Speaking UP, OUT and LOUD is what this BLOG is all about!
Songwriters: NELSON, PRINCE ROGERS
What's wrong with the world 2day?
Things just got 2 get better
Show me what the leaders say
Maybe we should write a letter
Said Dear Mr. Man, we don't understand
Why poor people keep struggling but U don't lend a helping hand
Matthew 5:5 say “The meek shall inherit the earth”
We wanna b down that way
but U been trippin since the day of your birth
Who said that 2 kill is a sin
Then started every single war that Ur people been in?
Who said that water is a precious commodity
Then dropped a big old black oil slick in the deep blue sea? [ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/p/prince/dear_mr_man.html ]
Who told me, Mr. Man, that working round the clock
would buy me a big housed in the hood
Cigarette ads on every block
Who told me, Mr. Man, that Eye got a right 2 moan?
How about this bog old hole in the ozone?
What's wrong with the world 2day
Things just got 2 get better
Dear Mr. Man, we don't understand
Maybe we should write a letter
Listen, Ain't no sense in voting – same song with a different name
Might not b in the back of the bus but it sure feel just the same
Ain't nothing fair about welfare
Ain't no assistance in AIDS
We ain't that affirmative about your actions until the people get paid
Ur thousand years r up
Now U got 2 share the land
Section 1 – the 14th amendment says “No state shall deprive any person of life,
liberty, or property, without due process of law”
Mr. Man, we want 2 end this letter with 3 words
We tired a-y'all
Fred Hampton (August 30, 1948 – December 4, 1969) was
an African-American activist and deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the
Black Panther Party (BPP). He was killed while sleeping in his apartment during
a raid by a tactical unit of the Cook County, Illinois State’s Attorney’s
Office (SAO), in conjunction with the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Hampton’s death was chronicled in the 1971
documentary film The Murder of Fred Hampton, as well as an episode of
the critically acclaimed documentary series Eyes on the Prize
Hampton was born on August 30,
1948, in present day Summit, Illinois and grew up in Maywood, a suburb to the
west of the city. His parents had moved north from Louisiana, and both worked
at the Argo Starch Company. As a youth, Hampton was gifted both in the
classroom and on the athletic field, having a strong desire to play center
field for the New York Yankees, and graduating from Proviso East High School
with honors in 1966.
Following his graduation Hampton
enrolled at Triton Junior College in nearby River Grove, Illinois, majoring in
pre-law. He studied law to become more familiar with the law, using it as a
defense against police. He and fellow Black Panthers would follow police,
watching out for police brutality using this knowledge of law as a defense. He
also became active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP), assuming leadership of the Youth Council of the organization's
West Suburban Branch. In his capacity as an NAACP youth organizer, Hampton
began to show signs of his natural leadership abilities; from a community of
27,000, he was able to muster a youth group 500-members strong. He worked to
get more and better recreational facilities established in the neighborhoods,
and to improve educational resources for Maywood's impoverished black
community. Through his involvement with the NAACP, Hampton hoped to achieve social
change through nonviolent activism and community organizing.
Chicago
About the same time that Hampton
was successfully organizing young African Americans for the NAACP, the Black
Panther Party (BPP) started rising to national prominence. Hampton was quickly
attracted to the Black Panthers' approach, which was based on a ten-point
program of a mix of black self-determination and certain elements of Maoism.
Hampton joined the Party and relocated to downtown Chicago, and in November
1968 he joined the Party's nascent Illinois chapter — founded by Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizer Bob Brown in late 1967.
Over the next year, Hampton and
his associates made a number of significant achievements in Chicago. Perhaps
his most important accomplishment was his brokering of a nonaggression pact
between Chicago's most powerful street gangs. Emphasizing that racial and
ethnic conflict between gangs would only keep its members entrenched in poverty,
Hampton strove to forge a class-conscious, multi-racial alliance between the
BPP, the Young Patriots Organization and the National Young Lords under the
leadership of Jose Cha Cha Jimenez. Later they were joined by the Students for
a Democratic Society, the Blackstone Rangers, the Brown Berets and the Red
Guard Party. In May 1969, Hampton called a press conference to announce that a
truce had been declared among this "rainbow coalition," a phrase
coined by Hampton and made popular over the years by Rev. Jesse Jackson, who
eventually appropriated the name in forming his own unrelated coalition, Rainbow
PUSH.
