Death Blossoms: Reflections From a Prisoner of Conscience

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The Faith of Slaves

The tradition of the dead weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.
-- Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

AS IN ANTIQUITY, the black church was born in the womb of oppression, and its adherents labored under the heel of slavery. In a climate of general repression, blacks (even so-called "freed" slaves) were prohibited from a wide range of jobs and crafts.

One area begrudgingly allowed them was that of preacher. It was a useful allowance, for an obeisant minister -- especially one who believed in the efficacy of long-suffering over rebellion -- could exercise tremendous influence over his fellow captives and save his white "Massa" countless difficulties. Vestiges of the same attitude can be seen in a recent controversy that surfaced during Christine Todd Whitman's first gubernatorial campaign in New Jersey: GOP strategists allegedly donated considerable sums to black preachers, who in turn promised to urge their congregations to refrain from voting. (The ministers in question, of course, vociferously denied all knowledge of this.)

On the positive side, the black pulpit has been a powerful battery that energized the struggle for civil rights, and as such, other human rights movements in the late twentieth century. It is noteworthy that the most influential African-Americans of our time have been clergymen, albeit of many varied religious traditions. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Minister Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) are only two of many who come to mind.

King's influence has been reflected in the recent past in many ways, especially in the widened access blacks have gained to professions and positions previously closed to them before the passage of various civil rights laws. The influence of Malcolm X, while equally evident in the same basic realms, is also reflected in the emergence of a new and different consciousness, particularly in the Black Panther Party and many other similar black nationalist organizations across America and the black world in the seventies.

The first, though perceived by many of his contemporaries as a radical, was at base a traditionalist whose views were largely synchronous with the conservativism of the black church in which he was raised. The second, known in many circles solely for his searing revolutionary oratory, complemented (at least in his later years) the radicalism of his earlier message with a more conservative spirituality colored by Arabic-influenced Islam.

Both were assassinated in the prime of their lives as they stood on the brink of exercising unprecedented influence on national and international affairs.

WHEREAS KING was a dyed-in-the-wool Baptist, Malcolm X was proudly non-Christian and regarded Christianity as a white man's religion, wielded by slave masters to control their black chattel. He excoriated the kind of Afrophobic religious thinking described in Blyden's Islam, Christianity and the Negro (1888), where the following observations are recorded:

It was our lot not long ago to hear an illiterate negro in a prayer meeting in New York entreat the deity to extend his "lily-white hands" and bless the waiting congregation. Another, with no greater amount of culture, preaching from John 3:2: "We shall be like Him," etc. He exclaimed, "Brethren, imagine a beautiful white man with blue eyes, rosy cheeks and flaxen hair, and we shall be like Him." The conceptions of these worshippers were what they had gathered from plastic and pictorial representations as well as from the characteristics of the dominant race around them.

Such psychological enslavement might seem unbelievably blatant to us today, yet to our black great-grandparents it was a simply an expression of a lingering self-hatred that even emancipation could not drown from the subconscious. Its echoes reverberate even in the present.

One example is the depiction of the deity that continues in black churches: of a white, blue-eyed Christ peering down upon the congregation through shimmering stained-glass windows. It might seem like a small thing in itself, but coupled with the undeniable fact of America's persisting caste system, the power of suggestion it possesses is tremendous. Perhaps it is such images that have disenchanted and alienated many African-Americans and turned them from the churches of their youth to the various schools of Islam, to pre-American or syncretic African faiths, or to the rejection of the religious dimension of life in toto.

WHEN THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL were delivered from Egyptian bondage, they traversed the desert for over forty years, until almost all those who had lived in slavery had passed away. One reading of that wilderness experience regards it as a necessary prerequisite to what was to follow: it concludes that no one with a slave psychology could live as a truly free person in the Promised Land and that, moreover, a survivor's psyche would be so indelibly etched with the taint of enslavement that it would even pose a danger to the next generation.

We who are familiar with the biblical account of the same exodus recall that, in times of peril, hunger, and doubt, a cry arose from the people, longing for the land of their oppression:

And when Pharaoh drew nigh, the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians marched after them; and they were sore afraid; and the children of Israel cried out unto the Lord.

