SHORT STORY: THAT'S CHRISTMAS

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

That’s Christmas

 

We sat silently at the table. Keith, the youngest of us, was maybe five, six at the most, I probably was around eight, sneaking up on nine. My daddy had said go by the table in the front room and dutifully we waited quietly.

 

There was no tree in the living room, no lights around the windows, no radio on playing Nat King Cole singing The Christmas Song—a song that unfailing marks time for me ever since I was driving back from a holiday party my senior year in high school and the song came filling the car with a strange sentiment, which in years ahead I would easily identify as a combination of desire and satisfaction. Nat’s voice had a very reassuring quality, and at the same time the music made you want to have someone near to share that moment, someone you could touch in an intimate albeit unembarrassing way, like her hand between your legs or vice versa, and catching green lights all the way on the slow drive home.

 

When my daddy walked in the room we all looked up, certain that this was an important moment. My daddy was a man of few words, he didn’t joke around and when he told you to do something, well, as young as we were we understood.

 

It was maybe a week before Christmas. In future years by then we would have already strung lights around the grillwork on the front porch and on the edge of the roof fronting the sidewalk, and during the holiday seasons when we went all out, we would put color-coordinated blinking bulbs in all the windows facing the street, but at that moment there was only the lonely dining room ceiling light illuminating the bare table and the close-cropped heads of my father’s three sons as our giant of a man stood in front of us.

 

I don’t know where my mother was. She wasn’t in the room. Was she even home? I don’t remember.

 

Maybe I looked up at the fixture, a sort of frosted glass plate that muted the harsh illumination, the same kind of covering I broke one day while bouncing a rubber ball in the room. Boom, it shattered and a falling shard cut my top lip—the scar is still there, you just don’t notice it because of my heavy mustache. 

 

Then my father pushed his hand into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, opened the leather, extracted three five-dollar bills, gave one to each of us, said “that’s Christmas,” turned and walked out the room.

 

Nothing further was said. No lecture. No sugar-coating the naked truth. We continued celebrating Christmas for years after that but inside each of the three Ferdinand boys there was a calculator that added up each sentiment, every desire, all our feelings as part of the emotional audit we routinely did at key moments for the rest of our lives.

 

Thanks to my father, my brothers and I viewed Christmas and everything else in life with cold, clear, unsentimental eyes. We could and often did go through social feel-good motions but the mask of mythology had been ripped off our eyes early in our lives when our father taught us the true meaning of Christmas: give what you can and move on.

 

—kalamu ya salaam

 

 

ESSAY: WE STAND BY OUR STUDENTS

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

WE STAND BY OUR STUDENTS:

Students at the Center (SAC) 

By Kalamu ya Salaam, Co-Director, SAC

 

start with what you know

to learn what you don’t know

start with where you’re at

to get to where you want to go

   

 

Our Students at the Center (SAC) class stood around in small clumps outside the school building. The temperature an uncomfortable lower-50s, an annoying light rain falling, the weather was not welcoming. Tiesha stood unsmiling under a blue umbrella, I told her to hold that pose with her face booted-up; scurried over to my black leather briefcase to get the digital camera, I wanted to take her picture. “You really going to take my picture?”

 

After taking four or five shots, I moved under the sparse cover of a tree, but it offered scant protection. The rain still fell on us. Tiesha smiled as she inspected the small screen on the back of SAC’s digital camera.

 

Jim pulled out the heavy African-American literature book from his backpack and proceeded to continue the last discussion we had before the fire alarm went off. What did Alice Walker mean about fruit awakening taste buds in the poem about her sister Molly?

 

Greta, the coordinator of the Smaller Learning Communities educational program, called on my cell and wanted to know where we were? She was on the St. Claude and Alvar street corner by the front of the school, we were on the Pauline and N. Rampart street corner at the rear of the school. Shortly she joined us and jokingly admired Jim’s tenacity as chilly raindrops wet the book’s pages. “Yall, really going to try and hold class amidst all this?”

 

“Yeah, why not?” Jim casually replied, pushing back his long, dark hair that helps earn him the semi-sarcastic nickname of “Jesus.” Three out of the eight or so students in class that day gamely struggled to answer the questions.

 

We were outside because someone had set fire to the second floor bathroom. And eventually we were all called into the gym and dismissed for the day. This was, Ms. Holiday, the new principal’s second day in charge; a not-unusual, even if atypical, day at Frederick Douglass high school.

 

Everyday working in the public school system I battle the demons of despair; most times I eat that bear, but sometimes brother bear takes a deep bite out of my rear, and on such days, nursing my wounds, I retreat home to repair, often in the process questioning myself: why in the hell do I return to this day after day?

 

I love the youth, especially the students at Douglass and I know that I as an older Black male make a major difference, especially as I do not represent authorities types, but rather, in many, many ways, am but an older version of them, or at least a version of who they can become once they achieve critical self-consciousness and commit themselves to life long learning.

 

Any of us who work in a major American metro-area, inner-city public school intimately knows Mr./Ms. Despair bear, knows the challenge of maintaining in the face of a system whose normal state is either chaos unreined or else the even more sinister, terrifying silence of lock down. But here is where we go everyday, somehow nourishing the dream of teaching youth.

 

Some people have developed theories about teaching inner-city youth, and most of those theories are predicated on preparing these youth to participate in the mainstream, while never questioning the sanity of joining in a system that has systematically oppressed and exploited the very youth we are teaching. If preparing them to be productive citizens is the bottom line of what we do, then we might as well be teaching courses in suicide.

 

I do not apologize for my stance: I advocate education for liberation, not education for mainstream socialization.

 

I am interested in coaching youth to engage reality in two ways: 1. Know themselves and 2. Decide for themselves what they wish to become. Those two simple objectives are the foundation for my praxis—the pedagogical theories I develop and/or adopt/adapt, and the day-to-day practice I use to engage the reality of public education.

 

Like many professional artists, I became involved because I was asked to participate in a specific program and not because I was seeking a way to work in the public school system, or even seeking a way to work with youth in the teacher/student dynamic. For most artists, teaching is simply a way to make the money we need to survive and enable us to do what we consider our real work, which is developing our art. In my case, although I have a long history of working with youth, it took over two years before I would consciously commit to teaching as a professional priority of my life work.

 

Contrary to what many non-teachers think, teaching in public schools is not easy money. Reaching our youth is hard, emotionally taxing, and intellectually challenging work, especially if the goal is education for liberation.

 

I teach at McDonogh #35 (a citywide school) and at Frederick Douglass (a district school). Citywide schools require students to meet specific academic requirements. District schools are based on residence in a specific geographic location. In New Orleans we have a three-layered school system: parochial (primarily catholic), private, and public. The public sector is where the overwhelming majority of Black students are herded, although a significant number are in the parochial system. The New Orleans public school system is the largest in the state with a $500-million budget that exceeds the budgets of every town and city in Louisiana.

