You may have already heard about it. The biggest political news of the moment is that Barack Obama publicly declared his support for gay marriage. This made him only the very first United States president to do so. I am sure he weighed the pros and cons heavily before opening his mouth, being the shrewd politician he happens to be. The fact is that there is a tidal shift happening and Obama has placed himself on the correct side of history. Even I, with my deeply ingrained Jamaican tendencies, can see that denying homosexuals their rights is counterproductive. It is counterrevolutionary in fact.

Obama and I seemingly share this aspect of our thinking: we are somewhere over the rainbow. He recently said that his views on the matter are evolving. For me, homosexuality was downright repulsive not that long ago. I can clearly recall an episode in college where I made it a point to sing a line from – what else? – Buju Banton’s ‘Boom Bye Bye’ to a flamboyant gay guy from Montego Bay, Jamaica. Like Obeezy, my views on homosexuality evolved over time to presently just not seeing the usefulness of being unkind to a person because of their sexual orientation. In life, just as in art, people must express themselves however they please.

Washington DC is a kind of mecca for the LGBT crowd. In my time living here, I have come to be much less alarmed with the expressions of their lifestyle. Working in the progressive bookstore where I work, I interact with homosexual men and women regularly. I’ve also spoken to one or two transgender persons (I believe some of them prefer not to be identified as male or female). I have sold them books. I have had delightful conversations with them about politics, society, revolution, life. Some of them wear their shock value on their sleeves and want to be defined by their gayness, so to speak. Others are less overt and, like most of us, prefer to be defined by their humanity. You might never know one was homosexual until some implicit clue came to your attention.

My conclusion is this: live and let live. Anyone serious about social equality and positive, progressive change in the world would work consciously and tirelessly to shed silly prejudices. My evolution of thought has been something worked on for years and I am glad that, even though I know I still have a ways to go, I am now somewhere over the rainbow. Hatred is outdated.

Not that I am overly sentimental, and not that I don’t like Washington, but I miss Yard. Give me humidity that makes my skin sweat in the shade and give me rain in October and May. Give me no more Winter that has a way of interfering in the affairs of Spring. I’ll take Jamaica this very instant. There is much positive that I can reminisce about but there is one thing I don’t miss about Jamaica. My beloved homeland is one sick place, and by sick I mean that we suffer mentally from what I call BMS. Believe me when I say that Bad Mind Syndrome isn’t just a monthly phenomenon.

Jamaican people are proficient at sitting around, waiting for something negative to happen (especially to somebody else), and magnifying it tenfold with scant regard. This is, at least in large part, due to a pervasive North American culture portrayed through mainstream media. In one of his prolific books, Frantz Fanon said:

Youth in the underdeveloped countries is in most cases marketed entertainment from the industrialized countries… But in an African country where intellectual development is unequal, where the violent clash of two worlds has seriously shaken up the old traditions and disrupted ways of thinking, the affectivity and sensitivity of the young African are at the mercy of the aggression contained in Western culture.

It is this aggression (and associated negatives) that has consumed the present day youth on the island. The saddest part is that the entertainment marketed to us by these Western sources does not necessarily represent the greater part of their own culture. For instance, cowboys and indians were not battling in the streets of the USA when those black-and-white films were prevalent on television. They had already matured (a little bit) and moved on from that way of life (again, a little bit). They were, therefore, mostly entertained by their own history.

Likewise, whatever the formula used to create a good sitcom or reality show today, those programs entertain precisely because they are so removed from the norm in current American society. Yet, place those same moving images in an alien culture, especially a much smaller population, and what we have is a great way to distract and scramble the minds of an entire generation of a people. Jamaica is a perfect example. We did not have the contextual awareness to know that cowboys and indians killing each other was an archaic thing of the past. It was new to us, it seemed to be the way of the developed world, so we took it to heart and aspired to emulate what we absorbed, which was the worst aspects of a relatively healthier North American society. When Real World came out, did we stop to think how many young people in society actually lived in the communal settings portrayed? I don’t think we did, but we picked up the resulting bad mannerisms anyway and practically transcribed it onto our unrelated society. In this way, Hollywood has done real damage to places like Jamaica all across the world.