And they said unto Moses, because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt? (Ex. 14: 10-11)

The Jews later mimicked their Egyptian masters by fashioning an idol in the form of a molten golden calf -- an ancient example of a people adopting the religious mores of their oppressors.

In our own era and culture, the Reverend Albert Cleage created considerable controversy in Detroit when he commissioned a stained-glass montage and altarpiece for his Shrine of the Black Madonna, which featured an African Mary with an African Christ.

Not unlike the Israelites before them, it has taken generations for a once-enslaved people to reach the point of mental freedom from which they can see the face of the divine in themselves.

When the face and the presence of the divine can be glimpsed in the smile of a child - or the hope of a bride, the fecundity of a green field, the wisdom of the ancients -- it is a small sign that a people are emerging from the dark coffin of bondage.

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Hope

What keeps me alive? My belief -- my religion, which I call Life -- the teachings of John Africa and the example of my MOVE brothers and sisters across the state, many of whom have survived imprisonment for years and years. Their example has buoyed me up over fourteen years behind bars. Also, my faith in the power of commitment, in the power of family, in the power of love, of community, of God. I could give you one term instead of four or five. "Family," for example, means unity, commitment, love. That is "family." The other thing, of course, is laughter. Very simply, it's human to laugh and to find humor, even in something small. Every day. Every day there is something to laugh about! That keeps me human.

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Salt of the Earth

Blessed are they
who are persecuted
for righteousness' sake;
for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are ye,
when men revile you
and persecute you,
and say all manner of evil
against you falsely,
for my sake.

Rejoice,
and be exceeding glad,
for great is your reward in heaven:
for so persecuted they
the prophets before you.

Ye are the salt of the earth;
and if salt loses its savor,
of what use is it!
It is good for nothing
but to be cast out
and trodden underfoot.

-- Jesus of Nazareth (Mt. 5: 10 - 13)

IT DOES NOT TAKE a biblical scholar to see that the righteous have indeed been persecuted throughout history. The "meek" may well one day "inherit the earth," yet for the last few millennia it has been the exclusive property of those in power, whilst the meek have inherited the grave.

American history provides plenty to illustrate the point: as an unsurpassed disinheritor of aboriginal peoples, it is an imperialistic nation-state composed primarily of stolen or forcibly seized territories. Were the so-called founding fathers meek, that they should inherit this piece of earth?

Central to the question is the proposition that America is a Christian nation -- a nation composed of men and women eager to be persecuted for righteousness' sake. If this be so, then it is Christian to wipe out whole native peoples and commend their ravaged remnants to barren reservations; it is Christian to steal millions of people from their overseas homelands and hold them in bondage for centuries; it is Christian to cast thousands of Japanese into concentration camps and to seize their properties on the pretext of that magical word "security." If it is really so, then it is Christian to vaporize hundreds of thousands of fellow humans by dropping an atomic bomb on them, as a global "demonstration" of power; Christian to cage millions and execute thousands; Christian to devise a socio-economic system that marginalizes the weak, the awkward, the inarticulate, the downtrodden poor. Or are we to conclude that perhaps America is not a Christian nation after all?

For those faceless, nameless black, brown, and yellow millions who have been savaged by America, it might even appear that the course of its history has been guided by some demonic orientation. Instead of Christ, perhaps Dracula should be substituted for this nation's guiding god -- for has it not sucked the blood of the planet's other peoples for two centuries? Does it not do so now?

Where is the God of the poor, the powerless, the damned, the crushed? Where, in national political life, is even one voice of Christ-like compassion heard?

The Roman historian Tacitus described the first Christians as a "sect" who entered his city "clad in filthy gabardines" and "smelling of garlic," a people of poverty, the salt of the earth. How, we must ask, did they come from that to this: from a tribe of the lowly to the vampires of the planet?

In order to trace the devolution, we must begin by admitting that a second crucifixion of Christ has taken place, not by a second Roman empire, but by the very men and women who bear his name: his Church.

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Community

Revolution is not a word but an application; it is not war but peace; it does not weaken, but strengthens. Revolution does not cause separation; it generates togetherness.
-- John Africa, Strategic Revolution

Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
-- Margaret Mead

FOR MILLIONS, perhaps billions of us, life is a search, a journey of seeking for that which we found unfulfilled in our youth. We search for love; we search for family; we search for community. And in so doing, we seek the completion of Self in others, in the larger Self where similar selves are united in commonality -- in community.

