Troy

The discussion forum was down for several hours yesterday--the cause is unknown. Some suspect hacking... At any rate, I saw a 401 error, earlier today but I can't replicate the problem and I used all three of my ID's trying to do so. I suspect any remaining issues are the residual effects of yesterday's problem. If you see a problem try closing the browser and logging in again. If the problem persists please email me at troy@aalbc.com Thank You, Troy

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Submissions are still open for the 2014 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, a $10,000 award that honors Louisiana’s revered storyteller, Ernest J. Gaines, and serves to inspire and recognize rising African-American fiction writers of excellence at a national level. The book award was initiated by donors of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation and is in its eighth year. The national panel of distinguished literary judges includes Thomas Beller, Anthony Grooms, Francine Prose, Elizabeth Nunez and Patricia Towers. The 2014 winner will be announced in November. The Baton Rouge Area Foundation sponsors the winner’s travel to Baton Rouge, Louisiana where he/she will receive the $10,000 prize at a ceremony and reception in his/her honor. The award aims to allow the writer the flexibility and wherewithal to remain focused creating of excellent literature. The author will also participate in educational activities during his/her time in Louisiana. The Gaines Award emphasizes the role of literature and the arts in education, and through small creative writing workshops or a reading with Q&A, it encourages youth to pursue reading and creative forms of expression. Previous Gaines Award Winners: Attica Locke Dinaw Mengestu Victor LaValle Stephanie Powell Watts Ravi Howard Jeffrey Allen Olympia Vernon The deadline to submit eligible books for consideration of the 2014 Gaines Award is October 1, 2014. There is no fee to enter. Entries must be works of fiction (novels or short story collections) published in 2013 or 2014; Galleys for books that will be published by December 31, 2014 are accepted. The award ceremony will be Thursday, January 22, 2015 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Jessica A. Boone| Senior Donor Services Officer Baton Rouge Area Foundation 402 N. Fourth Street Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70802 225-387-6126 www.braf.org www.ernestjgainesaward.org

Deep. In this instance, at least, he was a very lucky young man. I'm sure you are correct about the motivation of the cops, and I'm glad no one was hurt, at least not physically.

I guarantee, if that happened in Statesboro, GA, it would be a completely different story. Was the person he hit Black or white? Was the neighborhood poor or middle class? Black guy hits a Black person in a poor neighborhood--no problem. Beside reporting crimes makes the numbers look bad, and who wants to deal with all the paper work to record the antics of a bunch of monkeys. Black guy hits a white person in an upscale neighborhood, that he does not live in, it would be a different story. Having a family member on the job always helps. Sorry to hear about your daughter(in-law). Losing a mother is not easy for a young man, but hitting someone while driving drunk is a very serious offense. Most of my buddies, who have loss the privilege to drive, lost it for that reason. One cat I know was locked for close to a year. You wanna make sure it is not a behavior that gets repeated. I swore I would never speed again (at least not in the state of GA). Never, ever run from the cops, or otherwise resist arrest (even if you know you are right) that is usually when bad shit happens--especially to us.

Was pulled over for speeding in Statesboro GA, the gnat capital of the world, earlier this Summer. I was not driving recklessly or unsafe for the conditions; broad daylight, empty road. I was not drunk, nor endangering anyone. I was given a $725 dollar ticket! Sure I was "wrong." I was driving faster than the posted speed limit. But $725 bucks! That is just crazy. No, I was not shot, nor handcuffed, or even touched. The two white male officers on the scene were not rude, just stoic and clearly uncaring, but the punishment was WAY beyond the crime. I felt assaulted and that fine though not a big deal to some forced me to change my plans for attending a book event. Was my race a factor in being stopped? Who knows, but I can help but suspect it was. Would I have been treated differently were I white? I believe I would have been. Do I believe these officers could have been members of the Klan, sure. Do I believe they have racists in their families? Given the location--absolutely. I have been pulled over by troopers more times than I can remember. Being pulled over for doing absolutely nothing wrong is quite common. Po-Po profiling Black men is a reality. If I, or any Black man, is busted in the wrong -- they throw the book at us. Three strike laws were not meant for white boys. Besides aggravation, we have increased insurance rates, points, and of course the financial burden of fines. But on paper I just look like some guy who was speeding and got what he deserved. While all the other speeders driving along, anonymously, enjoying benefits and privilege the skin color affords them. Now I'm a presentable, educated, articulate, law abiding citizen. If I constantly get the treated with the firmest hand of the law with each encounter what do you thing a young man with sagging mans, and an attitude will get? The same treatment is evident in our school systems and corporate environments. We live in a racist society, and the racists are usually not card carrying members of the Klan, Harry.