 

Education is ground zero in the systemic exploitation of Black people in New Orleans—ground zero because public schools are the direct feeder for the necessary, albeit unskilled, labor needed for the tourist-oriented economy. For those not fortunate enough to work in a hotel, the public schools prepare them for the penitentiary. I will not recite the alarming statistics, it is enough to note that in New Orleans they are building more hotels everyday—where will the bellhops and maids come from? If you are reading this journal, I assume you are already aware of the statistical fact that more Black males are in prison than college.

 

Teachers who would educate Black youth but either shy away from making or else are incapable of making a political-economic critique of the school system, such teachers are themselves impediments, if not down-right opponents of education for liberation. If we are not prepared to at least intellectually confront the implicit racism of using test scores to fail students whom school systems have systematically miseducated, if we are unwilling to recognize the utter under-preparedness of system administrators and the lameness of their solutions, if we are afraid to address the difficulties of middle-aged Whites trying to educate Black working class youth, in other words, if we are unwilling to face what is really happening in public education, all of our “innovative” programs will fail because they are not addressing the real problems.

 

We are at war for the future of our students. In New Orleans, tourism is the number one (two and three) industry. Our schools are the way they are because the economy continues to need drawers of water and hewers of wood, continues to require a labor force to clean, cook and serve. And though they can not articulate it in political language, our students know. The ones at the citywide schools, encased in a near zombie-like state of obedience, work to escape the neo-slavery of tourism via college and a “good job” somewhere else in America, those at the district schools rebel or else go through the day in an alienated state of non-engagement with the curricula, which they generally (and too often not incorrectly) perceive as a waste of time. This is the context within which Students at the Center works as a creative writing elective.

 

Everyone who visits our classes, or looks at “Our Voice” (a student run newspaper we publish), or reads the chapbooks and poetry collections we publish, or views one of our numerous videos, everyone marvels at the work and wants to know how we do it. I smile. Although we employ specific techniques, there is no secret ingredient. It’s the fruit of protracted struggle, the fruit of the hard work of encouraging the students to take their lives and their future seriously.

 

Three of our basic principles: 1. No class larger than 15 students. 2. Sit in a circle. 3. Require each student to participate in discussions. We also encourage students to engage in peer teaching with their fellow students who are not in a SAC class or with middle or elementary level students, including those in after school programs. We strongly urge students to get involved with social change organizations and agencies, a number of whom are active partners with SAC.

 

In addition to reading our work aloud and taking turns reading a wide variety of materials, we teach active listening skills by talking about how to ask questions and by our example of asking questions. Silence is death; no student is allowed to not participate. While we do not accept rote responses, at the same time we do not reject any honest response as “wrong” or “inappropriate.” we are not working on what Paulo Freire calls the “banking” concept wherein we as teachers have fed our students the right answer and are prodding them to give us back that specific “right” answer. Instead the SAC methodology is to begin at the beginning. We begin with the experiences and real thoughts and reactions of our students. We begin by affirming the importance of their existence, their personalities, howsoever and whatsoever they may be.

 

One particular tool in this affirmation process is the story circle—a technique developed by John O’Neal and others in the Free Southern Theatre. We sit in a circle and take turns telling a story about a selected topic.

 

To be successful, we must actively listen to our students. This process is one of building community. It is not reductively a one-way process of simplisticly asking our students to spill their guts to us while we silently sit in judgment. Indeed, in SAC we all participate as equals; we teachers tell our stories when our turn comes. We all tell stories and we all listen to each other.

 

Whether a person intends to or not, if they honestly participate, they end up doing two things. One, we all learn more about each other, and we thereby become closer to each other. Two, we learn to articulate ideas and emotions that previously had never been publicly expressed. For many students this is their first experience in an educational setting of being embraced for who they actually are rather than for how close they are able to come to some external standard that is set before them as a kind of holy grail.

 

We then encourage our students to write. Again, we do not require any one-to-one write-the-story-you-told process. Rather we ask them to write about a variety of topics, and even encourage them to write on a topic of their own choosing if it is a topic they strongly want to express. When we combine the story circle technique with the prompts and inspiration that comes from the reading assignments, invariably students produce a richer body of literature than if they were simply asked to respond to abstract writing assignments. Here is an example from Maria Hernandez, a sophomore at Frederick Douglass who presents a brilliant social-critique of the affects of violence that is also an unsparing and startling self-critique.

 

 

Just Like Him

 

They say when you’re around someone for a long time, you start looking and acting like that person. The problem is that I didn’t want to be like him in any way, but what can I say?  I have his eyes, his hair, and recently I’ve acquired his personality.  Lately I go crazy and snap.  I bitch slap my little brother and on more than one occasion I’ve drawn blood from my little sister’s lips.  I didn’t want to be like him, but I did it anyway.  And something inside me is telling me that I let him win.

 

When you review student writing at this level, the work forces you to confront yourself. You can not stand before this student and just go through a rote exercise. What do you do?

 

We publish the work and encourage her to do more. Maria’s piece is included in a collection of Douglass writings called From the Heart. Just as our students learn from us, we as teachers, learn from our students. The experience of liberatory education is necessarily a reciprocal relationship. We learn to know our students as fellow human beings with whom we share our lives and experiences, rather than solely see students as blank slates upon whom we teachers are trying to inscribe particular lessons.

 

When we say start with where we are at, we are saying a mouth full. Our students have many, many problems. An upcoming publication is called “men we love / men we hate”—recently during a discussion of an excerpt on Black manhood from bell hooks’ new book, a quick, informal poll demonstrated that only one person of the 12 or so students lived in a two parent family with a male as the head of the family.  We were discussing patriarchy, which is a bit tricky when there are no patriarchs present in their day-to-day lives; and that was at the city-wide school whose reputation is petite-bourgeois (we pronounce it boo-gie), many of them are literally the  children of first-generation professionals and lower-level managers.

 

Although functional enough to do their class work and to pass standardized tests, even these students, the so-called best and brightest, suffer social stress and trauma at sometimes unimaginable levels. Sexual molestation, dysfunctional families, suicide, drug (especially alcohol and tobacco) abuse, STD’s, and warped senses of self-esteem are endemic, indeed near pandemic across economic strata. Without falling into the trap of either pitying or being repulsed by their problems, our task is to encourage the students to articulate the realities of their day-to-day existence. Unless and until they can honest recognize and confront their own realities they will never be able to truly transform themselves and their communities.

