Slavery in America

Check it:
From CNN.com.
“A Florida couple accused of torturing and starving five children in their care were captured Friday night in Utah, a spokeswoman for the Citrus County, Florida, Sheriff's Department said. They are accused of using a cattle prod or some sort of stun gun to shock the children, securing them to spots in the house with chains, striking their feet with hammers and pulling the children's toenails out with pliers...”

As if it needed to get worse in the world, here appear these assholes into our lives. I was so disgusted by this I had to stop reading. I hate CNN. I hate the fucking news. As if the world needs more pain. couldn’t imagine. Just couldn’t imagine. We need to send out some real positive energy, prayer if you will, to these children, and to these poor sick people. thoughts of forgiveness and goodness and kindness and ‘its alrightness.’ I can only imagine the hell these kids were living... life is fucked up sometimes.

I'm not much into revenge. In all honesty I come into situations like this with a real open heart towards the victims and the victimizers both. Understanding that there are plenty of people in the world who don't look at things like that, so these two monsters are going to end up with more hate and violence aimed at them than they will be able to bear; because most people still come at life with an eye for eye mentality. Many people are still like this amongst us. not understanding some of the most basic of universal laws. Not understanding our evolutionary path yet. not understanding the profundity of rehabilitation and forgiveness and unconditional love and compassion. Not understanding that like creates like creates like. So they perpetuate what they disdain and punish through their own actions without ever being aware of it. And life goes on. And the few of us who sit silently watching it all like flower prints on wallpaper laughing and crying in convulsive bursts of emotion and horror at the pure absurd beauty that it is to be human in today's world, where the wicked and the cruel and the unjust and unholy are both wrong and right, the determination depending only upon who has the most money and who calls the shots.

Broker than I've been in years. just broke. In the last two years I have spent more money on old and new businesses of mine alike than I have made. About ten times more. Infinito asks me today, ‘what happened to all the money from selling your house. you must have banked on that in that neighborhood.’ ‘Gone man. I've loaned five companies over three-hundred thousand dollars in the last two years -- probably more, just cause I'm not thinking about it right now – and now I am pretty much totally effing broke. bro if one of them doesn’t pick up and take off then I'm back to square one. back to where I was in college’ ‘how do you sleeeeeeep?’ he asks me. ‘well, dude, honestly, I haven't slept well in about two years now. I wake up at the crack of dawn with stress running through my mind and body like lightening sometimes. My thoughts going a million miles an hour.... its crazy.’ ‘well hey, that's the ambassador, that entrepreneur spirit... yepper.’ ‘yeah dude. I know. I'm into being what I am. Doing what I do. I had a choice. its not like I didn't have a choice. I just really believe in what I'm doing. All the different projects. So I wake up early. psyche myself up. I kick ass. I stay pumped up.’ ‘Yeeeeaaaahhh. The ambassador makes it happen. that's the spirit that got you to the place where you had three hundred thousand dollars to invest in your own companies in the first place...’ ‘yep. You said it bro.’

Last screening: The history of American slavery, PBS special. volume 1 on DVD. O.k. check it. I am exhausted. It is 2am. I woke up from a dead sleep during this thing playing in the background to make some quick notes. I will be brief to allow myself the release so I can get back to sleep:

