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    A Dollar and a Dream in the South Bronx: Coming up in the Boxing Mecca (Part II.)

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    Going to battle in 2012 with a titan of an opponent in Dorchester, Massachusetts.
    Neem Blackgod
    Neem Blackgod and I won the Golden Gloves Fighter of the Night in Queens, NYC on this February night in 2003.

    Going to Battle

    In the winter, the boxing faithful trained entire months in below-freezing weather because the slumlord and the gym owner did not care that the heater was broken. Taking a shower in a filthy, frigid locker room, posed even more of a challenge. The pugilists tip-toed to the edge of the shower, took a facecloth, wet it and padded themselves down quickly. The only other option was going to work or going back home or to the shelter dirty.

    There were summer days, when we sweat so profusely that we slipped on our own perspiration. It was Ninety-eight degrees outside where there was at least muggy New York City “fresh air.” Trapped inside, we didn’t even have a small window for the ventilation of air. There was not an AC or fan in sight, yet no one complained. We got it in regardless. For the rest of the day to make sense, the mentality was to invest two hours in myself and my craftsmanship.

    Violated

    One night I went to war with a true offender. After the bell rang in the fourth round, bang bang Larz Chapman hit me twice. The slick fox timed it perfectly after the bell. He was mammoth, sly and tough. Soon after that fight, the police carted him off to jail for another sexual harassment charge. The next day Coach Too Smooth showed me some newspaper clippings. Larz was a convicted rapist and they were returning him upstate to jail. He’d just done a bid for fifteen years on a rape charge. I remained perplexed, wondering if I still would have fought him if I knew his background?

    The perfect juxtaposition to this deranged demon was a gentle giant named Elijah Thomas. Elijah had earned the name “Tyson” because of his raw strength and power. A lot bigger than Tyson, he was 6’2, 275 lbs. A monster! He came across as the meanest pugilist to climb the ladder into the ring. He struck fear into anyone that crossed his path. His competition openly wondered: Does he know how to smile?

    We sparred together over the years. One day on Westchester Ave, I was handling him after three rounds and he was tired. I climbed over the top rope as was my signature entrance and departure. I prepared to descend the steps down from the ring.  My trainer called me back. “One more round.” It was a test of my bravado. What could I say but “Ok for sure?” You don’t question your trainer. Saying no was akin to admitting defeat.

    I danced around until the bell almost rang for the end of round 4. Boom! I don’t know if it came from heaven or hell, but Elijah’s fist-bludgeon knocked me out. I sprang back up out of instinct, still only partially aware of what happened. The bell rang. What a shot! I gave him a pound and finished my workout, shaking off the blow and downplaying the knock-down. The entire gym stops when someone gets laid out like that.

    Two days later, I was folding laundry. Ahhhhhh I twisted to my right but couldn’t twist back.  I had two herniated discs on the right side of my back. I couldn’t stand up straight for three months.

    A few months later, I walked down 3rd Ave and “Tyson” was handing out brochures for his church. His smile and faith lit up the dilapidated intersection where 149th St., 3rd Ave and Melrose Ave. meet. He handed me a flyer about salvation and the coming of Christ. I asked him if the pamphlet would save his opponents from his deadly right hand? His response proved that he did know how to smile. As I walked away, it dawned on me. I had beat up a rapist but been knocked out by a 7th Day Adventist. Life unfolds in strange ways sometimes.

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    I have a love / hate relationship with boxing. I love the training but when you have to go to war, there is a lot of anxiety. This was a war with Jimmy Torney in Dorchester, Boston. An ample man, he was 6’8″, 250 lbs.

    Trauma

    There are many old school, punch-drunk fighters, champions whose star has descended.  Like veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, once their careers are over, most boxers struggle to re-adapt to “civilian life.”

    The boxing world trains you to be one-dimensional. Young scrappers coming up think they are going to make it big but only one in a million penetrate the top ranks. A man-child touted as a future champion from day one may never learn another craft.

    In Frederick Douglas’ memoirs, he recalled how the masters barred their slaves from learning how to read and write but forced them to wrestle and fight for their enjoyment every Sunday. This observation can be applied to oppressed communities today. Where does America draw its greatest point guards, running backs and heavyweights from? The vast reservoirs of oppression that dot this boundless land.

    “This is all I know”

    It is tough to exit the fight world. In the words of Vito Corleone, “just when I think I am out, they pull me back in.” There is rent to be paid.  There is child support, insurance, AT&T and Foodtown. For many, trading blows to the jaw is their only vocation. There is a price to pay: Parkinson’s Disease, trouble focusing, the jitters, memory loss, slurred speech etc.

    Smokes was a fifty-year-old veteran who wandered around the gym, asking repeatedly, what day is it today champ? His other favorite question was “which way is the Social Security office?”

    A former Olympic Silver Medalist, Weasel, repeatedly screamed out “Black Power! Puerto Rican Power!” He raised his fist like he was still on the podium in Mexico City in 1968, awaiting his medal. He had endured hundreds of civil wars, resulting in compromised nerve and muscle function. I asked Weasel one day: “If you could go back and do it all over again, would you? He responded: “Of course not. What else would I do? This is all I know.”

    Anger Management

    Many nights, there were more fights outside of the ring than inside. 57-year-old, former top middle-weight contender Edwin Viruet fought the entire gym and I’m not talking about sparring. Apparently, he didn’t believe in retiring. Every day he picked a fight with somebody. Teenagers or grown men, he was a jerk to everybody. If he wasn’t bragging about his fight against Roberto Duran, he was antagonizing somebody. That’s how Edwin is.

    Police on patrol visited the gyms daily, sometimes to admire the sweet science from ringside, other times to take our colleagues away in handcuffs.

    One night at the Harlem PAL I was in the final round of a fight against a Puerto Rican heavyweight. A brawl broke out in the crowd. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a torrent of bodies flowing to the right; then the human stampede redirected its course to the left.  Fans flocked towards the melee. Others ran for their lives with children tucked under their arms. This was all in the background. I had an opponent I had to hurt, lest he hurt me. The riot squad barreled in. The police escorted out hundreds of spectators. I fought on, scoring a technical knockout. As I embraced my tough opponent, I noticed almost no one was engaged in the fight in the ring. Even my own mother and aunt were involved in a squabble, forgetting who had trained for years to squabble that night.

    After my first fight in Madison Square Garden, I walked around shaking hands and taking pictures. I was all smiles even though I lost a close fight to Shane Stewart. Suddenly a fist fight broke out up in the nosebleed seats between two wildebeests. I was ringside but still carried my one-year-old son Ernesto away from the chaos and made sure my family was safe.

    The spectators were loaded up with liquor; the adrenaline was flowing. Beer-bellied fantasizers ran up the steps to the top row for a piece of the action. It was like a clip from a movie. A former heavyweight — known around the neighborhood as Pooda Stay Paid — could not stay away from the underworld of hustling, was incarcerated and left boxing.  That night, Pooda stole the Garden’s thunder and made his last stand. A torrent of suburban pretenders — fueled by liquid courage — raced up the steps for a crack at Pooda.  One by one, they were turned back by his right hand and hurled over the seats to their demise. The former champ sent the lumpy bodies flying over the section of blue seats. It looked like something between “The Three Stooges” and a set of dominoes falling one after the other.

    IMG_1567
    This is the crew on the set of the Liam Neeson & Ed Harris movie “Run All Night.”

    IMG_1562

    Motherless

    Larceny was a stone-cold, heartless competitor. Actually, he was no competitor; he was a killer.

    Larceny’s father was stabbed in front of him when he was an infant. His mother blamed him and treated him like some subhuman species. She made young Stevie (the young boy had not earned the nickname Larceny yet) eat out of the cat litter and prohibited him from using the bathroom if she was in a bad mood forcing him to wet himself. Ultimately, she abandoned him. Foster Care shuffled Stevie from home to home. Reared by the streets and taught to fend for himself since day one, Larceny never developed human emotions.

    Larceny became a career home-invader. His ring style and home invasion style were one and the same. A one punch knockout artist, he never threw combinations. He preferred mighty sledge-hammer blows that put his victims to sleep. Hardened, he ate other men’s punches for fun. Distrustful of everyone, he showed up to fights himself. He refused to let anyone work his corner. He didn’t believe in warming up and working up a sweat. Larceny said that his father’s murder was his warm up.

    It was one man versus the world. His career path reflected his callousness. A wrecking crew unto himself, he didn’t work with or socialize with anybody. He hired younger girls to ask for beers and lure unsuspecting homeowners off of their porches. By the time they realized it was a set-up, he had snuck through a back window and taken a seat on their couch, gripping an ice cold corona and his ice cold .45 magnum. His signature style was to stay seated and laugh at his victims when they scurried back into their homes to discover there was a new lord of their living room.  If the victim was white, he laid them out. If they were black he gave them a pound (handshake) and said “You Black. You get a pass n&^%$.”   This was Larceny’s own unique form of exacting reparations. He took everyone’s ATM cards. In this, he did not discriminate. If you gave him the wrong pin, he promised to come back for a follow-up visit.

    Still undefeated, Larceny disappeared from public view six years ago. Was he dead or locked up? How many hapless victims were devoured in the path of the hate that hate produced? Would we ever hear from the embattled Stevie again?

    Havana’s Redemption

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    cuba

    Alamar is an urban neighborhood composed of large apartment complexes in the far east of Havana.  The neighborhood was built up in the 1980’s in collaboration with the Soviet Union to provide modern housing for military and civilian families.  The visitor easily loses himself in the labyrinth of 10-story buildings that hug the ocean thirty minutes from Central Havana.  In some ways, Alamar reminded me of the South Bronx.  Families gathered together outside their buildings to picnic and share versions of the day’s events.  Children ran freely from playground to playground, inventing games and inventing life.  In other ways, the imagery was completely different.  There were no tales of drug abuse, wanton violence or police brutality.  There was a sense of social peace that would seem a fairytale in the Bronx.

