Volume 2 Issue 4

Demand vs Supply: The War on Drugs

Drugs are a fact of life! The vast majority of Americans use them. From alcohol and Prozac to Ridalin, most drug users are law-abiding citizens; their addictions are legally sanctioned. More important, they can purchase a fix over the counter or at the pharmacy with a prescription. From cocaine to marijuana, the remainder uses drugs that are neither taxed nor publicly regulated. Despite our expensive anti-drugs enforcement efforts, we are the world's number one illegal drug consumer.

In some ways, our officials appear to aid, rather than hinder, the drug trade. While the support is not overt like the subsidies and tax credits given peanut farmers and pharmaceutical companies, it exists. The CIA's role in dealing crack cocaine in black communities is documented. More telling is the oxymoron prison addict. Drug users incarcerated in state and federal prisons continue to feed their habits. Obviously, prison officials supply their fix. Much like Prohibition, government officials and paid politicians ensure beneficiaries of the business elude exposure and prosecution.

One solution to this duplicitous situation is the legalization of drugs. We can tax the revenues and regulate quality. Moreover, we can prosecute suppliers to finance drug treatment programs and offset the costly consequences of drug use. Finally, we can end an expensive war against otherwise law-abiding citizens. Legalizing drugs saves a bundle on prisons and drug testing. It is time we focused on the drug suppliers. DISHing It Up Hot!

A Slave Remembers

by Yohannes Sharriff Smith

I can still hear that fine crisp crackle

Whips splitting thick July air.

Those tortured screams!

The silence of unbearable pain.

Hideous beads of salty sweat

Creeping into wounds.

Ropes so tight...hands grow purple and numb.

Forced to lie, then watch friends and family die.

Feeling helpless! Powerless!!!

Running away bare foot

Through forests towards freedom.

A freedom... I ain't ever known!

You see... I was born a slave!

We could hear the dogs in the swamp.

The men and their horses

That terrified look in Jojo eyes,

As I choked him to death. "I won't go back!"

I quietly screamed, as he jerked and begged.

We either escape or die trying.

He was so afraid, but I eased his pain.

I can still feel those greedy hands

Groping at my ass, spreading my cheeks!

Examining my teeth. Degraded on the auction block!

Sold! Lesson 1...Massa's secret sessions

With those young slave boys...With me...with my son!

I can still feel his white hands shaking with excitement.

See... this one...didn't like to beat to break

He'd rather rape to take your manhood!

Their mommas teaching 'em how to please Massa

Teaching 'em how to survive hell!

See, I remember when the overseer

Cut out my momma's tongue!

The sight of beautiful black women

Forced to breast feed li'l pink babies

Though their own starved to death

During that harsh winter of '43,'

I can still see those soulless eyes.

Young and old come to celebrate

Hatred, as they gathered around the lynching tree

That stabbing pain as my li'l brother

Struggled for breath! Eyes bulging out of...

His electrified body dangling...gasping for life!

Noose digging into his skin..Crushing his trachea.

Neck collapsing

Under the weight of his thrashing body

I remember my life spent in hell.

The devil strapped me down...

I begged and screamed.

I remember that blade and 'em greedy faces

A sweaty hand holding my penis...

That quick stroke slicing it off!

I remember working

Like a beast until my back broke

Cause I didn't wanna remember... what they stole!

I remember the revolt of '46'.

We had to kill more niggers then white folks

I remember that musket ripping thru my chest!

I remember the peace of dying like a warrior.

I remember it all!

Dear God! I remember... Intuit

Hip Hops Erotica!

February, the month of lovers, explodes on Saturday the 13^th as the Atlanta Vibe joins Blaze and Sweets Productions' presentation "A Night of Erotica II." Featuring exotic artists, hip hoppers, rhymers, mic rockers and poets, Erotica II will bring alive scarlet infernos of sizzling passion. Yohannes Sharriff Smith, Wanda Jeanne, Blaze and Madam Sweets will weave erotic fantasies, while painting innermost dreams in spellbinding imagery. The new age jazz band "African Wind" will soothe the wild beast with tantalizingly voluptuous rhythms. Get pumped or crunked for Valentine's Day with an intimately entertaining night at LEVEL 2 Gallery of Fine Art.

Responding to questions about the show, Yohannes said, "Its about expressing love. Reaching out, being vulnerable and touching those places that excite and satisfy. Come out and share some love."

LEVEL 2 is located at 385 Marietta Street NW, ½ mile north of the Omni. The venue offers two shows at 8:00 and 11 P.M. Admission is $12.00. Be there for the hottest show this Valentine! T.H.I.N.C.

The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro lost two front teeth. He took their loss in stride with certain bravery. The Dark One/Ninja/Zorro is excited about selling others to the tooth fairy. Bat Cave

"This is Bruce saying go to the post office and buy our African American stamps each and every time you mail something. If we, you and I don't buy them NOBODY's buying them. I know some may think that it's not that big of a deal, but I would very much like for my children to grow up using stamps with faces resembling theirs instead of Elvis Presley or the latest endangered species. We don't have to go in the back door anymore. The least we could do is commemorate those who made that a reality. Love, peace and hair-grease, people." Fax: Bruce Gardner. Mailbox

By John Burl Smith

Dot M. Smith's Chasm of Inequality paradigm "Recession and Unemployment: A Retrospective Analysis of the Economic Welfare Loss," permits analysis of segregation's legacy in DeKalb County Georgia. The DISH investigated growth issues affecting neighborhoods, schools, redevelopment and other quality of life issues. This narrative answers the question, "If every section of DeKalb shared equally the tax burden, why are black areas showing such disparities?" The DISH concludes segregation produced a chasm of inequality between blacks and whites.

