Volume 4 Issue 23…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race… June 15, 2001

Note: The DISH is based on themes from T.H.I.N.C. (Teaching Humanity In New Consciousness): The Chrysalis of Evolution. According to the President's Initiative on Race, "The issues that this book brings to the forefront are important in our efforts to achieve the goals set forth by the President for the Initiative. This work will serve as a solid resource for us as we begin to examine these critical issues." For your copy of T.H.I.N.C., The DISH or to submit comments, contact ICIM, Inc. at (404) 244-6023. The DISH © 2001

Poet and activist, Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey on June 3, 1926. His father, Louis Ginsberg, was a poet and high school English teacher. Active in the Communist Party, his mother Naomi suffered with mental illness. From 1941 until her death in 1956, she was in and out of mental of institutions. "Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg," Allen's greatest work, explores her struggle, which profoundly affected his life.

Ginsberg attended Columbia University. His circle of friends, which included Lucien Carr, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, John Clellon Holmes and Neal Cassady, influenced his decision to become a poet. Calling themselves the "Beat Generation," the group railed against injustice, hypocrisy and materialism.

Arrested in 1949 and charged with accessory to crimes committed by others, he escaped a prison term when two of his professors arranged for a plea of psychological disability. He spent 8 months in a mental institution, where he met writer Carl Solomon, who was being treated for depression with insulin shock.

In 1953, he left New York on a trip to Mexico where he explored Indian ruins and experimented with various drugs, including marijuana. Eventually, he settled in San Francisco, where he fell in love with Peter Orlovsky, who remained his companion for 40 years. Ginsberg wrote Howl for Carl Solomon in 1955. According to biographer Bill Morgan, "Allen finally accepted his homosexuality and stopped trying to become 'straight'"

Shortly after Ginsberg published Howl and Other Poems in early 1956, San Francisco police seized copies of the book. Its author and publishers were arrested and charged with publishing and selling an obscene and indecent book. The ACLU defended Ginsberg in the San Francisco obscenity trial that ended in 1957 when Judge Clayton Horn ruled Howl had redeeming social value."

Ginsberg received wide media attention during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. When Chicago police confronted Vietnam War protesters in Grant Park with tear gas and billy clubs, Ginsberg took the stage and chanted "Om" to calm the crowd. Ginsberg's courage and humanitarian views made him a favorite spokesperson of the "hippie" generation. His bearded image wearing an "Uncle Sam" top hat came to symbolize the war protest. Ginsberg read his work around the world. A poet, he personified personal freedom, nonconformity and the search for enlightenment. During Poetry Month, April 6, 1997, he died. For more on the poetry, life and times of Allen Ginsberg, click on http://www.ginzy.com.

A new and exciting performance will debut for Honey Magnolia at Seven Stages on Sunday, June 24, 2001. The Block is written and directed by two of the Vibe's best and brightest Yohannes Sharriff Smith and Aqiyl Thomas. Breaking away from the ordinary with this original perspective, they elevate spoken word to a new level of Community Theater. A spoken word metaphor, The Block is a point of reference in our everyday dream world that is teased apart by the pain of reality. This collaboration will feature poems from Yohannes' new book The Red Clay Diary and Aqiyl's CD A Word’s Life: A Thin Line Between Hip-Hop and Poetry.

Mark your calendar for the June 24, 2001 performance. Get together with friends and catch the Honey Magnolia at Seven Stages' production of The Block. Show starts at 7:00 P.M. Become part of Atlanta's spoken word renaissance.

Venue for an Artist

by Indran Amirthanayagam

I meditated last night in public, while delivering poems,

On the public death of Allen Ginsberg, not the private

Agony which he did not let on, that insistence on writing

Down new poems, not accept every gig in the end,

His need for a helper through the airports, all that

I'll leave for another biographer;

But I have stories and images

To add to the composite, Allen in a window frame

Blue-smoked, face quartered, twisted in the glass

Like Dylan Thomas photographed in New England,

Hung in a tree on his final visit; Allen told me

The last time we spoke, from Brussels to New York,

That I must visit Charlesville, see the famous square,

Read Rimbaud's poems; others have compared

Rude Dylan to that French ancestor, I don't know

If Allen linked them, but no matter, we are all

Contained in Whitman he would have said.

In 1983 when I first stepped out in the city,

He advised me to walk on Brooklyn Bridge,

Hart Crane in my pockets, Ginsberg never stopped

Teaching, had a rabbi's blood, and a healthy

Sense of fun and outrage, but I do not wish

To cover all the Ginsbergs in a lyric:

I have always thought Father Death Blues

Distilled the necessary into memory,

Two beats at a time, and I am again at a loss.

When I saw Allen protest outside

The South African consulate, death

To apartheid, he asked me to compose a poem

On my tongue in front of him, I could not.

