We here at Black Kos were truly touched to have been nominated for a KOscar. But to have actually won an award against such stiff competition was truly amazing. Hats off to the other nominees especially our recent collaborators WGLB Presents. We would like to thank everyone who both nominated us, and who were kind enough to grace us with their vote. Every once in a while something happens that touches someone's heart, and this was one such moment. Thank you to all our readers. We have strived to create not only a welcoming, informative, and inclusive community, but also a place were people can have a discussion without a lot of "shouting" or fear of being disrespected. We have tried to provide news that is often overlooked even on other progressive blogs or communities. This award tells that we are at least somewhat close to achieving our goals. On behalf of Amazinggrace, Deoliver47, Justice Putnam, Robinswing, Sephius1, and myself dopper0189 Thank you!
RESULTS Daily KOscars 2009
- Community Forum:
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Commentary by Deoliver47, Black Kos Editor
Black folks and the Oscars
While we here at Black Kos are celebrating our KOscar, I got curious about the history of the Academy and its awards to black folks, as the kudos are going were going out to Mo'Nique, for her Best Supporting win.
Mo'Nique Oscar acceptance speech 2010
Not everyone was supportive or gracious about her speech, when she mentioned the "politics" of the academy. She said ""First, I would like to thank the Academy for showing that it can be about the performance and not the politics." She then referenced Hattie McDaniel, the first black person to win and Oscar.
Kate Harding, at Salon has issued a heated defense, which contained some interesting history (my bold).
In defense of Mo'Nique's Oscar speech
...But there is another element of politics versus performance where Mo'Nique is concerned, which can be found in the next line of her speech: "I want to thank Miss Hattie McDaniel for enduring all that she had to, so that I would not have to. " It's worth considering that if McDaniel had wanted to launch a schmooze campaign for the Oscar she won in 1940, it would have been virtually impossible. She was barred from attending the "Gone With the Wind" premiere in Atlanta, because it would have been against Georgia law for her to sit in a theater with white people. She was not only the first African-American to win an Academy Award but the first to be allowed into the ceremony in anything but a serving capacity -- they stuck her at a table in the back. Although she was a talented singer and comedian, she won Hollywood's grudging respect by playing a maid named Mammy. And during her tearful acceptance speech (below), she said bluntly, "I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race." It's the kind of statement that makes a 21st-century white liberal like myself cringe; that she felt the need to say that underscores just how entrenched and accepted overt racism was at the time. But even though the laws and culture have changed substantially, and you'd be unlikely to hear an African-American actor prostrate herself before white peers and viewers quite so nakedly today, it's certainly not as though black people in Hollywood are no longer burdened with representing their entire race or working overtime to prove themselves.
In the 70 years between McDaniel's and Mo'Nique's wins, only three other black actresses -- Whoopi Goldberg, Halle Berry and Jennifer Hudson -- have taken home Oscars. Just one of those was for a leading role, and if you guessed that went to the only thin, light-skinned, button-nosed, biracial one of the bunch, you get a gold star. Four black men have won best actor -- three of those in the last 10 years -- and four have won best supporting. So that's 13 acting awards out of 328. In 82 years. This year also saw the second African-American to be nominated for best director and the first ever African-American screenwriter to win. In 82 years. Welcome to post-racial America.
When it was also mentioned repeatedly that Geoffrey Fletcher, became the first African American to win an Oscar for best writing for best adapted screenplay for Precious, I got more curious. Since Mo'Nique is being mentioned as only the 5th black woman to win one, I thought I'd do a bit of historical digging to look at the history of the Academy in its relationship to awarding African Americans in the industry its highest award.
I didn't have far to go in my research. Found this excellent three part essay
A History Of Ignorance? Blacks & The Oscars: Part I by Ullin R. whose full name is Ullin K. Rigby. He hails from Freeport, Grand Bahama.
Here's his intro:
The Academy Awards do not like black people. Point-blank. Got your attention right?
