Share Brotha Amp

Fuck what anyone has the nerve to say

that we lynch ourselves from trees

1919 Red Summer, but this modern day

We ain’t lynch ourselves from trees

Full 2 16’s, for the bitches who wanna say

Issa suicide, lynch themselves from a tree

This why I keep a piece no KFC, every day to keep my peace

We was lynched simply for thinking we was free

Issa suicide the PD and the press say

Homicide investigation? They say no need

Goin be a riot ‘lieve me, oppressed have a say

They want so called Negroes pleadin

Fuck what anyone has the nerve to say

Fuck that horrid flag, the red is proof we bleed

Telling us we off ourselves in trees, it’s crazy

We ion lynch ourselves from trees

Y’all mad Melo stood his ground, free Anthony

Nevan Baker, Tasia, oh I can’t forget Reed

Nolan Wells, how many fams have to grieve

This is how it’ll always be, like fuck ya mean

I know some soldiers that’s down to bleed

Rob em, hold em so they can’t hear ya scream

soldiers like Nat Turner, ya know what I mean

When we come correct, ion wanna hear a peep

No sheets on heads, still killed Rashim (Carter)

No investigation done for Quawan Bobby

Black families sobbing, they’ll change the topic

Still haven’t shot George for what happened to Martin

Alarming, damn fuck this bloody amerikkkan dream

Bump any negro slipping the kool aid like a fien

Fuck the police, freeze em when they see my red beam

Don’t know much? / Just note that we don’t hang ourselves from trees

Share

Subscribe now

they see what you eat, what you read, what you see, even what you fiend

odd reason tho the school shooter, white domestic terrorists remain unseen

protect and serve tho, then shoot a black kid, gets a vacay and paid leave

crazy how quick a fucking traffic stop becomes a taped off crime scene

they see what you eat, what you read, what you see and even what you fiend

odd thing tho, most of these sick pedophiles somehow remain unseen

it’s a dream; to think the feds would actually do some investigating

they know who is responsible, it’s truly not as hard as it seems

Share

they see what you eat, what you read, what you see and even what you fiend

but still, can’t seem to put an end to child and the violent sex trafficking

it isn’t victimless, so it begs the question, who are they protecting?

which ones of the haves whom they protect is into this sick and disgusting thing?

they see what you eat, what you read, what you see and even what you fiend

surveillance state or not, here we must use all means necessary to defeat sick tyranny

flock cameras, fascist state and the capitalist’s control everything, still no fear in me

they see what you eat, what you read, what you see and even what you fiend

Subscribe now

- The Watchful State, Brotha Amp

This is a fully independent, reader driven works of art and literature. Please help any way you possibly can. Whether that be through simply liking this piece and sharing such if it resonated with you. Or if that would look like finding my Linktree in my bio and checking out the ways and links (PayPal, GFM, Kofi) you could possibly lend a hand. The more consistent contributions I receive, the quicker I can make writing and journalism my full-time job. Even with all of the things I plan to do it would be much easier for me to write full time then what I am currently attempting to do to no such avail. Thank You for reading this far. I greatly appreciate it.

love and blessings

As salaamu alaekum Wa rahmatullhi Wa barakaatuhu

Subscribe now

Poverty stricken, some will say gang affiliated

Who will cry for the little Black boi

Daddy missing and universally hated

Who will cry for the little Black boi

He’s not even famous, nah he’s just the latest

Who will cry for the little Black boi

Moms works 3 jobs, her ass off, still no paper

Who will cry for the little Black boi

Lynched by ‘friends’, the pigs say suicide made em

Who will cry for the little Black boi

Cold, abandoned, nobody running to save em

Who will cry for the little Black boi

White man’s roads, through the Black man’s homes

Who will cry for the little Black boi

The world ain’t meant for him, this will still fly ova most of y’alls domes

Who will cry for the little Black boi

Who will cry for one so hostile, so lost and alone

Who will cry for the little Black boi

Only noticed when he’s in the back of the end zone

Who will cry for the little Black boi

Or when he’s caught robbing, slanging, simply trying make his own

Who will cry for the little Black boi

Text, no call, shorty never even heard his phone’s ringtone

Who will cry for the little Black boi

Called a loose screw, but he’s just missing who?