Hampton's organizing skills,
substantial oratorical gifts, and personal charisma allowed him to rise quickly
in the Black Panthers. Once he became leader of the Chicago chapter, he
organized weekly rallies, worked closely with the BPP's local People's Clinic,
taught political education classes every morning at 6am, and launched a project
for community supervision of the police. Hampton was also instrumental in the
BPP's Free Breakfast Program. When Brown left the Party with Stokely Carmichael
in the FBI-fomented SNCC/Panther split, Hampton assumed chairmanship of the
Illinois state BPP, automatically making him a national BPP deputy chairman. As
the Panther leadership across the country began to be decimated by the impact
of the FBI's COINTELPRO, Hampton's prominence in the national hierarchy
increased rapidly and dramatically. Eventually, Hampton was in line to be
appointed to the Party's Central Committee's Chief of Staff. He would have
achieved this position had it not been for his death on the morning of December
4, 1969.
FBI
investigation
While Hampton impressed many of
the people with whom he came into contact as an effective leader and talented
communicator, those very qualities marked him as a major threat in the eyes of
the FBI. It began keeping close tabs on his activities. Subsequent
investigations have shown that FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover was determined to
prevent the formation of a cohesive Black movement in the United States. Hoover
saw the Panthers, and radical coalitions like that forged by Hampton in
Chicago, as a frightening stepping stone toward the creation of just such a
revolutionary body that could, in its strength, cause a radical change in the
U.S. government.
The FBI opened a file on Hampton
in 1967 that over the next two years expanded to twelve volumes and over four
thousand pages. A wire tap was placed on Hampton's mother's phone in February
1968. By May of that year, Hampton's name was placed on the "Agitator
Index" and he would be designated a "key militant leader for Bureau
reporting purposes."
In late 1968, the Racial Matters
squad of the FBI's Chicago field office brought in an individual named William
O'Neal, who had recently been arrested twice, for interstate car theft and
impersonating a federal officer. In exchange for dropping the felony charges
and a monthly stipend, O'Neal apparently agreed to infiltrate the BPP as a
counterintelligence operative. He joined the Party and quickly rose in the
organization, becoming Director of Chapter security and Hampton's bodyguard.
In 1969 the FBI special agent in
San Francisco wrote Hoover that his investigation of the Black Panther Party
(BPP) revealed that in his city, at least, the Panthers were primarily feeding
breakfast to children. Hoover fired back a memo implying the career ambitions
of the agent were directly related to his supplying evidence to support
Hoover's view that the BPP was "a violence-prone organization seeking to
overthrow the Government by revolutionary means".
Hoover was willing to use false
claims to attack his political enemies. In one memo he wrote: "Purpose of
counterintelligence action is to disrupt the BPP and it is immaterial whether
facts exist to substantiate the charge."
By means of anonymous letters,
the FBI sowed distrust and eventually instigated a split between the Panthers
and the Rangers, with O'Neal himself instigating an armed clash between the two
on April 2, 1969. The Panthers became effectively isolated from their powerbase
in the ghetto, so the FBI went to work to undermine its ties with other radical
organizations. O'Neal was instructed to "create a rift" between the
Party and SDS, whose Chicago headquarters was only blocks from that of the
Panthers. The Bureau released a batch of racist cartoons in the Panthers' name,
aimed at alienating white activists, and launched a disinformation program to
forestall the realization of the "Rainbow Coalition." In repeated directives,
J. Edgar Hoover demanded that the COINTELPRO personnel "destroy what the
[BPP] stands for" and "eradicate its 'serve the people'
programs".
On July 16 there was an armed
confrontation between party members and the Chicago Police Department, which
left one member mortally wounded and six others arrested on serious charges.
On May 26, 1969, Hampton was
successfully prosecuted in a case related to a theft in 1967 of $71 worth of Good
Humor Bars in Maywood. He was sentenced to two to five years, but he managed to
obtain an appeal bond and was released in August.
In early October, Hampton and his
girlfriend, Deborah Johnson (now known as Akua Njeri), pregnant with their
first child (Fred Hampton, Jr.), rented a four-and-a-half room apartment on
2337 West Monroe Street to be closer to BPP headquarters. O'Neal reported to
his superiors that much of the Panthers' "provocative" stockpile of
arms was being stored there. In early November, Hampton traveled to California
on a speaking engagement to the UCLA Law Students Association. While there, he
met with the remaining BPP national hierarchy, who appointed him to the Party's
Central Committee. Shortly thereafter he was to assume the position of Chief of
Staff and major spokesman.
Murdered
by Chicago Police
"We expected
about twenty Panthers to be in the apartment when the police raided the place.
Only two of those black niggers were killed, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark."
