Sub City

     Millions of New Yorkers ride the subways oblivious to the fact that people are living in NYC’s subway system. The others are too afraid to acknowledge the residents of sub city for fear that it will overwhelm their conscience. The two types of citizens in sub city are the riders and the tunnel dwellers. The riders stay on the trains throughout the day. They may even live right there on the trains, switching subway lines to avoid police harassment. The tunnel dwellers live in the tunnels on train lines no longer used or at stations no longer used. They also live in open space down in the subway system. While all of this is going on public housing units sit vacant. Don’t ask me why, ask our mayor.

Black Man's Fatigue

     When I was a teenager I used to retreat to an apartment for weeks at a time. As an adult I have to retreat for months at a time. You see, I suffer from Black Man’s Fatigue. This is a condition of chronic weariness that causes the sufferer to need long periods of rest. I will now walk you through a day in my life to give you a view of Black Man’s Fatigue up close. The first thought that I have when I wake up in the morning is disappointment that I am still in a time and space of a system that fuels other people’s success at the expense of African people. My second thought is that I must figure out how to transcend systems, and even what passes for humanity these days, because to face the world in a bad mood could end up with me dead or incarcerated. When I face the world I do it as a wanderer from a people that have disintegrated into a state of savagery. This means that I have to prove my human value with every individual encounter. When I was in school I had to function at a high enough level to pass through institutions that trained me to maintain the system created to keep me enslaved. When I went to work I maintained that system. I have not worked in the system for 3 years, so at least I am free of the Soul suicide that America calls work. As I fellowship with friends and family I have to present to them the parts of myself that they can understand. At the end of each day I meditate with the hopes that I will be able to reach beyond the here and now and stay there.  

The Unwated Ones

     While I was in the womb the drama played out this way. My father gave my mother money to abort me. She thought about it, but was raised under morality, so she decided to keep both the money and me. My father saw her swollen womb later and told her that I was not his. Unfortunately this is not an unusual story, there are millions of us. We are the unwanted ones. We act out the fact that we are on our own in different ways. Some of us decide that we are less valuable because we were abandoned and resort to deviance. Others try to over-compensate by achieving great things to show the world that we are worthy of acceptance. A small number of us embrace the reality that we had nothing to do with our parent’s decision making. So the personal baggage is not ours to carry.

What the Gay Marriage Bill Taught Me

     In the middle of a summer night the New York State Legislature passed a bill that gives same sex couples the right to marry. It did not teach me that the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgendered (LGBT) community are people, I knew that. It did not teach me that marriage is a social contract, not a moral one, I knew that. What the whole situation taught me is that if a community is willing to organize themselves around a set of principles, that community can force outsiders to accept their beliefs. It is such a simple and ancient process, but the LGBT community had to teach us again. The question is whether our respective communities will use this lesson to improve ourselves.

The United States Died in the 1960's

     Every since the United States was put together the masses of the people have moved forward and backward, but always with a net gain. We always gained because of the quality of our leaders along with our willingness to follow. Then we had the terrible decade of the 1960’s. In the 1960’s we lost social titans that caused the masses to shut themselves down with drugs, alcohol, and meaningless tasks. In the 1960’s they killed Medgar Evers, John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. After those men were assassinated no one quite filled their shoes. It is kind of difficult to understand how killing four people can kill an entire empire, but the right people at the proper time can move empires up mountains or off of cliffs. Just imagine what the U. S. would be like today if some group had killed George Washington, Benjamin Banneker, Prince hall, and Thomas Jefferson. We may not even be living in a place called the United States. Now that the U. S. has been dead for forty years, it is time to turn the page. We have to create communities based on common understanding, which means that we have to build new institutions from the ground up philosophically. We can no longer afford to shut ourselves behind closed doors and say nothing more to our neighbors than hello and goodbye.Black Americans: The FBI File