For Immediate Release: 9/3/14 Media Contact: Ailene Torres, Ailene@upmarketpr.com Texas Voodoo Zombies are coming to Dallas We are pleased to announce that Texas Voodoo Zombies are coming!!! Yes, Victor McGlothin, local bestselling novelist and filmmaker is currently in pre-production to begin filming a historic horror movie project. McGlothin and Victory Vision Films are excited about being the first in the country to bring zombies to the ‘hood. Victor McGlothin, a Kimball High School and University of North Texas grad, has penned 13 bestselling books before producing two short films “Backsliders” and “On The Radio;” based on his popular novels. Now, he’s recasting the mold to which many readers know him best. “I’m a story teller and my projects usually end with a girl falling in love and a guy blowing something up,” McGlothin jokes. “So this is kinda the same, only with zombies.” Funding is a challenge for any filmmaker but McGlothin believes the help of his crowdfunding campaign, now live on Indiegogo, will make this movie a huge success. “I’m hopeful that area Dallasites, zombie fans and Victor McGlothin fans will rally around this project financially and make it something special that we can all be proud of. In Indie film making, it’s really the contributions that make dreams come true,” McGlothin said, while heading into rehearsals. (see the movie trailer and campaign) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_p9cu-jbe0 https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/texas-voodoo-zombies With Texas becoming increasingly a hot bed for movie productions, Dallas based Victory Vision Films and Victor McGlothin should feel right at home. “I love Texas, horror movies and the tough neighborhood I grew up in so it’s only natural to incorporate the three of them in my first big breakout film. I’m proud to do something that’s never been done in horror movies, I’m bringing zombies to the ‘hood.” We look forward to seeing how Victor’s film, Texas Voodoo Zombies, turns out. Imagine that, a real Zombie Hoodpocalyse in Dallas. What will they think of next!

Interesting exchange. In my mind both parties are corrupt, or rather, under the control of the wealthy and powerful. If you look at outrageous incarceration rates, the mortgage crisis, the current crisis in education, needless lives lost in senseless wars, a tobacco (and food) industry allowed to profit off products known to be deadly, and so much more, you will see all of this was presided over by both parties. Of course each party will say well they have to clean up the other party's mess, or they are being blocked by the opposing party. But at the end of the day all of these politicians are paid very well and get benefits so generous it is obscene. Few seem concerned with the people they were elected to serve. As a result, I have no faith in either major party and by extension the current political system. Also, I was just thinking about how I have not heard from Cornel West in the media lately, while Sharpton is everywhere. One would think West is doing nothing, based upon media coverage. I don't think this an accident.

I'm not exactly a prince fan myself. I'm more familiar with his older music, I have not purchased anything his has made in many years, but his concerts are really quite good. I do know that there are many Prince fans out there, hence the mention here. Go see a Prince concert when you can.

1890, deep. He lived through, as an adult, the entire depression, WWI, WWII and Jim Crow. I wonder if he was world weary? Despite all the nonsense we see today, America, the world even, seems to be a much better place for the generations that came after his; at least it seems that way... I'm gonna hold onto my dream of being able to control my destiny for a bit longer, otherwise what is the point?

ART OFFICIAL AGE, becomes available on September 30. I stumbled across this looking for something else. Whatever that something else was I've forgotten what is was as got detracted listening to cuts and reading comments about this upcoming release. I'm not exactly a rabid Prince fan, but he generally gives an excellent live performance. I've seen him twice but I know many who have seen him 10, 20, 30 times. I can't think of any artist I would go through the effort and expense of seeing that many times. At any rate it was interesting to read some people get on Prince for being irrelevant and autotuning to worshiping him believe he is the best thing since mobile access to Facebook. At any rate hopefully I'll make a few buck from people clcking the link: http://aalbc.it/artofficialage to buy Princes latest from iTunes. If sales of Prince's latest can help subsidize my efforts to share information about important books it is all good!

"land the free white man and home of the brave black nigger" Interesting quote what year was you dad born in Cynique? Sure the election of Obama proved the system is broken. However Obama was elected, in part, because Black people voted him in. In Ferguson, I've read voter turn out in the Black community is roughly 10%, not much than in Harlem during the midterms. Ferguson would have much better representation if they simply exercised their rights to vote. I would not call the election of Obama a revolution. The fight to get the right to vote was revolutionary, taking advantage of that right is not. The old system clearly worked much better; Gladwell's article illustrated a fine example. I'm afraid if we have to fight for the right to vote or to eat at a lunch counter we would be in sad shape. I don't even blame us for the situation. Perhaps if MLK and company where protesting in 2014 they would encounter the same issues. Our enemy is brilliant and they execute flawlessly.