 

In this McDonogh #35 class three seniors were working on projects. Angie Solomon was working on a two character drama about a young woman trying to talk to her best friend about new feelings she is having that might be homo-erotic but which may not be, she just needs to… to talk about it and her friend is not wanting to listen. The brief piece illustrates the importance of being able to talk about life with a supportive friend. Asia Brumfield’s piece is about her uncle, a high school student, one year younger than Asia, who was murdered at a near by school in a brazen hit in the school gym during the middle of the day. Rather than a simple cry of sorrow, Asia is intent on exploring the nexus of relationships in her family which include her who was imprisoned at the time and a grandfather who had survived a barroom shooting. Marnika Farria is exploring the subject of rape spurred by her own attempts to deal with her mother being raped when Marnika was 11 years old. As Marnika does her research and family investigation she finds out that her grandmother is also a rape survivor although Marnika previously had no knowledge of that history of rape in her own family.

 

These are not woe-is-me, feel-sorry-for-us-poor-downtrodden-negroes investigations, rather these are honest explorations of complex social situations. For Angie, Asia and Marnika, these investigations are a brave and ultimately inspirational example of self-transformation through confronting  social issues at the personal level. Neither Jim nor I try to weigh these projects with overt political views. Our tack is to ask questions, we encourage them to dig deep within themselves and be as truthful as possible.

 

Because we are not a core curriculum class and because we are a “creative writing” class we have more latitude with subject matter and lesson planning than do most of the regular classes. Although one might suppose this means that we are less rigorous in an academic sense, all of the students will tell you that, except for a handful of their other teachers, our SAC class requires them to work much harder than do their regular classes.

 

Even though they have to read more, write more, think more, they come back, some students taking our class two or three times during their high school matriculation. Last semester at Douglass we encountered the phenomenon of male students cutting their assigned classes to sit in on our writing class. One of them eventually persuaded his counselor to switch his class, another student, Bruce Lightell, got a note from his mother saying that it was ok to skip one class so he could be part of our SAC class.

 

Later in the semester when Bruce was selected as one of two students to represent Douglass at a statewide conference on “agenda for children” where our SAC duo recited poetry, one of the counselors wanted to know how in the world could that happen since Bruce was failing every other class. Bruce has severe problems with text. His spelling is on an elementary level and his grammar is almost non-existent, but he has a sharp mind and easily grasps concepts such as metaphorical consistency, which he calls “m-c”. When it is time to publish Bruce’s work, we patiently sit with him and correct each misspelled word. We question him about grammar. We do what editors have traditionally done for many, many highly rated writers whose manuscripts would be unpublishable without significant editorial help. One of my favorite images of Bruce is his head buried deep in a dictionary trying to find out the correct spelling of a word he wants to use. His academic shortcomings notwithstanding, Bruce has the fire and determination to improve himself and his family supports SAC partially because they know the value of our work—one of Bruce’s older cousins had previously been an editor of Our Voice newspaper.

 

We are not a one-shot project or a new approach trying to prove itself. We have made a long term commitment to public education, long enough that we now have former SAC students who are college graduates returning to work with SAC. Also, a significant component of SAC work is now in the hands of SAC alumni who are currently college students, two of the more active of grads turned SAC staff are graduates of Frederick Douglass—our staff is not just drawn from the academically better prepared students at McDonogh #35.

 

Indeed, at Frederick Douglass the situation is paradoxically both easier and more hopeless—easier because the students are more forthcoming, more hopeless because these students generally have only a modicum of reading, writing and mathematical skills.

 

Steve Grant, a handsome, football player belies the stereotype of the jock who gets all the girls. In a moment of disarming honesty, Steve penned a short response to an Ishmael Reed poem. When he finished reciting his poem there was a moment of stunned silence—we never thought of Steve that way.

 

If I had a nickel …

 

 If I had a nickel for every time I had been rejected I would be poor because I’ve

Never really had the heart to approach a girl.

 

In one of his writings, Steve gave us the title “From The Heart.” in a similar vein I remember Darrow Reaux coming to class one day after being absent for two days. I asked him where he had been, why had he missed class. He dropped his arrest papers on the desk where I was sitting. I scanned the papers, gave them back to him, and simply said welcome back. Turns out he was arrested because he was standing on the block outside his home when the police came through doing a sweep because of a fight that had happened nearby. I don’t remember for sure, but it was probably after curfew. The next day, Darrow wrote a short piece which highlighted his arrest but from a totally unexpected perspective.

 

 

I Told My Mother I Love Her

 

This girl in my writing class name is Anastasia and it seems like we’re the same but we really don’t know whose the blame. We both stay with aunt and uncle thinking that they were our real parents. My real mother name is Irita and my real father name is Darrow, but I don’t called neither one of them mom and dad. I continue on calling my auntie Rose, mamma, and my uncle Junnie, papi.

 

The funny thing was I got arrested the other day and I haven’t seen Irita for about three months and I ran into her in jail. I really didn’t know how to feel when I saw her I didn’t even bother asking what she was doing here but she asked me, and I told her what I was in for. The police brought me in the back for booking she came to the window and told me bye. In jail it is really crazy. Some old man was getting beat while the guards was feeding us cold luncheon meat. I went to court and the judge release me on ROR.

 

I went home to my mother Rose and told her I was in jail. They let me go without paying bail. My mother said she didn’t know where I was because I left my cell phone. I left the radio on. The lights on and my writing everywhere. She told me don’t go outside at night so I wouldn’t have to fight with the police anymore. I told my mother I love her and good night.

 

 

The students at Douglass have no problem sharing their problems, whereas the better educated students at McDonogh #35 are also the more reticent and the least in touch with their true feelings. Often they have repressed their thoughts and feelings for so long that their ability to express what is happening inside has atrophied. They have the words, in the intellectual sense, but lack the psychological ability to express themselves.

 

The Douglass students are the inverse. They are not hampered by self-censorship, but rather limited in their language skills. By the measure of the leap tests (our state-mandated standardize tests), Douglass is the second worse high school in the state. On a scale that ranges up to approximately 150, I believe we scored 11 and were surpassed in a negative direction only by our uptown sibling, Booker T. Washington, who scored in the single digits, “9” out of the possible 150. Their educational limitations not withstanding, our Douglass students produce creative writing that helps them cope with and begin to overcome the crippling effects of miseducation.

 

There is a misconception that under-educated students are not ready to grasp philosophy, political-economy, subtleties of high art, etc., however, just because the school system has failed to educate them, does not mean that our students are stupid and/or uneducable. That they score poorly does not mean they can not think and do not have analytical skills. Indeed, their environment forces them to develop very sharp discrimination skills.