    I walked the streets with a poet named Guevara.  He showed me an apartment wall that were reserved for graffiti artists to show their work.  My eyes zoomed in on one collage.  Someone named Stalin had written: “I’m Stalin Don’t Mess with me.”  Just above this playful warning, someone had inscribed the Nike swoosh logo.   The perfect contrast!  One of the ultimate symbols of the portending capitalist advances into Cuba vied for space with the autograph of a young man who was named after one of the chief representatives of a diametrically opposed social system.  We stopped to analyze the curious juxtaposition and Alamar’s future.

    Guevara explained how he admired his country and its dignity and that he also admired me and how I lived.  He said I was free to wake up any day and get on a plane and travel to any far-off-place that I chose.  He reflected on how he aspired to see, taste and inhale the world’s many scents.  In a moment of great lucidity, we both shook our heads in disapproval of the world we live in –a world of haves and have-nots.  In the Northern hemisphere, those -who are to some degree- free to travel the world, rarely do because of fear and everyday survival.  Meanwhile, in the South how many brilliant souls would leap at that first opportunity to board a plane?  The economic order however does not afford them this luxury nor do the Northern “democratic” countries allow them to freely enter.  So many contradictions.  So many encaged spirits.

    We kept walking the maze of apartment buildings and Guevara introduced me to his crew.  Alamar is considered the birthplace of Cuban hip hop and is a hotbed of creative, youthful Cuban talent and art.  Guevara was part of this scene.  I was first in East Havana 12 years ago, when I stayed with Omni Zona Franca in the summer of 2001. Omni Zona Franca is a collective of rappers, break dancers, poets, sculptors and what seemed like every other genre of artist under the sun.  The cultural activists invited me to share my poetry that Saturday night at a gathering where people came to perform their work in the living room of one of the collective’s founders.  There was great cheer, wine, stanzas, dialogue and caldosa, a traditional Cuban stew with beans, vegetables, spices and a hodgepodge of other ingredients.  It is true that Havana brings out the artist in all of us.  It was an honor to be back in Cuba.

    Cuba2

    Guitarists, b-boys, scribes and singers performed their work.  I followed a young woman who read about her experience as an Afro-Cuban woman navigating age-old stereotypes that were slow to die.   Midway through a poem on the legacy of our ancestors and their resistance, one of the rappers named Balexis rose from the crowd and lunged towards me, clutching the flesh of my arms before leaping into my chest and screaming out that tonight he had been summoned to resurrect the cimarrones.[1]  Caught by surprise -mid-verse- I tried to peel him off of me as he was aggressively squeezing himself into my chest.  Was it part of his act?  Was he serious?  Was this 5’8; thickset dark-skinned escaped slave sent to redeem his people before the foreign guest?  Or was I too invoked by the spirits to walk in the memory of Antonio Maceo, Lemba, Dessalines and Nanny the Maroon?  My poem had inspired his “episodes” -as his peers later called them- but none of this was clear to me at the moment.  I just wanted to breathe.  I banged Balexis up against a wall trying to force him off of me but he was glued to my chest blaring out about our common forefathers.  Two of the other performers, Nilo and Amaury sprang into action and wrestled Balexis off of me.  They restrained him and tackled him to the ground, dragging him into a back bedroom.  I was left before the crowd of onlookers wondering if this was in stride with the spirit of my vignettes.  I finished performing with the ear-piercing screams of the Black man, his historical plight and redemption filling the Havana night, the perfect background to my poems.

    When we had all finished, in a sort of impromptu collective therapy, the participants shared their own horror stories.  Balexis’ epileptic attacks took the form of exorcising his internal maroons and siccing them onto whoever was near.  Several artists repeated “que fula” or “how crazy” but explained that they never took it personal as he had no control over his sudden tantrums.  One story made us all keel over with laughter.  Several weeks before a delegation from Havana’s city government visited Alamar to respond to a proposal for investment in one of the neighborhood’s cultural centers.  When Balexis did not recognize the delegation touring his territory, he flipped out.  The spirits were again resurrected.  He hurled himself at the humble city officials chasing them all the way back onto the state bus that had delivered them to Alamar only two hours before.  What an image!  Alamar’s greatest defender chasing Communist Party officials in and out of playgrounds and buildings as they raced for cover under a hail of flower pots.  The city’s official response to the collective’s proposal would have to wait.  Coñó Asere!  It was good to be back in Cuba.[2]  I wished everyone back home and across this wide world could have these travel opportunities that Guevara and I appreciated so much.

    [1] Maroons

    [2] Cuban slang for Damn Brother.

    I Stay Blessed Up: The Streets of Kingston

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    I Stay Blessed Up

    The traveler seeks guides, adventure, companionship & human affection. “Do you want to crash here for a night?” “Would you like to stay for dinner?” These words are music to the ears. Without local wisdom I have nothing. My journey is aligned with the energy that surrounds me.

    The traveler longs for a place to stay and quite naturally for new acquaintances. There are times I’ve set out without knowing anyone on the other side of the seas. This is part of the anticipation. To enter into a distant land knowing not a soul…to leave an entire family behind. Meeting new friends and establishing life-long relationships…this is the traveler’s mission.

    Hotels are a last resort. Hotels are cold, isolated, expensive places, the stomping ground of tourists. Tourists want nothing to do with the people beyond the services they have come to expect from them. I would highly prefer to contribute some money to a family’s dinner and collective merriment than to squander it on a hotel. This strategy has worked wonders from Casablanca to Cartagena, from Belfast to Belo Horizonte.

    The University of the West Indies

    A few days before arriving in Kingston, I reached out to the Guyanese and St. Lucian Youth Councils –with whom I had worked before- to see if they knew any student and youth leaders in Jamaica. Two contacts in Georgetown and Castries initiated a Facebook chain message that instantaneously linked me to eight Jamaican student leaders. Who would respond? Who would be available to build? The anticipation mounted.

    Kordell responded a few days later. He offered to meet me at a lecture I was attending at the University of the West Indies on “African Liberation in the Humanities” given by Dr. John Ayotunde Isola Bewaji.   I hoped that he would recognize me on this massive campus as my chances of recognizing him were slimmer. I was overwhelmed at the awesome campus which hosts tens of thousands of students from 18 different Caribbean nations. After the lecture, a short, sturdy, balding young man extended his large hand to greet me: “Professor Shaw, I am Kordell.” We stuck around and mingled with the students and professors of the Philosophy department taking advantage of a buffet and good conversation.

    After an hour or so, Kordell offered to show me some night life around Kingston. We exited the auditorium towards one of the parking lots that dotted the vast Mona West Indies Campus. I stood in his way blocking the driver’s door confusing it with the passenger’s side entrance which is on the opposite side in the U.S. We jumped in his old Fiesta Ford, a steady-old jalopy.   He needed some petrol to keep us moving so that was our first stop. After putting in $2000 Jamaican dollars (US$20) of gas, Kordell asked permission to ask me a question. “Of course shoot away,” I responded. “Do you play Call of Duty?” “Call of Duty” I thought to myself, “what are we going to do tonight? Play video-games? Are you serious? I thought we were going out for a night on the town?” That gut feeling ran through me. After my pause, I told him “I don’t know much about the video-game generation but my 12 year old son certainly does.” “No, no, no Ah no I mean…” he stuttered. I was curious where this conversation was going. After more awkward stumbling around the question, he withdrew a 9 millimeter automatic glock from the back of his pants. The brief second appeared an eternity. “I have to let you know if we go out together in New Kingston, I carry this.” I cracked a smile and said “Well I appreciate that. But I was just thinking we would share a few beers and some jerk chicken. Something low key. Not any gun battles with local posses from Tivoli Gardens and Trenchtown.” “No, no, no” he responded diffidently. He was now embarrassed.

    “You see my father was working. He did security for private buildings near Cherry Gardens. He earned a mere pittance but worked hard his whole life. He never complained. He just did what he had to for all of us.” I again wondered where this was all going. He was staring off in the distance as he spoke. “He got murdered a few years ago. Some thieves tried to enter past a gate and opened fire on him.” He looked at his glock as if it was nodding back at him, “All dese bad man, that’s why I stay blessed up.”

    Tivoli

    Capitalism Kills

    Kordell continued with his story. He had dropped out of the university after the tragedy and was still trying to find himself three years later. He had stayed in touch with the Jamaica Youth Council in hopes of affecting positive change for young people navigating realities of violence and its aftermath.   The story was heartbreaking and made me think about how the contradictions of this society affect and harden peaceful people. The crime statistics in Jamaica are alarming. With 1,193 murders last year, it rates as one of the most violent countries in the world.[1] And who are the victims? Like Kordell’s father, everyday working class folks trying to eke out a meager existence. Protected on the other side of town, far away from Drewsland, Waterhouse and Tivoli, the rich don’t have to worry about being caught in the crossfire.

    Neither of us any longer had any appetite for nightlife. We just shared stories, ate some food and talked the night away. Having lost a sister and other family to drugs and violence, I knew I could be a good listener and source of strength for this young brother with his whole life ahead of him.   The tragedies -tucked away deep into the night- made me remember another reason I had traveled to Kingston.

    I grew up playing basketball with a kid from Kingston named Clayton. Exceptionally slight and quick, he was the point guard of our high school team. I remember he was a hustler too always trying to put food on the table for his mom and younger siblings. One foot on the court another in the streets was the motto he lived by. A few years after graduating he got caught up in retaliatory violence over drugs with some Cape Verdean kids who were also mixed up in the game. The cruel paradox! The sons of two displaced nations -forced to migrate to a faraway land alien to their being and interests- duked it out over crumbs from an international economic system that had monopolized the resources of their homelands. His retribution crime landed him a 10 year bid in a federal prison. The government then deported him back to Kingston.   I wondered if I could track him down so many years later but no one from the old crew had any leads. I shared his story with Kordell, left to imagine that Clayton may either be dead or in the General Penitentiary.

    The seemingly unrelated stories that accumulated that night begged the question of how many lives are unnecessarily stolen by this brutal system? Bob Marley’s eloquent lyrics beamed out: “Oh why can’t we roam? There’s open country. Why can’t we be what we want to be? We want to be free.” The silence had the last word and Kordell and I were left to ponder the insanity of it all.  We shook our heads at the whole design -a common melancholy and rage shared between us- until we drifted off to sleep.

