Revolutionary Minds

OPEN MIC LAST CALL…PT II

MARCHIN’ TO LIBERATION:

REVOLUTIONARY MINDS Farewell Party

Come spit, listen or vibe with us for our last Open Mic of the Spring 2011 Semester.

THURSDAY 4/28, 7:30-9:30pm @ the Interfaith House

Come!

Peace & Jah Bless.

-RM

Amongst the stress and the rush I wake every day
With this didn’t work and that didn’t happen right.
Yet People praise this job or that result.
And yet I’m anxious ya’ll see, My mind stressing, perplexing
cause it didn’t work and it didn’t happen,
Like I wanted or planned.
Then as my mind is twisting and turning
Suddenly you see, a few words I hear, and my mind whispers in my ear;
“It is well, with my soul”
It guides my day, As I walk and say,
“It is well with my soul”
I feel at peace, relaxed, contented.
My eyes pick up, A smile crosses my face.
Cause I know, I’ve got God’s love, his faith,
And I love, I believe, I have faith in him.
“It is well, with my Soul”
This simple statement,
It guides my heart, guides my day, as I walk and I say,
“It is well with my soul”
ADDENDUM:
Why?
Cause “It is well with my soul”.
So as I leave you here today remember this,
Remember that “It is well, with your Soul”
and If it isn’t so, make it so, for your Soul.

-CCM

(Poem submission 4/29/10)

Rev Minds keep rockin’!

A look into the RevMinds fam.

Ever growing in intellect, awareness, understanding….&size

We

Want

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-RM

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Nepal Report: Revolutionary students shut down 8,000 private schools indefinitely

Posted by Mike E on April 25, 2010

The following is a report from Nepal, first posted on jedbrandt.net. Jed Brandt’s previous reports, photos and writings are also available here on Kasama.

by Jed Brandt

KATHMANDU April 25 — Revolutionary students allied with the Maoists today shut down 8,000 private school across Nepal demanding fee hikes be immediately withdrawn. Business offices were padlocked at major schools last week. When negotiations between the student union and school owners broke down, several buses were torched. As of today, an indefinite closure was ordered as Nepal approaches the Maoist decisive May First mobilization.

Re-structuring Nepal’s two-tier educational system has been a key demand of the Maoists since they launched the People’s War in 1996. With public school lacking books, salaries for teachers and even buildings throughout much of the countryside, much of Nepal’s education is pay-as-you-go. Tuition for Kathmandu Valley is about the same amount most wage-earners bring home, excluding the working classes from serious education.

Bandhs continue in Pokhara following the arrest of All-Nepal National Independent Students Union (Revolutionary) leaders on trumped-up charges following fights with Nepal Congress-allied student groups. Clashes continue at Kathmandu’s Trichandra campus between Congress students and the UML’s group.

On Love:
We need more of it, sadly hate dominates and fear has conquered our lives. Far from “terriorsim, falling in love, trusting “and the list goes on, When it comes to me I do believe that true love exists but I think that it is a gift from God to those with pure hearts, so I only hope that I’ll be lucky enough to receive that special gift

On Politics:
It’s a dirty game, sometimes I wonder how we elect people to decide our fates when we can’t even decide our own fate… either way I can’t trust politicians, because to me politics is the art of selling people. Even if the politician has a good idea, and really cares about the hopeless and the society, but those who are around him are wolfs who have been protecting their interests and they will always do so its point less to have faith in a system designed by people who enslaved others and yet claimed to care about freedom for all.

On Music:
Today’s mainstream music reflects the society that we are living in, empty and shallow. I don’t want to talk about it in depth because everyone knows what I’m talking about… but even though the mainstream music has no soul or substance, but there is still great music gaining some momentum like the Northwest underground movement with people like Geo from the (Blue Scholars) educating the youth through his powerful versus, Sabzi from the Blue Scholars who carries the listeners to a land of imagination free from the harsh reality faced day to day by the listeners. Gabriel Teodros who advocates for love and respect, and Macklemore who discusses the problems that are destroying the streets of America, and countless others who are bringing back the true meaning of music.

On life:
Life is truly amazing. Many powerful people think that they will live forever, like those who came and went before them. People such as Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan Hitler, Napoleon and countless others who dominated others, but many forget that at the end of the day life is just a small path in between two different worlds . The first world is the mothers belly, before we are born we spend nine months in that world, then we come into this one for several years, then we pass into the next. Death is our end, yet many of us refuse to talk about it, think about and even except it. Truly those who understand that death is closer to us when compared to anything we love like food, cloths, sleep our love ones etc, the people who realize that are the wise amongst us, and they are the ones who truly enjoy this life.

