Volume 4 Issue 38…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…September 28, 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

(Current, Williams and Friedel)

A relative of the current White House resident- George W. Bush- Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms as United States President. Winning in 1884, he lost to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and won again in 1892. As the Panic of 1893 attests, Cleveland was not known for instilling confidence.

Cleveland's knowledge of economics was slender and his economic philosophy simple. He opposed government extending special favors to any group. Let all stand equal, the giant corporations and the worker, he proclaimed, never comprehending the power differences among competing economic interests. In vetoing a $10,000 appropriation for drought-stricken farmers, he moralized, "though the people support the Government, the Government should not support the people."

The Cleveland administration was hardly settled in office when the most severe depression up to that time struck. Dubbed the Panic of 1893, its causes were varied and complex. A typical boom period preceded the panic and ensuing depression. The 1880s economy featured overexpansion and overinvestiment in railroads and industrial combinations. Depressed agricultural prices weakened the purchasing power of a substantial section of the population. Depression conditions that had begun earlier in Europe were felt in a decline in the export trade, and a withdrawal by foreign investors or gold invested in this country.

Whatever its causes, over 8,000 businesses failed in a period of six months, 156 railroads went into receivership and 400 banks suspended operations. Agricultural prices tumbled to record lows, and perhaps as many as a million workers, 20% of the labor force, were thrown out of jobs.

by Dot

In America, freedom is a skin color concept and justice is secured via the dollar. The forces of supply and demand do not determine outcomes in America's markets. Congress bails out big corporations quicker than they pass legislation to fund public education. In America, free market capitalism is an oxymoron!

Under free market capitalism, a nation's scarce resources are allocated to their highest and best use according to the forces of supply and demand. In such an economy, people 'freely choose' among a number of goods and services based on the dollars in their pockets. Theoretically, this freedom maximizes satisfaction or general welfare with little governmental intervention.

Like democracy, this simple theory sounds good, and is for the wealthy that can 'freely' exercise choice in the market. Recent US census data show a handful of Americans control the wealth of the nation. This concentration of wealth negates the theory and explains why there is no well-funded revolt to save democracy in the wake of the Supreme Court coup that put George W. Bush in office. No true democrat would accept not counting the votes to determine who leads this country. Yet, all 100 US Senators, some of the country's richest folks, unanimously agreed to the scheme not to count votes.

These folks know America is a republic whose wealth was built on the free and damn-near free labor of slaves and their descendants on land brutally taken from its indigenous people. Big business and big government dominate American markets. Members of Congress receive thousands of dollars in farm aid via the committees they sit on that write farm legislation (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/01/politics/01FARM.html). Given America's concentration of wealth and other anomalies, free market capitalism is an oxymoron.

By Atlanta Spoken Word Team

A product of grass and trees mixed with concrete.

Running through fields of sidewalks and back streets.

In Reebok Classics, flip flops or bare feet.

Sun shines most of the time, so we can stand the heat!

Police be on our backs like clans in sheets.

Talk slow with a Southern drawl,

but still have to repeat" cuz the shit is so deep!

You gotta let it seep...In parables we speak....

We march to King's beat...Whether circle or square

The rotation is still complete

Perception is deception when deception is perception

Shit...I got a degree in hard knocks.

My style is laid back and classic.

Fresh like cocaine-white Reebok, so fresh and so clean.

Down here it's hot as fuck, so you better take it easy...

It ain't easy as it seems.

They try to keep my 3^rd eye blinded from the ice gleam

Make me focus my attention

on matters that lack solidity

"Cash rules everything around me"

Got me chasing cream

I bust my head against this glass cubicle,

and shit ain't changed so I dream

Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

Auntie Em, Auntie Em, where's Toto?

"I'll get you my pretty! And your little dog Toto, too!"

Got my brothers caged like lions in a zoo!

But anything you can do, ain't necessarily better!

And everything you can do, we can do, too!

Damn, did I fall asleep? Am I still a slave?

The media whispering we ignorant...

But, "just like music"....

We are the undeniable voice of change.

This Southern slang,

Be native wildflower, framed damsel fly

Serpentine fire walker, cool glass of water

Country days!

Homemade ice cream and cake, collard greens,

Red Beans and rice, iced tea, cornbread,

and sweet potato pie.

Red clay hips, peach corners, and

figure 8 her speech.