As I pondered this article, I knew there were several approaches to making it realistic and fair without appearing like an "Uncle Tom" or "the angry black man." I am self-professed awards buff – don’t care what industry, I will watch awards shows. Growing up, I never really noticed that most of the faces receiving – and presenting – the awards at the Academy Awards were Caucasian....I guess I was too consumed in either the fact that my favorite actor had just won or my favorite actress had just been robbed. It was what it was...but with maturity comes consciousness...and with consciousness comes the need to address a stark reality that exists.
The Academy Awards – or Oscars, as they’re commonly called – began in 1929 and have occurred every year since then. Initially, the awards only honored actors in the lead acting categories (the supporting categories were introduced in 1936). Each category celebrates the 5 best performances of the year, hailed by critics and viewing audiences alike. Take a look at this disturbing mathematical calculation: 5 nominees X 2 categories X 81 years = 810 possible nominees (give or take that some people have amassed several nominations during that period...case in point, Meryl Streep who has 16 nods to her resume, including one this year). Well guess what? Less than 50 African Americans have been nominated for acting awards (including the supporting categories.) Yes, you read that right....only 46 African American actors and actresses can lay claim to at least one nomination (only Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx and Morgan Freeman have scored multiple nods.) If that ratio isn’t crazy, I don’t know what is.
Give it a read. He's done far better research than I can, and has pictures and a lot of interesting data.
After reading his history, I started to muse about all those fine black actors I've seen on the silver screen over the years, most of whom were never nominated, and if nominated did not take home a statue.
First on my personal list was Paul Robeson, who reprised his award winning stage performance in a film version of Emperor Jones in 1933.
If you've never seen Emperor Jones (which was controversial at the time) the entire film is now available online.
As a side-note, Robeson was the subject of a short documentary that got an Oscar nod in 1979, Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist. Robeson had died 3 years before.
Saul J. Turell’s Academy Award-winning documentary short Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist, narrated by Sidney Poitier, traces his career through his activism and his socially charged performances of his signature song, "Ol’ Man River."
My question today to the community is, "Who do you think should have won an Oscar in the past?"
I was pretty amazed by the list of superb black actors who went home empty-handed. I found a List of black Academy Award winners and nominees, on wiki, which has nominees and winners. (strangely it includes Peter Ustinov, who seems to have had some African-ancestry)
After reading the history of the dearth of acting, writing, directing awards – I figured well, we must have won a lot of Oscars for music right? You know – the best original song category. I mean black folks music is the foundation stone of American music. We have jazz, blues, gospel, r&b (and rock and roll as a by-product) not to mention latin-jazz, salsa, reggae, hip hop, and rap.
Wrong.
It took the Academy until 1971 to bestow an Oscar on a black person's music in a film.
From the list:
1971 Isaac Hayes Shaft "Theme from Shaft" Winner the first black winner for Best Original Song
That brought back memories, though it is hard to believe it was a "first".
Isaac Hayes - Shaft - live 1973
While examining the list, also noticed that in 1982, the only Native American to share an Oscar was Buffy Sainte Marie for:
Up Where We Belong" — An Officer and a Gentleman • Music: Jack Nitzsche and Buffy Sainte-Marie Lyrics: Will Jennings
Though Jennifer Warnes and Joe Cocker sang it here’s our sister Buffy’s version:
The following year, my Afro-Latina (Puerto Rican-Cuban) homegirl from New York got the prize.
1983 Irene Cara Flashdance "Flashdance (What a Feeling)" Winner the first (and only) black woman (Afro-Latina, Puerto Rican-Cuban) to win a non-acting Oscar. Cara credited as lyricist only. Shared nomination with composer Giorgio Moroder and co-lyricist Keith Forsey
Ironically Flashdance was not meant to be a movie starring a black woman – since the casting folks had no idea that Jennifer Beales was bi-racial(African-American, Irish-American) when they selected her for the role. Oops!
For some reason the 80's was the least skimpy decade.
1984 Stevie Wonder The Woman in Red "I Just Called to Say I Love You"
1985 Lionel Richie White Nights "Say You, Say Me"
and in a different category, but still music there were two more winners:
1984 Prince Purple Rain Winner the first (and only) black winner of Best Original Song Score (which is different from Best Original Score category); this category was retired afterwards.