Talib Kweli explains, during a interaction with Don Lemon, that Tweeting does not make a revolution. He does however point out that there are several organizations, on the ground, doing the work I did not think was getting done. I trust they get the people of Ferguson to vote, with their numerical majority they could at least get some Black folks in office who would be more inclined to support the Black residents there.

The other day I was thinking about Gil Scott Heron's Poem the Revolution Will Not be Televised. I was considering writing a updated version to the poem, tentatively called, "The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted". Realizing there is nothing new understand sun, I decided to search the term, "The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted," and I actually was surprised by the abundance of content on the subject and discovered other people had already written similar poems on the subject, so I abandoned the idea. The Brother's version below is better than what I would have done, though I think far too long. I also discovered a four-year-old article written by Malcolm Gladwell, entitled, "Why he Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted." While one can easily find a lot of criticism of the article, I find it to be on point. People tend to exaggerate the impact of social media: “It is time to get Twitter’s role in the events in Iran right,” Golnaz Esfandiari wrote, this past summer, in Foreign Policy. “Simply put: There was no Twitter Revolution inside Iran.” The cadre of prominent bloggers, like Andrew Sullivan, who championed the role of social media in Iran, Esfandiari continued, misunderstood the situation. “Western journalists who couldn’t reach—or didn’t bother reaching?—people on the ground in Iran simply scrolled through the English-language tweets post with tag #iranelection,” she wrote. “Through it all, no one seemed to wonder why people trying to coordinate protests in Iran would be writing in any language other than Farsi.” Social Media is not a substitute for organizations: The drawbacks of networks scarcely matter if the network isn’t interested in systemic change—if it just wants to frighten or humiliate or make a splash—or if it doesn’t need to think strategically. But if you’re taking on a powerful and organized establishment you have to be a hierarchy. The Montgomery bus boycott required the participation of tens of thousands of people who depended on public transit to get to and from work each day. It lasted a year. In order to persuade those people to stay true to the cause, the boycott’s organizers tasked each local black church with maintaining morale, and put together a free alternative private carpool service, with forty-eight dispatchers and forty-two pickup stations. Even the White Citizens Council, King later said, conceded that the carpool system moved with “military precision.” By the time King came to Birmingham, for the climactic showdown with Police Commissioner Eugene (Bull) Connor, he had a budget of a million dollars, and a hundred full-time staff members on the ground, divided into operational units. The operation itself was divided into steadily escalating phases, mapped out in advance. Support was maintained through consecutive mass meetings rotating from church to church around the city. The article sums up the situation perfectly. and in my mind explains why we are so ineffective today: "...it is simply a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections that give us access to information over the strong-tie connections that help us persevere in the face of danger. It shifts our energies from organizations that promote strategic and disciplined activity and toward those which promote resilience and adaptability. It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact. The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo. If you are of the opinion that all the world needs is a little buffing around the edges, this should not trouble you. But if you think that there are still lunch counters out there that need integrating it ought to give you pause." The full article is 4.4K words worth reading.

Perhaps Mexicans will be the "New Black." The upper class could/would dispense with Black folks, including our beatified president, tomorrow if it were feasible. It really does not matter to them as long as there is an underclass to perform the low level tasks and manual labor. Indeed white folks use other white people when they have to But again, I don't believe this is about race. It is about those with the most financial resources and power increasing it; in America virtually all of these folks happen to be white but that is incidental not the cause. . Since these folks happen to be white, Black folks have had the misfortune of being easily targeted. Our best strategy would be to combine our resources, but this simply is not happening. The activism, organization and institutions of the civil rights era are a distant memory...

Here is just a few more exmaples

Playing devils advocate for a second Cynique: When I encounter a situation that requires me to determine what a person's (or any entity's) motivations are I just look at what they do--because I can't know what they are thinking, indeed it does not matter. If a man says he loves you but is constantly treating you poorly; clearly, he does not love you (no psychic necessary). If, for example, the US Government actually disliked Black people, would they need to behave differently? Could we do a better job at locking our Brothers up? Could we mis-educate Black people any better? Could we have pumped any more drugs and guns into the community? This all without mentioning a few hundred years of enslavement and Jim Crow... Would it really be a leap to believe in ethnic cleansing. To compound things, birth rates are down for Black people. Black people are no longer the largest minority in the US (or won;t be very shortly). But most importantly, there is essentially no "Black community" this might sound odd coming from me. But we are essentially a conglomeration of competitive factions separated by class, income, and education, whose most successful members strive to separate themselves from the so-called Black community. Given our population this is an astonishing thing to say but I believe it is largely true. I would be happy for someone to prove me wrong. If you disagree ask yourself the following; What percentage of communities in the US are majority Black and not poor (what is the largest one and where is it)? What percentage of job offers are given by a Black person to another Black person (a decent paying job with the potential for career growth)? What percentage of Black people, who are murdered, are murdered by a Black assailant? What percentage of Black income is spent with a Black owned business? I could go on for days with examples. Some of the answers to the questions above are available, some not as no one has bothered to look, or ask. But at the end of the day, none of the answers, to the questions above, would point to any semblance of what one would call a "community."