Who will cry for the little Black boi

Ignored through school, now lives the motions on mute

Who will cry for the little Black boi

I always do, so I decided to write this poem for you

Who will cry for the little Black boi

Maybe you’ll cheer for him next time the entire world roots and profits when he lose

-Brotha Amp

I did not plan on writing this, perhaps maybe that is why it came so easily. I woke up this morning and on impulse, penned this 16-bar piece, perhaps that’s why it hit me so emotionally. I feel like I have been hit with a bag of emotional bricks. I guess that is all I can expect, therapy with non- Black people could never afford me…

“The white man will try to satisfy us with symbolic victories rather than economic equity and real justice.” – Malcolm X

WARNING: Images and the words contained in this article not suitable for people of all ages. Trigger warning, some images of mob lynch violence.

I was raised in a working class, somewhat middle-class household. I was adopted by a Black father who didn’t necessarily care about his identity or even his history. I couldn’t tell you how many times I would spit facts—historical facts about Black folks in Amerikkka or elsewhere—only to get a simple, casual, "Okay,” in return. Culturally, he may have been somewhat in tune, though unwilling to share freely. One cannot grow up in the Black community and avoid such knowledge, but one can definitely suppress it. I can now admit that this stunted my growth, stifling my identity and my understanding of how this extremely anti-Black world operated. I saw my pops seem to be most at rest, truly at home, relaxed, and comfortable with himself only when he was with his side of the family during our visits. To be honest, my father and I had our most serious “race” talk, only after the murder of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in February 2012. I don’t even believe race would have been mentioned in that conversation if I did not initiate it myself.

From a very young age, I loved to read and then that love led to a love for writing, and research. So naturally, when I learned about the last days of the Civil War in U.S. history, I practically ran to the school library and skipped a week’s worth of lunch to learn more. Through my own research—not the school’s history book—I discovered the day of recognition about the “last” slaves who were “freed” from plantations in Galveston, Texas, in 1865. From June 19, 1866, onward, the formerly enslaved Black folks of Texas and neighboring states would celebrate or recognize the day their brethren were freed. While I do immensely understand the sentiment, Juneteenth never made sense to me, especially given my study of the plight of African so-called Amerikkkans after the Civil War and the failures of the too brief and underwhelming Reconstruction.

How can one forget the struggle we still face to this day? Mass incarceration, police occupation, and mass surveillance in every single impoverished hood. We hold the present-day class distinction of being the permanent underclass of Amerikkka due to the massive gap in social and wealth inequality. Never being paid our owed reparations is only part of the reason this remains true. I see almost daily the bars placed on all of our communities. Inside them, non-Black people exploit Black labor and dollars, treating our youth like animals and receiving no time at all for their actions. Too often, this has meant murder or blatant discrimination that seems to always lead to death for a young Black person. So many of us are locked up—by the system, by our own alien environment, enslaved by capitalism, the wealth of such then and now, built upon our backs, convict leasing by another name. Why are we celebrating freedom when everything around us shouts the absolute opposite?

Black liberals—those whom I presumed never truly celebrated Juneteenth as our ancestors did—disgusted me when they cried in excitement over “Uncle Joe Crow Biden” making Juneteenth a recognized federal holiday. Symbolism: a word that only sounds correct when you spit it out like a bad taste in one’s mouth. Mr. Uncle Joe, I am guessing, did this to get some love and votes back from Black folks after saying, during his campaign trail, that those who didn’t vote for him just ‘ain’t Black’.

Can't sub today? Donate directly.

So now, until Trump finds out about it anda attempts to revokes it’s federal recognition, white federal agents who put our brothers and sisters in private prisons get the day off in the middle of summer to think of new ways to further suppress Black unity and progress.

I guess since I have learned all of this, I have rarely wished “a happy Juneteenth” to many Black people. I have accepted those who have wished it to me even less so. Brother Malcolm X’s quote, “The white man will try to satisfy us with symbolic victories rather than economic equity and real justice,” rings ever truer with this pathetic act by the federal government and administration. But it’s more than that, right? At the same time, Biden was giving weapons, funds, and military assistance used to kill Afro-Palestinians indiscriminately. At the same time, he was denying Haitian refugees at the border—refugees escaping a situation set in motion by the U.S. shadow imperialist empire assassinating a Haitian president and getting away with it using a private militia operating in Miami, Florida, of all places. Haitians were and still are trying to escape violence involving drones, so-called gangs, and private militias filled with ex-U.S. military service members—a situation that may not have happened if Amerikkka could keep its bullets out of leading politicians’ bodies. While this was happening, while Black and African people were being oppressed and suppressed by Amerikkkan imperialism here and abroad, Biden signed legislation—passed 415-14 in the House and unanimously in the Senate—that officially recognized Juneteenth as a federal holiday. Amerikkka is a hypocritical hellhole that decides to fund, aid, and profit from the genocides happening in the Congo , Rwanda and Sudan, while simultaneously attempting to celebrate “freeing” a race of people it continues to suppress to this day. The same federal government that could not pass an anti-lynching bill until March 29, 2022, is patting itself on the back for “freeing” its enslaved, unpaid, and downtrodden labor force, with no recognition of what happened to those formerly enslaved people after June 19, 1865. It is abundantly worse than a gesture of symbolism. It is amazing but not surprising to see how many of these neoliberal negroes tap dance, when it’s obvious that this, during times like these, was another example of the federal government playing in our faces.