1986 Herbie Hancock Round Midnight Winner the first (and only) black winner of Best Original Score
From 1986 on there was a very long dry spell. It took until 2005 for any black musicians to get a nod, and the results stirred up a hornets nest in the black community yet again:
2005 Three 6 Mafia "Hard out here for a pimp"
Their performance Oscar night was changed - "bitches" became "witches".
Davy D from HipHopKC had an interesting critique.
I'm not going to say anything about that particular award, except that since then - nada.
Not a very long list, nor imho a very representative one.
But that's Hollywood.
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Todays News by Amazinggrace and dopper0189, Black Kos Editor and Managing Editor
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Chicago Tribune: Charter school in tough neighborhood gets all its seniors into college.
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The entire senior class at Chicago's only public all-male, all-African-American high school has been accepted to four-year colleges. At last count, the 107 seniors had earned spots at 72 schools across the nation.
Mayor Richard Daley and Chicago Public Schools chief Ron Huberman surprised students at an all-school assembly at Urban Prep Academy for Young Men in Englewood this morning to congratulate them. It's the first graduating class at Urban Prep since it opened its doors in 2006.
Huberman applauded the seniors for making CPS shine.
"All of you in the senior class have shown that what matters is perseverance, what matters is focus, what matters is having a dream and following that dream," Huberman said.
The school enforces a strict uniform of black blazers, khaki pants and red ties -- with one exception. After a student receives the news he was accepted into college, he swaps his red tie for a red and gold one at an assembly.
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Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic: The Miseducation Of Maceo Paul Coates.
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Continuing on a theme, here in Harlem, and I'm betting in cities across the country, there are a lot of schools with "success," and "achievement" appended to their name. I think a lot of these institutions are doing God's work. They are, in many cases, servicing families which are fighting to survive and want nothing more than to keep their children off the corner, out of jail, out of teen pregnancy, and out of an early grave. The prospect of college admission is the ticket, the passport, from the hood class into the middle class.
Despite reports to the contrary, Harlem is still a relatively poor area of town. And also despite reports to the contrary, the class of people here, and in poor black neighborhoods around the country, are mostly made up of parents who desperately want to get their kids getting up and out. The schools are addressing that sentiment with uniforms, discipline and three hours of homework. There's a school in the Bronx that bills itself as "college prep." That school starts in fifth grade.
I've lived around my people all my life, but this is one of those points where I feel the distance between myself and the striving collective. Samori will be going to middle school the year after next, and so the conversation about schools has really gotten intense. Kenyatta's been going to all the various open houses looking at decent schools, and almost all of them speak the same rubric of "success," and "achievement." There's a lot of talk about kids who score two and three grade levels higher than the average, and the kind of work-load that I probably couldn't handle as a 34-year-old man.
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Race Talk: A reflection on the wages of whiteness: Violence and the politics of privilege in the UAH shootings
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The faculty shooting at the University of Alabama – Huntsville in February, in which Amy Bishop, a white faculty member, murdered three of her colleagues of color and wounded three others after being denied tenure for a second time, is the most recent evidence of how hard it is to talk about race in the Age of Obama even when it appears to be hidden in plain view.
In this article I explore the implications of the UAH shooting and argue that the nation’s collective refusal to understand the complexities of 21st century racism and the reality of white privilege allowed Amy Bishop, a woman who killed her brother and allegedly attempted to do the same to a professor who negatively reviewed her work in graduate school, to evade the criminal justice system and go on to brutally murder three of her colleagues, all of whom were faculty of color.
This article urges us to understand how whiteness has transformed and reconstituted itself since the Civil Rights era and to challenge simplistic, liberal understandings of racism as the isolated behavior of a few individuals rather than as structural, systematic, and reproduced through the maintenance of white privilege. White privilege is a central feature of contemporary American racism and this race privilege enables white people to work the system in ways that simply are not possible for people of color.
