Sojourner Truth's 1851 speech asking "Ain't I A Woman?"

"That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?"


Dear friends, 

On the link below, said to be 6'2" tall, this incredible African American woman, Sojourner Truth, in only a few hundred spoken words, defined the plight of all women in both a nation and world where Male Supremacy - euphemistically called sexism or patriarchy, rules.

 Liberation! 

 G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/sojtruth-woman.asp Read full post

From MWS Journal - Chokwe Lumumba passes...

"None but ourselves can free our mind."
--Bob Marley
"Redemption Song”

We are at the end of the month of February already—the short month from which Negro History Week began the growth of Africana studies, toward today’s recognition by many as African Liberation Month. (Yes, African-Americans, we are an African people, and our condition as a people worldwide remains one in need of emergence from the cultural dominance and outright political oppression of white power.) We in the USA today especially are in need of such awareness; we need to attend to it throughout each year...

The announcement of Chokwe Lumumba's passing this week came with a bitter bite. This great brother had just become the mayor of Jackson , Mississippi (last year) and had launched upon a program of crucial social reforms for the city. However, his remarkable life otherwise reveals much about our history that we must not ignore or neglect.

Chokwe Lumumba death notice--video and links to previous stories related to his life and works (DemocracyNow! Feb 26, 2014)

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/2/26/breaking_jackson_mayor_chokwe_lumumba_has Read full post

Russell Brand makes brilliant Manifesto

Dear friends,

I saw the 10 minutes-long video interview on the link below, on Facebook. It was posted by the great social activist Cynthia McKinney.  In any case, rarely do we see anyone from Hollywood involved in anything that is really relevant, at least to me. Yet, Russell Brand delivers a statement here that makes it apparent that there is reason to keep fighting against human exploitation and oppression. Liberation!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.themindunleashed.org/2013/10/russell-brand-may-have-started.html Read full post

Looking back a month later - was it a Party or a March on Washington?

Dear friends,

With all of the problems in Washington DC alone, why wasn't there anything happening, regarding "community service" for genuine community development?

Instead, it was just a lot of people "celebrating". I remember vividly, as a child growing up in an activist family, leafleting the housing projects where I lived - door-to-door about the upcoming march, while my Mother and older brothers sold tickets for the buses that were traveling there. Even then, the only people who were buying tickets, much less attending, were people who were already actively involved in The Movement. Today, the crowd is made up of a bunch of party revelers.  Please think about it.

G. Djata Bumpus Read full post

We Nust End Both Male Supremacy and White Supremacy!!!

 

 

Dear friends,

 The phenomenal Malcolm X once said “you don’t catch hell, because you are a Republican or Democrat...you don’t catch hell, because you’re a Baptist or Methodist...and you sure don’t catch no hell because you’re an American...because if you were an American, you wouldn’t catch no hell...you catch hell because you’re a black man… You catch hell, all of us catch hell for the same reason."

 The point that our beloved brother was making, and it still holds true, is: our oppression and exploitation is not inflicted upon us as individuals...rather, the injustices that are put upon us are done so as a group.

For our women, there is the double jeopardy of being both black and female...of course, in a socially-stratified society like ours, one can belong to an oppressor and an oppressed simultaneously...the Clarence Thomas\Anita Hill case proved that quite adequately.Likewise, European American women, while they are oppressed as females can be equally racist and harmful to all African Americans, as well. The same goes for European American (so-called “white”) people who make staunch claims of “sexual identity”, based upon something as precarious, if not frivolous, as the human sexual appetite.

 

 Therefore, to me, anyone who claims that s/he wants to get rid of human oppression and exploitation must necessarily insist that we rid ourselves of both Male Supremacy and White Supremacy...after all, long before Barack Obama there had already been scores of black presidents all over Africa and the Caribbean (and continue to be)...yet, that has not helped the plight of black women (or their children) in those places...if anything, it’s far worse than here.

 

Liberation!

 

G. Djata Bumpus

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