—FBI Special Agent Gregg York
"You can
kill the revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution."
— Fred Hampton
Bed that Hampton
was initially shot in during the raid, with large amount of blood on mattress
and numerous bullet holes in the walls.
Fred Hampton was quickly moving
up the ranks in the Black Panther Party, and his talent as a political
organizer was remarkable.
In 1968 he was on the verge of
creating a merger between the BPP and a southside street gang with thousands of
members, which would have doubled the size of the national BPP.
In November 1969, Hampton
traveled to California, and met with the National BPP leadership at UCLA. It
was there that they offered him a position on the Central Committee as the
chief of staff, and asked him to serve as the national spokesman for the BPP.
While Hampton was out of town two Chicago police officers, John J. Gilhooly and
Frank G. Rappaport, were killed in a gun battle with Panthers on the night of
November 13. A total of 9 police officers were shot; a 19 year old Panther
named Spurgeon Winter Jr. was killed by police and another Panther, Lawrence S.
Bell, was charged with murder. In an editorial headlined "No Quarter for
Wild Beasts" the Chicago Tribune urged that Chicago police be given
the order to approach all Panther suspects prepared to shoot.
The FBI, determined to prevent
any enhancement of the effectiveness of BPP leadership, decided to set up an
arms raid on Hampton's Chicago apartment. FBI informant William O'Neal provided
them with detailed information of Hampton's apartment, including the location
of furniture and the bed in which Hampton and his then-pregnant girlfriend
slept. An augmented, fourteen-man team of the SAO — Special Prosecutions Unit —
was organized for a pre-dawn raid armed with a warrant for illegal weapons.
On the evening of December 3,
Hampton taught a political education course at a local church, which was
attended by most members. Afterwards, as was typical, several Panthers retired
to the Monroe Street apartment to spend the night, including Hampton and Deborah
Johnson, Blair Anderson, Doc Satchell, Harold Bell, Verlina Brewer, Louis
Truelock, Brenda Harris, and Mark Clark.
Upon arrival, they were met by
O'Neal, who had prepared a late dinner which was eaten by the group around
midnight. O'Neal had slipped the powerful barbiturate sleep agent, secobarbitol
into a drink that was consumed by Hampton during the dinner in order to sedate
Hampton so that he would not awaken during the subsequent raid. O'Neal left at
this point, and, at about 1:30 a.m., Hampton fell asleep in mid-sentence
talking to his mother on the telephone. Although Hampton was not known to take
drugs, Cook County chemist Eleanor Berman would report that she ran two
separate tests which each showed a powerful barbiturate had been introduced into
Hampton's blood. An FBI chemist would later fail to find similar traces, but
Berman stood by her findings.
Body of Fred
Hampton, after being shot twice in the head at point blank range by members of
the Chicago Police Department.
The raid was organized by the
office of Cook County State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan using officers attached
to his office. Hanrahan had recently been the subject of a large amount of
public criticism by Hampton, who had made speeches about how Hanrahan's talk
about a "war on gangs" was really rhetoric used to enable him to
carry out a "war on black youth".
At 4:00 a.m., the heavily armed
police team arrived at the site, dividing into two teams, eight for the front
of the building and six for the rear. At 4:45, they stormed in the apartment.
Mark Clark, sitting in the front
room of the apartment with a shotgun in his lap, was on security duty. He was
killed instantly, firing off a single round which was later determined to be a
reflexive reaction in his death convulsions after being shot by the raiding team;
this was the only shot the Panthers fired.
Automatic gunfire then converged
at the head of the bedroom where Hampton slept, unable to wake up as a result
of the barbiturates that the FBI infiltrator had slipped into his drink. He was
lying on a mattress in the bedroom with his pregnant girlfriend. Two officers
found him wounded in the shoulder, and fellow Black Panther Harold Bell
reported that he heard the following exchange:
"That's Fred Hampton."
"Is he dead?... Bring him out."
"He's barely alive.
"He'll make it."
Two shots were heard, which it
was later discovered were fired point blank in Hampton's head. According to
Deborah Johnson, one officer then said:
"He's good and dead now."
Hampton's body was dragged into
the doorway of the bedroom and left in a pool of blood. The officers then
directed their gunfire towards the remaining Panthers, who were hiding in
another bedroom. They were wounded, then beaten and dragged into the street,
where they were arrested on charges of aggravated assault and the attempted
murder of the officers. They were each held on US$100,000 bail.
Aftermath
Funeral
procession for Fred Hampton. Hampton was widely loved in the black Chicago
community, and his funeral was attended by over 5,000 people.