On Friday, February 12, Amy Bishop Anderson, a professor and neurobiologist, opened fire on her colleagues during a departmental faculty meeting, killing three and critically wounding three more after learning she had been denied tenure a second time. According to the New York Times, in the weeks leading up to the shooting, Bishop had expressed anxiety about getting tenure. She blamed specific faculty for the problems that she was experiencing in her department without pointing out exactly who she believed to be responsible.
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(courtesy of Radio Girl) Huffington Post: The Tea Party Is All About Race.
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I was going to open this piece with an analogy about the tea party groups and why they're treated seriously by the press and the Republicans. The analogy would go something like: "Imagine [insert left-wing activist group here] getting a serious profile in a mainstream newspaper, and imagine serious Democratic politicians appearing at their convention."
The problem is, when I really evaluated what the various far-left activist groups are all about and compared them with the tea party movement, there really wasn't any equivalency. At all.
Because when you strip away all of the rage, all of the nonsensical loud noises and all of the contradictions, all that's left is race. The tea party is almost entirely about race, and there's no comparative group on the left that's similarly motivated by bigotry, ignorance and racial hatred.
I hasten to note that I'm talking about real racism, insofar as it's impossible for the majority race -- the 70 percent white majority -- to be on the receiving end of racism. That is unless white males, for example, are suddenly an oppressed racial demographic. But judging by the racial composition of, say, the Senate or AM talk radio or the cast members playing the Obamas on SNL, I don't think white people have anything to worry about.
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The Root: The Oscars and Why We Can’t All Be Sidney Poitier.
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Sidney Poitier is the doctor who saves the life of the racist who wants him dead. Sidney Poitier is the teacher who becomes the Great Black Hope for bratty white students that British society has written off. Sidney Poitier is the dignified handyman who builds a chapel for nuns for free. Sidney Poitier is the heroic Philadelphia police detective who risks his life in 1960s small-town Mississippi to bring a murderer to justice.
Sidney Poitier is not a man so much as he is a superhero, slaying racial stereotypes with every role. With his immaculate diction and regal bearing, he’s Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr. and every honest, hardworking and earnest black man we know in real life. They go to work, feed their families, and push through the kind of racism that would otherwise render both victim and perpetrator something less than human.
All of that is to say, Sidney Poitier does not down a bucket of greasy fried chicken while running down the streets of Harlem. He does not have HIV or impregnate his daughter twice. If he has a movie daughter, she would never ever balloon to 350 pounds before she gets to high school.
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This story should bring strong and conflicting emotions from many readers. New American Media: Gender Bias: Linda Carty's Last Hope on Death Row.
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Carty’s story is unique not just because of her life, but because her pending execution tosses another hideous glare on the plight of women that face execution. The one time that executions stir more than a public yawn is when a woman is scheduled to die. In 2009, the 53 women on America’s death row made up less than two percent of prisoners sentenced to death. Eleven have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
Carty’s plea is a virtual template for the other death row appellants in Texas. They claim lousy representation, tainted evidence a rush to judgment by cops and prosecutors, and a rubber stamp verdict by a judge and jury.
In Texas, their protest of legal taint, racial bias and pitiable defense attorneys is notorious. Yet, it almost always falls on deaf ears in the state and appellate courts. In most cases, the condemned are eventually executed. But Carty is a woman, and a foreigner to boot, with British officials putting legal and diplomatic muscle behind getting her death sentence squashed. This guarantees that her claim would get noticed.
But Carty’s case also spotlight another quirk in the tortured, contradictory and confused application of the death penalty, and that there’s twisted gender bias buried deep in the death penalty. Women are far more likely than men to get their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.
The gender bias that riddles the death penalty is a good thing in that it saves the lives of women. What's problematic is the rationale for saving their lives. Prosecutors regard women as less violent, less threatening and more emotionally unstable than men. If they kill and maim, they supposedly do it out of blind love or loyalty to a man. This reinforces the notion that women are the dainty sex in need of guidance, protection and, ultimately, male control. This strips them of any social and moral accountability for, and control over, their acts. It makes it even easier to marginalize women.