On the future:
Geo said it best “The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be”
The future is darker then ever with many possibilities of wars, destruction and death. Either way I still have hope of a better tomorrow, we still have to believe that tomorrow will be better for our kids.

Somebody tell me about the politics of attraction. How humans can view one thing as “attractive”, while another attribute as “unattractive”.

Or perhaps the politics of gender. Or the intersection of both. Simple questions such as, why is it that colored females are raised to think that they are not to be in the spotlight, not by their families or friends, but by the culture America is fueled by? Why is it that males are encouraged to be tough, insensitive and “strong”, elevating them to a level superior to females?

Its animalistic, really. What are our mating calls, or dances, that we do almost ritualistically to attain the attention of certain people of the opposite sex? And why them and not the thousands of males/females we see every day?

Interesting how our minds have been colonized in that way, too.

Perpetually learning,

RM

I have not been as excited and motivated as I feel tonight. The aftermath of the first Revolutionary Minds’ Rockin’ the Mic event has once again proven that the people are ready and eager for an space to discuss the “elephant in the room.” That “elephant” may be race, gender, sexuality, religion, class, it doesn’t matter; this event shows the people are ready to discover what happens when we gather to expose what society does not want uncovered. As I surveyed the room and saw the excitment on the many faces, I wondered what schooling would look like if this was the topic that was covered. What if people were able to write on paper to give the teacher their ideas about what matters in their life, and what if we combined the people’s lives with what was being taught. Would the people be as engaged in the lesson as they were with the event tonight? Would they begin to care about what was being taught because it actually related to their lives? What would happen if they began to care about what was being taught because it matters in their lives? Maybe that’s why they don’t teach classes that include shit that is relevant to the peoples’ lives. If they taught relevant shit, by asking the students what they want to learn about and relating it to the topic being taught then it gives the opportunity to excel in the classroom. I don’t know if the system really wants that. I guarentee the system doesn’t want what went on at this event tonight because then certain people may begin to move up. Certain people, the system doesn’t want to excel…as in students of color, low income students, first-generation students. We have to know that schools are founded on White Male Middle-Class traditions and therefore the knowledge that is transfered in lectures is from this point of view. When you bring students’ experiences into the classroom, the result is what you got tonight; the people actually cared about what was going on. This is not what the system wants and that is why lectures continue when it is known that they do not assist in learning. What I saw tonight was motivating! When you ask the people what is fucked up in their lives, that’s when real conversation begins. We gotta continue to ask why is this not done in the classroom. Who’s benefiting from it not being done in the classroom? Why does the system want certain people to benefit and others not to benefit? Motivating, because once again doing shit outside the box proved that it works.

