year, The New Jim Crow, just painting the most vivid realist portrait of the judicial system and the prison industrial complex (I mean with data and court cases and all), and of course how black people (Spanish speaking and non) make up over 80% of the national population in prisons; just amazingly written.
Then we have the "revolutions" in Tunisia (Africa), Egypt (Africa again) and the most volatile one of them all Libya (and I will not going to fool anyone by calling that a revolution) the most African of them all with Qaddafi still today (September 2, 2011)declaring that the fight continues! (if you are not familiar with the non-western perspective on this war in Libya then please check out the youtube clip of Cynthia McKinney discussing her visits to Libya during the NATO bombing campaign; its freakin unbelievable!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPVJMSZsXeA)

Urban education (aka black, poor, at-risk, black) is under reform (also known as the resurrection of the AMA, Teach for America, opps I meant, American Missionary Association), and black folks who have been responsible for teaching these black children in these urban cities' public education system for the past 25 years are no good, especially when the cities are being gentrified by more liberal, diverse, educated, and white (better) communities. If you don't believe me check out New Orleans Tribune today http://www.tribunetalk.com/?p=1979 ,and let it not be misunderstood they will use our own to fool us; in Africa it is called neo-colonialism).

And let's not forget the most deadly one of them all; it effects all the others mentioned in a way that is cancerous, economics; employment, underemployment, unemployment, never-been-employed-because-you-got-locked-up-ten-years-for-smoking-a-joint-employment.
I mean this crisis runs the gamut...smh!

But what ignites my tyrant is this ridiculous issue of beef between Jay Z and Lil Wayne!!! Like really!!!

...

...

(I'm pausing because I am literally speechless...)

...

Ok, ENOUGH is ENOUGH.

It's bad enough that Watch The Throne has received the type of attention it has. Sure its good, but they have done better, together and separately. But now Lil Wayne's album is out and folks are talking about it and this supposes beef...(I'm lost again...still smh...)

STOP!

Libya or as Qaddafi re-named in 1986, Great Socialist People's Libya Arab Jamahiriya (translates as "state of the masses") is under NATO bombing attacks!

There is no more time for us to bathe leisurely in the pool of decadency (not that the masses of us ever could, but you know what I mean).

We are a people of action, a people of revolution and social change. The blood of those that not only survived, but also rebelled runs within our veins. The time for silence is over. This makes me think of Dr. King's speech given one year to the day of his assassination, A Time To Break Silence. This speech was his wake up call to America and it's antics over in Vietnam. He shared with great conviction that we can no longer sit by while you attack another nation when the social conditions of all people, but especially black people, were as dehumanizing as it was.

We must today, too, stand up and say, "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!"

We? I thought this was about you?

Yeah, No, it is about We. You and I. Because as my friend Judie shared with me today, "all I can do is talk to my two children and their friends, and share what I know."

That, my friend will make a world of difference.

Let us all talk, at least for a start, what is going on. Peace and love!