At a press conference the next
day, the police announced the arrest team had been attacked by the
"violent" and "extremely vicious" Panthers and had defended
themselves accordingly. In a second press conference on December 8, the assault
team was praised for their "remarkable restraint,"
"bravery," and "professional discipline" in not killing all
the Panthers present. Photographic evidence was presented of "bullet
holes" allegedly made by shots fired by the Panthers, but this was soon
challenged by reporters (although the Chicago Tribune initially
published these photos in support of the police action). An internal
investigation was undertaken; the assault team was exonerated of any
wrongdoing.
Hampton's funeral was attended by
5,000 people, and he was eulogized by such black leaders as Jesse Jackson and Ralph
Abernathy, Martin Luther King's successor as head of the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference. In his eulogy, Jackson noted that "when Fred was
shot in Chicago, black people in particular, and decent people in general, bled
everywhere."
On December 6, members of the Weather
Underground destroyed numerous police vehicles in a retaliatory bombing spree
at 3600 N. Halsted Street, Chicago.
Four weeks after witnessing
Hampton's death at the hands of the police, Deborah Johnson gave birth to Fred
Hampton, Jr.
Civil rights activists Roy
Wilkins and Ramsey Clark (styled as "The Commission of Inquiry into the
Black Panthers and the Police") subsequently alleged that the Chicago
police had killed Fred Hampton without justification or provocation and had
violated the Panthers’ constitutional rights against unreasonable search and
seizure. "The Commission" further alleged that the Chicago Police
Department had imposed a summary punishment on the Panthers.
The federal grand jury did not
return any indictment against anyone involved with the planning or execution of
the raid. The officers involved in the raid were cleared by a grand jury of any
crimes.
The FBI informant, William
O'Neal, later committed suicide after admitting his involvement in setting up
the raid.
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This picture perfectly captures significance of
today's anniversary
December
01, 2012
Today is the
anniversary of Rosa Parks’ refusal to sit in the back of the bus in Montgomery, Ala. And this photograph of President Obama sitting on
that exact same bus 57 years later is a poignant reminder of just how much America has changed in half a century. The image was taken
at the HenryFordMuseum in Dearborn, Mich., where the humble 36-seat General Motors bus is on
display. Like this simple picture of the president, the bus is an ordinary
thing that represents extraordinary progress.
Welcome to another web edition
of THINKING OUT LOUD, and I'm your host, E. L. Pleasant. Thinking Out Loud,
what progress?We may not have to sit at
the back of the bus or give up our seats, but for some, our slavery roots run
too deep to move forward and that’s where you will find us still seated today.
If a white female gets on and there is no available seat, we are 9 times likely
to offer her our seat before we offer it to one of our own.The bus can be empty or half full and the
first place we tend to migrate is straight to the back without ever being told
to do so or ask of ourselves the reason why?She can’t stand to look upon you, but she will take your seat and ask of
you like asking a child are you sure?If
you weren’t would you have offered in the first place?We are still treated and thought of as not
being intelligent enough when it come to making decisions; therefore it would
be best if they continue making them for us. Like still naming us after so many
years as if it was just yesterday they were calling us Toby too what ever came
to their mind, now they want to name us African Americans. Do we still need
them to take care of us?Because for
many white people they would argue that is what they are doing for those blacks
from generations to generations still receiving welfare over getting an
education, that is what they have being doing since the depression era.Seventy five percent of the white population
would contend that they are sick of us as a hold and yet they are the guilty
party that created this dependency handed down from their forefathers to keep
us where we are out of fear and ignorance, that we would someday over power
them and rule.So they set up laws to
work against us and programs to keep us abated at every turn. It is recorded that Jesus came and died for
our sins.The same sin was here before
he came, after he died and has multiplied.Martin Luther King Jr., gave his life so that we could hold hands
together and sing songs, now where has that gotten us? 2013 half behind bars, the other half the
chains are off the hands and feet, but the mind is still held captive and our
youth are being killed right before our eyes while we as parents say, “I DON’T
THINK IT WAS DONE OUT OF HATE.”These
are the one’s that God is looking for because he said love thou enemies and
these are they that will be deemed as righteous.I’m not! For Thinking Out Loud, I'm E. L. PLEASANT
STORY BY:
E.