    Old Harbor

    When I woke up the next morning he asked me if I was up for a little road trip. He offered to show me the neighborhood where he grew up outside of Old Harbor, a city of 30,000 an hour east of Kingston. When we arrived, we set out on foot around Old Harbor Bay a sea-side village where most families survived off of fishing.

    We visited some Haitian families who had left their homeland and arrived in fishing boats in search of better opportunities in another oppressed land, perhaps a few rungs elevated above theirs in Dante’s neoliberal inferno. The conversation revealed how the families had been in Jamaica for over 15 years but still suffered discrimination for being ‘foreigners.” Right on cue, two Mormons strolled by in their customary white shirts with a tie and a name tag. I playfully asked three neighborhood children “Hey who are those guys?” to see what my question would elicit. One of them responded “White man.” I thought well shucks I may as well be the same as them then but asked nonetheless “And Who am I?” “Brown man” the same tike responded.   I was proud to be of a different category than the missionaries. That was a first. This brought a smile to my face. Things were looking up.

    Kordell introduced me to his younger siblings and his mom who was turning 50 that day. He told me he was the lucky one. His brother Shane stayed behind to fend for the family. Kordell called him on an old track cell phone and he raced from the countryside on his bicycle. He was carrying two large sacks of coal and sweating under the blazing sun. Every day he rode an hour into the countryside to cut down trees and burn them for charcoal which he sold to families that needed it for cooking. He earned $20,000 Jamaican dollars or $200 U.S. on a good month.

    With the sun peaking above us, the humidity in the zinc-roofed shack was unbearable. I looked down in front of me and saw a crate full of plastic soda bottles full of green, blue and pink liquids. My mouth watered thinking about the milk-shake like beverage. I asked how much for a bottle? Shane said “one hundred” which is a dollar. I asked “which flavor is good?”  He said “they are all good.”  I picked one out and twisted off the cap tilting it above my mouth anticipating the quenching of my thirst before Shane’s mother intervened: “No! No! That is not to drink! That’s detergent.” The whole family laughed. That was a close one. Shane sold the detergent around the city. I asked him “How many jobs do you have? “As many as we need” was the working man’s answer.

    Farewells

    It was time to leave. I was traveling to Morant Bay to unearth the legacy of the legendary Baptist preacher and slave rebel Paul Bogle. I would stay with another wonderful family which had its own unique circumstances and struggles.  I shared this simple solemn human story to show how connections are made. I now had contacts and friends in towns I had never even heard of. Realistically, even if I could never return, how beautiful to be in touch with this humble family, the salt of the earth!

    The traveler discovers revelry but also tragedy, joyful escapism but also harrowing reality.   The trick is to roll with the punches, to be at one with the wind, to ride the momentum to see where it takes you. Upon departing in torrential downpours, Kordell and his family expressed worry that I would get lost. After a round of hugs, handshakes and mutual gratitude, I thanked them and told them “Don’t worry, I stay blessed up!”

    [1] Statistics provided by the U.S. State Department.

    Rasta Means Resistance

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    Rastafarians are present throughout the Pan-African diaspora, a living manifestation of pride in African roots and a direct link to the ancestral world.  There are thriving Rastafari communities in the Caribbean, Western Africa, Latin America and within immigrant communities in the US and Europe.  Beyond the Pan-African world, the influence of the Rastas is felt from the Pacific Island nations of Hawaii and Fiji to the Arab world to the inner-city neighborhoods of New York and London.

    Upon recently returning from Jamaica –the birthplace of this far-reaching culture, world-view and lifestyle known as Rastafarianism– I wanted to reflect on my groundings with a Rasta community.[1]  Rastas are misconstrued and misunderstood.  There are a host of misrepresentations that misinform the outside world’s view of this nation that exists within nations.  I will share some of my groundations with some Rasta friends and comrades in Kingston in order to challenge some of these misconceptions.  I don’t claim to speak for or understand the Rasta way of life. I am merely a storyteller sharing some of my experiences in order to offer a different perspective on some inspiring, graceful human beings I had the good fortune of learning from.

    Allman Town

    The portrayal of Kingston in The Jamaican Observer or in popular movies like “Belly” or “Shottas” is designed to strike fear into the heart of the visitor and keep them on the tourist path, with all of the consumer patterns this entails. My mission then was to navigate the streets of this city of over 600,000 people and develop an understanding of how social stratification plays out and how people live and survive in a hostile neoliberal economy.

    Contacts in other West Indian nations and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean introduced me to student and community organizers in East Kingston some of whom were Rastas.  We organized a community event in Allman Town looking at the overlaps between police terror in Tivoli Gardens and the South Bronx and the Black Lives Matter movement that grew out of this reality.[2]  Afterwards, some Rastas invited me to walk their neighborhood streets with them.  Rolling with this highly-respected crew was an immediate passport into the collective spirit of the community and provided me with a glimpse into these narrow, winding back roads miles, away from the Jamaica the foreigner is accustomed to seeing.

    The brethren saluted everybody as we strolled by neighbors who were parring.[3]  It was past nine o’clock and the streets were alive with music, children, spliffs, and neighbors cracking jokes and catching up on the day’s activities.  Families sold fried chicken with peas and rice out of make-shift kitchens in the front of their wooden homes.  I was hungry and the Ital food shack had closed much earlier.  Rastas prepare their nourishment with the utmost care.  They do not consume food that they themselves have not prepared from scratch.  Naïve as I was, I thought by ordering a vegetarian option I could share with the crew.  They would not accept any of the rice with peas, cabbage and carrots because of the oils, pesticides and herbicides that were mixed in.

    Spiritual Collisions

    Next we passed by an Evangelical gathering.  A hundred or so Pentecostals celebrated their faith on a main street adjacent to Heroes Circle singing hymns and listening to a preacher bellow about the salvation that awaited the true believer.  I observed the interaction of the two different spiritualities -–one inherited from the white world, the other from Africa– vying for influence, over the soul of Kingston. Herein lay the origins of Rasta faith as Kymani explained it: “A long time we see image a white god, white Christ. Dis a nuh owa God. Haile Selassie – di king of kings – di God of di black man. Him a fi wi God.”[4]  The religious ceremony practically came to a standstill when we walked by.  Those who had not stopped singing and chanting to greet the Rasta crew stared at us from across the street.  The back and forth and jesting was friendly.  Everybody knew each other.  After a five minute interruption, the good Christians gathered themselves back together and proceeded with their routine.

    Zebulun walked the streets barefoot.  He wanted to be as close to the earth as possible.  The concrete could not deter him.  He had not worn shoes in over three years.  The Rasta is a free man, perhaps among the freest to roam the earth, not bogged down by white beauty standards and products, white illusions and white gods.  He knows where he stands in the Babylon system, on the margins as far removed as possible with no intention of integrating into a burning house.  He prefers to exist outside of the shitstem, unencumbered by the burdens of the market economy.[5]  To the extent that he can, he subsists of what he himself produces.  Communal living is a sharp antidote to the exploitation that characterizes human relations today.

    The locs are the most visible sign of natural, unapologetic Black beauty.  The crown is a rejection of white beauty standards.  Some elder Rastas –-contemporaries of Bob Marley– explained that the anti-colonial Mau Mau fighters were the first to adorn the dreadlocks.  Images of the guerrilla fighters in the bush first reached Jamaica in the 1930’s and inspired what would become the ultimate symbol of the Rastas.

    I was proud to be part of the dignified, distinguished band.  We attracted attention at every turn.  The youngsters wanted to join us.  We passed by a corner where six or seven women played bingo with their children, inventing makeshift games close by.  They beckoned for us to come by and share a few moments with them.  We swooped in to exchange some gentle banter.  I took advantage of the opportunity to inquire about the Gully & Gaza divide.  They explained that there were two famous reggae stars Vybz Kartel and Movado and how their rivalry sparked the dividing of different hoods into spheres of influence that supported either Gaza (Vybz and the Portmore Empire) or Movado (Cassava Piece).  One teenage girl referred to Vybz as “the world don.”  Lost in the Patois, I asked her why she thought he was “a moron?”  My complete misunderstanding spawned laughter.  But following up on “the moron” misunderstanding, I brought up the skin-lightening creams that are used in Jamaica and that Vybz Kartel himself infamously used.  Some of “da yute” shrugged it off as a stylistic choice, parroting Vybz’s line that it had nothing to do with self-hatred.[6]  Zebulun took us deeper to the source of the issue evoking the memory of Marcus Garvey and the centuries-long struggle to recover a Black self-image that slavery and the post-slavery economy had waged war on.  The conversation again proved to be fascinating and they pleaded with us to stick around, but we were off as quick as we arrived.

    “Every man a smoke his own spliff”

    Our next stop was a local tavern.  Three veteran dreads downed some beers in between puffs of sinsemilla.  Carrington –-who rolled with the righteous crew but was not a Rasta– wanted a drink.  He mixed a shot of vodka with an energy drink called Boom.  Rastas don’t consume alcohol.  They patiently puffed away as Carrington enjoyed his drink, explaining that the police still parade in and harass them for their time-honored tradition of smoking.  The state still stops, frisks, harasses, fines and arrests them for being who they are.  What are the fines but another tax on poor people’s very existence?  Though the enforcement is not as draconian, the harassment takes place against the backdrop of the Dangerous Drug Laws of decades past which landed scores of the Rasta faithful in General Penitentiary.

    Rastafarianism requires a lifestyle of great discipline and faith.  I come from a family that has abused marijuana and used it as a numbing of the senses, a way to check out and escape social reality.  The Rastaman utilizes the cannabis plant to smooth out the world’s tensions and glide deeper into his own spiritual harmony.  The cannabis of the Jamaican mountains was pure and untampered with.  In contrast, we here in the US smoke the McDonalds’ version of marijuana, coated with chemical additives. The long-term effects from a habit-forming addiction and a guided spiritual practice are very different.

