Nnamdi Azikiwe

I love that!!! In my opinion people fight because they have bought into the Hegelian dichotomy of fight or flight as though there are not other options. Only people who have achieved self mastery could consider mastering their opponent. #ChessNotCheckers #Mate

Why did you stop doing affiliate programs @Troy? I came here specifically because I want to send you traffic instead of A2Z.

vaguely...it went out in a blaze of glory. This whole process of investigating the BBE is making me more aware of how important Pyramid was. Though at the time it seemed like just a guilty pleasure. Hours could fly by in that place just reviewing the merchandise.

Willie Lynch 2.0

...they are being fed that nonsense for a reason... I think the reason is the generators of that nonsense fear an awakening taking place among the masses. If not there would be no need to generate propaganda and lies. Google Trends is a tool to track what people are thinking based on search word interest level. But even that can be manipulated. What happens when an idea they do not want to spread starts to trend, goes viral and catches on like wildfire. All they will be able to do is watch it burn. Despite what they want there is nothing like the power of an idea whose time has come. That video was created in March out of fear. They were hoping to curtail ideas other than the ones they want people thinking. Vanity Fair is writing about something that failed to achieve its objective six months ago because they really have no confidence in their rhetoric. Taking a second bite of that apple wont make it taste any better six months later. It's still just as rotten as it was then. Think about it. How old is "Imagine?" 1971!!! Does that mean nobody has had an idea in 50 years that is more inspirational than John Lennon??? It's not looking good especially since that little stunt was a miserable failure.

Not just the FBI but the NSA...and they sell the data to guess who? None of which bothers me...anybody whose life is so empty they have to watch others live their own are the least of my concerns.

The former Pyramid Books on Georgia Avenue in DC. Hodari is a legend here. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1981/12/10/new-bookstore-fills-void/ba2c912b-1063-46e1-8680-ada97fa51c20/

Google doesn't push ads to me about my searches. The ads are based on time and location. The only ads I see are related to cookies from sites where I have an account. Lately the only ad I've been seeing is from Ingramspark. Your ads show up fine. The google ads are blocked. That's Firefox for you. Just turned off the tracker for AALBC.COM. Audible is your number two advertiser. That's funny.

This is why control is more important than ownership. Haki owns TWP but JB controls the information about sales of TWP on A2Z. That's only true because no one has a plan in place to counter it. Again we are watching people play the game and know all their moves but we have no winning moves of our own. If they could make more as a third party seller somewhere else that would cease. It's not about profit or ownership... it's about control. JB controls what we let him control. Control over publishing and distribution is essential. Hodari Ali made mention of his plans to start franchising Pyramid Books. Imagine a system where turnkey Bookstores by their books from the publisher and distributor. Now make those Bookstores a bookmobile. iSankore. That's not ownership. That's control. That's what JB has and he only has it until someone builds a better mousetrap that they control. *Buy

Maybe. Haki Madhubuti in Plan to Planet has a chapter: "The Necessity of Control: Publishing to Distribution—a Short Proposal for Black Distributors." He talks about the mafia controlling distribution. When the NYT started being self distributed they got shut down. Anybody who sold the NYT would sell nothing else. Newsdealers who owned their locations could not control what they sold. Control/access is key. NO!!! But I know the ads etc are different. The news they show has nothing to do with my searches. It's more comfortable than seeing what I searched for show up in my news feed. NO!!! But I know the ads etc are different. The news they show has nothing to do with my searches. It's more comfortable than seeing what I searched for show up in my news feed. And that's just on Google's end cookies are a whole other source of info. Every site has their own tricks to make it seem like they are giving you the option to opt out of cookies. Any site that uses cookies gets and scooped up in Googlebot...they gotcha Chrome tracks searches too...it has to be opted out separately. Firefox to the rescue. They block trackers...and ads.

Only if you don't opt out. And even then I get recommendations that I don't necessarily care for. They are terrified of this: "Imagine no possessions"

Just watched it. We now have evidence rich smart people will make a mistake at some point in the future and the world will end before they realize it was all their fault. The biggest thing is they were singing in environments that were diametrically opposed to the lyrics of the song. "Imagine no possessions."

The people that made this thread necessary just made a video. A collection of AA celebrities could do the same or better by singing one line each of Wake Up Everybody. Just realized this is old news.

One of the things he brought to mind is the University of Sankore. Islamic scholar Abd al-Rahman al-Tamimi needed to go back to Fez before he was qualified to teach at Sankore. Outstanding literature is a product in demand. A supply of Gwendolyn Brooks' and Toni Morrisons that can only be gotten through the Black Books Ecosystem encourages more of the same.

It gave me a different vision. Wait till you read Phase 2. It seems like he is talking about having a monopoly over books by Black authors, although he does not use that word.