 

They are able to easily spot insincerity and incompetence. They know with the accuracy of a finely tuned Geiger counter, which teachers are simply collecting a paycheck or impersonally teaching from a textbook without being concerned about the student as a human being. Students learn early how to dodge the bullies and con artists who daily confront and try to hustle them both in and outside the classroom. They develop all sorts of evasive techniques to avoid physical harm and/or incarceration by police, guards and other authority figures whose sole responsibility is to maintain law and order, a law and order that demands mindless obedience and compliance with arbitrary rules and regulations. In many, many ways our students are far more realistic about their educational situation than are we who would teach them but who do not take the time to understand them or their world except as either an abstraction or with a pejorative view of their environment.

 

A sure sign that many of us do not understand our students is our refusal to understand that even if students can’t spell, they can reason, even if students can’t pronounce multi-syllabic words, they can express themselves. How well a person does on a standardized test is no indication of that person’s character or desire to learn. A test may measure what one knows, but can not accurately predict whether a person wants to or is capable of learning.

 

Thus, we read and discuss Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” or excerpts from Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, along side of Toni Morrison and excerpts from the writing of Frederick Douglass; we read Sandra Cisneros and Birago Diop as well as Alice Walker and Langston Hughes. We not only read these authors, we discuss the relationship of the text to their lives and follow-up with assignments that, for example, ask them to write about their own “cave” experiences. Here is high school sophomore Rodneka Shelbia’s cave essay written when she was 14 years old:

 

 

When I was 13 years old, I stumbled into a place with very little air and very little space.  I was uncomfortable.  I stumbled in this place not knowing what I was getting into, not knowing a way out.  This place was a dark, confusing, messed up place.  Being in this place was terrifying and painful, full of decisions.  This place was a cave, a cave of many emotions.

This cave was a relationship between me, a boy named Tim, and a boy named Rodney.  Tim was my boyfriend.  Tim and I had a good relationship.  We were known as the star couple.  We had known each other for about three years, but we were together for about five months.  Tim had what I look for in a boyfriend.  He attracted me because he was himself.  He did not try to be anyone else, and he accepted me for me.  He was my 9-10, but we broke up.  We broke up over a few words that were passed around and the pressure of Rodney.

  Rodney was someone I would call a best friend.  Tim, on the other hand, thought Rodney was not just a best friend.  He saw Rodney as someone trying to get with someone else’s girlfriend.  After Tim and I stopped talking, Rodney and I started talking.  Rodney was the type of nigga that would do anything to get what he wanted.  He was good at his game, cause he got me.  We were together for about two weeks, but after those two weeks he lost me.  I had to leave him alone.  I felt like I was cheating on him, cause I still had love for Tim, which meant Rodney wouldn’t get all I had to offer, maybe not even half. 

Now I was hurting, stuck in the middle of a four-wall cave, just confused.  On each of the walls there was an engraving that somewhat frightened me.  The first wall was engraved, “Rodney,” next “love,” then “Tim,” and last “Decisions.”  On the ceiling and base of the cave there were little riddles and clues telling me where the answer lay.  There was one in bold print that stood out like none other.  It stated, “The answer lies where you stand.”  I sat thinking, “What does this mean?”  What could I do to help myself, to strengthen myself, to free myself?  I soon noticed two rocks next to me.  Those rocks were nothing more than my feelings. 

The first rock was soft and chalk-like.  With this rock in my hands I looked around and repeated three of the clues to myself. 1) The answer lies where you stand.  2) Freedom is the key.  3) “X” out that that won’t help. 1) The answer lies where you stand.  2) Freedom is the key.  3) “X” out. 

I thought, “Freedom, freedom is the key.  It can open the cave.  The rock lies where I stand.  The rock can “x” out the words on the cave.  I can write freedom on the cave.  It just might open.”  I was hoping and praying as I got up to try my plan.  I got up to the wall, but the rock was so soft it crumbled up as I wrote.  I found that the rock didn’t engrave nor write, because the rock was soft and contained no strength, no power, only mixed emotions.  It didn’t help me at all. 

I sat hopelessly thinking.  “What am I going to do now?”  I looked at the second rock and thought to myself, “Ain’t no way in hell I’mma get that rock.”  So I just sat making excuses.  “It’s too far; I can’t walk.  It’s too heavy; I’m too weak.  It’s in a pile of man-eating creatures; they’ll eat me alive.  That junk is gonna hurt.  It’ll probably make me look ugly.”  Then I thought to myself, “It’s the only way out.”  So I walked over there to get the rock, but in the process I suffered.  I bled and lost a lot, but I got the rock.

This rock gave me confidence.  Every step I took with this rock felt like the hardest step in the world.  When I got to the wall, I started to write freedom on it.  That was very hard, because my hands were bloody, and the rock was heavy.   I had to push the stone in the wall to make the engravings, but the good part about it was that as I engraved I grew stronger.  I became more powerful, and my emotions came in line.

When I finished, the cave vanished.  I became free.  Rodney was gone.  Tim was gone.  Love was gone.  And I was free, oh so free.

 

Although teaching writing is both a more complex and a far broader question than can be addressed in this short essay, one quick example, will illustrate the difficulty, if not impossibility, of finding a working solution that addresses all the needs. Three of the students in our small class at McDonogh #35 are transfers from Douglass. This is an example of the typical third world brain drain that is a common feature of under- and un-developed countries. While we struggle to meet the needs of all our students, including those who are intellectually gifted, a larger fact is undeniable: when the best students are relocated from the neighborhood schools to a citywide school, invariably the level of instruction goes down in the neighborhood school. The absence of “gifted” students in the classroom ensures that those who are left behind stay left behind.

 

We discuss these concepts with all of our students. Rodneka was considering leaving Douglass, and though there is no doubt that she would benefit from a better educational environment, there is also no doubt that were she to leave, Douglass would face a big loss. Our task as SAC teachers who recognize this dilemma is to provide ongoing educational stimulus and opportunities for all the Rodnekas we encounter even as we recognize that schools such as Douglass do not provide a quality learning environment or instruction.

 

That is one small example of the complexities we face. I want to make sure no one romanticizes SAC and the struggle we wage. Students such as Rodneka deserves far more than we are able to give them, even though we, they, and their families recognize that SAC has given them far more than they would have normally received in their matriculation through the jungles of public education.

 

I am an experienced writer, sort of a writer-in-residence, but only “sort of.” although i have published books, have had my writings used as part of the SAT tests, and am an award-winning journalist in both print and broadcast, most of the students do not know me as a published writer. They simply know me as their teacher, the one who helps them write and shows them how to make movies. Additionally, I have years and years of work as a community organizer at local, national and international levels. I do not have to rely on teaching in this program to make a living, nor am I using this program as a stepping stone to get to another level in my writing career. Ultimately, education for liberation demands a commitment far beyond career development.