-  Thomas Jefferson penned the famous words, ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal... etc...’ but by the time he wrote these words -- the document itself is brilliant – and he was a mere 33 years at the time -- slavery was in full effect in America. By 1790 1 in 5 Americans were slaves. it’s true. 1 in 5 Americans were enslaved, were owned by other men. Jefferson himself was one of the richest slave owners in the colonies, owning over two hundred human beings at the time as his own personal property to do with as he pleased. He later secretly wrote a friend ‘if almighty God is just, we will pay dearly for this.’ So he knew all along that what they were doing was wrong... Slavery was not the law of the land in America for the first hundred and fifty years. People don't realize that. we are taught, I assume to make the bitter pill go down easier, that slavery was always around, that we as Americans just played a game that was already being played. This is not true though. It was one of our many American myths. In fact it was against the law in England already for one man to own another; but it slowly and craftily turned into what is known as ‘the terrible transformation’ over a period of many years through the hands of the colonists in America.
- Black men did not start out as slaves in America. They were equal. Many owned land and lived next door to white men as planters and farmers and regular folk just like you and me. It wasn't until the mid sixteen hundreds that it started. By the mid seventeen hundreds the American white man had created, or recreated rather, something that was by this time entirely outlawed in Europe and England, the enslavement of one man by another. You could have servants but not slaves. But slowly, a sickness grew in humankind and slavery became something that was not only conceivable again but turned into law in America. They actually started writing laws to create slavery, to assure that if you were born black you had no rights and you were not human. These were called the Negro laws. This was right here in our hometowns all across America. Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, all thirteen colonies. By the mere color of ones skin you were considered born a slave for life and so were their children and their children’s children. 
- Now in fairness to the Americans (can we call them Americans? Can we call ourselves Americans? I'd say we call them “the insurgents” since that has become such a popular term these days... and by definition of course... Different story...) once they decided to go for it one hundred percent, the Dutch, the English, the Spanish, the Portuguese, and even the Africans started following suit and participating in the slave trade with the colonies just like the insurgents calling themselves Americans were doing. Everyone started seeing how much money could be made from forcing other people to work for you for free. But the thing is that countries England couldn’t handle it. say they were more evolved than the barbarians in America were, or perhaps just kinder gentler people, but by the seventeen-seventies they outlawed slavery once again. America on the other hand kept it going for another hundred years and even considered the defense of their to slavery one of principle reasons they were fighting for their own liberty from England. (Twisted, I know. fighting to defend their liberty to deny the liberty of others. But this is the foundation of American independence. And it wasn't as if this observation went un-noticed. Everyone understood the inherent contradiction in the America’s fight for liberty in light of their slave system. it was often spoken and written about.) Again, we are never told this. its never spoken about.    
- America during the slave years which lasted some two hundred and fifty years was no different if not worse for the sheer length that it was encouraged than Hitler’s Germany; but many many years longer and equally tortuous. I find it fascinating that the subject is treated so light-footed in our schools when we are young Americans. And yet how horrendous the Hitler Germany years are portrayed when the very foundation for the treatment of Jews right down to the laws were incredibly analogous to America during the slave years. blacks were not citizens. Blacks had no rights. Blacks could not own property. Blacks could not have money nor earn money. Blacks could not be paid. blacks could not be seen in public without being attended by their owners. Blacks would work for free till they died. It was cheaper to work a black person to death and import another than to keep one alive. Blacks were put in ships to import and export, in the lower decks all chained together, sitting upright in each others legs. They were naked and were forced to sit in each other’s feces and urine for two to four months straight. Occasionally they hosed off. If they died, which they did by the thousands on those ships, it did not matter except how it effected the bottom line. They were not allowed to take their own life by trying to jump overboard. It was considered an injustice and they were to be shot before they landed in the water so they would die by the white mans hands rather than by their own. blacks had no rights to have families of their own. they could be separated from their spouses and children at the will of their owners. it was legal to kill a black person if you wanted to. blacks were hung in public. Blacks were whipped in public. Blacks were mutilated if they disobeyed. Men would have their testicles cut off or a leg removed if they attempted to escape. Women would have an ear cut off. Blacks were burned at the stake in public for all to see. They called them negro bonfires... sounds familiar.
- As horrific as burning Jews in ovens sounds to us, in the broader picture one sees that its just a more advanced form of burning black people at the stake; America had perfected this barbarous atrocity years before; the Germans took it to the next level. Either way, you're talking about the worst that humanity has to offer.
- as a quick aside, there are some people who refuse to acknowledge the similar nature between the black-American-holocaust and the European-Jew-holocaust, as if one was any worse than the other, citing that the Germans were intentionally attempting mass genocide on millions of Jews, while the Americans were just torturing and murdering millions of blacks while they worked them to death...  I'm just too fucking tired to argue with these idiots. Let’s move on. 
- So on and on it went in America for two hundred years but we are taught things so different than this here in our young idealistic America. As a boy I never heard of such things in school. Never do I ever remember learning about these atrocities. I only heard about how great the “founding fathers” were. They never taught us that these same men were evil murderers and torturers similar to the likes of Hitler or Stalin... they never spoke of how wicked America was for so many years... only how great it was... I must question this. we all must question this. what is the reason for this? why are we taught the famous ‘I cannot tell a lie father, I did cut down that cherry tree’ story (which turns out is a fucking lie) but we are not taught the whole story, the real story, of who George Washington was and the fact that all of these men owned tortured mutilated enslaved and murdered other men so they could make money from them? Because I have a photographic memory, I remember the day that our teacher told us the ‘I cannot tell a lie story.’ I remember what I was wearing, what the teacher was wearing, and I still remember many of the names of the other kids in that particular class. I would be lying myself if I pretended that I wasn't angered by the understanding now that that fucking bitch was lying to me and all those other kids; that we were just being manipulated and brainwashed like all the other countries around the world. I'll tell you what occurs to me, day in and day out... what isn't a fucking lie in this country? is there anything that we were told that is true? or is it all just a big fucking scam, no different than what they tell us the Iraqis or Iranians or Palestinians experience growing up in their countries. Is there any fucking truth in America or in American history?
- in honor of George Washington he himself in his will mandated that all his over-100 slaves get set free upon the death of his wife. She set them free before her death because she was afraid for her life. by the time of his death, before even, he understood that what they were doing was wrong and against the very foundation of the republic that they were creating. Good for him.  
- the idea of the black or African holocaust is not something that is discussed in American schools or in American history... the idea of the black-or-African-holocaust is not even an idea yet. if it is, then it is an idea kept silent. And yet it should be. it should be.
- I wonder why there are not more slavery memorials in America... it seems that there is a new Jewish-holocaust memorial going up every year... this occurred to me many times while watching the show. Where are the slavery or freedom memorials for the black people who were beaten and whipped and tortured and raped and murdered during these years here? what is really going on here... I do not know, nor do I dare to conjecture.
- it was said that it is an enigma that through slavery mankind could sacrifice his very heart and soul for the sake of money... deliberately turning against what he knew to be right in order to profit... this is the puzzle of man. Myself, I will never get it.
- that by enslaving we became enslaved ourselves. Knowingly bringing bitter enemies into our very homes in order to profit. The slave owners became slaves themselves in their own homes unwittingly. Living constantly in fear and trepidation. But for the money...
- we have done away with slavery in America. Just as England and Europe had done away with slavery before America brought it back. I am proud of this. we all should be. I just wonder what took so long. I wonder if mankind will ever succumb to this sickness again in our future history? I wonder if the black man is born angry and we the white man just do not see it. I would be angry if I were born black. I would secretly hate the whites.
- I wonder why there is not an institution of obligated reparation in America for all people born black to attempt to pay them back... for so many years of enslavement. Is simply saying your sorry enough? Why do we need a united negro college fund? Why not just give them all free college or something for a few hundred years? I know all about the theory that that idea would be in itself racist to a degree... but I wonder if it wouldn’t also be appropriate. To settle the score.
- surely no one is so blind that they do not see that the remnants of our slavery past are still all around us. in every city in America. On every street corner and in boxes sleeping in the freezing cold on the steps of every church. And in our prisons. Surely they are enslaved no longer by law or by shackle but in mind and spirit they are still imprisoned by a system that seems still almost ingrained in all of us. what can be done about this? will it take another two hundred and fifty years for this illness to heal... by nature alone? Is there anything that we can do as a community, as a country, to quicken the course?  
- I do not agree with the phrase African American. I am not called English Italian American. Black is black and white is white I guess. If one is from Jamaica or Bahamas or Barbados then they are surely not African American, but simply black or white. This term makes no sense anymore here. I wish we didn't have to call ourselves anything.