As we search and grow, we find that modern life, with its bursting balloons of materialism, leaves us more and more empty inside; "things" that once seemed to fill us now fail to bridge the gaping chasms in our psyche. Our inner selves are pulled in too many ways at once -- the demands of work here, and social obligations there, the pressures of financial need (or the lesser burdens of wealth), public responsibilities, the needs and wants of our private sphere -- and finally they break, atomized, meaningless.

The dominant societal ideology of the hour is a perverse individuality hammered into our consciousness by myth and legend. It ignores the historical verity of community -- of groups striving to move the social order forward. It ignores the reality that people working together are the only viable solution to any social problem.

As human beings, we are at root social creatures. Outside the bonds of our familial and social relations, we cannot truly live. Our very sanity depends on them. We are birthed in and into community. We grow in community. Community determines who we are. It is not the individual self per se, but its place in the broader social network of human society that defines our identity and gives our life meaning.

Whether in religious, political, economic, or educational matters, collectivity is a basic requisite for meaning. Can there truly be a religion of one? What political action can be effectively undertaken by a lone person? Doesn't every step toward economic progress require at least some level of social agreement -- some willingness to put aside antagonisms -- for it to function? Doesn't education, especially as it is presently constituted, consist largely of teaching youth how to play by the rules of the broader social order? Is it purely coincidental that students are organized into "classes"? Doesn't it teach them how to acquiesce, not how -- or even whether -- to transform the status quo?

And what of a circumstance in which the status quo is unfair or oppressive? Such can be said to have given rise to a community of resistance, known as the MOVE Organization, which, in the words of its legendary founder John Africa, has as its raison d'etre total liberation:

The MOVE organization is a powerful family of revolutionaries, fixed in principle, strong in cohesion, steady as the foundation of a massive tree. A people totally equipped with the profound understanding of simple assertion, collective commitment, unbending direction.

While the so-called educators talk of love, mouth the necessity for peace, we live peace, assert the power of love, comprehend the urgency of freedom. The reformed world system cannot teach love while making allowances for hate, peace while making allowances for war, freedom while making allowances for the inconsistent shackles of enslavement. For to make allowances for sickness is to be unhealthy; to make concessions with slavery is to be enslaved; to compromise with the person of compromise is to be as the person you are compromising with. [1]

John Africa founded and forged a remarkable family, a small but potent community of resistance that took Life as its creed and fought to protect the lives of all the living, even animals like dogs and cats.

Everyone is born into the family of their flesh; here was one of choice, commitment, and faith. It was a family embattled, but a family nonetheless. It lives, grows, and thrives today. Long live John Africa's revolutionary family!

_______________

Notes:

1. "On the Move: from the Writings of John Africa," Philadelphia Tribune, 28 June 1975, 17.

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Men of the Cloth

Pam Africa, minister and disciple of the teaching of John Africa, tells the true tale of a meeting between the latter and a man of the cloth behind the old headquarters of the MOVE Organization in the Powelton Village section of West Philadelphia.

The scene: a man, middle-aged, bearded, booted and blue-jeaned, is called to the back door by the leader of a small group from a nearby church. Though both are black, they present a fascinating tableau of difference. The one wears a T-shirt, sweat soaking his breast; the other is impeccably dressed in silk suit and tie, the only touch missing is coattails. The one's hair is rough, gray-fringed, uncombed, and hanging like ropes to his shoulders; the other's is pomaded, greased and brushed smooth -- the head of a preacher-man.

The air is thick and charged with controversy, for the city is threatening to remove MOVE from their property and the neighborhood after a series of highly publicized confrontations with the police that has left several MOVE men and women beaten and bloody, and one MOVE baby dead.

"So, you're sayin', all I gotta do is pray, and everything will be all right?"

"That's what I'm saying, brotha."

"If I pray, the cops will stop beatin' up my people?"

"Yes! That's what I'm saying, brotha."

"If I pray the cops will stop killin' us?"

"Yes! Pray -- in Jesus name, brother -- 'cause the Bible say, 'Ask, and it shall be given unto you.' That's it, brother."