L. PLEASANT
STORY
EDITOR
BRANDON
DE’LEONCE
MUSIC
BY:
BONONIASOUND
SHINERECORDS
ISTOCK
PHOTO
PRODUTION
MANAGER
JOHN
WESLEY
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DUPLICATION, ELECTRONIC DISTRIBUTION OR EXHIBITION MAY RESULT IN CIVIL
LIABILITY AND CRIMINAL PROSECUTION
When the United States
won the war of independence from Great Britain,
it became a “sovereign state.” Notice the word “reign” in “sovereign,”
indicating that we in the United States
reign over ourselves. This freedom to self-govern came as a free gift to us,
but at the ultimate cost to a host of forgotten soldiers. No other nation
reigns over the U.S.
because numberless heroes died for our freedom.
God has made each of us sovereign in that same sense. No other person chooses
for us. Ultimately, our choices determine our destiny. I’m not denying that God
is the King of the Universe. I’m even willing to say that He knows and even
predestines the future. But at the same time I affirm that within the panorama
of His plan, we image-bearers plan and execute, and therefore self-determine,
through a mysterious thing called free will.
Sometimes I do a little exercise that helps me appreciate this mystery. I come
up with several scenarios and imagine myself pursuing them. Then I speak them
out loud, beginning with “I could.” For instance:
- I could start a vegan restaurant in downtown Philadelphia.
- I could go back to performing music full time.
- I could start an inner city drug rehab facility.
- I could retire early and try to live off my garden.
- I could give up all my hobbies and work out till my muscles bulged.
- I could start breeding Angora rabbits and develop a
sweater business.
- I could devote the remaining years of my life to breeding teacup Pomeranians.
- I could get a graduate degree in turf grass management (yes, one exists).
- I could have a sex change and become a Zen Buddhist monk.
- I could leave Christianity, become a Satanist and pursue witchcraft.
- I could kidnap my daughters and sell them into human trafficking.
My “I coulds” began with the likely and progressed to the absurd. That second
to last item sounds almost blasphemous, and the last is horrific, unthinkable;
but I mention them all for a purpose. It’s good for us to realize that God
gives us the freedom to do evil as well as good. Understanding our potential
for wickedness puts us in touch with our power. It moves our focus of control
from outside of ourselves to deep down in the tissues of our own wills. It
tells us to stop playing the victim, to grow beyond children, “tossed here and
there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of
men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Ephesians 4:14), and grow up into our God-given dignity and
potential.
God’s kingdom operates from a foundation of freedom. Think of it: God values
free will more than numbers of people. God would rather save one person who
worshiped Him from choice than a whole cosmos of robots. He could “save” all
6,894,594,844 people in the world right now with a snap of his holy fingers if
He so chose. He could even raise from the dead the estimated 107,602,707,791
who have ever lived and herd them into heaven. But most of that 114,497,302,635
people would abhor everything about heaven — the vegan food, the celestial
music, the absence of sex and substances, and most of all the rapturous cries
of “Worthy is the Lamb!” — because they’d never worshiped God from choice. God
would rather have one, just one, freely loving Him than 114,497,302,635 showing
up as if at gunpoint.
Do you appreciate your freedom? Let’s see it through the eyes of a lady named
Edith Eva Eger. Edith lived through the Holocaust. She watched her mother die
at Auschwitz; a German guard broke her back; and she
endured the Brno “death march” of
35 miles from Germany
to Austria.
Finally wasting away to forty pounds, she found herself on a heap of bodies,
left for dead. Just then the war ended. An American soldier saw her hand move
and summoned help, so that she lives today to tell her story.
Edith remembers that some in the camps resorted to cannibalism to fend off
starving. “I chose to eat grass,” she says, “And as I sat on the ground,
selecting one blade over the other, [I told] myself that even under those
conditions I still had a choice — which blade of grass to eat.”
Nothing can take your freedom from you; God Himself has secured it. Your
material security, your health, your job, your status, your loved ones and your
friends — all these can be taken away in a moment. But nothing short of brain
damage can take your ability to choose. We fail to appreciate this treasure. We
fear the responsibility of it. We’d rather blame, complain, react, and
generally wallow in the juices of our own imagined helplessness. Edith says,
“The biggest concentration camp is in your own mind.” I would like to
personally celebrate my freedom today, won on the battlefield of Calvary’s
blood, by walking out of my personal, self-imposed Auschwitz.
Will you come with me?