For years, I carried the shame,

Like forgetting Tamil which insecured

The anchor of my nostalgia, shipped

Me out to write and make my home on the sea.

Allen, I have repeated a thousand times

Your instruction to cut half the first draft

Out, now I have no other version,

Except these recollections, and the black

Ball point signed books curlicued

With sunflowers. In Abidjan, one evening,

I heard the French news televised

On the lips of an Ivorian journalist:

The poet Allen Ginsberg has died.

We became our admirers, turned

To the bookcase, read Rimbaud

And Baudelaire, mucked about in Smart

And Whitman, laughed until we howled,

Until the Kaddish was sung, until Jack

Kerouac rose from his grave to light the pyre

As the grey sunflower, aged locomotive,

Caught fire, crackled, shunted off.

About Me: I am Indran Amirthanayagam. I have been writing in Spanish over the past two and a half years while posted in the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. My next assignment with the U.S. Foreign Service is in Chennai (Madras) starting in mid-September. My first book The Elephants of Reckoning (Hanging Loose Press, 1993) won the 1994 Paterson Poetry Prize. The second collection, El infierno de los pájaros, has just been published in Mexico City. A volume of translations, The Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia, will be out next year from Sun and Moon Press. Starting June 18^th, I will be traveling by road from Mexico City to Washington, D.C. Along the way, I will read in San Jose Iturbide and Guanajuato in Mexico and New Orleans, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. (and possibly elsewhere). For details, write to indranmx@yahoo.com

Disgruntled says: From the movie Forest Gump comes a priceless expression. I dare not tinker with it! "Stupid is as stupid does" is sheer perfection.

Disgruntled says: Grandma knows best. Her wisdom has rarely steered me wrong. When she said, "Only the good die young," I wondered was that an admission that she was no saint, but she explained, "It takes some longer than others to reach that lofty state."

Disgruntled wants to know: The World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) is scheduled for later this year in South Africa. Efforts are afoot to derail or otherwise minimize what is said and pledged at this international gathering. If the US deserves its image as the world's foremost democracy, where individual freedom, justice and liberty for all reside, why does it fear this forum?

Teaching Trévius to recognize inequality provided an opportunity to explain his grandmother's research. Normally too mundane for a child of eight, last week's lesson made an excellent sequel to helping him understand his slave heritage. When does 1+1 Not = 2? When you are black in America, nothing adds up. For the rest of the civilized world, one human being plus another one equals two humans. However, in 1789 the United States of America adopted its Constitution and reduced some humans to less than one. Article 1 Section 2 of that document established inequality as the first law. It fixed the value of human capital such that a white man equals one and a black man equals .60. Known as the Great Compromise (3/5ths), this law of inequality (slavery) made the Constitution an economic document.

The movie Glory presents the Constitution's impact at its rawest edge. It showed Trévius the price paid by blacks fighting to determine the status of slaves and their descendants. One cannot help but appreciate the tremendous learning hurdle slaves and free blacks had to overcome just to be able to fight and die hoping for freedom. This is where his grandmother's research comes into play. The Civil War, Emancipation Proclamation and subsequent passage of the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments did not repeal Article 1 Section 2. Nevertheless, white liberals and ignorant blacks still insist these measures and actions gave blacks equality.

Dot's research proves nothing could be further from the truth. Fact is slavery never ended; the inequality codified in Article 1 Section 2 of the Constitution remains intact. By not repealing the constitutional 3/5ths value placed on blacks, strict construction keeps the inequality. Using Labor Department data, Dot's research shows medium family income for blacks relative to whites mirror the three-fifths value. The fact slave descendants still have an economic value less than one proves slavery never ended. This is not an inference; it reflects the record in the same way the US Civil Rights Commission's draft report details the disenfranchisement of blacks in Florida during Election 2000. Both results grow from the same seed of institutionalized racism, which maintains the 3/5ths inequality.

So that Trévius would not miss the point of the lesson, we watched Goonies. The lesson's objective was to make clear history is a matter of perspective. I wanted him to understand that "the past can tie you down or free you up." This was the point of Mikie's impassioned plea for the Goonies to recognize, "It is our time." Other people really screwed everything up, which brought them, like us, to this point. But maybe, like the black soldiers in Glory, if we believe in ourselves, we may be able to straighten out a mess others made. Exemplifying Yohannes after some of our sessions, all this left my boy Trévius' eyes a little glazed over, but that was okay. 1+1 = 2 is a lesson in American economics that Ph.Ds still cannot get right. T.H.I.N.C. about it! John 2001

The United States Civil Rights Commission made public its draft report on the Florida 2000 presidential election. Their findings replicate Smith's Paradigm or chasm of inequality. As you know, the chasm reflects the 3/5ths Compromise of Article 1 Section 2 of the US Constitution. While Smith looked at median family incomes, the Commission's investigation revealed similar racial disparities in Florida voter disenfranchisement. If you missed the Commission's hearing on C-Span, read the draft report on the Internet at http://www.usccr.gov.