"And if I pray, our people will truly be free?"

"Uh-huh. Yessir, brother!"

"Well, c'mon, Reverend. Let's pray then."

John Africa drops to his knees, oblivious of the soft mud already staining his jeans.

"Whoa! Whatcha doin', brotha?"

"You said we needa pray, right?"

"Uhh ... uhh ... "

"Come on, Rev, pray with me, okay?"

"I ... I ... I meant, pray in the church."

"Why, Reverend? Ain't God out here in the open air, ain't God all around us? Come on! Let's kneel down here on God's earth and pray."

At this point the Reverend backs up, and John Africa says, "What's the matter? I thought you said we should pray. Well, come on down here and pray with me."

The Reverend continues to stand there, staring. John Africa asks again, "What's the matter, man? That suit you got on more important than God? I thought you said you believed in God. This dirt is God, so why don't you kneel down here and pray with me?"

"Well, uh ... excuse me, brotha, but I gotta be getting back to my church."

At this point the people standing around the two men begin to speak: "You see that! That man is down there on his knees in the dirt; he got to be for real. That Reverend ain't nothin' but a phoney. He scared he gonna dirty his suit. He talkin' 'bout how he believe in God. He don't believe in nothin' but that suit."

One woman comments to another, "That preacher's a hypocrite. See, that's why I don't go to church, cuz I don't believe in them preachers, cuz they ain't nothin' but liars; they ain't for real. That man there kneelin' in the dirt is for real."

John Africa goes on, "You don't wanna pray with me, then, Rev?"

"I gotta go, man, uhh ... I'm sorry."

"Why you leavin', Rev?"

The dashing preacher beats a hasty retreat from the muddy yard, more intent, it seems, on saving silk than souls ...

Several years later, and several miles westward, the city would torch MOVE's home and headquarters with a helicopter-borne firebomb, incinerating John Africa and ten other "longhairs" (some of them women and children) in a massacre plotted to take place on Mother's Day.

The scene: smoldering remains of an entire neighborhood, only hours before the site of a blistering, billowing inferno. Philadelphia's men of the cloth have gathered once again, though only to examine the carnage -- not to weep for the fallen, nor to pray for the dead.

They have come bedecked in robes and collars, the purpose of their gathering to pray in support of the mayor of a city that has bombed its own citizens, and obliterated, incinerated, and dismembered its own babies.

The police commissioner, the fire chief, the mayor, and his officers are almost to a man "Christian" -- Baptists or Catholics, most of them -- religious people. Yet these men who have gathered to pray are not only churchgoers. They are ministers, pastors, priests! Aside from praying, though, it seems that they mean to do little. Why should they? They've just winked at a full-scale war waged over mere misdemeanors: at the deaths of eleven people blasted by a sky-bomb, the destruction of dozens of homes, and the permanent scarring of a neighborhood.

And so they pray and leave for home, their duties fulfilled. Men of the cloth, yes. But men of the spirit?

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Hate's Unkind Counsel

A COOL AUTUMN WIND blew through the chain-link fence and razor-wire cages. Rog, a brilliant jailhouse lawyer, and I were running around in leftist circles warming up for a few games of cage handball. We had scarcely hit twenty laps when a mustached man in a sweater appeared. My counselor. We threw some words at each other, but I kept running. My jogging back faced him, moving away step by step.

"Jamal! Anything you wanna talk about! No rap, huh?"

He walked away, scribbling pro forma notes on his clipboard. Rog stopped running.

"What's up, man?"

"Did you see that shit, man?"

"What! Whatchu talking 'bout, Rog?"

"How that dude was lookin' atcha!"

"Whatchu mean, man?"

"Jeezus H. Kee-rist! Didn't ya see how your counselor was lookin' atchu' Talkin' to ya, Mu?"

"Hey, look, man. I don't pay that guy no mind, man."

"That's your counselor!"

"That's his title, but what can he do? Can he help me even get a phone call?"

"No, but -- "

"See?"

"But that's not the point."

"What is the point, then?"
"How that dude was lookin' at you!"

"Whachu sayin', Rog?"

"That dude hates your guts, Jamal!"

"And --?"