______________________________
Welcome to another web edition of THINKING OUT LOUD, and I'm your host, E. L. Pleasant. Thinking Out Loud, Though they all have one to tell, their story is no
different than yours, because it’s the one time that it doesn’t matter if your
name is Young Buck, T.I., or 2Pac, for the requirement has already been
established at birth if you are blessed to be born black.Out of every house hold there are at lease
one or more family member that are in jail or will be before the year is out
because of an unpaid traffic ticket(s.)They have been unlawfully stopping blacks since 1940 and it wasn’t
called racial profiling until around 1980, when in fact you and I know it has
never been racial profiling, but a hate crime being committed by those that
sworn to uphold the law.The same people
that make the laws are the one’s that breaks them at will, because they are
above the law or at least over you and I.So let’s start calling it what it is and that is, HATE CRIMES.We joke about it in our songs like, “Driving
Dirty,” too in our movies, like “National Security,” and saying, “Driving While
Black, to keep from dealing with the reality of what is happing every single
day when we venture out from our homes.It is the same message that the whites have been sending since we
stepped off of their ships, and that is, they are going to tame/break us one
way or the other, meaning physically or mentally any means necessary.Think about it, every time you get behind the
wheel you fear being stopped, you do thirty five when the speed limit is forty
five and you panic when ever the police get behind you because you know he’s
running your plates.So you run like a
slave or if you had a weapon you would kill them is the only thing that comes
to your mind after being stopped more times because of your color than your
driving record.This is what they want
you to fear every time you get behind the wheel or venture outside of your
homes when you see them coming that they still have control over you.Their motivation is the same as their
grandparents, hate past down from generation to generation that will not be
broken.You have seen their dreams come
true, for they own every thing worth having and only a few successful blacks
have seen theirs come to light, but they refuse to remember where they came
from out of fear also.Because if they
acknowledge who they are and proud to be what they could not break or be bought
would be a indication that they forgotten their place, therefore they fear more
than anything of being treated or thought of as being one of us.So they do what they call beating them at
their own game when the whites are the ones controlling the dices.
So officers like Beekman will sit on a deserted parking lot
with only one thing on his mind and that is to arrest and get as many niggers
off the street and into a cage as possible because that is where we
belong.Nine out of ten he knows that
what be an issue because for every tenth car that he stop will be the only one
to get away. For every one of the remaining nine people is going to have
something wrong with them, from suspended license, revoked, unregistered car,
expired plates, no insurance too traffic warrants already being issued years
ago.Yet he had no reason(s) to stop you
other than his motivation and that is hate, which he call doing his job and you
can see that every time that you had to appear in court and seen one hundred
blacks like the million man march and less than a dozen of whites.Think about this also.All the money that is being raised out of you having to sell blood to pay for these tickets,
where to you think the money is going?
Dontay Hogan is the shit to those that know him well. He
drives two hours back and forth to Mexico Missouri for 15.80 every morning
unloading trucks and in between time locked- up in some county jail. A month in
the city work house, two weeks in another facility too 72 hours in Florissant,
Jennings, Delwood, Hazelwood, Molean Acres and so forth, you get the ideal,
he's a lifer and this is what life mean to him. He sits up from his laid back
position to spit his tail for now he has a captivating audience of one, which
is me to listen and decide for myself which is bull and the hold truth. "I
wear nothing but Polo and matching hats, when my girl and I moved in together
and she saw my shit, she was like damn you must think you're the shit." I
must admit I couldn't control my smile, because I could see that he thought so
as well, and he couldn't wait to continue telling me about his life as a rose
that sprung up from the concrete, with many broken dreams or misguided hopes in
all. How he flipped cars by buying them for 150 to 300 hundred and selling them
for1500 hundred, leaving him holding 20 thousand at onetime that most of his
peers would never see or hold in their hands to be able to hold the same bragging
rights like him. His hustling has taught him one thing and that is how to
survive rather it selling drugs, stolen items or what ever to get paid. He had
a white lawyer on retainer but he had to fair her because she wasn't about
handling business and just to think he was planning on making her their family lawyer,
so he said."Once I was over my
cousin, right, my ex called me and asked where I was at cause she wanted to go
out, like I gave a fuck where she was going and she wanted me to keep my son.
So I tell her to bring him, shit, that’ll be cool little man can hang with me.
The next thing I know I'm standing there on the porch with my cousin talking
when the police rolls up, get out, and asked me what my name were, I say
Dontay. Then he asked me what my last name were, and I asked him what he wanted
to know my name for. He said he had a warrant for my arrest. That crazy bitch
told them that I jumped on her. My cousin told them that I been there all
evening because my girlfriend had my car, so there was no way that I could have
done what she said, I tell them that she called me saying she was bringing my
son over to me. Those mother fuckers arrested me any way because they said I
had a traffic warrant, that, that white bitch was suppose to have taken care
of. So when I get there I call my girl and tell her where I am and she says,
stop lying, I say for real girl and come and get me out." He's smiling as
if he has been holding this shit in waiting for someone to come alone so he
could relieve himself. "He tells her to life up the arm rest as he could
hear her scream damn, and he is telling her to be quite. Then he tells her to
take the key and open the glove box, and she screams again, saying damn you
must think you're the shit, I been driving around all this time with all this
money up in here. That's what I do, because we were supposed to go out that
night."
