STOPPRESS...............................
NEW WHITE
RESIDENTS SAY "NO" TO BLACK CULTURE IN HARLEM-
RALLY TODAY
Rally today, Saturday at 4PM at
MARCUS GARVEY PARK @ 5th Avenue at 124th street side. Our
new White "neighbors" have decided that we
should not be allowed to practice our culture. They also
want to change the name of the park from Marcus Gavey
Park back to Mt. Morris Park. If you agree with
them, stay home.
Kwame
Whenever in Harlem, we go to the park
where we can hear the drums. It's part of our culture. I
am trying not to be angry but this further attempt to
disrespect our traditions makes my blood rise. Please
pass the word.
for
immediate release
Marcus Garvey Park Drummers,
July 2 2007
Sat June 30 two white police officers approached drummers
at 5th Ave Marcus Garvey park, at about 7:30pm, stating
that they received complaints about the drumming being to
loud.
Two spokes persons, a man and woman, from the drummers
organization told the officers, 'We have been drumming
every week until nine p.m. for the last thirty years ',
They asked the officers why were they coming now when it
was only 7:30pm. The officers responded that the
residents at 2005 5th Ave (across the street) had
complained that the drumming was too loud. The drummers
said We will continue until 9 pm.
The policemen then called for reinforcement, when a car
with a bar officer came , the drummers spokesperson
continued along the lines of their right to drum,
it's our culture from Africa and the
Caribbean One women drummer said about the
white residents. 'They have forced Black people out of
Harlem to move here, they knew that we drum here every
week, if they don't want to hear the drumming they should
move
Still another police car came, this time with lights, and
about nine policemen. With the drummers, women, children
and men around eighty people, the drummers resisted their
position and continued to drum, while an assigned
spokesperson talked to police offers.
Across the street at Fifth Ave condo (124) the four white
residents watched while the struggle continued. The
drummers, dancers and crowd took out their cellphones and
video cameras recording. After 25 minutes the police
backed down and the drummers drummed louder as a protest
and message to the white residents that they will fight
for their African culture.
letter from Kwame: As
to that. I got the notice that morning also, and
forwarded it right away. The crowd was good, but
the drummers seem to be willing to settle for
another space in the park that is 1) Secluded and
possibly dangerous to those coming to see them 2)
very high up on the steps behind the
amphitheatre, a climb that could give many above
40, a heart attact, 3) although
"guaranteed", they will have to move if
there is an event in the amphitheatre and have to
go even further up to the Bell Tower.
State Senator Bill Perkins brokered a deal with
the Parks Dept, in which they would spend money
on the area by putting benches there, and a
plaque noting "Drummers Circle" (that
might not be the actual title) which they seem to
be in favor of accepting. They say that "all
they want to do is drum", overlooking the
other issues of "self determination"
that are involved and are of issue throughout
Harlem and the city. They are not particularly
politically concious. I advised them to push for
more, even if they finally accept that space.
These "new neighbors" are trying to
change the name of Marcus Garvey Park back to Mt.
Morris Park, and we got wind through policians
that they also want to change the name of Malcolm
X Boulevard back to Lenox Ave. I proposed that
part of any agreement must be that there be no
change of the name of the park, it MUST remain
Marcus Garvey Park and that the community arts
groups (National Conference of Artists and the
Harlem Arts Alliance) be allowed to raise funds
privately to select an artist to create a
sculpture of Marcus Garvey for the Park. NCA, the
oldest (48 years old) continuously operating
Black visual arts organization, in touch with all
of the major (and emerging) Black artists, should
be the group to search for the artist to create
the monument.
The reason that I suggested "private"
is because if the government does it, it would
have to be open to all, and we will not allow the
disgraceful results that happened in Washington,
DC, where the "open search"
resulted in a Red Chinese winning the right to
create a statue of Dr.Martin Luther King. No
disrespect to the Chinese, but WE MUST ALLOW OUR
OWN TO CREATE WORKS THAT HONOUR OUR
HEROES. ANYONE LESS THAT A BLACK ARTIST CREATING
A STATUE OF GARVEY WOULD MEAN WAR.
There will be a meeting at Garvey
Park (indoors) this Thursday at 7:30 PM. I'd
advise those who are more politically conscious
attend and not let the drummers alone, decide
this issue. Even thought some of them don't
realize it, it has deep consequences for other
decisions that will go down in Harlem.
Kwame.
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Please join us next Saturday July 7th to help support the
Marcus Garvey Park drummers in their struggle against the
ongoing police harassment.
Statement written by
Johnnie Stevens
By Phone :
866-527-2545
update:Last
night's drumming was uninterrupted by any disturbance
from new residents or authorities. All day long,
according to one attendee, people had been coming to the
park to offer support. At 7:30 there were at
least 100 people, a dozen or more drummers, two
trumpeters, several dancers drawn from the many listeners
and any number of people with precussion instruments.
People came from Harlem and, responding to
the call, from New Jersey, Queens, Brooklyn and who knows
where else. Young and old (one man shared with me that he
was 81) they stood, or sat, and enjoyed, or joined
in, the music. Seven thirty, the time events
had been interrupted last week, came and went without
event. At nine o'clock, the drumming stopped, the
estimated one hundred participants and attendees left the
park quietly. It remains to be seen if last night
represents a solution or a temporary respite due to the
holiday weekend. What was clear, from the number of
people who came specifically to support the drummers, is
that the community won't stand for new comers
assuming control over community institutions!
My own opinion, that brought me, from the African Arts
Festival outside my window here in Brooklyn, up to Harlem
to support the drummers, was a deeply felt resentment
against the assumptions of the new arrivals to our
communities - in Harlem, in Brooklyn, in all of our
communities that newcomers have decided to try to claim
for themselves - that they have, by right of arrival, the
right to suppress our community institutions.