"I jus' never saw a counselor treat a man like that. How's it make you feel?"

"To be honest, Rog, I never really thought about it. It's jus' normal, I guess."

"Normal? My counselor don't talk to me like that! I looked at that dude's face, and it made my skin crawl, Mu!"

"Really?"

"No shit, man."

I flashed in memory at his visage, and saw -- really saw -- what upset Roger so. Here was a face of naked hatred. Why hadn't I seen it before? How had I ignored it?

Roger, a man with three first-degree murder convictions, three death sentences and ages beyond of time, was no Pollyanna. How could he be so profoundly shocked at what I couldn't even see without his help?

It dawned on me then that I had seen my counselor's tight mask of hatred before, when he wore his gray guard's uniform, wooden club gripped in a tight white fist, a leather thong stretched across its back.

Now that he was a counselor, his uniform had changed, but his face hadn't.

I remembered him escorting naked men to the shower, weapon in hand.

To me, he was hardly a man from whom one sought counsel, for his weapon had merely been transformed into an ink pen and a clipboard; he was an agent, albeit with another function, of the same State that fought to steal my life. And even if I had not recognized his hatred at first, I knew intuitively that there was a profound distinction between the way he saw Rog, and saw me -- one I couldn't allow myself to see, but which a white death row prisoner couldn't ignore. Both of us were sentenced to death (one of us thrice!), yet one of us he treated as a man; the other as a non-human beast.

Perhaps I had subconsciously chosen to ignore the distinction before; chosen not to see what there was to see every day: a psychic spittle of hatred, fear, and alienation splashed against my inner person. More than choice, though, my willed blindness, pretended invisibility, and psychological self-distortion were mechanisms of self-defense: a survival stratagem in a House of Death.

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Human Beings

NINETY-FIVE PERCENT of the guards I've met are doing their job simply because they need the money. Like cops and sheriffs, they are men, human beings, and their central concerns, needs, and fears are the same as anyone else's - they need money to pay rent, put bread on the table, provide an education for their children. But they have become part of the system because of their fear; they have bought into it because it is built on fear. Remember, the system is not a true reality, but an idea which can be fought and dismantled. People forget that we don't need the system, or the accessories we mistakenly assume are essential for living. We need only the things God gave us: love, family, nature. We must transform the system. That's the challenge. It's do-able, but only if we ourselves do it.

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The Spider

NORMAN CALLED OVER, his voice heavy and strangely conspiratorial. "Hey, Mu. Ya bizzy, man?"

"Naw, Norm. I wuz jus doin' a little readin.' But wussup, man?"

"I been lookin' at this mama spider in my cell. She beautiful, man!"

"Yeah?"

"She tiny, but she so strong, man!"

"Uh huh ... "

"An' ya know what's amazin'?"

"Whut's dat, Norm?"

"Think 'bout how she make her own home -- her web -- out of her own body!"

"That's amazin', man."

And indeed it was amazing, especially to Norman, a man encaged in utter isolation. Here he sat -- would sit for the remainder of his days -- in the antiseptic stillness of a supermaximum-security prison block, yet he was not entirely alone. With a quiet, unwitting bravado that defied the State's most stringent efforts to quarantine him, spiders had moved in and built webs in the dark corner under his sink. Now they shared his cell, and he spent hours watching them spin their miraculous silken thread.



Norman watched them give birth. He watched them stalk those few rare flies who entered his cell, only to be trapped. He watched them suck the life sap from their prey until nothing remained but dry husks. He watched them in a deep and reverent wonder, and his cell became a study.

Norman watched, and whenever something truly remarkable occurred, he quietly tapped on the wall. He'd begin in a deep stage-whisper: "Mu -- Yo, Mu! Ya bizzy, man?"

I was rarely too busy to listen for fifteen or twenty minutes, and it wasn't long before I found myself sharing his fascination and enthusiasm. And in time, lo and behold, a web scaffold appeared in my own sink-corner.

IN ANCIENT AFRICAN and West Indian folklore, the mother spider -- Anansi --looms large. She is a wise and protective being who knows proverbs and possesses the gift of prophecy.