Yes what I mean by Psychic too someone that could basically lay out what is going to happen in plainly--not like some Nostradamus-like quatrains which calls for interpretations. I suspect if there was anyone who could actually see the future they'd be on wall street or some government facility not some side-show attraction. Yeah I'm pretty much and on the surface kind of guy. But I'll tell you straight up I'm vulnerable and need help. It is rough out here in the book world, which is really part of a much bigger cultural war--and I'm on the losing side... Sexual edginess, do you have access to my web browsing history

Cynique what have you sensed from me on this board? Over the years we've been communicating I've gone through a ton of changes, challenges and transitions on so many levels (as perhaps we all have), I'd be curious to read your impressions. Del feel free to chime in. In general I'm open to the ideal of psychics, in fact I think it would be really cool. But I have not had an experience with a psychic such that I would say with a high level of confidence that they are indeed psychic. I have encountered many people who have, but I have not. But I also know I don't readily accept the things that most people accept so easily and seemingly without question.

I guess that is similiar to what I did when I created a Facebook profile, photo wearing a hoodie, a viral activity that really had no impact. The same thing with all the photos you see now of people holding their hands up. Amazingly I have not seen a single video of a celebrity getting doused with water (perhaps because I spend very little time on Facebook), but I have heard about the acitivity and I have no interest in it. If it helps raise money for ALS that is great. I'm more interested in other things...

The Official NYC 80th Birthday Party for SONIA SANCHEZ! Friday, September 19, 2014 6 pm - 9 pm Performances by: Ursula Rucker, jessica Care moore Remarks by Haki Madhubuti of Third World Press, Music by DJ Reborn and more Bedford Hall 1177 Bedford Ave. Brooklyn NY, 11216 General Information: 718-804-8883 This year marks a milestone for our beloved and dear sister Sonia Sanchez. She turns 80 in September. Sister Sonia has a been a shining light in all of our lives, through her kind and inspirational spirit, her words of wisdom, and her love for all things that we do for the betterment of humankind. Would you like to contribute to this event? Please contact Maeshay k. Lewis at mlewis@mec.cuny.edu or at 718-804-8882 or make a contribution directly on Eventbrite.

This is the interview who were speaking about believe you are referring to this interview Dorothy had an incredible life, long and full. Getting married would have, changed everything for her. I suspect if she were a man she could have gotten married and accomplished everything she did--perhaps more. I wonder if Dorothy were a man would the interviewer have inquired about his marital status? Here is another good interview

Cynique Know thy enemy reminds me of the scorpion and the turtle folktale. The problem is all cops are not MF'ers, most are just trying to get through their day, without killing someone or being killed, and lasting long enough to collect their pension. But a sufficient number of officers are bad, that you would be safest to behave as if they were ALL were indeed MF'ers. I've been abused by some cops and have been treated fairly by others, but most of the times my encounters with the police have been bad, or financially very costly. In fact, I'd argue the the financial burden imposed upon people by our police state has just a high an impact on us as our hyper-incarceration rate. In NYC there are people losing cars over parking tickets! After two tickets you car will be booted and towed. If you have the money you simply pay the tickets. Once they have your car, you have to pay off all the tickets, plus the tow, storage and extra fees. This is just one example. People with money don't have to worry about paying parking tickets. Poorer people do. The system is stacked against poor. Everyone should try struggling financially for a few years, it would give you a completely different world view and maybe help them understand people who have done this for generations and live with virtually no hope for escape.

I gave up on this experiment after 37 days. I was just running into to much difficulty running AALBC.com avoiding the use of Facebook. Many writers, more than I anticipated, have very little content about themselves online other than what is on Facebook. When I logged into Facebook I was also surprised by the number of people who attempted to contact me on Facebook--despite what I thought was ample notice that I would not be using the platform--and these were people who actually know me and who have my email address. My friend Marcia posed this photo of me Facebook. it is one of those shots that did not know existed. I don't recall if it was a candid shot or if I was posing. In the good old days Marcia would have posted this shot on her website site (or mine), and sent me and anyone else she wanted to to see this photo and the other she took a link. Facebook would not be able to exert any control, or ownership of the content. I'm not even sure when or where the photo was taken, but Facebook knows because the information is digitally encoded in digital image that was uploaded.