In the end, we observe or participate in a big and unnecessary hoopla when trivial things occur, like somebody popular getting pregnant out of wedlock. Meanwhile, this sister has come forward with a respectable cultural analysis of the shituation. My perspective: for a nation that is unavoidably connected to Bob Marley’s message of ONE LOVE, we have to see the irony here. We’re content to be not ONE anything, but a society becoming more fragmented with time because we genuinely enjoy entertaining ourselves with our own Bad Mind. We don’t need cable TV anymore. That seed, planted decades ago, has grown into a well-rooted tree reaping a bitter fruit.

I previously shared my opinion that Black people must assert a geopolitical space. Even more important is to take charge of our economic destiny. Again, Marcus Garvey is my premier source of inspiration. Do you realize what his Black Star Line meant for us?

I have to ask twice: do you realize what the Black Star Line meant for Black Africans, African Americans and West Indian Blacks? I hope you will dignify this question with no less than 60 seconds of thought. Think about the era in which Marcus Garvey lived. Think about how many people purchased shares in his start-up company. Think about the fight that he must have got (and did get!) from people opposed to this kind of leap that Black people dared to take towards economic stability. Ponder it well.

Consider that and also consider the reason why Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. The great advocate and leader of non-violent struggle in the USA (and the first African American to have a monument on the National Mall) was not assassinated because of the strides he and his generation made in the political arena. No, it was actually because he was beginning to affect the economics of the nation. His little movement was cute until then. After he started getting involved in labor strikes and affecting the profit lines of the bigger heads, it was no longer cute and he had to be removed from the picture. This is something that I have been told by a number of civil rights activists who are still alive and who I have encountered here in Washington. MLK was aware of the buttons he was pressing and, like the Notorious B.I.G., he was ready to die. So think about this disciple of Gandhi while you think about Garvey and the Black Star Line. The politics is important but the economics is the crux of the matter.

I always think to myself, What if Marcus Mosiah Garvey was living now? With all the social networks and crowd funding websites that have proliferated on the internet, imagine what a man of Garvey’s temperament and drive would have accomplished? By now, there would have been a Black Star Airline. Imagine that for 60 more seconds.

What a fleet of Black-owned aircrafts facilitating direct flights between the Americas (including the West Indies) and the African continent would mean in the present era is the same as what it must have meant to have a fleet of Black-owned ships in the 1920s. Direct travel between and among our divided peoples would be the mere beginning of increased trade. It would also be a great catalyst for sharing ideas and, further, working together to test and implement those ideas.

I resent that people living in the Caribbean Sea must mostly travel to Europe or North America before they can arrive anywhere in Africa. That is just wack and it allows governments in Europe and North America to record the movement of Africans between and among territories run by Africans. It also allows them to exercise control over said movement of Africans. The situation is counterproductive at best.

Where is today’s Garvey? What are the Garveyites of today doing with themselves? I need to know.

A little observation of widely available historical facts points to a sobering realization. There is actually no chance of Black Africa and its Diaspora being on equal social and economic footing with the other peoples of the world unless we, its members, claim and assert a geopolitical space as our own.

Sub-Saharan Africa and the majority of the West Indies are presumably our safest spaces at the moment. They are, for the most part, administrated by Black Africans, but for whose ultimate benefit? Even without the endemic corruption prevalent in many of the territories, they are nations set up to be sucked dry of their best resources and talents for the benefit of the long established industrial nations. Our siblings elsewhere on the planet are acutely aware of how the leadership of world order preys upon Africa’s natural and human resources with only a politically correct regard for the continent or its scattered people. North America and Europe (home to most, if not all the “long established industrial nations”) provide the most telling examples, where Africans are either overtly or subconsciously reminded on a daily basis that we are nowhere close to being treated as true equals. Things have always been this way despite social advances made and it would do us well to note that every time we have “advanced” we have contributed to the blackballing of Black progress.

The problem is that we look at the markers of progress as determined and achieved by other peoples – almost exclusively White people – to determine the kind of future that we should aspire towards. In other words, massa got it so we gots to have it too, dammit! What we keep failing to grasp each and every time we win a victory is that we are taking steps closer to complete submission. It is as though we keep going to a used car dealership for our vehicles and we celebrate the purchase each time, not realizing that we’ve been sold a product with many flaws. Then, as we labor over the maintenance of flawed goods, the sellers have already begun to test drive a new model. We will doubtlessly want the upgrade in the future, at least as soon as we learn that it exists. By the time we get it, it also will be used goods.