    Never a smoker myself, I promised some faithful weed-puffers back home that in the course of my travels through Kingston, I would inhale a hit or two on their behalf.  When I jumped in the corner cypher, the response was uniform and swift: “Each a-man smoke him own spliff.”  There would be none of the passing of the blunt as we are accustomed to seeing in the states.  Good lesson learned.  I had no need to smoke after all.

    Having traversed so many topics that night -–both at the formal gathering and now in these informal streets gatherings– I returned to a question I had posed to Rastas in Havana, Port-au-Prince and Chaguanas: “What do you fight for?  What is your ideology?”  The responses turned into a history lesson that I am anxious to share with the reader.  While the youths claimed to be non-ideological and to pledge allegiance only to the Conquering Lion of Judah, some elders delved deeper into the question.

    Coptic Cooptation

    Nothing strikes fear into the hearts of the island status quo like the agitation of the sufferah.[7]  Benjamin was in his early 60’s.  He described how the ruling class has invested a great amount of calculated effort into ensuring that the oppressed -–the sleeping lion– remained in their slumber, languishing in silence and conformity.  The 1865 Morant Bay rebellion and the 1938 St. Thomas strike proved to British capital and the island’s managers that the mobilization of the producing classes signified direct consequences for those who profit off of “order and tranquility,” that is the order of the propertied and moneyed.

    It made me think of Dr. Walter Rodney –-the Guyanese Pan-Africanist and revolutionary– who came to teach at the University of the West Indies at the height of the Black Power movement which grew internationally and among the African-American people.  Rodney urged the sistren and brethren to differentiate between the ideal of a heaven-on-earth kingdom and the reality of the African village and its systematic interruption by white settler colonialism and its African collaborators.  This tension persists today between idealism and materialism –-between the Rasta who maintains faith in Haile Selassie’s pending divine intervention and the political Rasta who insists on fighting for Black equality in the here and now.  In 1968 the Minister of Interior referred to Rodney as “the greatest threat to the security of Jamaica.”  An apolitical Rasta was acceptable –and even promoted– but a politically-charged movement united across Rasta and non-Rasta lines for Black social redemption was too much of a threat.  Because of Rodney’s “dangerous” interventions in the neglected gullies, he was deported and banned from Jamaica, resulting in rebellions across Kingston that donned his name.

    While the state repressed with one hand, they promoted and offered free passage to depoliticized foreign Rasta imitators with the other.  Historian Horace Campbell reflects on the attempts made by US and Jamaican intelligence agencies –in collaboration with one another– to infiltrate Rasta youth.  The Ethiopian Coptic Zion Church was based out of Star Island, Florida and imported into Jamaica.  This grouping of nebulous origins, placed all of their emphasis on the fetishizing of ganja and the idolization of Emperor Haile Selassie and veered away from the class-conscious and Black nationalist essence of Rastafarianism.  They were given a free hand to traffic drugs in and out of Jamaica, accumulating thousands of acres of land second only to American bauxite companies in terms of land ownership.[8]  Such importations were used to sow confusion among the youth, blurring the lines between genuine Rastas and impersonators of their styles and aesthetics, who selectively drew from the spiritual tenants of their belief system.  These imposters –masquerading as Rastas– functioned as mafiosos and religious zealots, contributing to the further misrepresentation of the Rasta as they carried out their own individualistic agendas.

    According to the elder Benjamin, the state’s message is simple; abide by our laws, practice your faith, don’t take up too much social space and the harassment will be minimal.  But resistance –-any challenge to our monopoly over the central economic arteries of this society– will be punished.  Dismissed as non-ideological, the brethren had a very political understanding of the challenges before them.

    RastaII

    Unleashing the Thunder of the Sufferah

    The Rasta was the pulse of the neighborhood, radiating out positivity wherever he roamed.  The sistren and brethren were highly creative.  Among their ranks were painters, singers, artists, composers; producing always producing.[9]  Burdened by the parasitism that lords over all members of the laboring class -–the landlord, the store owner, the police fines, the tax collectors, the supervisors, the boss, the foreign owner– the most humble still produce more art than any other class.  Where have all of the internationally-acclaimed reggae artists come from?  The gullies, the roots, the bottom, the ghetto.  The comprador bourgeois class –and the classes most directly influenced by them– have their sights set on London, Paris and New York and are dismissive of musical and aesthetic expressions which are manifestations of Black and African pride.[10]

    The Rasta to this day constitutes an oppressed, socially-maligned and stigmatized segment of Jamaican society.  But everyday they win over more trust and respect because of their happy, peaceful way of being.  Exuding warmth, life, optimism, eternal smiles and unity…this was a snapshot into the ancient soul of Senegambia.  I went to say goodbye.  One of the other brothers, named Unorthodox –-a writer and hip hop artist– put up his right hand and said “Lian Paw.”[11]  Above shoulder height, he interlocked his right hand with mine pressing his palm against my palm saying “Rasta nuh seh good-bye.  I seh good ova evil. I seh life ova det.”

    [1] Groundings are the Rasta word for building, politicking, and working towards a strategic end.

    [2] On May 23rd 2010 hundreds of police entered the Tivoli Gardens neighborhood in pursuit of a Christopher “Dudus” Coke.  Over the course of the next week they would go on to kill 140 Jamaicans in what would be known as the Tivoli Gardens Massacre.  Presently there is an inquiry into the excessive force deployed by the state and their foreign backers.  While the state puts the official death toll at 73, the community says that it is twice that.

    [3] Ours was a crew of men, hence the masculine pronouns.  Parring is a Jamaican word for hanging out.

    [4] “For so long we only saw the image of the white god, the white Christ.  This is not our god.  Haile Selassie –the king of kings- the God of the Blackman.  This is our God.”

    [5] The shitstem was Peter Tosh’s word for the system of capitalism.

    [6] The youth.

    [7] Sufferah is the Rasta term for the poor and oppressed.

    [8] See Rasta and Resistance. Horace Campbell. Page 115.

    [9] Resistance has brought change.  Many Rastas are now lawyers, doctors, journalists and the like.

    [10] Comprador refers to the local rulers who are beholden to foreign interests.  Sell-outs.

    [11] Lion’s Paw but pronounced as written.

    The Day Flatbush Exploded

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    Why did you Kill that Man?

    March 16th, 2000 was a day like any other for Patrick Dorismond.  He worked his shift as a security guard for the 34th St. Partnership and went to have a beer with a coworker after work at the Wakamba Cocktail Lounge.  He was in the best of moods because the next day was payday.  Upon exiting the bar after midnight, some middle-aged men strolled up to him trying to score some marijuana.  Patrick politely told them he didn’t do drugs and asked them to keep it moving.  They insisted that surely he knew where they could score.  The situation escalated until Patrick’s tone of voice rose and he warned the troublemakers to get lost.  The men were undercover NYPD officers -caught up in a movie of Cowboys and Indians- instructed to “bring in the dope-peddling good-for-nothings.”  Patrick -a Haitian-American whose parents had come to New York for economic reasons- fit their description and they planned to fulfill their quota.  Without identifying themselves, they attacked the security guard.  When Patrick defended himself –two other officers there for backup called “ghosts-” intervened, shooting him in the chest, murdering him instantly.

    Patrick D
    Patrick Dorismond

    To the naïve, it was a terrible isolated tragedy.  From the perspective of the Black community, it was police business as usual, what police have done to Black people for centuries.  Tonight Patrick would not go home to his fiancé Karen and their one year old daughter Destiny.

    As was customary, the political establishment attacked the victim, claiming the 26 year-old Dorismond was at fault.  The career-politician and acting Mayor Rudolph Giuliani told the press Patrick was “no altar boy,” never once expressing regret for the loss of an innocent life.  Interestingly enough, Patrick had graduated from the same Catholic school as the mayor, a piece of irony Giuliani chose to ignore.  As the funeral approached, tension was high between a community devastated by police abuse and a police department drunk with arrogance and racism.

    Would we Patrol your Funerals?

    Tens of thousands congregated in Brooklyn the weekend after Patrick’s murder to stand with his family and express their repudiation of the latest police slaying.  What began as a somber funeral procession generated momentum as it slowly rolled down Flatbush Avenue, a central artery of the Haitian community.  By the time the march reached the funeral home on Church Ave. it was impossible to decipher where the burial march began and ended.  The community stood as one mighty fortress.  The forces dressed in blue sensed they were increasingly outnumbered.  The air was heavy with grief and anger.  All eyes were on the thousands of police sent to patrol the funeral.  Young and old alike looked at their robotic faces as if to say “Why are you even here?  This is not your family’s affair.  Go back to where you came from and let us grieve.  Would we patrol your funerals?”  It was clear that Flatbush was on the brink of combustion and all it needed was a spark to ignite into an indomitable blaze of glory.

    The slap in the face that pushed people over the edge came in the form of yet another police miscalculation.  Vying for control, they led the lead vehicle with Patrick’s body towards the cemetery but attempted to halt the crowd of thousands who quietly and respectfully followed the casket.   A melee ensued and the police lines were pushed back as the furious crowd demanded to accompany their son on his final voyage.  What was one, two, three confrontations were soon hundreds of conflagrations that threatened to devour those accustomed to being in control.  The united police line was broken.  The intruders found themselves drowning in isolation until they were completely enveloped by the sea of fury.  White-shirted and white-skinned captains’ faces filled with panic.  Standing paralyzed before the mighty lavalas or tidal wave of popular anger, one police lieutenant spoke into every walkie-talkie he could muster up.  I wondered how that communication was heard at the local precincts and at the mayor’s office; “Send the entire precinct.  No! Send every precinct in Brooklyn.  No! Send the National Guard.”

    The terrain had shifted under the feat of the invaders.  The indigenous army grew emboldened.  Fear was not invited to this gathering and the ranks of the enraged swelled with fresh reserves of recruits who streamed in from surrounding streets. The police were fish out of water.  Every roof was a marksman’s nest, a staging ground to shower the NYPD in bricks and bottles.  With the blue reinforcements in pursuit, every door was an entrance into hallways that became Cu Chi Tunnels.  When the police closed in on their prey a door magically opened up snatching the children from their would-be wardens.