 

Moreover, I am not an “artiste.” I am against an emphasis on the arts where the focus is on teaching technique and individualism. Our students need to focus first on their own realities rather than be seduced by the intellectual brilliance or the career bling-bling of some artist. In other words, it is not about me as the artist—the focus must remain on the students. Moreover, we have to model social commitment not by sloganizing or by using clever rhymes to fight oppression, but rather we must do the hard work of helping others without requiring students to look up to us on our teacherly pedestals of wisdom, truth, and beauty. We must be serious about keeping students at the center of our work.

 

In our SAC classes we encourage our students to critique the SAC education process, including how we teach them. We ask them for opinions about what we should study, which programs we should do and which we should pass up. Sometimes it is as simple as requesting they select a topic to write about for the week or select the theme for a story circle, other times we lay out particular situations we are dealing with and ask for their input in the decision making process that ultimately Jim and I make. The students quickly realize that they can help shape their education. They can help determine what they will learn. This engenders a sense of ownership and identification with the learning process that will never happen if one simply uses predetermined lesson plans and state mandated educational objectives.

 

We realize that not every class can operate the way SAC does, however we are certain that public education can be significantly improved by specifically focusing on the needs of the students, which, for us, means including the views of students. We believe another world is possible. We believe students are a resource and not just an object of education. We encourage the students to become agents of their own education, and we struggle with other teachers and administrators to make these changes. Unavoidably this is sometimes a contentious and even bitter struggle. There are teachers and administrators who actively fight against what we are doing, but, as the British are wont to say, at the end of the day the work our students generate stands out and speaks for itself.

 

Still the attacks come. Some people say: SAC is successful because we work with only a handful of students. SAC is elitist because we pick only the best students.

 

At Douglass, there are racial antagonisms aimed at Jim Randels, a white teacher in a school that has only one or two white students and none in any of the SAC classes. In the second semester of the 2003/2004 school year an antagonistic counselor assigned us two special education students, plus one student who was a serious discipline problem, plus three students who needed upper level English to graduate and who also had to pass the leap test but whom had failed the English portions previously, all of this in addition to those who were assigned to us “just because,” even though we are supposed to be an elective course, and even though the counselor did not include some students who requested our class. Meanwhile we have a handful of students who want to learn how to write—two of whom are intent on becoming writers.

 

So we circle the chairs and soldier on. And though we have our problems, despite stumbles and setbacks, despite backbiting and resentments (the inevitable result of struggles to create change), despite having to deal with a wide range of student attitudes and capabilities, despite all of that, our students produce and their work is both our defense and our offense. Their work is answer to the question of can public education be improved. We proudly stand by the work that our students do.

 

Marcus Garvey said, what man has done, man can do. Terence said, there is nothing human that is foreign to me. SAC says: start with what we know, in order to learn what we don’t know. Start with where we’re at, to get to where we want to go.

 

*NOTE: This essay was written in 2004, before Katrina and the flood. The situation is both better and worst now in 2010. Douglass high school is closed and a KIPP charter school operates in the building. McDonogh #35 is no longer a magnet school with admission tests. SAC holds daily Advanced Placement English classes in two high schools, Eleanor McMain and McDonogh #35.

Free PDF downloads and books for purchase of writings by SAC students are available online at <www.sacnola.com>

 

—kalamu ya salaam

SHORT STORY: ALL MY LIFE

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

ALL MY LIFE

 

“Joshua, you’re laying here wounded in a hospital bed and you’re worrying about what’s happening in Fallujah?”

 

Joshua looked at Vivian, a pained tenderness clouding her usually clear dark brown eyes.

 

“No, I’m worrying about humanity, about the species, and about my own personal humanity. If I can’t feel their pain, how human am I?”

 

Vivian bit her lower lip. Joshua momentarily paused when he saw the signature sign that she disagreed with something he said.

 

“Vi, they’re killing women and children, dropping 500 pound bombs. Those people, all they’ve got is rifles and grenade launchers, and a will to resist. They’re burying their dead in a soccer field cause the Marines won’t let them get to a cemetery. And why? What for? Cause four mercenaries got killed? Cause, to quote president Chavez, that ‘asshole’ Bush...”

 

It wasn’t good for his healing when Joshua got so agitated. Closing her eyes to dam the beginnings of tears welling up, Vivian softly kissed Joshua in an intimate attempt to halt his ranting. Joshua did not return her kiss.

 

Ignoring her unvoiced plea, Joshua raised the remote and clicked on the TV. Since the play-offs hadn’t started yet, all he watched was the news for as long as he could stand it, which was usually twenty-some minutes at the max. If his brain was a computer, TV was a virus. What was he to do: the radio was worthless, filled with twenty songs in constant rotation on the pop stations, right wing toro-poopoo on the talk stations, and liberal drivel from NPR?

 

Vivian took the remote from Joshua’s hand; he did not resist. She clicked the mute on. The surrealness of Joshua watching war reports from his hospital bed was too much. Thankfully, the efficient hum of medical equipment provided an unobtrusive aural wallpaper.

 

“They doing that mess in our name, baby. You know?”

 

“I know.”

 

“I don’t want my silence co-signing that.”

 

She was faring worse than he was. Even with bullet wounds in his lower right leg, in his right side and in his left foot, Joshua was still feisty; his inability to sleep peacefully did not seem to too adversely affect him.

 

When you have shared a bed with a person for over thirty years, you know their breathing, how they toss when troubled, which way they turn when upset, moreover, inevitably you know that person’s slumbering self better than the person knows that part of their own self. Almost two whole weeks of keeping watch over Joshua’s fitful, sometimes nightmarish sleep had exacted a heavy toll, and now here he was all wrapped up in this Iraq thing...

 

In the pastel gloaming of the sun setting in the distance on the other side of the city, panoramic as a postcard when viewed from this seventh floor room, Vivian searched for something safe to say.

 

“Jamal’ll be here tomorrow.”

 

“I told that boy he didn’t have to spend that money to come out here. I’m alright. He’s just stubborn.”

 

“I wonder where he gets it from?” Vivian chided Joshua.

 

“Probably from his mama.”

 

Joshua returned his attention to the cool, color images flickering on the screen mounted on the wall facing his bed. What was Rev. Sharpton protesting now Joshua wondered without much interest. Then Kobe Bryant appeared. Josh reached for the remote. Vivian handed him the controller. The clipped but breathy tones of a female anchor gushed forth, “...charge that police did not read Bryant his Miranda rights.”

 

“Ain’t that something?”

 

“Joshua, please.”

 

“Ok. Ok.” Joshua clicked the TV off. “I’m just saying...”

 

“Joshua, we had this discussion already. Just because the police were wrong doesn’t make what Kobe did right.”

 

“You don’t even know what he did, Vi.”

 

“He admitted he committed adultery.”

 

“Yeah, ok.”

 

“Ok, nothing. He shouldn’t have never had that girl up in his room.”

 

“You’re right.”