Our soulful ways, not country or scrub,

but we do choose to walk barefoot

through the concrete kudzu

and leave our boot print in the mud.

Draped in Southern threads from head to toe

Ghetto Fabulous! (GA Me)

Ultra-Magnetic! (Malik)

Wordologist! (Alexis!)

Dr. Strange-Love (Yohannes)

We be the cardiologist nursing your heart back to good health

Yet so many black butterflies still crawl.

We're here to unify, what you would deny

I cry cuz we from ghetto slums under country skies

And why?

Cuz we make you see the ugliness you ignore,

Until it "busts you in yo face!"

Then you cry, "Not here, not this place!"

As if you're immune to pain and insanity.

"We made these guns, this isn't what we planned."

"Oh, you didn't plan for your own children to get killed?"

16 die daily in the inner city

"Savages is how you feel!"

Whether circle or square, the rotation is still complete!

Perception is deception when deception is perception!

Deception is Perception is best experienced performed live by the artists - Alexis Little, Georgia Me, Malik and Yohannes- or heard on their MoorEpics 2001 Slam Team compact disc, which is some of the best of the Atlanta Vibe. If you have not heard them perform in a while, The Block: Poetic Asylum is the perfect venue to experience the best in Atlanta's poetry scene.

Artists Aqiyl Thomas and Yohannes Smith present The Block: Poetic Asylum, which takes the Atlanta Vibe to the next level. The Block: Poetic Asylum is on stage Sept. 28 @ Davage Auditorium in the Atlanta University Center (AUC). For more info, log on to www.undergroundepics.com or call (404) 896-4260.

Oxymorons

by John Burl Smith

Statements such as tough-love, compassionate conservative, pro-life/pro-death penalty and American democracy are oxymorons. Oxymorons combine meanings that do not reflect the reality of the analogy. For instance, tough implies a physical presence. Love, on the other hand, is a mental experience motivated by sensitivity. It is the same with compassionate conservative. Conservative implies, holding back or a hard edge against change, whereas compassion acknowledges empathy, a softening of attitudes toward change. One cannot be pro-life in the womb, while supporting state-sponsored killing. Oxymorons do not deny meaning; they simply illustrate the absurdity of the combinations.

Analogously, anyone who has read the US Constitution knows America is a republic not a democracy. America's electoral process is not based on one-person-one-vote democracy. Article 1 Section 2 (3/5 Compromise) codified racism in American law by making blacks 3/5 white. Ironically, not counting 2/5 of the legally cast black votes is the only legal way the US Supreme Court could rule as it did in Bush v. Gore. The 3/5 Compromise begs the question, where is the democracy when the Supreme Court can stop the counting of legal votes to prevent black people from electing America's president? Stunning the world, as though repeating it makes an oxymoron reality, Democrats are calling Bush a "democratically elected" president.

Allowing people to vote in an election does not make America a democracy, especially if courts can decide which votes to count. The US Supreme Court, in its retreat from equality, has also changed the constitutional mandate for apportioning legislative bodies. Baker v. Carr made clear reapportionment is to extend or equalize representation according to one-person-one-vote. It outlawed at-large and multi-member districts as unconstitutional schemes that dilute representation. This ruling made clear, without reapportioning legislative bodies, representation based on the individual's right to cast a vote weighing as much as any other vote is impossible. Yet, in Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court turned equality on its head. It entrenched white control by turning reapportionment into a political weapon to support the party in power.

Even though its redistricting scheme changed, Georgia maintained the same number of representatives in the legislature. According to Baker v. Carr because Georgia gained two congressional seats, but did not realize a commensurate increase in the number of state senate and house seats, everything Gov. Roy Barnes' rubber stamp legislature did regarding redistricting is unconstitutional. Consequently, like American democracy, equal representation in Georgia is an oxymoron. T.H.I.N.C. about it! John 2001

Alarkam@webtv.net: Congresswoman Barbara Lee should be commended for refusing to jump on President Bush's rush-to-war bandwagon. When Pharaoh Bush tells the world "You are either with the U.S.A. or you are with the terrorists," he is also serving notice on all African-Americans "You are either with the Caucasian ruling elite, or you are against it. I want you African- American men and women to fly overseas and bomb and kill anyone I order you to, while I deny you basic human rights right here in America." The real battle our people should be focusing on is the battle for reparations.