    How does it Feel?

    Reinforcements were called in on both sides.  It was army versus army on an open battlefield called Church Ave.  One army counted upon battalions who acted to collect their paychecks and appease their superiors.  The other militia counted among its ranks protagonists who sought to undo and transform years of humiliation into one united fist.  Everything became a weapon in the hands of the dispossessed.  A 15 year-old freedom fighter -born in Port-au-Prince but reared in Brooklyn- would later claim that Haitians were born with rocks in their back pockets precisely for these moments of self-defense.  The next line of police arrived atop a cavalry of misdirected mares.  Why introduce these poor creatures into a battle scene so distant from their birthplace?  In unison the multitude burst out into chant “Get those animals off those horses!”  Advancing forward the cavalcade sought to regain momentum but the day was ripe with surprises.  A young man-child armed with only some stones and a boomerang of colonial violence set the tone.  He ran straight at the approaching enemy lines, stopped on a dime then did an about face before dropping his drawers to the applause of the mighty crowd and mooning his enemies.  Perhaps it was not the cue the veteran street commanders expected but it struck a chord with the generation of youth warriors.  As if rehearsed, the cadre of teenagers saluted their oncoming foes with this perfectly-timed gesture.  The ultimate symbol of disrespect and contempt signaled a fresh fusillade of glass, steel and stone into the eyes of the police.  The horses were turned back.  The horsemen fell, reduced to a state of atomized desperation.

     funeralII

    In this carnival of liberation only smiles decorated the faces of our heroes.  The pendulum of confidence had swung from one side to the other.  This was the closest some would ever get to emancipation.  Power dislodged powerlessness.  Regardless of the aftermath, for that brief glimpse of eternity, broken men and men they sought to break were in control of themselves, of their environment, of their humanity.  Every self-assured smile posed the question: How does it feel boys to try to wade in the mighty current of the people’s wrath?  Those accustomed to swaggering around with full confidence now retreated in full sprints thinking of their own spouses and loved ones.  Were there heartbeats and human instincts beneath those uniforms and badges?  Past battles argue that no there are none but it rests upon future battles to address this timeless question once and for all.

    Our only Weapon: The Ancestors

    NBC news wanted to be the first major network to break the story.  The camera crew piled out of the news truck intent upon recording the situation and interviewing the balaclava-clad rebels.  They immediately came under fire from a group of young generals who bombarded the news truck with bottles and everything under the sun.  How the terror came alive in their eyes!  Sprinting in high-heals and Dockers cannot be easy but our guests made it look quite natural on that day. They sped off with shattered windshields and windows as fast as they had arrived without a hello or goodbye.  The masses burst into laughter waving Bon voyage!  as if to say surely you can misreport from a safe distance -up in your helicopters and in your air-conditioned newsrooms.  It is not safe for you down here were history unfolds.

    The roofs of parallel apartment buildings remained the launching pad for Flatbush’s resistance.   The phalanx of police were again on the run, a familiar sight that day and one of the finer sights the author has had the privilege of laying his eyes upon.  These were Haitian sharpshooters taking on the usual American snipers.  Antagonists and protagonists flipped roles.  The underdog was in control.  He would write his own Hollywood ending.  These were scenes from “The Spook who Sat by the Door,” spontaneous urban guerrilla warfare.  The last were first and the first were running for their lives, unseated from their bastion of condescension.  Bricks and rocks flew from the hands of every young Black man and woman who was ever been stopped, silenced, humiliated, frisked, harassed, insulted, spat on, imprisoned and murdered.

    How many years of accumulated rage detonated that day?  The mightiest of loves and hatreds intermingled in the clouds that hung overhead, a harbinger of a future on the horizon.  The ancestors had deposited an inheritance of truth-seeking in the hungry, willing veins of prodigal sons and daughters.  The Haitian offspring of legendary battles and epic victories taught us all a lesson. The daughters and sons of Dessalines, Kapwa Lamo & L’ouverture showed us who is invincible and who is vulnerable.  They showed all of Brooklyn and every ghetto in the world that we all have a Haiti within, searching for redemption.

    The Final Word

    The tale the author tells flows from torrents of tears and excruciating heartbreak.  The masses bid farewell the only way they knew how -assuring Patrick he had not died in vain- promising Guilianni to rashe manyok li –uproot him from office.  The latest police murder –coming on the heals of the abuse of Abner Louima and the murder of Amadou Diallo- forced the hand of the oppressors and flipped the script between the prosecutor and the defendant, the accuser and the accused, the hunter and the hunted.  “Our best organizers in the South,” the reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “are the police themselves.”  All too tragic and familiar the dialectical relationship between humiliation and the people standing up to say “We’ve had enough!”  Has liberation ever been baptized in anything but the blood of the oppressors?

    Our detractors tell us not to encourage or glorify violence.  Meanwhile under the hypocritical flow of their segregating tears and moralizing cliches, our people’s lives are stolen every day.  Nothing has ever slowed the oppressors in their tracks like the armed discipline and self-defense of the oppressed.  This does not mean that we rule out non-violence and civil disobedience.  These are all tactics in our collection of freedom-weapons.  Why would we limit ourselves?  In the words of Georgetown’s profit Walter Rodney: “the revolution will be as peaceful as possible and as violent as necessary.”  Only the dispossessed will determine which weapon is correct for each twist and turn of the decisive showdown with their brutalizers.  Those on the sidelines -comfortable with sermonizing- should stay right there as the people take center stage and make things right again.

    Two of Haiti’s Musical Greats are Political Clowns: The Short-Sighted Worldview of Wyclef and Sweet Micky

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    march-haiti-nov-2014
    March against the UN Occupation

    There has been confusion over the past few years about the sudden entrance of Michel Martelly (or Sweet Micky) and Wyclef Jean into the Haitian political arena. A brief survey of the political careers of these two mainstream Haitian musical figures, Wyclef and Sweet Micky, demonstrates which side of history and the illegal U.S./U.N. occupation they are on.

    220px-Wyclefjean2_(300dpi)
    Wyclef

    Wyclef

    Wyclef’s 1997 Carnival album rocked the musical and cultural world.  Haitian teenagers from around the diaspora lip synced the bilingual songs, emulating Wyclef’s Flatbush pace and swag.

    Pre-Wyclef, Haitian youth found themselves searching for reasons to be proud of being Haitian in the U.S.  Racist stereotypes abounded.

    In high schools in Brooklyn, it was common for non-Haitian students to use derogatory language about Haitians, such as the term “HBO” for “Haitian Body Odor.”  The US Department of Health blamed Haitians, Homosexuals, Heroin abusers and Hemophiliacs for the spread of HIV in 1986. The spiritual practice of voodoo was misconstrued to further discriminate against Haitians.

    Reeling under the circumstances, many Haitian students tried to pass as Jamaican or West Indian to escape from under the yoke of 500 years of accumulated colonial ideological aggression.  Wyclef helped forge a proud Haitian American identity.  This is part of his reflection in “Sang Fezi.”  “Yele” is about Haitians forced to leave Haiti in precarious makeshift rafts, with the dream of making it to and in Miami.  Wyclef equated “the boatpeople”–as they became known in Kreyol–to the exodus of the Jewish people in the Old Testament.

    An American Dreamer

    While Wyclef has made noteworthy cultural contributions, he has a long history of lining up on the wrong side of the struggle back home in Haiti.

    Wyclef came out as pro-occupation, supporting the 6,600 United Nations soldiers who have imposed foreign rule over Haiti since June 1st 2004.  Reminiscent of Napoleon’s invading army of hundreds of thousands two centuries ago, the UN soldiers repress the democratic aspirations of Haiti’s people.

    Wyclef family opposed Jean Bertrand Aristide, the twice democratically elected and twice-kidnapped president of Haiti. Aristide’s true crime was that he inspired, led and galvanized Haiti’s poor. Had Aristide been willing to play politics with the good ol’ boys, he would not have incurred the hatred of Haiti’s true rulers. The right wing attacked Aristide–as they have the leadership of Venezuela and Brazil–precisely because of his incorruptibility.

    To understand Haitian politics today one has to begin with the admission that the Aristide, was kidnapped in an illegal, U.S.-orchestrated coup on February 29th 2004.  The international and domestic media campaign to discredit Aristide and justify successive coup d’etats was so thorough that it confused many observers.

    The 24-7 assault on Aristide polarized Haiti’s oppressed sectors.  To this day Aristide remains the most divisive figure in Haiti.  Why?  Precisely because he represented a radical departure from “ti sou sou blan” politics (American puppets). He demanded reparations for Haiti from the French ruling class. He used the church, ti-legliz, to mobilize the poor and rashe manyok, uproot the system. His slogan “From misery to dignified poverty” struck fear into the hearts of Haiti’s sweatshop owners and debt collectors.  From the perspective of high finance, Aristide was bad news.

    Whose Role Model?

    Wyclef is a role model for Haitian and American youth. However, because he was divorced from the reality on the ground in Haiti, Wyclef was converted into a star-strangled American dreamer.  In Ghosts of Cite Soleil, Wyclef–in between taking jabs at Haiti’s leaders of the poor–painted the picture that anyone with a vision can make it in this so called “land of liberty.”  He failed to see the connection between the pillage of Haiti by the U.S., France and the rest of the neo-colonial club, and the forced migration of millions of Haitians. Using his air time to mimic the same old cliches, Wyclef converted himself into a harmless icon.

    In 2011, Wyclef made a bid to run for the Haitian presidency.  His attempt to participate in this rigged process without even a murmur of the illegal deportation of the country’s rightful president was a combination of pure idiocy and avarice, reflecting how detached he was from Haiti’s history and current reality.

    Sweet Micky aka Haiti’s “President”

    pic_668The president of Haiti, Michelle Martelly, is standing proof of the corruption and greed exercised by “(s)elected officials.”  The forces of U.S. occupation have put many jokers into power across the world–from Mobutu to the Shah–but this puppet is uniquely obscene and insulting to the intelligence and dignity of the world’s people.