Every one of the twenty or more awaiting inmates had a story to tell how they
ended up here with only one or two variations that still came down to the same
conclusion, just another hate crime being committed by those sworn to uphold
the law.
Joey Bittle resides two cells down from Hogan, one of two
white cell mates that will be spending the night, though he had been feverishly
trying every ten minutes or so to get his mother to bail him out by making
hollow promises that he will pay her back no matter what ever it takes. You can
tell by his eyes he doesn’t want to be around no Negro any longer than he can
hold his breath, for there are only two of them here tonight. The guy that is
sharing a cell with him is a mixed therefore he's not white though he surely
could past for one with his shoulder length blondish hair, his conversation
tells us he have accepted the term nigga as he spend his tell fucking some
white bitch as he described her. His words not mine. He was at some red neck
bar as the story goes and he took her out back, fucked her and left her where
she bent over. He's been drinking cranberry and goose all evening so he said.
When he got ready to reenter this fine establishment some big red neck
motherfucker stepped to him asking the where about of that white bitch, and “I
asked him what business was it to him, he said some shit and I stole him. When
I woke up I was in jail with a broken nose twisted to one side like Owin
Wilson. Man I Never got my black ass beating by some white boys in my life.” Joey
is sitting across from this one gentlemen who name I failed to catch as he rest
his head against the bars laughing. But Joey isn't laughing and there's
contempt in his eyes. Maybe it's because he didn't like the idea of him talking
about being with a white woman or the fact he can past for white but he's
black. He springs from his metal bunk and grasp the phone once more. "Mom
please, I swear I'll pay you back, are you listening to me? I didn't start the
fight with Cory, he started hitting me, shit, are you fucking crazy? No, I'm
saying you act like you're not hearing a word I'm saying, mom I didn't go over
there to fight Cory, you can ask Brian." His call is disconnected for the
third or forth time, in which he had cursed her out repeatedly asking her for
help. Another guy on my left chimes in on a beat. "We always want to blame
the white man for the situation that we are in, when we are the one's that
didn't pay that ticket." Every voice fell silent to these unsolicited
comments nor did anyone care to debate with this individual, not even I with my
intellect. Unable to stand a second longer the phone is once again in the
24year old Joey Bittles hands, not to apologize, but demand to be set free by
his mother. Now swearing to get her money back to her, his mother, this went
from three days to now two in the time he said it would take, for desperation
calls for any means nessacere. He will walk home if she just come and pay his
two hundred dollar bail in between a few more curse words. Pleading how he want
to spend the holiday with his son. "No mom, why you keep trying to make me
out to be a bad person, I 'm the one with the bruises and he called the police
on me. Then call Brain mom and ask him for me to come and post bail for me. The
phone goes silent as I'm ask to vacate the premises while ever eye in now on me
and the President. “Still Asking What’s The Meaning of Life?” from the streets
I give you “PAHZAZZ” for THINKING
OUT LOUD, I’m E. L. PLEASANT
"To Live is the rarest thing in the world, Most people exist, that is all."
"PAHZAZZ"
STORY BY:
E.
L. PLEASANT
STORY
EDITOR
BRANDON
DE’LEONCE
MUSIC
BY:
BONONIASOUND
SHINERECORDS
ISTOCK
PHOTO
PRODUTION
MANAGER
JOHN
WESLEY
THIS PRODUCTION OF THINKING OUT LOUD IS PROTECTED UNDER THE
LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES AND OTHER COUNTRIES, AND ITS UNAUTHORIZED
DUPLICATION, ELECTRONIC DISTRIBUTION OR EXHIBITION MAY RESULT IN CIVIL
LIABILITY AND CRIMINAL PROSECUTION
On November 18,
1993, Tupac "2Pac" Shakur was arrested for sexually abusing a
19-year-old woman, who he met in a New York nightclub, and allegedly sodomized
and sexually abused with three of his friends. In 1995, he was sentenced to
prison for up to four and a half years, but received an early release after a
few months. In September 1996, the 25-year-old Shakur was shot four times in
the chest and died from the wounds.