One historical fact that comes to my mind in illustration of this point is the liberation struggle on plantations all across the western hemisphere just prior to the abolishment of the slave trade. Now, this is something that we all can relate to if we paid any attention to a proper history lesson or the words of wise elders. Even in the Caribbean, where we are not as much faced head-on with the sources and purveyors of oppression, we have shared this very common slavery experience. When our freedom fighters overpowered the so-called “masters” and had them begging for mercy, we mostly said we wanted to earn money for our toils. What we should have said was “leave now and don’t come back.” How silly was it of us to gain the upper hand and still beg for a handout? In my imaginings, I see the Europeans saying to themselves, “these dumb niggers.”

Did we have an inferior complex? Did we think we could not manage the plantations (and ultimately the economy) on our own? Who knows… but what we did was to agree to continue working on plantations that were still White-owned in exchange for a wage. The Whites, being Whites, devised. They devised a system that made the cost of necessities like food and shelter more expensive than the wages being paid to the now “free” Blacks. By the time people bought food and paid their rents, there was nothing left to do but work harder to get more money. The credit system was in full effect and people sank deeper and deeper into debt just to survive. The whole ordeal amounted to voluntary slavery which is in overdrive in today’s world. Essentially, we handed them more power than they previously had and we continue to do so practically every time we think we are achieving an increase in social status. My feeling is that we might have done more damage to White supremacist aspirations had we sunk all the ships on the way to the Americas. They were practically unable to build anything without us and if we simply stopped participating today they would find it extremely difficult to maintain the society we built for them.

Today, any skin tone is acceptable for a slave but, in the hardest of times, it is people of color who suffer from lack of protection from their governments. That applies whether they live in a White-run or a Black-run geopolitical space, and it happens whether by choice (via corruption) or by helplessness in the midst of the forces of “globalization,” which is certainly a non-African design in present form.

I say to you, concerned reader (you are probably concerned if you have read this far along), that if Africans have little protection in the difficult times, then, when unimaginable times arrive, Africans will be caught completely off guard in the face of extinction. The only way to assure survival is to claim our own geopolitical space. The sooner this is done, the better. We should do everything we can to wean ourselves away from the influences of any other peoples, whether they are European, American (which is basically European) or Asian, such as the rising Chinese who are presently “investing” all over the place. They all rightfully and sensibly have their own well-being in mind. And so should we.

In the spirit of Marcus Garvey: Africa for the Africans! We can do it. We shall do it.

My first time venturing in the ‘gideon (ITG) on scheduled revolutionary business in 2012 took me to the newest Busboys & Poets location in Hyattsville, Maryland. The event was hosted by Words, Beats & Life and centered around a film called The Furious Force of Rhymes, based on the power of Hip-hop music and culture across the world. After watching that, I then sat on a panel with some brilliant people doing great work in their respective fields.

In a future post, I intend to elaborate on a particular contribution I made about the connections between Hip-hop and Reggae in the context of revolutionary progress. For now though, just watch the video and let me know your thoughts via my twitter account.

What: ‘Glocal: Thinking Globally, and the Impact of Rapping Locally’

Where: Busboys & Poets, Hyattsville

When: January 9, 2012

Yet again, I left my comfort zone and went ITG – in the ‘gideon – for the sake of advancing the revolution. The mission on this occasion was the most personal one yet: to launch my first book, Tried & True: Revelations of a Rebellious Youth. (Get the paper version or the Kindle version.) It could have happened nowhere else but in Jamaica, the place that inspired my journey and, thus, my story.

What: ‘Tried & True’ Book Launch

Where: National Library of Jamaica + Bookophilia

When: November 22, 2011

I was very recently reminded of the fact that many of our African elders, scattered around the world, have a lot of anxiety about the state of our people today. In attending the World African Diaspora Union’s State of the Race Youth Conference two days ago at Howard University – I had an enjoyable book signing event there only two days prior to that – I sensed, among other things, despair.