I will quote a very old and famous slave song. A beautiful song. A haunting song:

“Your country, how can it be yours? Before the pilgrims landed. We were here.”

It is a simple song. The same verse repeated over and over and over again...

“Your country? how can it be yours? Before the pilgrims landed. We were here.”

On Sunday I will go to the Abyssinian Baptist church in Harlem again; not because I am a believer in Jesus as God, but because I am a believer in the spirit of man and I believe that the great spirit of man is expressed no more exuberantly, no purer, and no more divinely than in black American churches. But this Sunday, after learning what I have learned tonight I will look at the members of the church differently. I will wonder if they look at me differently seeing that I am white. I will feel appropriately most honored that they allow me to worship with them. I will pay them no disrespect by dissembling my own personal belief that we are there to worship humanity, ourselves, and not a God, just as I do not hide this fact from white people.

Perhaps one day the God bug will get under my skin, and I will welcome it if it comes honestly. But for now I am content to believe in and worship mankind in all of our glory, rather than a God who has never shown his face or the slightest concern for our troubles and woes since we have known of our own existence. A God such as this we surely do not need if he were to exist. We would do ourselves and future generations quite well if we were to do away with the God concept entirely and begin instead to truly worship and divinely respect ourselves and all that we are; and to sing praises and shout many hallelujahs for how far we have come all on our own in spite of our unanswered longing for help from the outside. There is no better place on earth to do this than in a black American church.