 

Joshua looked up at the ugly ceiling. After twelve days of laying in bed, it seemed like he knew every inch of the room. In the corners, the wall, which once had been a sort of dark teal, now looked more like a putrid dish of lentil soup crusted over, molded and gone to some shade of brownish-green between tequila-laced, guacamole vomit, and the dirty brown of two week old road kill. Although he didn’t know what the name for that color was, he was sure there was a name and equally sure it was clearly delineated on Vi’s mental color wheel.

 

Joshua smiled grimly and then looked at Vi standing beside his bed, her left arm held across her paunch-less stomach and her slender right hand curled over her mouth--as usual, she was not wearing lipstick.

 

He really liked that she was not self-conscious about the faint, but unmistakable, sexy, facial hair above her full lips--at least he thought the ecru-colored, wisp of a moustache highlighting the plum dark fullness of Vi’s luscious lips was sexy as hell.

 

Funny, he had been able to resist the enticement of Vi’s kiss a minute ago, but now here he was, entranced by the tantalizing sight of her negroidal profile silhouetted by the twilight glowing through the two, large windows directly behind her. He was especially mesmerized by the way she pursed her mouth into a fleshy pout, and though it was concealed in the darkness covering her profile, he vividly imagined the deep dimple two thirds the way up her jaw. Even in her fifth decade there were no hanging folds of flesh marring the elegant line that curved from chin to jaw to throat. Vi could have been the perfect model for a Dogon mask.

 

Vivian saw Joshua lick his lips and slowly work his jaw muscles, producing saliva which he casually swallowed.

 

“Here.” Vivian held a straw to Joshua’s mouth so he could suck a small sip of cool water. As the liquid trickled down his esophagus, Joshua closed his eyes, wondering how it was that this wonderful woman always anticipated his desires. There was a slight click when she sat the plastic cup on the Formica tabletop; then the unmistakable sound of a visitor in the hall--it had to be a visitor because of the click of hard-soled high heels on the linoleum (all of the nurses were stealthy in their rubber-soled sneakers); and finally there was the distinctive, hushed, musical jangle of Vi’s bangles quietly clanging.

 

“Hmmmm,” Joshua half-audibly hummed as Vivian rubbed his chest. Vivian was leaning against the bed, the head of which was elevated at a gentle twenty-degree angle. She had slipped her right hand between the top and the third button of Joshua’s pajama top after deftly unsecuring the second button to give a wider range of motion.

 

“That feels good.”

 

Vivian playfully pinched his left nipple.

 

“Yeahhhh.”

 

A nurse walked in.

 

Vivian did not move her hand.

 

The nurse said nothing, peered at the equipment connected to the patient, picked up the chart and made a few quick notations. “Do you need anything, Mr. Gibson?”

 

“He’s Ok.”

 

Joshua glanced from Vivian to the young, white nurse--well, at least she had reason to be in his room. Vivian continued lightly scratching her fingertips through his chest hairs, maybe scratching was not the word for it, perhaps tingle-touching was a better way to put it; whatever, it felt good. When the nurse left, Vivian withdrew her hand. Oh, so Vi’s touches had been a marking of territory, a sign to other females: hands off.

 

“What’re you smiling about?”

 

“Why yall always got to want to know what a man is thinking?”

 

“Why are you men so reluctant to share your thoughts?”

 

“Just like yall got secrets...”

 

“Ok. Whatever.”

 

The lamp’s florescent glare masking its departure, daylight was near completely gone from the room.

 

“Mr. Tucker called.”

 

Josh knew where this was headed. Thirty-three years and counting. “I told that fool I don’t work cause I got to, I teach cause I want to. The kids need me.”

 

“I need you.”

 

“Just wait til they let me out of here, I’ll give you all you can handle.”

 

“Joshua, I’m serious. You know you could volunteer in a community program. You don’t need the pressure of teaching every day.”

 

“Vi, haven’t we crossed and re-crossed this bridge?” Hadn’t they talked about why he wouldn’t retire until he did thirty-five years? Thirty-five--just like his mother. It hadn’t mattered that it was safer when his mother taught, much less stressful, the schools better. Actually there was nothing sacred about thirty-five years. It was just something Joshua wanted to do.

 

He had started when he was twenty-three. In two more years he wouldn’t even be sixty yet--he had plenty enough years left to enjoy retirement.

 

Vi kicked off her comfortable red-suede mules and half sat on the side of the bed, cozying beside her husband. She drew her knees up, careful not to touch his side, and lightly rested her head on his collarbone while smoothly slipping her right hand down his arm, that sensual motion culminating with her fingers intertwining his as she clasped his hand.

 

Joshua had felt a twinge of discomfort when Vi climbed aboard but that was quickly replaced by the pleasure of her softness: soft touch caressing, soft voice humming, soft spirit nurturing.

 

Joshua half-turned his face towards the crown of her head. The peach-flavored fragrance of the shampoo in Vi’s salt-and-pepper un-cut, longer-than-shoulder-length, natural hair delightfully tickled Josh’s nose. Once out of high school, Vi had never again permed her hair and after she retired from the Post Office in ‘98, she said she’d let her finger-snap-short afro grow until 2000. By the time 2000 arrived, Joshua had gotten so used to burying his face in the luxurious pillow of her black and silver mane that he begged her to keep letting it grow, like, what was her name, Sonia Braga, yes, Sonia, that gorgeous Brazilian mama with the flowing, au-natural hair. Vivian preferred to believe that her auburn hair and skin shade resembled Alice Coltrane like on the cover of Alice’s Transformation album, but she knew Brazilian beauties was Joshua’s thing and had long ago come to understand that Joshua’s fantasies and movie-fueled infatuations were no threat to their marriage.

 

***

 

“Aaahhhh.”

 

Even though Joshua’s cry had not been very loud, Vivian woke instantly. The nightmare was back; this time after only two nights absence.

 

For the first week it had been very rough and then it got rougher--some inexplicable signal would rouse Vivian and she’d know immediately, Joshua was... was... well, was... what was it Robert Johnson sang? Hellhounds on his trail. Yes, that was it, Joshua would have that terrified look, the look of a runaway flailing through the swamps, vicious dogs about to leap on his back.

 

The first time Vivian saw Joshua cry she shrank back involuntarily for a moment before gathering her self and going to him. “Ssssshhhhh, ssssshhhh. It’s all right. I’m here.”

 

Joshua had shook.

 

“Ssssshhhh.” Badly as she wanted to, she had been afraid to hold him less she harm his wounds. She could only think to dab his forehead with a cool towel and to coo to him until he eventually quit shaking.

 

And, my God, that first time he hollered out, she was sure it was physical, probably his side or something like that. He wouldn’t talk. She rang for the nurse. They ended up sedating him. But it happened again a few nights later.

 

“Tell me. Joshua, tell me. What is it? Joshua?”

