Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Poetry Editor
How we got from there to here is a question all of us ask ourselves and wonder at. We can consider the sweat it took and the blood let; the cries of pain and of joy. We can consider the broken hearts left behind and we can consider those who left us with the broken heart. We can wonder at the sad trek of the sad soldier homeless and forgotten and we can wonder at the young mother celebrated in a...
Birthday Poem
First light of day in Mississippi
son of laborer & of house wife
it says so on the official photostat
not son of fisherman & child fugitive
from cottonfields & potato patches
from sugarcane chickens & well-water
from kerosene lamps & watermelons
mules named jack or jenny & wagonwheels,
years of meaningless farm work
work Work WORK WORK WORK—
“Papa pull you outta school bout March
to stay on the place & work the crop”
—her own earliest knowledge
of human hopelessness & waste
She carried me around nine months
inside her fifteen year old self
before here I sit numbering it all
How I got from then to now
is the mystery that could fill a whole library
much less an arbitrary stanza
But of course you already know about that
from your own random suffering
& sudden inexplicable bliss
-- Al Young
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Grab a chair, and join us for discussion. Barbeque is on the table and dessert is on the way.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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“My intention with standup, with this show, with film, with anything that I do as overzealous as it sounds, is to contribute to expanding consciousness. It’s genuinely what I think I’m here for.” -Jerrod Carmichael: The Grio: ‘The Carmichael Show’ is unapologetically black in primetime.
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Jerrod Carmichael is widely known for his undeniably unique style of stand-up comedy featured in the HBO comedy special Jerrod Carmichael: Love at the Store. Some folks might recognize him from his recent film role alongside Seth Rogan and Zack Efron in Neighbors, or you might identify the sound of his voice from his work on the adult animated sitcom Lucas Bros. Moving Company.
Carmichael is currently entertaining millions of viewers with The Carmichael Show, an NBC-scripted sitcom that he created, executive produces and stars in.
The modern-day series, which is based on comedian’s real life and family, stars Loretta Devine, David Alan Grier, Amber Stevens West, Tiffany Haddish and Lil Rel Howery.
“I write characters that I’ve met. I write words that I use, I write very honestly, and if it’s unapologetically black that’s because I’m unapologetically black,” Carmichael told theGrio.com during an interview on the set of The Carmichael Show.
Thus far, the show has tackled hot-button topics such as Islamaphobia, homophobia, the Black Lives Matter movement, and gun control, to name a few.
Just last month, Carmichael and his cast dedicated an entire episode, titled Fallen Heroes, to the sexual assault controversy surrounding legendary comedian Bill Cosby.
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When Marvel Comics announced last September that Ta-Nehisi Coates would be writing a series about the superhero Black Panther, fans were thrilled. Vulture called it “the most significant superhero-comics news of the year,” while Claire Landsbaumenthused in Slate that Coates was “indisputably a great choice to pen” the character’s adventures. Coates seemed like a natural fit to carry on the legacy of the first major black superhero. As a well-credentialed comics fan, he was clearly prepared to handle a character who’d been a player in the Marvel universe for almost fifty years.
That enthusiasm only built in the months leading up to the actual release of the project, with articles in the New York Times, the Guardian, and other publications expanding the comic’s reach beyond the fans who sustain Marvel’s print publications. Now that it’s finally here, however, it’s hard to know what to make of the series’ debut issue, which published on Wednesday. Coates, who has never written a comic before, still seems to be finding his voice in the medium. Though the art by penciler Brian Stelfreeze is crisp and precise, entire pages are sometimes hard to follow—the action choppy and characters’ backstories fuzzy.
Despite that, Coates’ comfort with Marvel’s traditions is evident in virtually every panel. In interviews and on Twitter, he’s shown that he approached the assignment like a scholar, delving deep into the Panther’s history, and his evident erudition only underscores the book’s occasional befuddlements. The first of eleven planned installments, it reads sluggishly despite its frantic pace, at once at burdened by and benefiting from the narrative histories it draws on.
The issue begins in a jagged rush: We meet our costumed hero—who is also known as T’Challa—in the middle of an uprising in Wakanda, the secret African nation that he rules. “I came here to praise the heart of my country, the vibranium miners of the Great Mound. For I am their king and I love them as the father loves the child,” he thinks as he studies the chaos. We never learn, not in these pages, anyway, exactlyhow that chaos began. Indeed, we never so much as see the blow that brings him to his hands and knees on the book’s opening page.
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Beyoncé typically lets her music speak for her, skipping interviewsin favor of song lyrics. But in the weeks following the release of hercontroversial video for the song “Formation,” she sat down with Elle magazine to share her thoughts on some of the issues her music raises. Here’s what the star had to say about police violence, feminism and why she doesn’t strive to be perfect.