Nobody asked them to move in! The cultural fabric that
they find when they arrive, would be well for them to
accept, to learn to accommodate to. We still live
here, it has been, and will continue to be, OUR
community. Confrontation is certainly not the path
to harmony. We are not Lanape Algonquins, they are not
the Dutch and this is not the seventeenth century! We
will not be pushed out of our own communities in the
interests of European expansion! The forces of
capitalism may be supporting their arrival, the forces of
culture and the power of the community will support our
survival!
This isn't, I suspect, over, and I hope we see a whole
lot of folks up there next week - and for all the weeks
it takes to deliver the message that it is our park, our
tradition, our institution, and that we will, with
respect and firmness, protect our prerogatives.
Note to the newcommers - you paid for your apartment, not
our community, our culture or our institutions. These are
still ours and we will both indulge and protect what is
ours. You will just have to learn to play well with
others. You don't own the playground. We, however, do.
It occurs to me - since the complainers live just
doors from a convent of nuns who have not expressed any
concern about the 9:00 closing time for the past 30
years , what makes last weeks complainers so high,
mighty and holy? I know. I'm p.o.'d and venting! I
need to go eat breakfast and take the taste of their
disrespect out of my mouth! Come on out to the African
Arts Festival today - and see y'all in Marcus Garvey Park
next week! If you see me, holla! "Power
concedes nothing without a demand" -Fredrick
Douglass
[TheBlackList]
HARLEM: RACE,
CLASS & GENTRIFICATION Saving the Soul of Black
Businesses in Harlem : Ending the Economic
Siege of Our Community Wake up & Smell the
Power of Your Black Dollars
Connecting
the dots Community
Forum
St. Ambrose Church Saturday,
July 14,
2007
9 West 130th Street
4
PM - 7
PM
(Between Fifth and Lenox Avenues)
Speakers:
Sikhulu Shange (owner of
the Record Shack for past 35 years), Minister Kevin
Mahammad (Mosque #7), Rev. James David Manning (ATLAH
Ministries), Harlem Filmmaker Duana Butler, Maurice
Powell ( 125th St.
Vendors), Representatives from the 116th
Vendors, Nellie Bailey ( Harlem Tenants Council), and
others!! Special Report: Marcus Garvey
Park Drummers Will not Be Silenced! The so called
revitalization of Harlem is taking place with
the ethnic cleansing of local Black businesses. Major
corporate chains are moving in while local Black
businesses are being forced out, incredibly with funds
from the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone (UMEZ) that
subsidized $11.2 million in loans to Harlem USA that also
received funds from Chase Manhattan Bank and the Empire
State Development Corp. This is nothing more than
economic racism!! Join us in this powerful
community discussion on how to take back the local Black
economic life of Harlem. Light Refreshments Served
Sponsors: Harlem Tenants
Council (HTC at 212-234-5005 or email: harlemtenants@aol.com)
and Harlem Committee To Protect Black
Businesses ( 212-866-1600)
or email:saredi@aol.com. Directions: 2 or 3 Train to 125th
or 135th Street .[TheBlackList] Harlem Forum on
Gentrification and survival of Black Businesses
Ironic
By John Burl Smith
from "The Dish" Internet Magazine
www.thedish.org
The term irony indicates incongruity between what might be expected and
what actually exists or contrasts between apparent and intended meaning or
consequences. Truth and reality, good intentions but bad results, even
good results from bad intentions are all instances of irony. Another
example is the United States (US) is a Christian nation, where people
believe "all men are created equal," yet, it was founded on the
institution of slavery. Thus, considering US slave descendants and their
present dilemma, irony describes their situation perfectly.
Knowledge and the acquisition of it have always been major forces behind
slaves and their descendants' drive to become a people. Since kidnaping
free Africans and forcing them into bondage approximately 400 years ago,
keeping them ignorant has been a major goal of whites in the US.
Attainment of knowledge by slaves has been dictated by the need to
accomplish limited tasks through labor or scarcity in white manpower. Any
knowledge beyond that gained by slaves was their creation or manufacture.
Once out of forced bondage, slaves and their descendants faced knowledge,
socioeconomic and political gaps relative to whites.
Almost immediately following the Civil War and the Reconstruction period,
whites began using their knowledge, socioeconomic and political
advantages to force slave descendants into economic slavery. Ironically,
in less than twenty years after emancipation, federal, state and local
governments augmented by lynch law enforced by the Ku Klux Klan and Jim
Crow segregation had forced blacks into a situation worse than slavery,
because terror became the white man's instrument of control.
Terrorism suborned by government created a hostile environment so lethal
to slave descendants that lynching drew crowds as large as a hundred
thousand white men, woman and children to what were called "picnics."
This extra-legal system remained intact until the late 1960s. Segregation
and its hostile environment maintained the knowledge, socioeconomic and
political advantages whites had over slaves in 1865, and the irony is that
in 1965 conditions were relatively the same for their descendants. There
is no measure of conditions, legal statue or social practice that was
implemented by the US government to reverse this situation, let alone make
up for the 218 years of discrimination, disparate treatment, racism and
hostile environmental conditions slave descendants have endured.
Ironically, in their ability to do for themselves, minus lynching, slave
descendants fared better during segregation than during the subsequent
period of so-called integration. This was not because of segregation but
because of the indomitable will of slave descendants not only to survive
but improve as a people. Over the course of that 218 years of terror and
deprivation, blacks have beat the odds and defeated efforts to deny them
opportunities to demonstrate their phenomenal abilities. Slave
descendants were so successful, whites built the US economy on their backs
by plotting and taking over everything slavery's descendants built or
created.
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