 

When he had turned to face her, his eye sockets were twin grottos, each filled with a glistening pool of tears. Vivian’s heart had raced at that point. She had never before seen him cry.

 

He didn’t have to say anything. She knew, from that first night when the police called, when they told her as near as they could figure it, some young thugs tried to car jack Joshua and a battle ensued over a gun and two people were shot, one was dead and “your husband is in the hospital. He’s wounded but the doctors say, it looks like he’ll pull through ok.”

 

Vivian had known the healing would be difficult but she was anxiously confident he would overcome. She remembered decades ago his struggle to master martial arts, how long it took him to get to black belt, how many times he damaged his hand trying to break wooden planks, but he kept at it...

 

“Vi, you know I been loving you since I met you...”

 

Vivian snapped out of her momentary hypnosis. It had only been three and a half seconds before she gathered herself and bent to minister to Joshua, but during that long interval, Vivian had remembered encountering this anguish for the first time.

 

“Sssshhhh, sssshhhh. Joshua’s it’s ok...”

 

She had also remembered Joshua apologizing for loosing the new, forest green, Toyota Prius that was found two days afterwards, burned out. The irony of getting jacked for an environmentally safe car and that car subsequently getting trashed; were it not so serious, it would have been laughable.

 

“...don’t try to talk. It’s ok.”

 

When Vivian bowed to rub Joshua’s brow, he turned his head away. She began humming Naima, Joshua loved her singing.

 

Vivian knew, neither the car nor his wounds was the issue, it was...

 

“Vi, you know, it’s like, I don’t see how we’re going to survive.” He spoke while looking at the wall. “What can we do? The shit has gotten so bad. All my life... well, you know.” Joshua paused, turned to face Vivian and then continued in a firm voice, “The sit-ins, the going to jail, the African liberation support stuff  in Tanzania and hanging in the bush with the Frelimo guerillas in Mozambique, right down to supporting the Sandanistas in Nicaragua in the eighties, and, all that. You know?”

 

Joshua stared helplessly at Vivian, she closed her eyes, bent low and whispered in his ear: “this too shall pass.” But even as she said it, she knew that neither she nor Joshua would ever reconcile themselves to the horrible guilt that Joshua felt for killing that boy.

 

“He told me to run. I said, take the car, man. He said, ‘run, nigga.’ Vi, I ain’t never run from nobody in my life, and I wasn’t about to start that night. I was already mad cause I had bought this car for your birthday and...”

 

“It’s ok, it’s ok.”

 

“Naw it ain’t. When he shot me in the foot, I knew I had to do something or at least die trying, even though it was two of them. I would’ve been alright, but the other one started shooting...”

 

Joshua stopped.

 

It was early, early, ‘fore day in the morning. The silence was awful. The sinister mechanical chirp of the medical equipment, awful. Joshua squeezed the morphine pump. Vivian blinked to keep her own tears from spilling as she bent low and slow-kissed away Joshua’s tears.

 

-end-

 

 

—kalamu ya salaam


SHORT STORY: 4 MOVEMENTS/12 MOMENTS IN THE LIFE OF AN EX-SLAVE

4 MOVEMENTS/12 MOMENTS IN THE LIFE OF AN EX-SLAVE

Long Live Assata!

 

 

1.1

I'm not afraid to die but I am afraid I'm going to die. Afraid that, outside of a grave, there will not be one square inch of earth on which I can reside; afraid that my enemies will not allow me to breathe unless concrete and steel coffin me; afraid that this sweet island, which has been my sanctuary, will be curdled into a tropical casket.

 

1.2

For we who have been political prisoners, long term incarceration in modern Amerika is a certain death—it is not like South Africa's Robben Island where a number of movement men came out stronger, and it is certainly not the same as for those who go in unconscious and fly out as dragons both their wings and their fierceness engendered by the education and self-education that one can extract from the school of captivity. No, I am thinking about those of us whom they want not merely to confine and control, but those of us whose spirits they want to thoroughly crush; we are never released from prison unscathed—if we escape that is different, but if they release us, our freedom inevitably means the authorities have successfully, in some nefarious way or another, reprogrammed us to accept the world as they have constructed society or to either self-destruct in fits of rage or in spasms of insanity.

 

I know what I am saying. I know Huey Newton was never the same after prison. I know many of my comrades who remained there for ten, for twelve, for twenty years, I know if and when they are released they are deranged even if they really believe they are still ready for the revolution. I would never publicly give the government the satisfaction of recognizing such effectiveness, but I know there is no life after prison for people like me. The mind games, the chemicals they feed us in substances they claim is food, the constant dehumanization of strip searches: fingers forced into your everywhere, beneath each fold of flesh, piercing each cavity. And not just the dignity stripping of naked meat inspection, but also the simultaneous twisting of the ephemeral web that is one's consciousness, one's sense of self. Literally who we are becomes different after we have been systematically and scientifically fucked with by experts at mind games.

 

1.3

So you see, it was either escape, which I did, or die.

 

I am a runaway slave in an era when the descendants of slaves are well paid in the employ of both consuming and perpetuating big house fantasies. An era where living on the edge seems totally nonsensical, totally unnecessary to those reared on television and cyberspace, corrupted by creature comforts as seemingly innocuous as fast food hamburgers and video games, sports events and evangelical churches.

 

The mantle of conformity fits us so snugly that those of us who choose naked resistance rather than wear the weave of exploitation, we appear to be no more relevant than homeless bag people existing on the fringe of society, scavenging to survive as we mutter incoherent inanities about how bad the good life is.

 

Indeed, the guardians of good times tell everyone that not only are we maroons crazy, but worse, because we refuse to join the parade of collaborators with the status quo, we are painted as failures who are afraid to grasp the success that is available to any and all of us who would pledge allegiance to taking advantage of others.

 

And where can I run to now that capitalism is global and the liberated zones are nearly all paved over and billboarded? If Cuba goes under where will I be able to stand tall? What other country would endure the economic whippings administered to anyone who shelters me? What other nation would (or could afford to) refuse the bounty the government of my tormentors offer for my head, my body?

 

1.4

Though I rose from the dead once before, I do not believe in miracles. I do not believe if they entrap me this time that I will be able to live within the grip of their murderous clutches.

 

My strong instinct for survival, so strong at times that I have done what the normal person can not even imagine, indeed, I have done what I could not imagine, I have done whatever was necessary—and you know that necessity is unsentimental and often very, very ugly, if not sometimes downright amoral. My strong instinct for survival will not allow me to be locked down by them and turned into a person who accepts the status quo, or worse, a person who insanely (and ineffectively) rages against the dark of 24-7-365 nightmares.