Let us dive in further, shall we? The order that Major General Gordon Granger issued was never read aloud; instead, it was posted around the Texas town of Galveston Island. It took the Union Army more than a year to spread the word, and assuming most orders were not given out publicly but posted in areas of town where so-called Negroes gathered, the responsibilities of delivering the news to those “formerly” enslaved people were almost entirely left up to the slavers. Many enslaved individuals of this era were born under laws that made it punishable by death to be able to read. This is the same state, Texas, where, in the two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slavers killed nearly 2,500 enslaved people simply because they loathed the idea of these people becoming—or more accurately, “being made”—free. This is an example of how Texans thought about the enslaved Black folks providing them with free forced labor. So, what took place afterwards is truly not a surprise.

After the Proclamation, for roughly more than two years, many enslavers continued the Southern ritual of moving their enslaved people from state to state. But now, instead of doing so to escape debt collectors, they did it because Texas was the last state the Union Army could physically reach. Less than twelve years after Juneteenth, the Compromise of 1877 brought an end to the so-called Reconstruction period. Black codes, which were already emerging across the South, began to take shape in legislation, drafted at the whim of the newborn prison-industrial complex.

Almost immediately after the Civil War, Black codes were written into law to continue the slave codes that supposedly ended with the War. Taking advantage of the loopholes of the 13th Amendment—loopholes still exploited to this day—they suppress, threaten, and mentally lynch any Black thought other than fear. To maintain white dominance, laws were enacted to restrict Black freedom of movement, suppress potential Black political power and unity, and truly kill the life of African so-called Amerikkkans before it even began. Black codes were used to legitimize a profitable system of exploitative convict leasing (if the many murders of these enslaved so-called criminals didn’t greatly affect productivity). Make no mistake, this was born directly from the evils of capitalism the so-called ‘free market’, born out of chattel slavery. These specific Black codes kept wages low while industries such as cotton, tobacco, and companies like U.S. Steel, yes that US Steel, became ever more profitable as their products began to supply the global market and economy.

I need you to imagine and truly understand the plight of a so-called newly “freed” Black enslaved person here, so allow me to paint the picture. You are standing in front of a field, the midday scorching sun burning the soles of your feet. A field, thousands of rows deep of cotton, which you exhaust yourself tending day in and day out, from sunrise to sunset and then some. The only day of the week you get off is Sunday, so you can listen to out-of-context Bible verses telling you to obey your earthly masters in the here and now so you can have a place in heaven in the afterlife. You are not allowed to read that Bible; you have never even learned how to count to ten. Education is forbidden and brutally enforced. You are barely allowed to sing hymns after church service or on the field while slaving away, work that has never benefited you other than avoiding the whip you have learned to fear almost from birth. You have to whisper stories about a past life in Africa, stories passed down by word of mouth. With each passing generation, more and more of your homeland and its memories are lost.

Hushed rumors circulate of present-day tales of escape, revolts, revolutions, and war—war that was far away from the lonely plantation you have resided at since birth. All are fearful of being accused of spreading hope to your fellow enslaved people. The name given to you by your parents—who were sold off to separate plantations after your birth—is voiced only by the people who look like you. The only name you ever knew from your master or his overseers is “nigger” or “it’s Mr. Johnson’s slave.” This is your life, and this has been your story for as long as you can remember. You wouldn’t know how to begin to count the years you have been alive; and even if you could, how would you know the day of your birth from any other? This is the history of your people for as long as you know. You have long been too hot in the summer and far too cold in the winter, with just barely enough food so you’d be able to get up bright and early and work all day again. This morning, you had two stale biscuits to start your day. As you begin to stare emphatically at your fifteen-year-old daughter standing reluctantly by the cruel white man’s horse as his newest addition to his mistresses, you snap to as dark-skinned bodies, slick with sweat and radiating heat, shift in nervous energy all around you.