A rural county twenty-five years ago, integration was a wedge for segregationist in DeKalb. Integration united developers, politicians and the Ku Klux Klan, who ruled with ropes and burning crosses. Without restraint, whites were like Republicans trying to impeach President Clinton. Whites did whatever they wanted to fuel North DeKalb's phenomenal growth.

CEO Liane Levetan is a product of those times when whites exercised absolute power. Her attitude resembles her predecessors'. She has done little to break patterns of segregation. Retrospectively, successive administrations diverted funds away from black areas to aid north DeKalb development. They saw south DeKalb as a bee hive where black worker bees brought in money, and beekeeper whites got the honey.

Data shows unbridled home and mall construction in south DeKalb has widened the chasm. For instance, HOST funds for community improvements have followed segregationist patterns. Although no hard numbers are available, CEO Levetan's proposed disbursements show the lion's share going to the north end. New homes crammed between established neighborhoods strain community services. Streets built for a rural county years ago now handle city traffic. No impact studies of congestion, recreational needs, or loses in quality of life were made. To date, Ms. Levetan has not proposed solutions.

DeKalb kept African Americans in all black schools, while fighting court orders mandating equal rights for blacks. Dragged kicking and screaming, DeKalb was forced to open white schools to blacks, but continued depriving black schools of resources to modernize white schools. Astronaut Ronald E. McNair High School is a prime example.

A student body ninety-eight percent black, McNair has no science nor computer department. Languishing at the bottom of every important learning or performance measure, its staff is either unable or unwilling to affect this pattern. Faculty members' attitudes are depressingly negative. Teachers accept students' lack of motivation as a fact of life.

Equipment and aids to address special needs of McNair's students are obsolete. Discipline is the number one priority, and expulsion is the preferred course of action. Adding injury to insult, the facility is dilapidated and overcrowded. From a student's point of view, "Attending a school one cannot see because it is surrounded by trailers, notifies everybody that this is The Ghetto."

CEO Levetan plans fail to recognize the lasting socioeconomic consequences of segregation. Specifically, crowded schools have direct academic and social impacts. Their deprivation set behavioral patterns, which determine a student's direction. Consequently, schools and neighborhoods in affected areas deserve increased funding to reverse deprivation due to segregation. Other Essays by John Burl Smith

Disgruntled says: In reference to the Falcons' fair weather fans that failed to show for Monday's parade: A true fan is there rain, sleet or snow, in good and bad times.

Disgruntled feels: Feelings started all of this mess.

Disgruntled wants to know: How can Aardvark Bob Barr be so gungho for guns, when he is opposed to a man being able to use his natural appendages and screw or not screw whomever? Disgruntled

The New Colossus

by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs

Astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed,

Sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch,

Whose flame is the imprisoned lightning,

And her name Mother of Exiles.

From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome;

Her mild eyes command

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!"

Cries she with silent lips.

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost, to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

The DISH receives e-mail from pen pals from around the world. Called E-pals around here, their notes are sometimes humorous, moving and frequently thought provoking. Often enlightening, one of the most interesting came hand delivered like a telegram or a FedEx package. Its subject line, "Statue of Liberty: She is a Black Woman," got my attention. To confirm its content, history books, the encyclopedia and the Internet were consulted.

Most Americans, Black and White, do not know the original model of "Liberty Enlightening the World," the name of the Statue, depicts a black woman. A McDonald's commercial, aired primarily on BET, mentions it, but American history books do not. Why is it that one has to know Black history to know these facts when Black history is American history?

The DISH is recommending that C-Span conduct an expose on the French abolitionist and sculptor credited with conceiving and creating the statue. Laboulaye and Bartholdi's stories are sure to be as interesting as their fellow countryman's Alexis de Tocqueville. An in-depth examination will close a hole in American history.

"The idea for the creation of the statue initially was the part that Black soldiers played in the ending of Black African Bondage in the United States. It was created in the mind of the French historian Edouard de Laboulaye, chairman of the French Anti-Slavery Society, who, together with sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, proposed to the French government that the people of France present to the people of the United States through the American Abolitionist Society, the gift of a Statue of Liberty in recognition of the fact that Black soldiers won the Civil War in the United States. It was widely known then that it was Black soldiers who played a pivotal role in winning the war, and this gift would be a tribute to their prowess." Email originator jthomas@kpmg.com

Essays by African Nobel Laureates Bishop Desmond Tutu and Dr. Wole Soyinka (AJC, 11/29/98) call for post-repression compensation. Tutu's "Forgive, but Never Forget" perspective paves the way for Soyinka's "Restitution Part of Equation." By taking up where Tutu leaves off, Soyinka's recognizes the economic flaw inherent in forgiveness without restitution. With the U.S. post-slavery experience as a model, Soyinka wisely advises South Africans against pursuing a similar solution that requires them to settle for simple forgiveness. Never made whole, African Americans have yet to receive Tutu's restorative justice. They remain at the bottom of America's socioeconomic and political totem pole. And, that promise of forty acres and a mule? It died in the black hole of U.S. history, like slavery, Jim Crow and the real spill on the Statue of Liberty. Bits of Black History

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