    “Sweet Micky”–as Michelle Martelly was known for two decades–was the “president of Haitian kompa” music.  He was considered by many to be a comedian and Haiti’s number one crowd-pleaser.  Notoriously lewd and filthy in his sense of humor and expression, Sweet Micky, stopped mid-concert and went on cursing sprees.  He has albums entitled 100% kaka and 200% kaka, which translates into any language.   A short clip in English –in which the president’s face is blurred out, as if this disassociated him from his vulgar musical career–will give a non-Haitian audience an appreciation of how asinine, reckless and unprofessional this individual is.  Sweet Micky’s personality is the merging together of Andrew Dice Clay and R. Kelly.  And now he is president of Haiti?

    Michelle Martelly has no history in politics.  He was simply the latest stooge (s)elected to parrot what the powers that be wanted him to say.  A professional memorizer of teleprompters, not any different from most politicians.  His emergence as Haiti’s commanding official occurred in an election overseen by occupying troops in which only 16% of the Haitian electorate voted.  Parliamentary and municipal elections are two years past due in Haiti.

    Here is a powerful report that provides images of what the UN/US occupation looks like in Haiti.

    Understanding the “Basket case”

    CNN, the New York Times and other mainstream media craft reports making the Haitian quagmire appear to be home grown, distant from anything to do with the United States. Haiti is indeed a political and economic basket case, but one concocted in the offices and boardrooms of the State Department, CIA, United Nations and transnational corporations.

    2015 marks 100 years since the U.S.’s first occupation of Haiti.  There have been three official U.S. military occupations and countless other incursions to make sure the “right” people are in power in Haiti.  To relieve the puppet master of blame is to fail to understand the balance of forces on the ground in Haiti.  Solidarity with Haiti entails understanding its history and relationship to the (neo) colonial powers.

    Three years after the earthquake, the Struggle Continues

    All of the supposed “aid” that goes to Haiti is a joke.  It amounts to political symbolism so that highly placed politicians can hide behind a veneer of helping the population.

    The total amount of recovery money awarded in contracts and grants by USAID after the earthquake was $1.5 billion.  1% of this aid went directly to Haitian organizations; 56% percent went to firms located inside the capital’s beltway which covers DC, Maryland and Virginia (Center for Economic and Policy Research).  There are still over 85,000 Haitians without a home because of the earthquake.  300,000 more live in informal communities on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.

    For the shrewd vultures, tragedy and disaster is but another opportunity to swarm and feast off easy prey.

    If charity had a truly empowering effect, aid would be made illegal in Haiti.

    The social and political reality in Haiti is that when white missionaries sacrifice a week to go “develop” Haiti, they are labeled heroes.  When Haitians sacrifice their entire lives to develop their own homeland and lift the poor out of poverty and dependency, they are labeled communists and executed.

    The underlying tragedy in Haiti is the 500 year-long colonial earthquake that has not allowed it to emerge from under the dominion of foreign powers and achieve Dessalines’ and Toussaint’s dream: Self-Determination.  How important to expose to a Haitian-American audience Wyclef and Sweet Micky for who they really are–two political tools and nincompoops at the disposal of their masters in Miami and Washington.

    The Band of Brothers (Part I): Breathing into the Pain

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    The details and names in the following story have been changed to protect everyone’s privacy. Any approximation to real events is purely coincidental.

    Setting the Stage

    Paddy and Brendan wanted me to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with them but I was just not up to it.

    I had just broken up with Patricia that past week. I didn’t want to but I had to. Part of me wanted to hang on to that which never really existed but it was time to let go. Isn’t that the toughest part? The kisses, the poems, the lovemaking — wouldn’t it be easier to pretend things were ok? Just to hang on to the familiar and resist reality? I will always remember Patricia as a beautiful, articulate and sweet partner (well in the good moments at least).

    In true dramatic break up fashion, I listened to Johnny Cash’s “Hurt” over and over. In yoga class, I broke down. I sobbed in child’s pose, the tears ran down my mat. In the boxing gym, my jabs fell short of the punching bag, the wind was knocked out of me before I took any shots.

    Despite the pain there was an immense sense of relief. The old me would have hung on for months instead of putting a dead-end, co-dependent relationship out of its misery. I bid farewell with affection and with genuine hopes that Patricia could find healing and continue to grow. I knew we had to cut off all communication. This meant no more texting and talking on the phone so that it would really feel over and the healing could begin. I thought I had drawn a clear line in the sand but over the next three days she wrote me and sent me songs via WhatsApp, G mail chat, Facebook and Instagram. I had to keep redrawing the lines a few times after they got blurred. Taking space is never easy in the electronic age.

    Reframing St. Patrick’s Day

    The break up was fresh and St. Patrick’s Day was around the corner. I have never been a drinker and resent the narrow conception most Irish Americans and Americans in general have of this day. The Irish blood that runs through me is the blood of Irish rebels, political prisoners, hunger strikers and fierce guerrillas who refused to be assigned a second-class position before 800 years of British domination of their homeland. Stripped of its hallowed traditions, St. Patrick’s Day has been converted into the day jackasses have a pretext to perform their tomfoolery.

    It is important to remember the Irish were never white until well after they came to America. Back home the Irish were regarded as sub-human by the colonizer because they had a different native religion, customs, communal land ownership and language. Seeing the general pattern of behavior of Irish Americans today we see a text-book case of assimilation. The defiant, conscious Paddies are few and far between. The rank and file of police departments up and down the East Coast are notorious for being thoroughly Irish American and thoroughly racist. This sea-change of identity marked a people’s metamorphosis from being an oppressed colonized nation to being part of the arrogant, manifest-destiny-driven status-quo. This is the chauvinism we seek to challenge.

    One evening I was approaching an Irish pub for an after-work function with a colleague who was an African-American poet and performer from Kentucky. When we were a block away from the pub she said: “Uh oh. I don’t have a good feeling when I see that flag. Too many insults.”

    Wow that hurt! I wanted to explain to my colleague what the assimilation process entailed. The underdog of yesteryear had ascended on the social totem pole and assumed their role as scapegoater, toeing the oppressor’s line, a jump across the pond. It pained me to hear of her experiences which I had witnessed too many times myself. The Irish flag had turned into its opposite in the U.S.

    Who are we?  Who have we become?

    We are more than this.

    st patricksSt Patricks

    Lest we forget that the blood of great Irish rebels flows through us.

    james connollyBobby_Sands_Funeral II

    A Test of Wills

    On that bitter cold Sunday in March, Paddy and Brendan were persistent. They knew they couldn’t lure me in with beer and cheer but then they mentioned that they were going to a Republican bar. Republican in Ireland has nothing to do with Donald Trump or John McCain. An Irish Republican is someone who believes in one united Ireland, not in the partitioned Ireland that has existed for 400 years. An Irish Republican then is a believer and defender of one indivisible Irish Republic free of foreign control.

    Our band of brothers were both Irish-American veterans of Desert Storm and shared some of my Irish nationalist, anti-imperialist sentiments. They definitely had their reactionary side but I saw them as two potential movement contacts and mentees. They urged me to shake off the memories of Patricia and have a night out with the lads. I promised to make a brief appearance that Sunday night but I was in no position to socialize and enjoy myself. That is the worst thing about break ups and obsessions. You get so mired down in the quagmire that everything else in life temporarily loses its beauty. Besides I had to teach the next morning at NYU (New York University).

    I arose that day in cleansing and healing mode. I awoke to a run, meditation and reading. I studied before I went to the 4:30 p.m. 145th St. Bikram Yoga donation class. The other classes are $25 per class but there are two classes per week where you can crumple up a few single dollars, place them in a glass jar and be part of the privileged 104 degree lot for 90 minutes. After a long shower at Bikram, I went to visit a yoga instructor friend in Astoria, Queens. I was on Day 5 of a fourteen day cleanse and she had homemade kombucha and fresh-pressed juices. We talked, cleansed and stretched. It was now nine p.m. I felt better. I felt light and high-off-of-life after the fresh-squeezed juices of apples, cucumber, lemon and ginger.

    Break Ups are Tough. No one is invincible.

    I headed to Maspeth, a neighborhood that is in on the border of Queens and Brooklyn. I entered The Gin Mill pub with the intention of making an appearance and then returning to my mind’s obsession, the break up.

    My buddy Paddy was already inside, a few “drinks to the wind.” He knew I was struggling. He began to lecture me about “playing the field” and never getting attached. I laughed at his twenty-eight-year-old-ness. Those who were afraid to be touched would never completely open up and give of themselves. Those who live with fear only get to feel a fraction of the life and love that is before them. I promised him his day would come. When he least expected it, he too would run the gauntlet of love, pain and break-ups.

    And sure enough a few years later that was precisely what happened. He had met his match and found himself equally distracted, demoralized and depressed. What are break ups but growing pains, rites of passage and an essential part of being vulnerable and being human? They are difficult as you go through them but they will strengthen you for the rest of your life. There is no way out of it but through it. He pressed some drinks on me but I still was not tempted. He knew I was a vegan — or what in Ireland some of the lads called a berry-picker — so I wanted to keep my reputation intact.

    The Volunteer

    It was just after 10:30 p.m. when Mooch and his family came into the Gin Mill. Mooch was the nickname of a legendary IRA man who participated in an urban guerrilla war in Belfast in the 1980’s. The natives who signed up for the IRA — sacrificing their lives for the cause — were called volunteers. For a decade, Mooch lived on the run sleeping in different safe houses, evading British paramilitary outfits and prosecuting the just war. War-weary and hardened, he knocked back drinks like there was no tomorrow. He was playing the guitar and singing rebel songs in a circle formed with his wife, daughters, family members and friends.