Historian and voting rights expert Professor Allan Lichtman conducted the statistical analysis using standard and ecological regression. According to Lichtman, he initially assumed the Florida voter irregularities were technological in nature. He never dreamed race would be the principle factor that explains the disparity in ballot rejection, which amounted to voter disenfranchisement. Yet, after controlling for variables such as education, income and technology, Lichtman, like so many others before him, was forced to conclude that there is a significant positive correlation between race and the ballots not counted during the 2000 presidential election.

The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro is very creative. Content with his own company, he does not engage in idle conversation. When asked for his comments, he groaned, but responded, "I am playing with my games. I am being un-deceptible!" I THINC he just made up a word to describe his unique need for isolation.

From Allen Ginsberg's obscenity trial to the Ku Klux Klan's right to march, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has amassed a rich history of fighting for justice and equality. Many times, it has been the only voice raised to defend the constitutional rights of the minority against the tyranny of a blind and deaf majority.

Visit their website at http://www.aclu.org and sign up for their free email alerts on current issues. This week the American flag is a hot topic. Annually, members of Congress try to pass laws to criminalize acts they see as flag desecration. The ACLU has forcefully argued that free speech includes burning the American flag in protest. Recently, they decided to assist students suspended for wearing clothing with Confederate symbols. Most Georgia schools prohibit students from wearing controversial articles of clothing.

Encouraged by this, I wrote the Atlanta ACLU and asked for their assistance in a lawsuit filed in Federal District Court. The suit- Smith v. Baker 1:01-CV-0584 RWS- questions the constitutionality of Georgia's flag law. Ostensibly passed by the General Assembly to change the state flag, the law enshrines a Confederate white supremacy heritage that does not represent more than a third of Georgia's citizens. This violates the equal protection clause of the 14^th Amendment.

All Georgians are asked to write the ACLU. You can send them an email, FAX or telephone and ask for their assistance to ensure justice and equality are served in this matter. With your help, we may be able to convince the ACLU to come to our rescue too!

By all accounts, the June 2, 2001 march and rally for racial justice in Cincinnati was successful. Called for shortly after the police shooting death of unarmed black teenager Timothy Thomas on April 7, the peaceful demonstration was reminiscent of the mass civil rights and Vietnam War protests of the 1960s. Lead by Thomas' mother, Angela Leisure, the march drew a broad cross-section of Cincinnati citizens, as well as people from other Ohio cities and from as far away as Atlanta, Los Angeles and New York. Young, old, Jews, gentiles, Latinos, blacks, whites and Native Americans came to peacefully protest against injustice. They called for an end to police brutality. All members of the diverse group were most impressed by the sense of unity. Cincinnati police estimated the demonstration drew 2000 participants; the organizers estimated 3000 marched.

After the peaceful demonstration, police arrested seven protesters in the Mount Adams area. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that 80, mostly white protestors, blocked an area intersection to draw attention to "the selected enforcement of the citywide curfew," which was called when rioting broke out after Thomas' murder. According to one protestor quoted in the Enquirer, "The march was an act of civil disobedience to stop traffic and draw attention to the inequalities that exist between the white upper class and blacks in Cincinnati. Curfew violators in black neighborhoods were roughed up and hauled off to jail, but nothing happened to curfew violators in Mount Adams."

DISHing It Up Hot!

by Dot

I spend a great deal of time putting ink and/or lead to paper. It is time consuming, but I like the sound and feel of physically writing. Of course, I then have to type it into the computer, which makes writing it down on paper seem like a waste of time and resources, and according to an old friend of mine, "it is stupid!"

This is a matter of perspective. Writing it down first would be senseless, if it served no useful purpose. I do not feel stupid, because my method gives me one more opportunity to get it right. I aim for perfection; a human, I often fall far short of my expectations, but writing what I say on paper before typing it cuts down on the errors, especially those that are grammatical in nature.

Viewpoint is something else entirely. The information we take in and our experiences shape our perspectives. Even grammatical correctness cannot salvage a topic tackled from a limited frame of reference. For example, given what we know about the black human condition in America, it is stupid to start a statement about it with the prepositional phase "after slavery ended." Someone did and I called them stupid. Offended, they tried to chide me for using this adjective. I offered no apology. The word means slow-witted or obtuse. No other word comes close, expect perhaps ignorant. But, why mess with perfection? Gump said it best; "Stupid is as stupid does!" Any adult who does not know America's slavery did not end is just plain stupid.

Back   ||  ICIM Home   ||  THINC  ||  The DISH || 2001 Issues