It is or was rather 4am on Friday night. at my house now. We have been beaten, lied to, pepper sprayed, arrested, chased, and interviewed to near exhaustion for the last two days. All just because we were peacefully protesting the FTAA. We are sitting around my dining room table. In the wee hours of the morning Too tired to open our eyes all they way but too wired to go to bed yet. so we are talking three of us from three different cities in America. Obsessed with activism and obsessed with social change. We all share in between yawns. Red from XXXXXXX is some kind of mad genius who goes to all these different events and enables and coordinates all the different people coming together from all over the country and working the media to tell the people’s side of the story, rather than the corporate bought mainstream medias’ side that we normally hear about. I tell him in exchange for what I have provided in the last four days all I ask is that I am able to video an interview of he and I and Thoreau (from Connecticut) discussing this  revolution that is brewing in America. We agree that in the morning when we are all awake and semi-refreshed we will make a video to share with my fans and friends on Transcendent Television. More people in our generation need to know that this is happening. He quietly and passionately tells us that he got involved in activism because he could just feel many years ago that there was going to be a massive shift, some kind of revolution in our generation. What the activists in the sixties were not able to accomplish we will in the coming years. Thoreau and I both agree. All three of us could feel the same thing in our own private corners of America over the last few years and here we were sitting in the dark of my dining room never having met before three days ago. but united in this one quest: to break all the world’s citizens free from the brainwashing of the Matrix and the clutches of corporate run governments all over the world.

Later today. It’s the afternoon now. Saturday. We are all meeting. All the different leaders from all the different groups to fill everyone in on what's going on. Sharing all the different things we have heard. And what needs to happen. Evidently some of the 394 people who are now in jail from protesting are being tortured. Mainly the ones who refuse to give their names, nationalities, or cities they came from. there are hundreds of injuries. Many in the hospital. People being denied access to food. Some of the people who are in jail now are attorneys from the ACLU, or from legal observers, or retirees who were protesting, or union labor leaders, people from all walks of life.

one of the people with us is a Cannes film festival award winning director. he is documenting this whole week for an political activism film. He is not just a documenter, but one of us. just like at this point I am not just a singer, but one of us. [I continue to silently question this within myself: how much am I just a singer and wish to be outside of all of this, and how much am I actually completely a part of it now?] We are all starving and no one has any money for food. There are about thirty of us, from every city in America. This is amazing how no one knows each other, just from different orgs and events around the country over the last ten years. when you read about acres of rainforests getting saved or oil rigs getting blocked, or the WTO meetings in Seattle getting stopped, or innocent human rights activists getting freed from jail, it is because of many of the people who are gathered in this room here today, and many others. I am honored to be a witness to this. I am not arrogant enough to consider myself part of it. but more of an admiring observer. all just activists from different cities who have two major goals to accomplish in the next two days before everyone leaves town for their respective homes: one, to try to free the people who are in jail now and make sure they have adequate legal counsel; and two, to try to control the media spin here in Miami and with the national and international media to make sure that the people are made aware of the issues: The importance of stopping the FTAA from going through and its dangers, and how what we have evidenced in Miami in the last two days is a sign of the police state that America is turning into.

I must admit I am still in shock by all of it. I have spent the last three years voraciously studying American history. And so I have learned that our country was founded on this kind of activism. The very foundation of our constitution was created because of this kind of peaceful and sometimes forceful opposition to the status quo by the people in order to defend and protect our rights as people. so it is true, that I am in shock by seeing peaceful protestors and demonstrators attacked so brutally, and also by the kind of bias slant in the media that I have seen in the last three days. I really had no idea that there was going to be such a flagrant cover up of the truth. Is real American patriotism possible anymore in America? or is America really a secret dictatorship like many Europeans say it is? I wonder now.

We now have video footage interviewing locals around Miami who were paid by the police before the meetings began to rob anyone they saw in the streets in their neighborhoods who had cameras or video equipment. There are five video cameras in total missing now from the independent media team. Stolen by locals. [does one believe this? out of a movie right? I'm watching the footage myself. Some of the cameras have been returned now because the locals feel bad after seeing the police beating people up on TV last night.]