eating light has kept me light on my toes, in my speech, in my thoughts. light in my prayers. prayers...
r.i.p nelson mandela.
mandela was a name people rocked like malcolm, when i was coming up. he was a symbol of a dying freedom movement that roared like forest fire, like zapatistas/lakota/zulus/naxalites/sandanistas refuting the contorted media images that depicted their tortured existence as terrorizing.
mandela's departure from robin island, the home of the prison system that contained him, left him not far from where he was 27 years prior, when he was first incarcerated - in a state of liberation of movement activity, ready to conclude the chapter of apartheid in south africa.
protest. does it still happen?
"only a hundred people showed up at the protest," my young homie said today, when i ran into her on the 6 train. she held a book on injustice and reminded me why taking a step back to interrogate the political structures we are entangled in/by, is important.
there was a cuny protest this past week. heard about it from another homie. it was to question why the war monger david patraeus was being upheld by city university. the man decorated with medals that commemorate genocidal actions, was well protected by the university and the hordes of police that outnumbered the protestors 2:1.
"the movement is not the same any more," my little homie said. i wondered if there was a movement. did we forget apartheid and colonialism because it looks different now?
in the spirit of mandela, and freedom movements in america and throughout the world, pelican bay prisoners protested the inhumane practices of solitary confinement. they fasted for 2 months. 10 california prisoners that expanded to 30,000, at its peak. palestinian prisoners joined in solidarity.
mandela called the practice of the colonizing of the bloodily concocted nation israel, on the indigenous, land-robbed palestinians, as nothing short of apartheid. desmond tutu, mandela's right hand man, in the struggle for freedom in south africa, said that the zionist nation's practices were worse than the dutch apartheid regime. that says a lot from a man who lived through the apartheid in south africa. says a lot about an ideology that touts the tragedy of the holocaust, to steal land, loot, plunder and decimate the natives and make them appear to be the heinous outsiders. deep.
a lot to weigh, if you consider mandela's life and deeds, if you consider gandhi. easier to think of them as posters, as moral-sheep, who just smiled and said peace. you wouldn't know that they were freedom fighters deeply engaged in political/spiritual/physical struggle. halo, smile and i-had-a-dream soundbytes sound good enough to get a tear rolling, say cheers. go deeper and you might act, resist, be called a name, as mandela, gandhi were when they were alive - a nuissance, supporters of tyranny, terrorist.
mandela fasted. gandhi fasted. attica inmates fasted. guantanamo inmates fasted. in protest. to resist. what were they resisting? how did fasting advance their resistance movement?
in thinking about the meaning of fast, the depth of it, the movement that i am integrally tied to for the freedom of my spirit and body, i find that the giants before me and amidst my existence, have always taken a stand from a deeper spiritual place, not in retreat of self into a hermetic spiritual existence, but a deeply engaged spiriutal challenge amidst the immoral, heinous behavior of systemic oppression.
i dedicate my fast to the movement for freedom, in homage to runaway slaves, harriet tubman, fredrick douglass, pedro albizu campos, the mirabella sisters, abu taher, subhash chandra bose, gandhi, the countless women and men whose contribution is felt if not known, the greats of the palestinian and arab freedom movements whose very mention, can lead one to a life sentence. my fast is dedicated to chief sitting bull, chief seattle, geronimo, the mukti bahini of bangladesh, the ghadars of punjab, the news outlets that counter the heinous upside down media, who, as malcolm put it - makes the victim look like the enemy and the enemy look like the victim.
these words of freedom
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