Previous Arrests·
1992 - Tupac was arrested after being involved in an altercation in
which a stray bullet killed a child, but the charges were later dismissed.
·April 5, 1993 - Tupac spent 10 days in a Michigan prison for beating
another rapper with a baseball bat.
·October 31, 1993 - Tupac allegedly stopped to help a black motorist who
he felt was being harassed by the policemen. A fight broke out and Tupac shot
one policemen in the leg and the other in the buttocks. When it was determined
that the policemen were intoxicated and carrying guns taken from the police
evidence room, the charges were dropped.
·November 18, 1993 - Shakur was arrested on the sexual abuse and sodomy
charges and weapons charges in New York City. The sodomy and weapons charges
were dropped.
·November 10, 1994 - Tupac, slated to star in the movie Meance II,
punched the director Allen Hughes. He spent 15 days in prison and was replaced
in the movie by Larenz Tate.
·November 30, 1994, Tupac Shakur was ambushed by three black men in the lobby
of a recording studio in Times Square in New York City. The men robbed him of
over $35,000 in cash and jewelry and shot him five times - hitting his head,
groin and hand.
·On September 7, 1996 in Las Vegas,
Nevada, Shakur attended the Mike Tyson and Bruce Seldon boxing match. Allegedly
after the match, Shakur was involved in a fight in the lobby of the MGM Hotel.
Later that evening he was shot in his car in a drive-by shooting. He suffered
four gun shot wounds and died in the University of Nevada Hospital six days
later. Although there was much speculation about the murder being stimulated by
an ongoing rivalry between gangs associated with east and west coast rap
recording companies, the murder was never officially solved
STILL I RISE
Still I Rise lyrics Dear Lord As we down here, struggle for as long as we know In search of a paradise to touch (my ni**a Johnny J) Dreams are dreams, and reality seems to be the only place to go The only place for us I know, try to make the best of bad situations Seems to be my life's story Ain't no glory in pain, a soldier's story in vain And can't nobody live this life for me It's a ride y'all, a long hard ride
Welcome to another web
edition of THINKING OUT LOUD, and I'm your host, E. L. Pleasant. Thinking Out
Loud, Four years have come and gone
and we are still singing the same song that is not worth the breath it is sung
in, for we have not over come. The words that I chose the use are not
complicated that causes you to have to turn to your Oxford Dictionary ever half
page to figure out what this Negro is talking about?Just look around and I know you see the same
things even the blind feel in the black communities.There are three things that the whites will
not put stock in when blacks are concern.You can have your churches if that will keep you out of ours; you can
have your hair salons because we don’t want to touch you unless we are hauling
your ass off to jail, and some place to stump your feet and become the fools
that you are.Other than that, they will
fight you every step of the way with red tape and zoning laws.Some of us loved listening to 2pac because
regardless of his life style, he was a true poet that was trying to give more
than he ever took away from here.His
message for those that didn’t want to listen or were unable to comprehend was a
simple one.Come together as brothers
and sisters and love one another, a place where we can call ours.Don’t have to pretend no more just to get
through the day, no police harassing us cause of our color or mean mugging
cause we riding four deep just chilling and enjoying life.That was his dream, totally different from
Martin’s.Since slavery and a thousand
marches we still don’t have anything of our own.
The rose that grew from concrete
Tupac Amar Shakur
"Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete,
proving nature's laws wrong it learned to walk without having feet."
On the contrary, where ever there is a will to live, something will always grow
out of nothing, even when you think there is nothing there. The wind blows dirt
into the gutters and plants start to grow in a self made bed. You build a house
on top of dirt don't mean just because there is no sunlight what was once there
will cease to exist, it simply will adapt and evolve into something else. As
blacks, that is what we have always done, for God said, "We shall not
parish." Yet will still can't come together as a race and my preaching about it only confirms that I stand alone. For THINKING OUT LOUD, I'm E. L. PLEASANT
STORY BY:
E.
L. PLEASANT
STORY
EDITOR
BRANDON
DE’LEONCE
MUSIC
BY:
BONONIASOUND
SHINERECORDS
ISTOCK
PHOTO
PRODUTION
MANAGER
JOHN
WESLEY
THIS PRODUCTION OF THINKING OUT LOUD IS PROTECTED UNDER THE
LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES AND OTHER COUNTRIES, AND ITS UNAUTHORIZED
DUPLICATION, ELECTRONIC DISTRIBUTION OR EXHIBITION MAY RESULT IN CIVIL
LIABILITY AND CRIMINAL PROSECUTION
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