 

After all is said and done, I am a human being who loves life, the beauty of quiet moments, the joy of conversation and sincere touch, the exhilaration of sweating as I labor, as I make love, as I exercise. My instinct for survival is no impulse merely to breathe, my instinct is to live, to love life freely and to be free to love life, and I will never accept slavery no matter how comfortable.

 

***

 

2.1

she followed instructions. got out with her hands up. and then the world exploded. she was on the ground, bullets in her. and she did not really know what happened.

 

a person caught up in the chaos is the most unreliable witness there is.

 

perhaps if she had been the bullet, she might have seen the whole scene more clearly, or if she were the gun, she would have known who the targets and who was calling the shots. or if she had been the finger on the trigger she might have known the time table, the sequence of events, but she was only the target, and before she was struck had no warning that the bullet was coming, after all, as the medical experts testified at her trial, given her wounds there was no doubt her hands were up in the gesture of surrender, she was following instructions.

 

she was not the bullet. so at that moment she did not know it had entered her torso, missed vital organs, and ended up lodged near her neck, leaving a mess of rented flesh in its wake, thin streams of thick blood seeping from the open door of the entry point.

 

nor did she know that the first bullet had a companion who followed closely on its heels like a younger sibling trailing an idolized big brother.

 

the impact of the first slug spun her around like a rapist sadistically intent on anal penetration.

 

the second bullet burrowed into her back.

 

immediately afterward, in the distance she could hear noises and voices. and thankfully so, for although the voices sounded muffled like that time as a child she had an ear infection and her mother poured some heated liquid in her ear and then plugged it with cotton and all day she kept loosing her balance and asking people "what did you say?" she was thankful because at this moment it was strangely comforting, reassuring even, to hear the words "she ain't dead yet" and to know that the "she" who was alive was her.

 

2.2

life is full of choices, most of them are minor, trivial details and inconsequential chains of events, but kernelled in the ordinary are those little nodes on which turn one's whole existence. why would an assata surrender? perhaps she did not see herself surrendering. perhaps this was just a momentary hassle, a stop and delay tactic. perhaps her gesture was meant to be a diversion. who knows. life is like that. sometimes we ourselves don't know what we are doing even though the doing will have profound and far reaching consequences. who knows. how can anyone know the future?

 

2.3

the discovery of the future is always an evaluation of the past. we only learn what the future means once it is over, once we have experienced it, once it has become history. and by then it is too late to change anything. we can never fully know anything, least of all exactly what we did and why. our ability to sense reality is too limited to take in everything. we can only ever grasp a small part of the totality of our existence. the trooper with the gun drawn, barking orders, at that moment what was assata thinking?

 

2.4

have you ever faced a gun beaded on you, an enemy hollering at you? do you know what you would do if you were shot and on the ground, or in the hospital chained to a gurney, or even in a courtroom and lie after lie after lie after lie was going on record against you, and the judge threatens to throw you out of the courtroom if you don't be quiet, and every fiber of your being is quivering with the urge to resist, even though enchained, even though guards are over you, and what do you do?

 

assata was removed from the courtroom and her comrade too. they were shunted into a side room while the trial proceeded and during that isolation they made love.

 

your enemies are kangarooing you to an almost certain death sentence or at least life imprisonment and you make the decision. to make love. think about choosing love as an act of resistance at that moment. then think about the bravery to make love.

 

you are a prisoner. on trial. armed agents are standing just outside the door. most of us would never even have thought of making love. and very few, very, very few of us would have had the bravery to bare our nakedness knowing that at any moment the guards could have busted us in the middle of getting it on.

 

oh, the adrenaline rush, to steal the sweetness of sex under such conditions. now if there was ever a definition of revolutionary fucking, that was it.

 

2.5

but every act has its consequence. every movement carries us somewhere else then where we were when we started. and sometimes we think we are ready to travel, but we really don't have a clue as to the magnitude of the trip we blissfully, or blithely, or unknowingly started on.

 

did assata know that she would become pregnant?

 

how many times did they do it in the dock?

 

and now it is decades later and kakuya, a girlchild, has grown up without the emotional anchor of a father's familiar words, without the rudder of a mother's daily teachings. a daughter has been reared by extended family. did assata reckon on that? of course not. sometimes we throw our rage at the state without a thought of where we will be thirty years later, who we will become, how our actions will affect those not yet born.

 

***

 

3.1

I am a warrior and I tell you I hate war. There have been so many times when I have had to go one on one with despair, and it was not always a given that I would win. Sometimes I battle day after day, other times, rare times, I have whole weeks, occasionally a month or two, when I am good to go, well, at least I am ok with being on the periphery of normalcy. My daily diet is the stress of uncertainty.

 

I know life back in the world is different from when I went underground. I know my people seem freer and hence less consciousness—the intoxication of options, the addiction of material acquisitions, the disorientation of commodification. People even come to Cuba for a vacation. A photograph with me becomes a trophy. It is hard not to be bitter.

 

3.2

The struggle has become so convoluted, so complex. I can understand the seduction of comfort corruption… even these words seem like so much political rhetoric.

 

When I was locked down, I kept myself defiantly alive, poised to escape. Now that I have escaped, I find that I am still in captivity, a qualitatively different captivity, a captivity where my range of motion is, of course, much, much wider, my ability to speak out significantly broader, and certainly my opportunities to love life infinitely greater, but I can not fool myself… as long as those who measure life by counting possessions and grading bottom lines are in charge of most of the earth, I remain either in captivity or on the run, never surrendering, constantly resisting, measuring how alive I am by how long, how well I am able to fight until death. What a hard way to live… but this is my life. My. Life.

 

***

 

4.1

the embargo is real. some times sanitary items are non-existent. there is nothing romantic about resistance. nothing romantic about the grind of constant vigilance, ceaseless struggle. romance is idealism. resistance is realism.

 

if you read about the struggle many years after, when victories are celebrated in textbooks, when most of the ugliness is erased, when the human costs are barely reckoned or recognized, if you only read about struggle then you can think of its beauty. but the runaway often literally stinks; they do not have the daily luxury of bubble baths or clean fluffy towels after a long, hot shower. the vegetarianism of a subsistence diet of beans and rice, or beans and tortillas is not a trendy choice. very few relationships last a life time in the field, or perhaps, that is the more brutal truth, such relationships only last the shortness of life in the field—life on the run is seldom very, very long and elderly runaways are rare.

 

people nostalgically talk about the good old days when the political struggle was on fire in the united states, but how many people are rushing to cuba to volunteer to live in exile with assata? we all like to dream, to fantasize about being heroes and to romanticize those individuals whom we consider our heroes. but, oh, the reality of being a runaway is a state embraced by only a very strong few, only a few, very, very few… while the rest of us rationalize about choosing to remain cocooned in the materialism of our relatively comfortable captivity.

 

—kalamu ya salaam