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Um, Yea! Race Talk: Does your race and income matter if face the death penalty?
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It is no secret that our country’s criminal justice system has consistently proven to be biased against minority communities of color. Statistics published by the NAACP show that even amongst those found guilty of crimes, African-Americans continue to be disproportionately sentenced to life in prison, face higher drug sentences, and are executed at higher rates when compared to people of other races. Michelle Alexander speaks of a "color-coded caste system" in The New Jim Crow that marginalized communities who encounter the criminal justice system.
Seasoned Texas attorney David R. Dow’s new book The Autobiography of an Execution provides an exploration of the death penalty, written through the eyes of a man who has spent 20 years defending over a hundred death-row inmates, most of whom died, and most of whom were guilty. As the head litigator for the Texas Defender Service, a non profit legal aid organization in the state that boasts the highest number of executions since 1976, Dow presents a powerful argument against the death penalty system. Candidly exploring how he balances such a trying job with being a good father and husband, Dow’s extremely personal book only works to strengthen the argument that the broken criminal justice system operates on a vicious cycle based on racial and economic disparity.
In his book, Dow opposes the unequal basis on which some criminals are sentenced to be executed while others aren’t, and deems the criminal justice system "racist, classist (and) unprincipled." He opposes the death penalty as a flawed and unjust facet of the criminal justice system. Based on his experience, he notes that while he believes that a majority of the clients he represented were, in fact, guilty, there was very little separating those criminals from others who were guilty of the same crime, other than "the operation of what I consider to be insidious types of prejudice." Most unsettling is his severe mistrust of members of the justice system – police officers, prosecutors and judges – whom he believes would "violate their oaths of office" and put men and women on death row who they think "deserve to be there".
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Think Progress: New report finds that right-wing extremist groups have grown 244 percent in the past year.
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A new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center has unearthed shocking data about the rise of militias, antigovernment groups, and other right-wing extremist groups. The report, titled "Rage on the Right," has found that there has been an increase of 244 percent in the number of these extremist groups in 2009:
The number of extremist groups in the United States exploded in 2009 as militias and other groups steeped in wild, antigovernment conspiracy theories exploited populist anger across the country and infiltrated the mainstream, according to a report issued today by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
Antigovernment "Patriot" groups – militias and other extremist organizations that see the federal government as their enemy – came roaring back to life over the past year after more than a decade out of the limelight.
The SPLC documented a 244 percent increase in the number of active Patriot groups in 2009. Their numbers grew from 149 groups in 2008 to 512 groups in 2009, an astonishing addition of 363 new groups in a single year. Militias – the paramilitary arm of the Patriot movement – were a major part of the increase, growing from 42 militias in 2008 to 127 in 2009.
Early last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned about the rise of "rightwing extremism in the United States," sparking an uproar among many on the right who derided DHS’s warning as merely "paranoid accusations of liberal bloggers."
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Editor's Note: The authors were in Haiti from January 24-29 as members of a team of five activists and academics, three of whom are Haitian-Americans, to assess conditions after the January 12 earthquake. The Nation: How to Help Haiti.
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Any expectation of corporate benevolence in the aftermath of the January 12 earthquake in Haiti quickly evaporated at the airport check-in. We were bringing in money and supplies, but we weren't part of an aid group recognized by Delta or American, so we were hit with additional baggage fees. At the suggestion of sympathetic airline employees, we evenly divided the supplies so that each bag was under fifty pounds. Nonetheless, four of us still had to hand over about $1,000 total for our additional baggage.
The extra baggage fee was shocking since most major airlines had announced they were organizing relief flights or offering incentives to customers who donated to aid organizations. Within days of the quake, AMR Corporation, the parent company of American Airlines and American Eagle, sent three commuter aircraft into Haiti carrying relief supplies. Spirit Airlines said it was working with the Department of Health and Human Services to provide aircraft for humanitarian aid efforts. Both Spirit and American gave bonus miles to frequent fliers who donated miles or money to UNICEF, the Red Cross or Wyclef Jean's Yéle Haiti. United Airlines Foundation said it would match up to $50,000 in monetary donations to the organization's International Response Fund. JetBlue flew relief workers "vetted by the Haitian Consulate" free of charge to Santo Domingo.