Dr. Welsing told us about the game. It has a lot of moves. We need to make counter moves. Otherwise we are just watching somebody else play the game with no intention to win. How do we promote our interests, keep them relevant and maintain positive attention to those interests? I am convinced every well formed question is pregnant with its own answer. Just as I typed the question above came the answer. We get African-American celebrities to counter with a video of them singing one line each of Wake Up Everybody by Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes. That wasn't hard.

Haki Madhubuti may have already written the White Paper on the Black Books Ecosystem. We just have to update it. In his book "From Plan to Planet: Life Studies; The Need for Afrikan Minds and Institutions" he has a chapter entitled "The Necessity of Control: Publishing to Distribution: A SHORT PROPOSAL FOR BLACK DISTRIBUTORS." It is essentially a primer on the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats facing the Black Books Ecosystem in the early 1970s. That we are still talking about basically the same issues with eBooks and A2Z added in means we might be going in circles. He goes into a lot of things that I would have never thought about: Mass Printing? Mass Distribution? Hiring salespeople? Ideology? https://archive.org/details/fromplantoplanet00madh

Just put it on hold at the library yesterday.

The Black Books Ecosystem has a fascinating history. Have you read From Headshops to Whole Foods yet @Troy?

One of the most radical acts that we can take is to open a Black owned bookstore. J. Edgar Hoover targeted Black owned bookstores in October 1968. "From 1968 until the store’s closing in 1974, the Bureau compiled nearly 500 pages of investigative files on Drum and Spear. " https://web.archive.org/web/20200225185456/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/fbi-black-bookstores/553598/

Russel Crowe was intelligent enough to portray John Nash in A Brilliant Mind, but he is no John Nash. Being a mathematician and elocutionist both take intelligence. Being adept at one does not necessarily mean you will succeed at the other. Guess that's why so many great artists have ended up broke. Look at how much money Zora Neale Hurston is making for people today and she ended up in an unmarked grave.

Black Bookstore Research Guide: The Bookseller & Bookstore https://libguides.nypl.org/blackbookstores/bookseller

Abolitionist David Ruggles had the first African-American Bookstore. He printed books, ran a press, and did book binding as well. His bookstore was burned down on September 4, 1835. He reopened at a different location not far away. https://davidrugglescenter.org/david-ruggles/ https://www.google.com/books/edition/David_Ruggles/yW0oiL7ueg4C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=david ruggles book store&pg=PA84&printsec=frontcover&bsq=david ruggles book store WE WON'T BE TERRORISED OUT OF EXISTENCE: BLACK BOOKSTORES IN ENGLAND RESIST FASCIST ATTACKS https://www.jstor.org/stable/41067845 Martin Sostre Sostre was arrested at his bookstore on July 14, 1967, for "narcotics, riot, arson, and assault", charges later proven to be fabricated, part of a COINTELPRO program.[5] He was convicted and sentenced to serve forty-one years and thirty days. Sostre became a jailhouse lawyer, regularly acting as legal counsel to other inmates and winning two landmark legal cases involving prisoner rights: Sostre v. Rockefeller and Sostre v. Otis. According to Sostre, these decisions constituted "a resounding defeat for the establishment who will now find it exceedingly difficult to torture with impunity the thousands of captive black (and white) political prisoners illegally held in their concentration camps."[6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Sostre

Drum And Spear: How A Local Bookstore Educated Washington About Black Power In The ’60s And ’70s https://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2018-05-15/drum-and-spear-a-black-bookstores-legacy-in-washington Fifty years ago a radical black bookstore opened in Washington, DC. Called Drum and Spear, the bookstore was an educational and political center for black power activists through the mid-seventies, providing space for events as well as acting as a clearinghouse for Pan-African, civil rights, and black power literature as well as African arts and crafts. We speak with founders of the book store and talk about its lasting legacy in the region, including what that legacy means for today’s black bookstores. It’s the 20th anniversary of the Kojo Nnamdi Show, and we are looking back and ahead at the people and places that shaped Washington. That includes the Drum & Spear Bookstore, where Kojo worked in his early years in DC.

Black-Owned Bookstores: Anchors of the Black Power Movement https://www.aaihs.org/black-owned-bookstores-anchors-of-the-black-power-movement/ Since 1968: The Drum & Spear Bookstore https://www.loc.gov/item/webcast-8548 A symposium exploring the themes of cultural work, geography, and community as manifested in the history of three organizations that emerged from the social, political and cultural transformations that reshaped national and global society in 1968: the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, Appalshop and the Drum and Spear Bookstore. Panel two: Established in 1968 on Fairmont Street in Washington, D.C. and operating until 1974, the bookstore (and its branch, Malezeo, located in the HUD building) was a creative hub for black power, black consciousness and internationalist activism. Founded by African-American civil rights veterans, the non-profit quickly became a leading space for cultural production and intellectual and political engagement in the city. Participants will reflect on the bookstore's leading role in expanding critical consciousness about such issues as cultural democracy, race, activism and the significance of place in the nation's capital.