    I was honored when his family invited me to take part in the singing.  When there was a pause in the melodies of Irish unity and rebellion, I shook some hands and learned from Mooch and another veteran of “the Troubles,” the name given to the past 30 years of war in the occupied six counties in the north of Ireland. They told me about the different factions that emerged out of the IRA once Gerry Adams had struck a deal with the Unionists and the British government. They cursed out the Sein Fein leaders and everyone who had compromised what they had fought and sacrificed so much for. When I posed a question about “Northern Ireland,” he grabbed me behind my neck and told me he had not done 11 years in Long Kesh prison for anyone to refer to the north of one united country as a separate entity. In an avuncular, mentor-like but brusque way, he impressed upon me that “There is only one Ireland son divided for so long by those who never cared about us who have been there generation after generation.” He then gave me a few hard approving slaps on the shoulder and offered me a pint.

    He pretend spat in his hand and extended it to me. We hugged each other lost in the revelry. Here was a titan who had given his freedom and lifeblood to the cause of national liberation. What could be more special than making a toast with a man who had been a confidante of Bobby Sands, Brendan Hughes and Mairead Farrell?

    ira

    Beer was the last thing on my mind but I was not going to reject it from an IRA man. The first beer tasted like pure ecstasy. Remember I didn’t have even a trace of a starch or a grain in me. Before the glass was empty I was elevated to another world. That is the advantage of drinking while cleansing. I was the quickest to feel the effects of the alcohol. Little did I know, the first beer was a tipping point. I was about to embark upon a journey from which there was no turning back…

    The Band of Brothers (Part II): The St. Patrick’s Day Massacre

    4

    The Momentum Shifts

    Mahoney the bartender shared the news our other mate Brendan could not make it. He roared into the phone:

    "The old ball and chain put her foot down boys. I can't escape tonight but the first $100 of drinks is on me."

    Brendan put $100 on our tab, making us promise to make good use of it. For the next two hours,  Mahoney fed us Guinness and Jägermeister shots. My claim to discipline drowned in the good cheer and flowing drinks. I took a seat on the bar learning the words to songs that told “the Brits to stick their decommissioning up their arse” and promised to fulfill “the sniper’s promise.”[1]

    As a make-shift rebel band assembled to play more songs, another friend Michael stood up and challenged Paddy to a contest. I watched on a they traded blows to each other’s rib cages. It was a spontaneous bare knuckle punching match. I aspired to be sober and at the top of my game when I threw punches. I wanted no part of their bravado contest. The band of brothers bruised one another’s ribs for the fun of it. This was truly an Irish pastime.  Mooch pushed another pint my way, yelling over the music

    “What are these tinkers up to? These gypsies don’t know how to act do they.”[2]

    Hardened Hearts

    I looked over at another middle-aged associate of Mooch who they called Meatsy. He too carried his fair share of colonial scars. War-torn and bitter, Meatsy took his wounds out on the night, talking to himself and punching the bar. Mooch filled me in:

    “They stew up like a kettle at the bar do they. All these emotions are pouring out. Ya don’t know what they been through. Torture, home invasion, the families interrogated, waterboarding, seen his best man get his brains blown out in front of him.”

    The images took me back to Managua where veteran Sandinista leaders who had survived an American holocaust also drowned their battle fatigue in drink. Too many of yesterday’s war heroes are today’s alcoholics. The war is over but victory is still distant; the anger burns the heart’s memory.

    Bredan Hughes

    Brendan Hughes, “The Dark” legendary IRA commander of West Belfast

    Never Drink on an Empty Stomach

    The hours passed; I was in an altered state of consciousness. I walked out of the pub for fresh air. When I stumbled outside, a young woman made her way down the block, smoking a cigarette. I faintly remember she had piercings and short hair with some green streaks through it. It was impeccable timing because there was not another human soul for miles in those icy, unsympathetic streets. I saw the smoke ascend from her lips in the punishing, acrimonious winds.

    What happened next is a blur. I asked the stranger if she could drive me home. I forked over the keys to her and sat in the passenger’s seat of my Jeep Cherokee. As she pulled off, it occurred to me that I had no idea where we were going, why I had left my compatriots and who was driving my car? I asked if she could kindly park to our right. We had only driven a few blocks. Fortunately, she obliged. I didn’t comprehend what was transpiring. I was a prisoner to her intentions but fortunately she was as much of a free spirit as I was. She handed me my keys.  I asked her if she wanted to join us inside the pub for some Irish music. Paddy was chuckling outside smoking a fag. As we walk back in I whispered to him “Weren’t you going to intervene ya bastard?” Smiling he replies: “Nah yas were having the time of your life. Too many cooks spoil the broth.” I walked back in accompanied now by the young woman who appeared to be Puerto Rican or Latina. She was now apart of our festival of Irish liberation.

    My head was spinning. Mahoney had a slice of pizza left over. I gobbled it down. Paddy wanted to keep drinking and singing but I begged for mercy. By now, Mooch had adopted the girl from outside into our circle. Her name was Stephanie; she was fascinated by the singing in Gaelic. She asked me if I could teach her the Irish language. I could barely stand up much less teach her a language I knew three words in. I yelled out “Tiocfadh ár lá!”[3] Paddy intervened and professed to be a master of our ancestral tongue even though he did not have but the same three words under his belt. Wasting no time, the imposter and charlatan rattled off pure jargon: “Ock-er, cloc-ker, fivemiletown mahogany banister.” He then spouted out the names of some other types of wood, some carpentry terms and Irish freedom slogans. Stephanie was duly impressed. She wanted to hear more. What else could our man pull out of his hat?

    At some point, Stephanie stood up from the bar stool to use the bathroom. She never came back. She had disappeared as fast as she had arrived. Perhaps the Irish gaiety was more than she had bargained for. I looked over at Paddy “What’s the craic? Where is she?” He shed some homophobic light on the situation. “Ahh she had piercings and short hair. Must have been a dyke.” Even in my inebriated state, I remember being taken aback by his remarks. I look at him as if to say where do you come up with this stuff? Who even uses these terms? But I couldn’t muster up the ideological strength to challenge him beyond that.

    The time had come for us to make our exit as well. But not before Mooch, Meatsy, Shank and the crew had unfurled a Union Jack (a British flag) and paraded us outside to set fire to it. How lovely to see the flames ascend over the butcher’s apron! A fitting last gesture on what was a fine night.

    There were endless pleas that we stay longer. Two sixty-year-old Republicans —  Squeely and Plug — questioned my manhood and Irishness for not drinking more. I felt so noxious by then that not even James Connolly himself could have kept me in that bar. We said our rounds of goodbyes and headed back out to battle the cold.

    An Inglorious Exit

    Luckily, Paddy and I were less than fifteen blocks from his basement studio. It was a four or five minute ride. If we had any sense about us, it would have been a ten minute walk. But there was no common sense or clear thinking to be found in the crisp, late winter air. The drink was in and the wits were out.

    We were mangled. I handed him the keys and put my seat back to try to sleep off the hideous head-spinning.

    When I opened my eyes, it was like British flying saucers were headed straight at us in the oncoming traffic. Over the next two hours I would intermittently wake up, ask Paddy to pull over, open the door, throw up half in the street, half in my Jeep, then toss my head back to sleep again. What is remarkable is that I remember doing this some five or six times. And every time I asked the same question “Our fella, how far are we from ya spot?” Every time, Paddy’s answer was the same: “It’s right up here.”

    The truth was the bastard had no idea where he was going. We didn’t advance. We were headed back in time. We only got more lost. One drunken sailor was leading another further and further out to sea. The sun was beginning to rise and there was still no sign of his street. I was supposed to be in the classroom at NYU in another four hours to teach Race, Ethnicity, Class and Gender.

    After a two and a half hour voyage — through half of Queens and Brooklyn — we made it. Paddy wrestled me out of the car and dragged me into a room he rented with two Indian lads and threw me on an old couch. I wanted relief from one of the worst feelings imaginable. As I drifted to sleep, I wondered if I had undone all of the yoga from the day before? What about my cleanse? I set my alarm. It was 6 a.m. and I had to lecture at 9:30 a.m. in Manhattan.

    The Drums Weighs Heavy the Day After

    When the alarm sounded, I struggled towards the shower. I was a mess but had to somehow facilitate my class. I saw Brendan’s texts: “How she cuttin’ ye big cunt? How was last night?” I wrote back “ya evil bastard you. I never felt so hung over in my life. I’m going to kill you.” Brendy’s next text said “Well as long as no one is dead or in jail sounds like yas had a fine night lol.” That about summed it up.

    I offer 1.000 apologies to the American reader but the word “cunt” is only 1/800th as offensive in the Irish tongue as it is here in the states. Because everyone is a cunt in Ireland, your mother your father your uncle and everyone else. It’s playfully used among friends.

    After fumbling around the bathroom and splashing cold water in my face,  I wondered how I would find my car? I roamed the streets for over thirty minutes going up and down the parallel and adjacent streets until I found my car parked half on a curb, half blocking someone’s driveway. There was a $135 orange ticket under my windshield wiper for the infraction. Fuckin Paddy! And where was our trustworthy chauffeur? I had no idea where he ended up sleeping.

    What a night! How the band of brothers made my pain go away that night. A hangover will definitely distract you from the pain of a break-up. The boys did for me what no amount of yoga or Brazil nut milk could do. The whole thing was cathartic.

    I made it to class only a few minutes late. I gave my students some writing prompts and made sure not to make eye contact with anyone. I’m not sure where I was in the kaleidoscope of still piss drunk and hungover. ‘

    I looked out at the students. Two big smiles emerged amidst a sea of serious, reflecting writers. Brendan yells out “What about ya lad?” Did I fail to mention Paddy and Brendan were my undergraduate students at NYU? I don’t think they would ever see their professor quite the same again. I wasn’t sure whether I should give them extra credit or fail them after that unforgettable night.

    [1] Decommissioning is a reference to Good Friday agreement in which the British government and their colluding paramilitary outfits in the north of Ireland appealed to the “leadership” of the IRA to turn in their arms in return for political recognition and a seat at the table of neoliberalism. The sniper’s promise is a reference to IRA volunteers who –compelled by patriotism- were forced to leave home to defend their land and people against fascist attacks on Catholics.

    [2] Reference to Irish traveler families are popularly and disparagingly known as gypsies or tinkers.

    [3] Irish saying meaning “Our day will come,” as in Ireland will soon be free.