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BBC: Net puts Kenya at centre of Chile rescue efforts.
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Kenya is nearly 12,000km (8,000 miles) from Chile and is therefore perhaps not an obvious place from which to try to coordinate the earthquake relief efforts.
And yet, on Saturday, within an hour of the massive quake, volunteers at a crisis group called Ushahidi sprang into action.
"All we need is a computer and a fast internet connection," said Erik Hersman, one of the team of volunteers based in Nairobi.
Ushahidi is an online mapping tool that can be used to collect and plot reports coming in from citizens via e-mail, SMS or even Twitter.
Messages plotted on Ushahidi's map of Chile already include: "Send help. I'm stuck under a building with my child. We have no supplies".
The intention is that emergency services can then use that information to target their efforts.
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Congratulations on the Oscar! LA Times 'Music by Prudence' affecting portrait of Zimbabwe girl's transcendence'
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The making of the Oscar-nominated movie "Music by Prudence" is a tale of two schools, one in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and one in Baltimore.
A favorite for best short documentary at tonight's Academy Awards, this 33-minute flight presents an affecting portrait of its tough, gifted title character, the singer-songwriter in a band of disabled youths at the King George VI School & Centre for Children With Physical Disabilities in Bulawayo.
Prudence Mabhena suffers from arthrogryposis, a condition that deforms joints and cost her both her legs. But at the King George VI School she transcended the physical limitations and social stigma of her disorder. There she discovered the power of her singing and her writing, and with her partners formed the Afro-fusion marimba band Liyana.
Tonight, Mabhena attends the Academy Awards. She would not have gotten there were it not for another school: Baltimore's Maryland Institute College of Art. The chief of MICA's video and film arts department, Patrick Wright, earned the credit of co-producer and associate editor and supplied critical equipment and talent for producer-director Roger Ross Williams and producer Elinor Burkett.
In "Music by Prudence," Mabhena and her partners express anger and hope musically, even in impromptu moments. Contrasting a decrepit society with a lush, inviting countryside, this film is more complex and involving than conventional inspirational tales.
In the King George VI School, Liyana's musicians find a haven from the widespread Zimbabwean belief that children born with disabilities are the spawn of witchcraft. Mabhena's paternal grandmother told her mother not to breast-feed her. Her mother left her father (and the country) and remarried. Only the girl's maternal grandmother offered support - and only the King George VI School gave her a way to find her voice.
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Voices and Soul by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Tuesday's Chile, Poetry Contributor
It seems everywhere we look, another devastation has dropped it's
heavy hand on the Earth; wars, global warming typhoons, earthquakes,
pandemics, the greed that would level mountaintops, that would pollute
air and water and the very blood that courses through our veins.
Jayne Cortez has determined that we shouldn't just take it, we
shouldn't just cower at these devastation's; instead, we should...
Push Back The Catastrophes
I don't want a drought to feed on itself
through the tattooed holes in my belly
I don't want a spectacular desert of
charred stems & rabbit hairs
in my throat of accumulated matter
I don t want to burn and cut through the forest
like a greedy mercenary drilling into
sugar cane of the bones
Push back the advancing sands
the polluted sewage
the dust demons the dying timber
the upper atmosphere of nitrogen
push back the catastrophes
Enough of the missiles
the submarines
the aircraft carriers
the biological weapons
No more sickness sadness poverty
exploitation destabilization
illiteracy and bombing
Let's move toward peace
toward equality and justice
that's what I want
To breathe clean air
to drink pure water to plant new crops
to soak up the rain to wash off the stink
to hold this body and soul together in peace
that's it
Push back the catastrophes
-- Jayne Cortez
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The Front Porch is now open. Please grab a chair, a rocker or a seat on the glider and join us in celebration and conversation. If you are new, or posting here for the first time, introduce yourself to the community and welcome!
Front porch music for today, courtesy of the Impressions: