the REBEL strikes back

"I feel that I am a citizen of the American dream and that the revolutionary struggle of which I am a part is a struggle against the American nightmare."

- Eldredge Cleaver

"I give it all I got, that's all I got to give. You gotta live and let live."

- Souls of Mischief, "Live and Let Live"

the SOUL page will have variousof my influences and other thoughts. self reflection is the bomb.

``I have no regrets, I had no regrets, I will never have any regrets. We were there to stand up for human rights and to stand up for black Americans. We wanted to make them better in the United States.''

- Tommie Smith

Sonnet XVII

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

-- Pablo Neruda
Translated by Stephen Mitchell

This following article was written by Mrs. Cosby after her son was brutally murdered. Although I don't renenber which newspaper was in first, or the title. I mean for this to expand peoples' minds. Enjoy.

A Reaction From Mrs. Cosby

I believe that America taught our son’s killer to hate African Americans. After Mikail Markhasev killed Ennis William Cosby on Jan. 16, 1997, he said to his frineds: “I shot a nigger. It’s all over the news.”

This was not the first time Markhasev had attacked a black person. In 1995, he served time in a juvenile center for stabbing a black man who was standing at gas station.

Presumably, Markhasev did not learn to hate black people in his native country, the Ukraine, where the black population was near zero. Nor was he likely to see America’s intolerableblack stereotypical movies and television programs, whish were not shown in the Soviet Union before the liller and his family moved to America in the late 1980s.

In his book, “The Prise of the Ticket,” James Baldwin wrote: “The will of the poeple, or the State, is revealed by the State’s institutions. There was not, then, nor is there, now a single American institution which is not a racist institution.”

Yes, racism and prejudice are omnipresent and eternalized in America’s institutions, media and myriad entities. Here are a few examples:

The Voting Rights Act signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 will expire in 2007. Congress will once again decide in African Americans will be allowed to vote. No other Americans are subjected to this oppressive nonsense.

African Americans, as well as all Americans, are brainwashed everyday to respect and reever slave-owners and people who clearly waffled about racde. In truth, the enslavement of millions of Africans immeasurably enriched the teasuries of America’s government and individuals. Interestingly, several slave-owners’ images are on America’s paper currencies: George Washington ($1). Thomas Jefferson ($2), Alexander Hamilton ($10), Andrew Jackson ($20), Uylesses Grant ($50) and Benjamin Franklin ($100).

Grant was the last U.S. president to own slaves. Even Abraham Lincoln ($5) said, “I do not stand pledged to the prohibition of the slave trade between the states....I, as much as any man, am in favor of having the superior postition assigned to the White race.

God and most Christian holy people have been artistically recreated in images of whiteness. This shrewd propoganda undeniably lessens the worthiness of most of the Earth’s people. Because of those visual constructs, the churches have a deep problem with race.

America’s educational institutions’ dictionaries define “black” as “harmful, hostile,; disgrace; unpleasant aspects of life.” “White” is described as “decent; honrable; auspicious; without malice.”

A medical school at the University of Texas in Galveston conducted a controversial study on primarily black babies from 1956 to 1962. The researchers withheld an essential fatty acid from the babies’ formulas that humans need fot the growth of the whole body and nercous sustem. Those black babies were used as laboratory animals, and seceral of the infants died during the course of the study. Previously, this research had been done on dogs. This is just one of several unethical medical studies on Africa Americans that has been documented.

Also, racism has negatively impacted African Americans’ health. Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint, a Harvard psychiatrist says, “Some research suggests that the high prevalence of hypertension among African Americans, compared to whites, is related directly to the stress associated with being a black person, living in a rcaist society.”

D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” an undisguised racist film, was recently rated by the the American Film Institute as No. 44 of American’s top 100 films. This movie depcited black people as subhuman creatures.

Gangs such as the Klu Klux Klan unite becaause of racial hatred. A gang will convince themselves that they are racially superior to outside groups, which must be harmed or eliminated.

Violence is prevalent in America. According to Gavin de Becker’s research in his book “The Gift of Fear,” the energy of violence moves through our culture....Our country’s murderers rob us of almost a million years of human life every year....In the last two years alone, more Americans died from gunshot wounds than were killed during the entire Vietnam War.”

Ennis William Cosby was shot and killed in a middle-to-upper-middle income, predominately white community. The misperception immortalized daily by the media and other entities is that crimes are committed in poor neighborhoods inhabited by dark people.

All African Americans, regardless of their educational and economic accomplishments, have been and are at risk in America simply because of their skin colors. Sadly, my family and I experienced that to be one of America’s racial truths.

Most people know that facing the truth brings about healing and growth. When is America going to face its historical and current racial realities so it can be what it says it is?

-end

The Katipunero's Rules of Conduct

THE LIFE THAT IS NOT consecrated to a lofty and reasonable purpose is a tree without a shade, if not a poisonous weed.

To do good for personal gain and not for its own sake is not virtue.

It is rational to be charitable and love one's fellow creature, and to adjust one's conduct, acts and words to what is in itself reasonable.

Whether our skin be black or white, we are all born equal: superiority in knowledge, wealth and beauty are to be understood, but not superiority by nature.

The honorable man prefers honor to personal gain; the scoundrel, gain to honor.

To the honorable man, his word is sacred.

Do not waste thy time: wealth can be recovered but not time lost.

Defend the oppressed and fight the oppressor before the law or in the field.

The prudent man is sparing in words and faithful in keeping secrets.

On the thorny path of life, man is the guide of woman and the children, and if the guide leads to the precipice, those whom he guides will also go there.

Thou must not look upon woman as a mere plaything, but as a faithful companion who will share with thee the penalties of life; her (physical) weakness will increase thy interest in her and she will remind thee of the mother who bore thee and reared thee.

What thou dost not desire done unto thy wife, children, brothers and sisters, that do not unto the wife, children, brothers and sisters of thy neighbor.

Man is not worth more because he is a king, because his nose is aquiline, and his color white, not because he is a priest, a servant of God, nor because of the high prerogative that he enjoys upon earth, but he is worth most who is a man of proven and real value, who does good, keeps his words, is worthy and honest; he who does not oppress nor consent to being oppressed, he who loves and cherishes his fatherland, though he be born in the wilderness and know no tongue but his own.

When these rules of conduct shall be known to all, the longed-for sun of Liberty shall rise brilliant over this most unhappy portion of the globe and its rays shall diffuse everlastingjoy among the confederated brethren of the same rays, the lives of those who have gone before, the fatigues and the well-paid sufferings will remain. If he who desires to enter (the Katipunan) has informed himself of all this and believes he will be able to perform what will be his duties, he may fill out the application for admission.

-end-

This is a poem written by Dr. Jose Rizal. I'm not sure if it was originally written in English or was translated, but nevertheless, here is the poem. You can also find other Rizal poems at Rizaliana. This is where I found this poem.

To the Philippine Youth

Unfold, oh timid flower !

Lift up your radiant brow,
This day, Youth of my native strand !
Your abounding talents show
Resplendently and grand,
Fair hope of my Motherland !

Soar high, oh genius great,
And with noble thoughts fill their mind;
The honor's glorious seat,
May their virgin mind fly and find
More rapidly than the wind.

Descend with the pleasing light
Of the arts and sciences to the plain,
Oh Youth, and break forthright
The links of the heavy chain
That your poetic genius enchain.

See that in the ardent zone,
The Spaniard, where shadows stand,
Doth offer a shining crown,
With wise and merciful hand
To the son of this Indian land.

You, who heavenward rise
On wings of your rich fantasy,
Seek in the Olympian skies
The tenderest poesy,
More sweet than divine honey;

You of heavenly harmony,
On a calm unperturbed night,
Philomel's match in melody,
That in varied symphony
Dissipate man's sorrow's blight;

You at th' impulse of your mind
The hard rock animate
And your mind with great pow'r consigned
Transformed into immortal state
The pure mem'ry of genius great;

And you, who with magic brush
On canvas plain capture
The varied charm of Phoebus,
Loved by the divine Apelles,
And the mantle of Nature;

Run ! For genius' sacred flame
Awaits the artist's crowning
Spreading far and wide the fame
Throughout the sphere proclaiming
With trumpet the mortal's name