    A Dollar and a Dream in the South Bronx: Coming up in the Boxing Mecca [Part I.]

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    Fighting Legends

    For the past 20 years, I have been training out of Betances, St Mary’s, Pops, Ft. Apache, World Wide, Juan Laporte’s and John’s Boxing gym. There were seven gyms within a three-mile radius of one another in the 10455 zip code of the South Bronx — the Boxing Mecca. Many have since closed down.

    So many memories emerge from these sites of triumph and tragedy, grit and struggle. Diametrical opposites meet in the boxing gym — heroin addicts and heroic world champions, convicted rapists and proven role models, sneaky snakes in the grass and stand-up, loyal friends. Here PTSD-afflicted veterans of the invasions of Vietnam and Iraq, prostitutes, single-parents, thieves, hustlers, 9 to 5’ers, murderers and the ghosts of the murdered come together. You name it — the good, the bad and the ugly — we’ve seen it and we’ve lived it. This is not hyperbole. This is the environment that has given birth to some of the greatest fighters to grace the canvas.

    I have strung together a collage of photos and memories so that the reader can enter into our small world — where everybody knows each another. What a journey it has been! I have come a long way as a fighter, father, and man since my first fight at Kingsway Boxing Club in 1999 against a 260 lb. brawler. My story is one of passing from mentee to mentor.

    How many local and international legends have come out of these gyms? Here is a sprinkling of the names of warriors who honed their craft in these bare-bones gyms on a daily basis: Kinda “Bombaye” Issouf, Emmanuel Gonzalez, Keith Tapia, Stivens “Superman” Bujaj, Joshua “Hitman” Clotty, Juan Celin Zapata, Nisa Rodriguez, Sadam Ali, Danny Jacobs, the Livingston brothers, Eddy Gomez, and Joseph “King Kong” Agbeko. In the entries that follow, I will take you into the ring — where the young gladiators do battle— but also into the back streets where they came of age. I divided up the “Dollar and a Dream in the South Bronx” series into six rounds, or entries. When the character portraits are less than flattering, the names and details have been changed to protect the privacy of our protagonists.

    IMG_1392IMG_1397IMG_1395

    Madison Square Garden 2005. I was the Daily News Golden Gloves fighter of the Year. I received $10,000 for this fight.

    454
    Fighting a former Golden Gloves champion out of Morris Park Boxing Club.
    1473
    The best part of a fight — when it is over and you can exhale and reflect on all of the hard work that went into it.

    Puttin’ in Work

    Whenever I am lacing up my boxing shoes to work out, I tell myself “Time to put in work.”  For a fighter, entering the gym is like going to work. It is not a choice but a necessity. Don’t analyze it too much or you might lose steam and never make it in the front door.

    When Gary came out of prison after a bid for heroin possession, his first stop was the boxing gym. He came out of jail 40 lbs. overweight and without a dollar in his pocket. I remember shadowboxing and wondering if he had a chance to make it.

    Four months later his Riker’s, starch-filled belly was gone. With his six-pack re-solidified, he was ready for a fight. Gary received $800 bucks for a four rounder. He lost but the check earned him some temporary breathing room.  The only money in boxing is high up on the totem pole. Gary was back in jail two months later for possession. This is not Rocky.  This is reality.

    Killing Ourselves

    Little Soto lived in a shelter. Every day in the gym, he fought for both his sanity and a shower. One late summer evening after Soto finished his sparring session, he felt on top of life. He had just received money on his food stamp card so he sent a younger fighter to buy a bunch of food and drinks for everyone in the gym. The delivery boy disappeared and never returned. Little Soto went into the streets with vengeance in his eyes. There were efforts to restrain him and explain that going back upstate to jail over $50 was not worth it but vengeance prevailed.

    A shoot out ensued two hours later on 3rd Ave. and 149th St. The statisticians chalked up the numbers. They added another Puerto Rican to the murdered list. The state sentenced another Puerto Rican to serve life in prison.

    Oppressed people specialize in killing one another. Cowering before the insurmountable conditions that tower over them, they take out their anger and pain on those who are closest to them. The boxing world is just one microcosm of a world where unemployment, addiction and humiliation cut people down on a daily basis.

    1335
    Boo Boo Smooth and I “getting it in” on a cold January day.  In the Bronx, no matter how bitter and cold it is outside, the fighters heat it up in the ring.

    1325

    IMG_1844
    This is legendary Cuban fighter and my trainer Lazarro Almanzar. I’m proud of Lazarro because post-fighting his weight increased drastically. He lost 50 lbs. in the last year making more conscious decisions about his “jama” or food.  Stay away from those chicharones y tostones asere!

    Haiti: Politricks Time Again (Part I.)

    52
    haiti
    Resistanz

    Located a few hours north of Port-au-Prince, Lestè is an area of Haiti that has been periodically ravaged by droughts, hurricanes and flash floods. There are stories of families who have ate dirt cookies to get through the famine. The geophagists warn of the damage that this can do to young tummies without asking why families are forced to resort to these survival tactics in the first place. Never is there any mention on CNN or in USA Today of the five-century long colonial earthquake that has shook and ravaged Haiti long before the natural disaster that occurred in January of 2012.

    I first came to Lestè in the year 2000. I had met a Haitian friend Widson Etienne who was studying at a monastery in Santo Domingo where I was a teacher, journalist and organizer.  We worked together in defense of Haitian people’s human and constitutional rights in the Dominican Republic. He invited me to travel with him and meet his family in Haiti. We developed some curriculum together that exposed Columbus and the rest of the colonial bandits for the rapists and tourists that they were. He had invited me to dialogue with some peasant organizations who were struggling against the privatization of their land. I learned a great deal from Widson’s family and community.

    Though I had fond memories of my visit, I was not able to return to Widson’s village for many years. This past summer I found myself back in Haiti doing work against the U.N./U.S. occupation. It dawned on me that I was only a few hours north of Lestè. I was not able to call or give any advance notice to Widson’s family of my arrival. I thought “Well what the heck? What is 14 years in the grand scheme of things?” In a city of only 40,000 someone is bound to know someone.  Otherwise I can just make some new friends, right?

    photo (11)
    Lestè

    Reunited

    A pickup truck — functioning as a bus — transported us across a bridge marking the dividing point between Gonaive and Lestè. The bus ride reminded me of the fascination many Haitians have with foreigners. There are a number of reasons for this.  Haitians have been taught they are inferior. Many people see migration to the US — or really to anywhere outside of Haiti — as the only way to save themselves and their family. An average American’s purchasing power is 100 to 300 times that of the average Haitian. Any interaction with a foreigner then is a step in the direction of hope.

    Many Haitians have only seen foreigners in the World Cup or in a movie so they would compare me to television personalities. Some kids said I looked like Zinedine Zidane — the Algerian soccer player — while others argued that I was a clone of Jean Claude Van Damme the actor. Haiti is good for one’s self-esteem in that way, you always get compared to somebody famous.

    The skies were overcast and I asked if they thought the skies would soon open up. “No.  It never rains here” was the reply. I forgot where to get off to find my old friends. I waited until there was a big gathering of people and I dismounted the vehicle. A traveling companion inquired if I know where I am going? I respond with a feigned confidence “Yeah I’ll figure it out.” I took three steps and asked a young man with headphones and a hoody if he knew Widson Etienne. His face lit up. “That is my uncle. Is that you Dan-yel? It is me Samson.”

    “Jackpot!” I thought. I knew I could track the Widson’s family but I never thought it would be that easy. It was almost a letdown. Part of the adventure is being lost in time, in another galaxy. Three steps and three seconds? I thought I would have to dig a bit more. Samson skipped his return to Gonaives to study and led me back to his family’s home.

    As we walked through the market, the cutest 2 1/2 year old baby boy appeared by my side and took my hand. An outsider would have sworn he was my nephew the way he latched on to me. “Where is his mother?” I asked Samson. “Why is he clenching my hand and walking with me?” Soon we were now 10 minutes walking from where I found him.  Samson told me his name was Ti-Ralph, laughing and assuring me “your new-found companion will find his way home. In Lestè, everyone knows everyone.” We picked up an assortment of Haitian fruits, including a watermelon with the seeds in tact which you can rarely find in the U.S. now-a-days.

    photo (10)
    Ti-Ralph

    We reached Widson’s home. I had not seen them in over a decade but they instantly recognized me. They welcomed me back into their home. I sat down and we began to reminisce. They asked me all about Widson and his beautiful wife and children in Hartford, Connecticut. They took me in like family. Neighbors and their children gravitated over to the house to see what the commotion was. A friend from far away was big news in Lestè.

    It was time for a shower. There are different notions of privacy in the countryside. Granmè or Nana Yvonne gave me a bucket of water and instructed me to bathe in a little makeshift chamber right behind where the children were playing and the adults were preparing dinner. I was just out of the view of three generations of a family and I was expected to shower?

    Tonton Makenley struck up a conversation with me about Haitian women as I bathed.  “Do you like Haitian women? How are they in bed? Sweet, aren’t they?” Highly embarrassed, I carried on with my shower. People were accustomed to having less privacy. Going to the bathroom was similar. People just didn’t look. Sometimes children wandered around out of nowhere and began to stare at me in compromising moments.

    No shower ever felt as cleansing as that bucket shower after taking on the dust and devastating sun of Okap Aysyen. A majestic peace came over me as I sat down to share some dinner with my long-lost friends and enjoy the evening serenity.

    A Quiet Night Interrupted

    Barely thirty minutes had elapsed when Tonton Makenley passed me a cell phone. Widson’s brother and other nephew motioned for me to bring it to my ear. I heard a familiar voice in Kreyol half yelling and half laughing at me on the other end: “You white bastard who doesn’t bathe you! Why didn’t you tell me you were going to Haiti you old vagabond! You have ruined my life.” It was Widson calling from Hartford, Connecticut.  He has discovered that I was back in his hometown. So much for my quiet entrance and departure. My cover was blown!

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    The essence of a revolutionary is their ability to stand up to bullying in all of its manifestations.

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