You thought you heard Mr. Johnson say that today was “the day that you have all been set free.” But this simply could not be true, right? The high noon sun and your hunger must have you swaying from heat exhaustion. Water break was not given today as it normally was on most other days. No-water days were used as a cruel way for overseers to punish the field hands for some perceived wrong supposedly committed by all the enslaved people. This must have made you light-headed, leaving your ears to mishear the words from the mouth of the extremely cruel man. Mr. Johnson begins to talk again, and you realize he is reading from a piece of paper in his hand, a newspaper you have heard called by the people who stayed in the Big House. There it was again! That strange word, “free-dom”… What on earth did it mean? You have heard of foolish but courageous slaves escaping from nearby, surrounding plantations, running and swimming north, dodging dangers at every turn, toward what they deemed “freedom.” You also know of your best friends who attempted an escape one late, moonless night. They made it no further than just before the front gate; then the dogs got them, and men on horses arrived shortly after, allowing the dogs to have their fun. They were then slaughtered, mutilated, and their dead bodies hung for all to see—for all who slave away on the field to understand the punishment for attempting escape, of even thinking about this so-called “freedom.”

To come to think about it… that day happened to be a no-water workday as well. You soon realize that this was different. The devil you knew only as a violent, brutal, and careless man was telling—no, informing—you that freedom was not something he could any longer take away from you. He could no longer use force to keep you enslaved on his property. Slowly, instinctively, you raised your hand. “Massa…,” you say, your voice trembling, for you know of many who were sent to the Deep South plantations, which was rumored to be worse than a brutal and quick lynching. At least you died quickly. All you know is that nobody, absolutely nobody you have ever met, has ever heard back from their loved ones once they were sold and sent South with heavy chains on their neck, hands, and ankles. “What does freedom mean, massa?” your mouth fumbling, your tongue stumbling over words you have never once uttered out loud before. Your eyes were still on your daughter but quickly looked up to see Mr. Johnson turn his body to meet your eyes. All you could see in his eyes was confusion and the look of one being distraught. But slowly, that strange alien look faded from his eyes and face… slowly he turned his horse without answering and rode slowly back to his quarters. Your daughter jogged behind him, not wanting to be left behind, not wanting to test this new “freedom” Mr. Johnson had just mentioned.

What would you then do with this news, this information, this unexpected announcement? What would be racing through your mind as you supposedly attempted to toll the fields again, one last time? What if this was a manipulative, ugly, and cruel trick done by those in power on the plantation to catch so-called Negroes in the midst of escaping? But even if this was true, what are the very limited options that would even be open to you? It’s not like you have an untold amount of savings stashed away under your cot. You have left the plantation where you were born on only two occasions. In those rare occurrences, you simply went to the next plantation over to help the other enslaved people serve the cruel white masters in some unknown holiday celebration—unknown only to you and your fellow enslaved comrades, of course. You watched with much envy, so much so that you could barely contain yourself as these devils—who whipped and killed other humans they viewed as property—filled themselves beyond content and had their way with far-too-young, enslaved house servants, as their wives sat watching with devious smiles. You would not know Alabama from Florida or Boston from Texas. Where would you go? How would you get there? While the famous Underground Railroad was still very much in service after the Civil War, what means did you have to contact them? Honestly, at this moment in time, until the start of the Great Migration, you had but three options truly.

You could stay on the plantation and become a so-called sharecropper, being taken advantage of in every way. This could be seen as the safest option, but make no mistake, it could very much end in a violent death. You will always be in debt due to fraudulent actions of white landowners, even in a year of good harvest, have no savings, and family life will be grueling and punishing. Basically, a slave by another name. You could take your daughter, maybe some honorable people you formed close relationships within the fields or slave quarters and leave the plantation. There will be more strength in numbers, right? But the question would still remain: what would you do then? While a few African so-called Amerikkkans received the promised forty acres and a mule, only a handful did actually see this form of reparations. Those who did were ordered to give it back to plantation owners after 1877 or risk the patriarch being slaughtered, lynched, and the same result happening—their family forcibly being made homeless. This leaves the third option: you strike out on your own. Leave the plantation and set your determined mind to meet those who escaped years before to the northern cities. Literally, be one of the first so-called Negro to take part in the Great Migration.