One love,
Rev Minds,
Paul

Well though I have been writing essays this whole week for school, but I want to take this time to write about my thoughts and reflection on many things I have been reading, and of many discussions I have had with many intellectual people. Lyrics of music and also movies I have watched lately. Its 11:37 pm, and it’s the start of a very long night for me. Either way I have been think about the reason why certain names of people who have died a long time ago still exist and people still look to their deeds, and stand in the past for inspiration and wisdom. It’s amazing because those people fought in the most isolated places in the world in places such as the jungles of Bolivia, the mountains of Eritrea, the dessert of Libya, and also in known places such as the most crowded streets of the United States. What is it that attracts us to such people? Was it their courage? Was it their stand for what they believed in? Or was it the fact that they died for the freedom of their people? Or maybe it’s because they weren’t afraid to die? I don’t know, but what I do know is that all the people who have inspired me, and many others have one thing in common. Even though those people fought in different conditions, during different times, facing different enemies, and using different methods of fighting, from Gandhi and Dr Kings peaceful methods, to Che, and Malcolm’s armed struggle. All those people understood that their death won’t be the end of their names, and what they stood for. They understood that a bullet could kill the man but it can’t kill the dream, and the believe of the man, because those believes were against oppressors, and the dreams where to uplift the oppressed, and even today the majority are oppressed in different corners of the world.
There is a story of a man that I want to share with yall.
His name was Omar Al Muktar. He lived in Libya and he was born in 1862. He was a teacher most of his life, and when he was around 50 years old, the Italians invaded Libya in October of 1911. Al Muktar picked up the gun at age 50, and he fought until he was captured after he fall from his horse on September 11th of 1931. Al Muktar fought the Italians because they placed five million Libyans in concentration camps, but many people don’t hear about the Libyans who died in that concentration campus way before the Jewish were place in ones I guess African lives don’t matter too many. He fought because Italians killed many farmers, raped many women and took a land that didn’t belong to them.
The following is the final conversation Omar Al Muktar had with the General Rodolfo Graziani who was in charge of the war against Al Muktar. This conversation took place the day before the death of Omar Al Muktar.
Graziani : why did you fight for so long? Did you really think that we were going to beat us?
Muktar: we fought and that was enough.
G: And you care nothing about the ruination of your country?
M: You are the ruination of my country. What would you do if someone occupies your land?
G: Did you ever think about how your attacks made us suffer, ambush, murder by night, deception by day, and threats against the farmers?
M: the Farmers farming our land? Libya is not your country; you have no right in it. Not to the milk of one cow, not one minute of right.
G: Italy has as much right here as anyone else. England has a right to Egypt, France to Tunisia, and Algeria and Spain to Morocco, and we have a hundred years of right here!!
M: Soon you will take everything from me “his life” and you want me to justify your thefts? No nation has the right to occupy another.
G: we rule here and that’s all, no one can deny us. Then he asked Muktar to read the date on a coin he gave him, which had Caesar face on it, and then he mentioned that the coin was dated and made in Libya.
Muktar replayed: you could also find Greek and Turkish coins “people who invaded Libya throughout history” all over Libya buried under our sand.
And after looking more at the coin
Muktar said: Yes the coin and the face that is printed on it have an interesting past, but don’t try to buy much with it today here. Your money like your glory is not permanent, but I respect your past and you must respect ours. We too have a rich history of science, mathematics, and medicine. During your dark ages we lead the world in learning and discoveries.
G: how many days will it take you to surrender your men?
M: we will never surrender, we win or we die, and don’t think it stops there. We will have the next generation fighting, and after the next, the next. As for me I will live longer in the robe you will hang me in.
G: what makes you think I’ll hang you? If I hang you, you will become a hero and a martyr in the eyes of your people.
M: you can only do to me what God have decided for me.
G: Are those chains uncomfortable?
M: Yeah they are uncomfortable facts.
G: I have always hoped that you and I , two enemies might sit down on the day of your capture and discuss Caesar…
Then Omar Al Muktar cut him and said that he can’t give him the conquest of Caesar.
G: I fought you for so long, and we have known each other not by person, but by the ideas we stood for, and I hope we can work together in peace.
M: and today is the day I work for you?
G: why don’t you ask me for your life: I might give it to you?
M: and what would I give you? My collaboration? No NO!!
G: you are too late for bargaining Muktar, you are far too late.
M: I did not ask you for my life, and do not tell the world that in the privacy of this room I asked you for my life.
G: NO I will not do that, I will not lie about you. You are a man of courage. Let us hope that you can Keep that courage tomorrow.
M: the robe of your Justice has always been hanging in front of me General.
And on September 16, 1931, on the orders of the Italian court and with Italian hopes that Libyan resistance would die with him, Muktar was hanged before his followers in the concentration camp of Solluqon
In February 1943 the Italians left Libya, and On December 24, 1951, Libya declared its independence as the United Kingdom of Libya.
Today Omar Al Muktar stands as a national hero, to people In Libya and to all who fight for freedom.

1.

“…In Islam’s Divine Mathematics, we learn that Wisdom is the Two after One, which is Knowledge—it is proof of knowledge, reflection of knowledge, knowledge in action. In my life, all these understandings of wisdom have proven true.
Krishna said that you can study all day, pray all day, chant all day, but you’ll get to Heaven faster if you hang with wise men. I’ve been blessed by wise men my whole life—whether it was my cousin GZA, who first taught me Mathematics, my Chinese brother Sifu, who teaches me kung fu, or the philosophy students I met in Athens, the villagers I shared mud huts with in Africa, the audio inventors I worked with in Switzerland, the film directors in Hollywood, the mullahs of Egypt. The kind of artist that I am, I tend to meet people who want to show me something, and I’m always down to learn. In the Wu- Tang Clan, I’m known as the Abbot—which, like Sifu, means “teacher”—but a real teacher is also a student, someone who never stops learning.
The Book of Proverbs says that King Solomon sought wisdom from the cradle to the grave. That’s a way of saying he sought rebirth. Just as you must come through a woman’s womb to attain physical birth, so must you come through Wisdom to achieve mental birth. And like childbirth, Wisdom often comes with pain. Pain, joy, fear—all have borne in me wisdom, which, like water, is an ever fl owing spring from a bottomless ocean, a flow of life that takes the shape of any vessel, that reveals itself in all bodies and all moments. For Wisdom is the Way.”

-RZA, The Tao of Wu

2.

5/11/06 Streaming Mexico: Other Invasions, Radio Essay by Mumia Abu Jamal

http://www.prisonradio.org/audio/mumia/2006Mumia/May06/astreamingMexico5-11-06.mp3

-RM