A famous Ghanian tale tells of a fire raging in a forest. As the beasts scamper for safety, an antelope feels a tickling sensation. A small dark spider has alighted on her ear. Before she can toss her head to flick it off, however, the spider whispers, "It is I, Anansi. Take me with you -- I will repay you." The antelope, more concerned with its own survival than the minor inconvenience of a spider, agrees and runs on to safety, her path directed by Anansi.

Once she reaches safety, Anansi climbs off, thanking the antelope and promising her she won't be forgotten. Several seasons later, the antelope finds herself and her offspring threatened again, this time by hunters. Her little one is too young to run, so she instructs it to drop to the ground and hide itself in the shrubbery. Then, leaping from the undergrowth, she distracts the hunters and leads them away from her baby. Arrows whiz through the air, but the antelope is too swift. Finally the hunters give up the chase and leave the forest.

Cautiously, she returns to find her young one, whose faint cry she hears but cannot place. Where is her baby? Try as she might, she can't find her.

Just then, Anansi lets herself down from a tree limb on her slim silken cord, and announces her presence. Whispering to the mother antelope, she directs her to a clump of shrubs where, hidden under a tightly-woven protective net, lies her baby. "I told you I wouldn't forget you," Anansi reminds her.

FOR NORMAN, the target of a hunt no less deadly than that of an antelope in the jungle, Anansi was vital company. In a cell constructed to maximize human loneliness -- a site designed to kill the mind -- Anansi was a source of friendship and wonder. In a concrete tomb erected to smother men to death, she was a tiny, marvelous reflection of life. She brightened a man's day, and made it meaningful. Nature amid the unnatural.

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The Fall



Each year, when summer fades and the air cools, a sense of sadness pervades. Leaf-life readies its swan dive of separation from mother tree in an explosion of color; flowers shrivel, and the sound of insect life dies away; even sweet birdsong pales.

The earth, like an old woman, prepares for death. She covers herself often with snow, and sunfire leaves her face. Her hair, once green and lush, thins and falls; her blood, her blue pulsing blood, slows to a trickle and eventually freezes still. All the markers of death gather around her like a storm.

Who can but grieve? Only the certainty of renewal mitigates the pervasive sense of loss: the knowledge that behind the cold night lies the spring morn; that beneath fallowed earth lies a mighty heart athrob with life; that life lives within life, and goes forever on.

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Children

IN JONATHAN KOZOL'S BOOK Amazing Grace, he demonstrates something of very positive significance: the power of a child's hope. The children whose stories he tells live in the worst possible conditions in the world -- in drug-ridden slums -- yet they still have an innate hope.

There is of course, a negative part to it that remains despite this hope, and that is the reality of the world around them. The children have hope, but they are not blind to the fact that they are often ignored, and sometimes even scorned, by the social order.

There's a little boy, David, in the book, who tells Kozol that he saw the mayor of New York City on TV, and he says, "I don't like him." Kozol asks, "Why do you say that?" And David says, "Because when I look in his eyes, all I see is coldness. He doesn't understand how poor people have to live." That is the way that most politicians in the system, actually most wealthy people, look at poor children. And the children see this; they sense this coldness coming from the people who literally control their circumstances -- the conditions of the neighborhood, the state of their education.

Still, many of these children don't give up. Perhaps the best thing we can do for them is to nurture their hope -- give them reason for new hopes, and feed the hope already within them so it can grow into something strong that will sustain them through life. Elie Wiesel says that the greatest evil in the world is not anger or hatred, but indifference. If that is true, then the opposite is also true: that the greatest love we can show our children is the attention we pay them, the time we take for them. Maybe we serve children best simply by noticing them.

Children do not only have an innate hope; they are hope. And more than that: they are our future. As Kahlil Gibran writes, they are like "living arrows sent forth" into infinity, and their souls" dwell in the house of tomorrow ... " They carry their hope with them to a future we can't see.

Children come to us fresh from the divine source, from what I call "Mama," from life itself, and they lead us to the same: to the God-force within creation. That is why none of us -- no matter our race, creed, religion, or politics -- can look at a child and not feel joy. We look at them, and something thrills us to the depth of our hearts. They are living miracles, and when we see them we know that there is a God, that life itself is a miracle. Children show us, with their innocence and clarity, the very face of God in human form.