They see that a majority of our rising generation has bought into some of the most destructive aspects of the Western value system. They see a fragmented historical narrative, further ripped to shreds by the behemoth that is mainstream media, which results in more cultural ignorance than ever before. Most of all, after this sense of disappointment in the youth has settled in their minds, they, being very honest with themselves, feel as though they are to blame. They are the ones who have failed us; and this is what I have heard in countless private conversations with elders who I admire.

I feel duty bound to express the contrary to my elders, especially those who have demonstrated the will to care, the will to speak out on our behalf, and also the will to resist with violence or nonviolence when they once had the youthful energy to put up resistance. They may have failed at some of their intended missions but they surely did not fail to inspire a new emerging guard. I want to say to them all, do not despair. There is good fortune ahead for planet Earth, and that includes the restoration of dignity and prosperity for Africans everywhere. We will owe victory, in part, to the wisdom and lessons learned from their efforts.

That is all, and I am glad to be able to express this here.

Brother Protoje has put out this new video for his song, Our Time Come, which was supposed to be on his first album but the nice Burning Spear sample could not be cleared in time. Fatefully, it was released yesterday, the same day that my book was publicly released on Kindle. Good energy!

What I love most about the video is that Protoje makes a conscious effort to include footage of various other young movers and shakers in the present Revival of positive Jamaican arts – Jah9, Kabaka Pyramid, Chronixx and No-Maddz to name a few. I am honored to be the lone author included in this project; I am featured starting at approximately the 3-minute mark. Play it and check out the vibes.

I have said this before but I feel it is important for me to elaborate at this time. Art is illumination in dark times. At least two separate occasions in history have shown us the one undeniable fact: the flourishing of the arts is a critical ingredient in any society’s effort to evolve into a higher consciousness.

Take a gander, if you will, at Europe between the 1300′s and the 1600′s. During that time period, the continent transitioned from an era called the Middle Ages to a new era known as the Modern Era. How did it happen? Well, there was an explosion of thought in the fields of science, politics and religion among other things. It is widely agreed though that the most significant innovations of this period were those made in the field of art. That period is now referred to as the Renaissance.

Flash forward to the 1920′s, a decade that many of our parents have heard about through firsthand accounts from their own elders. It was a time of intense, blatant racism in the United States. Even though emancipation had been declared, Africans and many mixed persons who appeared to have non-Caucasian features were discriminated. The unfriendly conditions led to the civil rights movements of the 1960′s of course, but I have been learning that the confidence that grew in the Black consciousness of that time, epitomized by people like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, stemmed from the seeds planted just prior to the 1920′s. In New York, there was a thriving community of Africans who migrated from all over the USA, especially the segregated states of the south.  In that community, which was (and continues to be) called Harlem, Black culture exploded. It was a conscious effort by musicians, writers and intellectuals, among others, to assert their rights through self-expression. Furthermore, it lifted the USA into a higher human awareness and brought the nation closer to the ideals its political leaders often boast about still. That era is now referred to as the Harlem Renaissance.

There is something happening in the Caribbean Sea right now. What appears on various maps to be an oddly shaped dot below and between Cuba and Haiti is actually the scene of another arts revolution. I am a romantic at heart so forgive me for the drama but do not take what I am telling you lightly. Jamaica, that incredibly blessed land where I am proud to be born, is on the rise again. I say “again” because there was already a renaissance here. Bob Marley has come to symbolize it today but it was so much more than one man. It was a culture built on human rights, positivity and the knowledge that Africa and Africans must collectively ascend to their proper place in global society before peace on Earth could be possible. It is widely overstood knowledge that the movement was deliberately derailed somewhere between the 1970′s and the 1980′s. How? By whom? And why? Ask around…

I am happy to share the unmistakable truth that the Zion train is, again, on track and heading in the right direction. The renaissance period is past, yes, but something greater has emerged. It is the Jamaican Revival. A thing was thought to be all but completely dead and some were preparing to pull the plug on it; but now signs of vitality are singing and dancing and painting and writing and cooking up a lively meal! Sniff around… look around… ask around. There is a loving energy and no one is unwelcome. If you are alive in this second decade of the 21st century, you are already an inescapable part of it. It is the Jamaican Revival.

LOVEwise.