GWalker920@aol.com California Congresswoman Barbara Lee has given the world the proper role model in her principled vote against the carte blanche funding of the new Bush war machine. She should be honored by all of us for thinking of the true victims of this ongoing tragedy, the poor people of the world. Lee's official site: http://www.house.gov/lee/; her campaign organization site: http://www.leeforcongress.org/

Soa1@juno.com : Chomsky: USA will slaughter victims of Taliban: "The U.S. has already demanded that Pakistan terminate the food and other supplies that are keeping at least some of the starving and suffering people of Afghanistan alive. If that demand is implemented, unknown numbers of people who have not the remotest connection to terrorism will die possibly millions. "Let me repeat: the U.S. has demanded that Pakistan kill possibly millions of people who are themselves victims of the Taliban. "... If the American population had the slightest idea of what is being done in their name they would be utterly appalled."

Emcp@mindspring.com: Martha Mitchell was a feisty gal but she didn't author GWTW.

September 11, 2001 called our attention to "the perilous pitfalls of a narrow perspective." Events paralyzed our minds' abilities to process the multitude of emotions and coordinate the mundane routine of daily habits. As most folks, my focus dropped last week, and it shows in Co-Intel-Pro's Legacy, and I offer a sincere apology for the error made in naming Martha Mitchell author of Gone With the Wind when of course everyone knows it is Margaret Mitchell.

It was probably the M thing, Martha, the wife of John Mitchell, US Att. General under Richard Nixon, paid a dear price defending one of America's bedrock principles, i.e., "free speech." So, the oversight is not entirely without merit. I give emcp@mindspring.com mad props for pointing out my faux pas and hope my miscue did not detract from the clarity of the message; "war is a grim reaper with death and destruction awaiting all who dare enter its valley of woe."

John 2001

The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro is not a happy camper. He must spend his time reading to improve his vocabulary. When asked for his comments, the Dark One/Ninja/Zorro replied, "I cannot watch TV because of all of grandma's stupid ideas."

Disgruntled wants to know: Dictators claim they are democratically elected, even when citizens' votes are not counted. Dubya claimed the airplane hijackers that attacked the Pentagon and World Trade Center 'hate us' because they despise American freedom and democracy. Why are 'they' player hating on things that do not exist?

Disgruntled says: In a dog-eat-dog capitalistic society, without reparations, blacks were released from human bondage to compete for survival against the slave master. Today, slave descendants remain at the mercy of the master for a job to survive in a hostile environment.

Disgruntled feels: Underwhelmed! Despite the press reports and media talking head commentary to the contrary, resident Bush failed to connect with Americans. He did not restore their shattered confidence as the stock market the day after his overly praised speech to the joint houses of Congress fell another triple digits to end the week down more than 14%.

After hijacking the presidency and calling it democracy, Dubya jawboned down the economy. Somebody slap him on the back for being the first president to destroy consumer confidence. With the world economy officially in the tank, we have Dubya to thank. Kudos to the first Court selected president to use negative jawboning to justify fiscal and foreign policy.

While his economic downturn justifies the tax cut, it will do little to boost worldwide confidence. On the domestic front, with so many workers being laid off, Americans worry they may have to repay the rebate.

When historians name what Bush has done either panic of 2001 or panic of the new millennium sound good. Killjoy or bushwhacked could be used. With worldwide confidence at an historic low, what does Dubya do? He declares war! Somebody slap him!

by Dot

On Wednesday, September 12, 2001, Ty turned three. On the day after that terrible tragedy in New York City and Washington, D.C. nobody felt like a celebration, not that we could afford any extravagance.

Ty and his broke mother, whose birthday is the same day, marked their day minus the normal birthday enthusiasm. Ty got toys he quickly lost interest in, and his mom, a single parent, got older trying to make ends meet while supporting two children.

In the hubbub surrounding the aftermath of that tragedy, I took the time to introduce Ty to The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss. He fell in love with it! Now, it rivals In a People House by Theo LeSieg as his favorite book. We are learning our ABCs, colors and numbers, who we are and the people we are related to, things we expect children to know before they start public school. First graders today are very smart; many know how to read and write before school starts.

At the rate he is proceeding, Ty will be among those children. He is smart; an artist at heart, he loves music and all things theatrical. At three, he is mischievous like the cat in the hat. Perhaps, that is why he loves that book. Like the cat, he willingly helps to clean up his mess. But unlike the cat's handiwork, the house is not the same after a Ty day filled with good fun.

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