Thursday, March 11, 2010














Parable of the Gangsta

He wanted to be a gansta since childhood. He watched his big brothers gang banging, in and out of prison, the funerals, parties with more wine than they had at the Last Supper.


Females were always on hand serving the brothers, raising their babies, visiting them in jail and prison. Big cars, flashy clothes, bling bling, the little brother watched and waited his turn.


When it was time for him to join, he got ready for the initiation. On that day he was required to kill and rape. He was ready. No matter his mother was a hard working house cleaner who took the bus to work. She wanted none of her children's ill gotten gain. She was a Christian woman who tried to get him into college, rather than go the path of her other sons.


But he had other plans. He didn't want to be a square. He hated squares. They were, in his mind, suckers for the white man. He saw them with their suits and ties and brief cases, thinking they were all that and a bag of chips.


He saw them in the dope house coping, along with their square girls. When the girls got sprung, they would leave the square nigguhs for the dope man. He watched the square brothers get broke and turn tricks with the dope man in front of their women.


He vowed to his dead gansta brothers he would not be a square, but would be like them, even though they didn't want him to end up like them, in prison or a coffin early in life.


Thursdays was gang initiation night in the hood. Most people stayed off the street on Thursdays, unless people got off work late and had to walk home. Anyone could be a victim if caught on the street. He drove around looking for a victim, not far from his house. It didn't matter who it was.


On a dim lighted street he saw a woman and snatched her onto the ground, tearing off her clothes. She screamed and yelled but he didn't care, especially since he was loaded on dope and out of his mind. He didn't bother to look at the woman's face as he raped her.


When he finished he turned her around and got the shock of his life. She was his mother! He ran to his car in shame and horror.

When he got home he took out his gun and shot himself in the head and fell to the floor dead. He was now a gansta.






--Marvin X 3/11/10






Based on a true story.


Beyond Gang Violence, toward Political Power

Gang violence is a senseless endeavor leading nowhere except more community trauma and suffering. It is the act of desperate men and women who cannot envision a way out of social oppression, but such oppression cannot end until the oppressed alter their mental state of stinking thinking.



We cried about how dumb President George Bush was, but dummy George wrote a three page letter and obtained nearly a trillion dollars--think about it, a three page letter for a trillion dollars!



And many times life is just this simple. You figure out what you want, what you need, then you propose it. At this hour, the Gang of Five, Plus One is meeting in Europe to configure a plan to resolve the war in Afghanistan and Yemen. Part of the plan includes offering jobs and housing to insurgents, so called terrorists.




Didn't Malcolm X tell you a hint to the wise is sufficient? It seems to me those brothers and sisters involved in gang violence, drug dealing, prostitution and other criminal activities need to think another way that will get them out of going to prison and to the cemetery. Yes, it is an act of insanity to do the same thing yet expect different results.



Mama told me to use the mind God gave you, so I say to you brothers and sisters in the gang life, ain't you tired of funerals, incarceration, causing trauma and grief to your community?
Well, your community is tired of you terrorizing it 24/7, causing the slaughter of innocent people, children, adults and the elderly. You need to get a healing real quick.



If the USA can offer schooling, jobs and housing to those committing violence abroad, why would not the USA offer you the same if and when you present yourself as a political force with the backing of your esteemed local and national politicians, including the religious leaders, intellectuals and artists?



Violence in our community is worse than Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen combined. You are not aware of it? Count the bodies coast to coast. Fifteen to twenty thousand young black men slaughtered last year, then the collateral damage to families, loved ones, friends. Then you want to destroy the lives of young women with prostitution. I say legalize prostitution, legalize drugs.


The white boys are selling marijuana legally at cannabis clubs. How many black clubs do we have? You still going to jail and prison behind weed and the white boy is selling it legally in your face. Go somewhere and still yourself so you can think, even if it is a jail cell. Yes, go to jail and get a healing, then come out ready to rock and roll.



Your community is similar to Haiti, totally destroyed and you are partially responsible because you have the energy and genius to reconstruct it from the ground up. Imagine, there are still empty lots in the hood from the riots in Watts and the rebellion in Newark, New Jersey. After you contribute to Haiti, sit down and consider your situation at home.




Look at your community without economic power, hardly a grocery store in the hood with quality food, a medical clinic, a decent school. Do you see the time and what must be done? As a nation of 40 million, we have not a bottle of water, a grain of food stored for emergency. Yet you're cool? No, you a fool! And you shall suffer the consequence for your foolishness as a people.
As a friend said, when you kill your brother you kill yourself. A young brother told me he was going to kill his real brother. Yet he said if someone else tried to kill his brother, he would kill them. He was silent when I asked him what if someone kills you for killing your brother?
Gangs can transform themselves into political organizations, the Black Panthers are the example.




The tragedy was that the Panthers tried to confront the police. They found that once you do this you bring the wrath of the entire society upon you, and it was valiant that the Panthers took the blows of the oppressor off the people and put it upon themselves, but it was a no-win situation, though we thank them and honor them for what they attempted.



When the Panther party was formed here in the Bay Area, there were two organizations. The brothers in the first organization, the Black Panther Party of Northern California, were warned by brothers from Brazil that if they confronted the police directly, they would be smashed, so the first Panther Party disbanded. We know the result of the Huey Newton/Bobby Seale Black Panther Party of Self Defense.




It was destroyed by the police, the FBI, Army and Navy Intelligence, and other agencies. And it was destroyed from within, from lack of discipline. So don't think I mean for you to stop gang banging and become a revolutionary organization that will be wiped out in an instant, especially in the era of 9/11, with its plethora of snitches and intelligence agents, provocateurs, etc.



I want you to use your minds that God gave you and take your game to a higher level. Present your ten point program to address the pressing issues in your community. Present them on the national level, but do so with the backing of your people. Don't you think your people will be with you to end the violence, to reconstruct your lives and your community?




The only ones who will not be happy are the police and correctional officers who may lose their jobs from lack of clients. The international drug cartels won't be happy that they can no longer pimp you. Too bad!



You must decide do you want to save yourselves and your people or destroy yourselves and your people. You can't do both. We tried that in the Nation of Islam. Some brothers wanted to deal drugs, pimp, murder in the name of Allah, then bring the money to Elijah Muhammad. How can you destroy the people and save them at the same time? Make up your mind!



Whatever you must do to get the evil and hatred out of your hearts, do it, then get about the business of organizing yourselves into a force for change, real change, otherwise you shall see this society has plans for your permanent elimination. The universe is about to enter an new era, the beginning of a new cycle of time. And either you are going to be in time or out of time, the choice is yours.



Now what part of Revolution 101 don't you understand?



1. We want jobs at a living wage.
2. We want decent housing fit for human beings.
3. We want land that is minerally rich and adjacent to the sea.
4. We want reparations and assistance for the next 25 to 50 years until
we can sustain ourselves (just as you did for Israel and as you shall do for Palestine).
5. We want education minus the white supremacy curriculum.
6. We want a general amnesty for all prisoners. 7. We want to secure our neighborhoods ourselves, minus racist police.
8. We want exemption from service in imperialist wars.
9. We want membership in the Pan African Union.
10. We want freedom for men, women and children to express their spirituality, minus physical, verbal and emotional abuse and brutality.
--Marvin X



1/29/10

1 comment:

  1. Brother Marvin,

    It is one thing for a writer to describe a situation or a social phenomenon. It is another thing for a writer to show us a situation or a social phenomenon. Clearly, you have achieved the latter with your "Parable of the Gangsta." In vivid detail, your parable has given us a piercing look at social conditions faced by young Black men in many neighborhoods across Amerikkka. Your parable also reminded me of what I saw as a young Black man raised in a Georgia housing project. In addition, your parable reminded me that we must all do something to transform those social conditions.

    Yours in solidarity,

    J. Vern Cromartie

    ReplyDelete