Oh, joyful, joyful day,
The Almighty blessed be
Who, with loving eagerness
Sends you luck and happiness

- Dr. Jose Rizal

In The Event of My Demise

In the event of my Demise
when my heart can beat no more
I Hope I Die For A Principle
or A Belief that I had Lived 4
I will die Before My Time
Because I feel the shadow's Depth
so much I wanted 2 accomplish
before I reached my Death
I have come 2 grips with the possibility
and wiped the last tear from My eyes
I Loved All who were Positive
In the event of my Demise

- Tupac Shakur

"There are in the end three things that last: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love."

- Corinthians 13:13

August 17, 1999

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter" I received this on a cardboard piece of paper in August 1997. It was at the end of the 2nd annual Filipino American Youth Leadership Conference in Sacramento.

At the time, I was not much removed from the participants. FAYLC is a predominately high school conference, and after finishing my first year at Davis, I was far from being separated from high school life.

I returned to the conference as a counselor this August. Being older and more confident, I feel like I have gotten more out of this past experience. More importantly, I think I helped more people out.

Unlike my first time being a counselor, I found myself interacting more with the participants and saw more expression in their attitude. It was a great feeling listening to our upcoming and even present day leaders.

I was fortunate enough to get a thank you from one of the core organizers in my group. She got something out of it. There's no thanks necesary... at least not towards me. I thank you, the youth (whom I'm still very much a part of,) because you show me what my meaning is and show me energy I may forget to find.

At the end of the day, my boy Simon spoke to the new young leader, Mike. He said that Mike's dedication and enthusiasm were what the CORE and past participants wanted the new people to experience. Two years ago, Simon was in Mike's role.

Isn't that so damn dope?

July 27, 1999

My Beef with MTV

have you ever heard of the independent label? well, when a recording artist either is not signed, or deemed unmarkatble, or is in rebellion against the business practices of mainstream distributors etc.. they go through independent labels to release their material. Here they have more freedom in their content and distribution. Usually, they don't have as much power or resources to go on mass distribution like the big labels, but for many artists indies are either a starting point or a home. Get it? I'll move on.

The other day I was watching MTV and they had a special called Flying Indie or something like that. It was a special on some videos from independent artists. I didn't watch the whole thing, Ihad better things to watch. BUT, I did have a chance to catch their report on black owned labels and black independents. The problem with this is that, black owned does not necesarily mean independent to people on the underground. What I mean is that, even though a label like Bad Boy is black owned, this is not an independent label. They have mainstream distribution, I think it's on Arista or something. They also talked about Roc-a-fella records which falls in the same category. These labels were focused on after their retrospective review of the origin of black owned labels. In the 1980s, those labels were indies, but now, they're the epitome of mainstream: DEf Jam (home of LL, DMX, Onyx, Method Man,etc), Tommy Boy (Digital Underground, De La Soul, Naughty by Nature), and Priority (No Limit, Blackmoon, etc) Can you honestly say these artists are independents?

They even had the gaul to show Chuck D of Public Enemy in the introduction to the show. Public Enemy, the once (and still) great moguls of political hip hop have left the mainstream label business for an independent label. The problem I have with them showing Chuck D is that he is a form of an pseudo-indie artist. He's too well known to be considered indpendent, even though he is on an independent label.

MTV capped off this presentation with a video from the Mountain Brothers. THey are a hip hop crew from Philly who once were signed on Ruffhouse/Columbia, but since left the label to pursue their own personal musical freedom. They have come out with their own album on an independent label because that is their only forum. They are a Chinese American hip hop crew who drop their flows over jazz heavy beats: not the formula to a radio hit. They're situation as independent artists is much different from Chuck D's. THey have their only forum through indie labels, while Chuck D (understandably so) chooses to work indie.

All in all, my point is that this is just another case of MTV's dedication to the mainstream which results in filtered and inaccurate news distribution. THey represent music culture to the extent of radio tunes, nothing more. When they attempt to convey a realer, more intimate relationship to the soul of the music itself, they fall short because of this dedication.

-Rebel4ce