PRINCE - DEAR MR. MAN

                                              http://www.loudoutthinkin.blogspot.com

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

Tous les clips Prince

PRINCE - DEAR MR. MAN


All Rights Are Reserved By Their Respective Owners (c) 2012
 

THE ASSASSINATION OF FRED HAMPTON

                                                       FRED HAMPTON

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.

                                                          By Jeffery Haas

                                                   http://www.amazon.com

 

 

                                                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

 

                                                COPYRIGHT © 2012

                                                E’SDROP PUBLISHING

COUNTRY OF FIRST PUBLICATION UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

 

SPECIAL THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING CONTRIBUTORS:

 

The Bing Corporation

Black Voices

Huffington Post

Yahoo

You Tube

Istockphoto

Bononiasound

Shinerecords

Malcolmxfiles.blogspot.com

Cornel West

Wikipedia

NBC News

AP

ROSA PARK THEN AND TODAY

                                           Negro Ink     E. L. PLEASANT

 

 

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 Henry Ford Museum 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

 

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

 

                                                COPYRIGHT © 2012

                                                E’SDROP PUBLISHING

 

COUNTRY OF FIRST PUBLICATION UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

SPECIAL THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING CONTRIBUTORS:

The Bing Corporation

Black Voices

Huffington Post

Yahoo

You Tube

Istockphoto

Bononiasound

Shinerecords

Malcolmxfiles.blogspot.com

Cornel West
NBC News
AP



ARE WE SEARCHING FOR BLACK JESUS OR THEIR'S

  



Elvyn "Esquire" Pleasant
Your Personal Barber

BARON'S HAIR SALON
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday
10:00am - 7:00pm
314-568-1603

6209 N. Lindberg
Hazelwood, MO  63042

DARE TO DREAM

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?
______________________________

Jennifer Schwirzer writes from Wyndmoor, PA. Visit Jennifer Jill Schwirzer online. All rights reserved © 2012 AnswersForMe.org.

 





Elvyn "Esquire" Pleasant
Your Personal Barber

BARON'S HAIR SALON
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday
10:00am - 7:00pm
314-568-1603

6209 N. Lindberg
Hazelwood, MO 63042