On police violence: I mean, I’m an artist and I think the most powerful art is usually misunderstood. But anyone who perceives my message as anti-police is completely mistaken. I have so much admiration and respect for officers and the families of officers who sacrifice themselves to keep us safe. But let’s be clear: I am against police brutality and injustice. Those are two separate things. If celebrating my roots and culture during Black History Month made anyone uncomfortable, those feelings were there long before a video and long before me. I’m proud of what we created and I’m proud to be a part of a conversation that is pushing things forward in a positive way.
On feminism: I put the definition of feminist in my song [“Flawless”] and on my tour, not for propaganda or to proclaim to the world that I'm a feminist, but to give clarity to the true meaning. I’m not really sure people know or understand what a feminist is, but it’s very simple. It’s someone who believes in equal rights for men and women. I don’t understand the negative connotation of the word, or why it should exclude the opposite sex. If you are a man who believes your daughter should have the same opportunities and rights as your son, then you’re a feminist. We need men and women to understand the double standards that still exist in this world, and we need to have a real conversation so we can begin to make changes. Ask anyone, man or woman, “Do you want your daughter to have 75 cents when she deserves $1?” What do you think the answer would be? When we talk about equal rights, there are issues that face women disproportionately…. Working to make those inequalities go away is being a feminist, but more importantly, it makes me a humanist.
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Tensions are running high in Darfur ahead of a controversial referendum that could see the war-torn region reorganised into a single semi-autonomous zone.
President Omar al-Bashir – who has been charged by the international criminal court for war crimes in Darfur – said he is holding the vote next week in partial fulfilment of the 2011 peace agreement between Khartoum and the various rebel groups that have been battling his forces for more than a decade.
The ballot, which gives residents the option to keep the five existing states or vote to see Darfur reunited as one entity, has been roundly rejected by locals who say it will merely provoke further clashes at a time when fighting has already intensified and millions have been forced to flee their homes.
As recently as February the UN reported tens of thousands of civilians were leaving Darfur’s Jebel Marra area after weeks of clashes between Bashir’s troops and rebels.
“We are displaced and most of us have no identity papers. How can we be actively involved in this referendum?” says Naima, a woman living with her family in a makeshift camp in Kalmah, South Darfur.
Fighting originally flared between forces loyal to the president and the SudanLiberation Army (SLA-AW), led by Abdelwahid Nur, in 2003
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In the last decade, millions of people have graduated out of poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean. But economic growth continues to drag on in the hemisphere, says the Inter-American Development Bank. Miami Herald: Bahamas hosts summit on Latin American, Caribbean economies
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While growth in Latin America and the Caribbean continued to decline for the fifth straight year, the region is still better off than in the past decade, says the president of the Inter-American Development Bank.
“The region as a whole, compared to a decade ago, has far less people in extreme poverty,” said Luis Alberto Moreno, the head of the hemispheric financial institution. “The challenge going forward is how in a lower growth environment do you preserve those gains that we achieved in the past?”
Finding the answers to that question against the backdrop of falling commodity prices, climate change and growing numbers of retirees, will be the focus of the Inter-American Development Bank’s annual meeting Thursday through Sunday in Nassau, Bahamas.
Finance ministers and central bank governors will discuss productivity, increasing infrastructure investments and making the best use of trade agreements. Another item high on the agenda is doubling the bank's climate-related financing.
United Nations studies have shown that rising sea levels have the potential of wiping out airports in the Bahamas and elsewhere in the region. Meanwhile, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) estimates that between 2000 and 2014, natural disasters caused at least $27 billion in damages in the English-speaking Caribbean.
The Bahamas, for example, faced a major setback in 2015 after Hurricane Joaquindevastated its southeastern islands in late September and early October, slowing GDP growth. In August, Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said a destructive Tropical Storm Erika, which killed at least 20, had set the Eastern Caribbean nation back 20 years.
But climate change isn’t the only concern. A strong U.S. dollar, reflected in falling commodity prices, is also leading to the devaluation of almost every country’s currency, increasing lending demands to the bank.
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The International criminal court has abandoned its prosecution of Kenya’s deputy president, William Ruto, who had been accused of orchestrating the post-electoral violence in 2007 that killed more than 1,300 people.
The controversial proceedings were declared by the court’s presiding judge, Chile Eboe-Osuji, to be a mistrial due to a “troubling incidence of witness interference and intolerable political meddling”.
The Hague-based tribunal also dropped identical charges of crimes against humanity – involving murder, persecution and forcible transfer of populations – that had been brought against the Kenyan broadcaster Joshua Sang.
The rulings reflect the frustration of senior lawyers in obtaining reliable evidence against high-ranking officials accused of committing atrocities.
Eighteen months ago the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, was forced to drop charges against Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, over the same flare-up of political violence, citing problems with witnesses who had been harassed and intimidated. At the time she declared it was “a dark day for international criminal justice”.
The majority decision, by two judges to one, to terminate the case against Ruto, 49, and Sang, 40, left open the possibility that the prosecution could be revived at a future date. It may yet be subject to appeal. Lawyers for the two Kenyans had argued that there was no case to answer.
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