Share

Surely there have been others, of those who escaped before and those newly freed so-called Negroes, surely some were able to set up corners in these foreign, strange large cities where a Black man or woman could live peacefully, not discriminated against, suppressed, or silenced by the very real threat of white violence. Work, labor with dignity. Finally put all this generational trauma behind you, unaware that this trauma will eventually find its way into the very souls, minds and DNA of descendants not yet thought of. What if I told you that there were some northern and western cities that had worse lynch mobs—at times it seemed like the entire town was in on it—than in the South, where they killed a Black person every seven or so days at the height of the Red Summers? What if I told you that on your merry way to the North, you could be arrested for a simple vagrancy charge and sent back to work at the same plantation you just left, or at least one very similar to it? You would spend the rest of your life working off your debt, because aallah ‘aelam (الله أعلم)— “there is no way in hell” you’ll be able to work off what you owe to the courts for the initial charge. Just like that, you are one of the first convicts to be leased, a slave by the words of the 13th Amendment itself, and I assure you, they were not shy about killing you anymore than they were before.

While Reconstruction was never truly meant for the enfranchisement of African so-called Amerikkkans—it was truly meant to get the South’s economy back up to speed as a crucial pillar, the backbone of the early Amerikkkan economy after the U.S. so-called Civil War—a handful of our ancestors were able to become landowners, politicians, and build small, soon-to-be-thriving towns. Over 700 Black men held elected office across the South roughly five years after 1865. All were soon erased by the end of the Red Summer of 1919 and the brutal, shameless violence, pillaging, and murder dished out toward African so-called Amerikkkans and Black townships in the preceding and proceeding decades. White violence toward political organizing by so-called Negroes started when Union Army troops still very much occupied the Deep South.

These murderers took a loophole in the 14th Amendment, which explicitly states:

If this amendment seems familiar, it should. It is the same amendment Trump wants to strike down because of the birthright citizenship it gives immigrant families, including his own administration’s Marco Rubio. It is also the same amendment that gives us, African so-called Amerikkkans, second-class citizenship. In relation to what I am referring to now, notice how the amendment explicitly says NO STATE shall… It does not mention anything about private citizens acting on their ‘own’ whim. Private so-called militias—or as I like to refer to them, extremely organized lynch mobs, not to be confused with disorganized lynch mobs of entire white towns, which took place in the South as well as the North, where newspapers, mayors, and sheriffs participated or at the very least looked the other way intentionally while these lynches took place. As Brother Malcolm once said, “If you are south of the Canadian border, then you are in the South.”

Those Black so-called Amerikkkan towns that did escape this violent bloodlust, in the North or South, were wiped out by integration a few decades later, or developments such as highways tore apart formerly Black towns and began to “gentrify” Black communities a couple decades after that. Nevertheless, a very large majority of our ancestors did not leave the plantations they had been born on and lived on for multiple generations. Many became sharecroppers. Please note, this is a very loose term, because for all the hell all sharecroppers received—in exchange for providing labor and having very little, less than needed to survive—the treatment of so-called Negro “sharecroppers” was much, much worse. Unfortunately, although I wish I could, I cannot explain to you the entirety of the Black struggle just from Juneteenth, 1865, till now. What I can do is point you in the right direction if you wish to take a deeper dive. All the links placed in this piece will do just such.

Get more from Brotha Amp in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Freedom is in the eye of the beholder. You aren't GIVEN freedom much less than one being able to obtain freedom peacefully. So where does that leave us? We are expected to wave Amerikkkan flags (like the FbA, Foundational Black Amerikkkan), eat red velvet cake, and parade in the streets as if a federal holiday erases the centuries of broken promises, the loopholes still chaining us, unpaid labor and trauma and the imperialist white boot still pressing on Black necks at home and abroad. Juneteenth, in its current incarnation, is a mirror reflecting the comfort of the oppressor and not the liberation of the oppressed. It is a day for the nation to applaud itself while it funds death in Gaza, turns away Haitian refugees, and watches as our communities’ crumble under the weight of a prison-industrial complex born from the very Black codes that followed Granger’s order and in spirit, in step with the slave codes that came before such. We cannot afford to mistake a day off for justice, nor a proclamation for progress. Until we see economic equity, an end to mass incarceration, and a dismantling of the systems built on our ancestors’ blood and bones, we are not free—we are merely marking time on a plantation which has only changed by name. I understand the sentiment of WHY us Black folks feel the need to celebrate the day with every ounce of our soul. But the pleasures offered by the devil always will come with strings attached. This is one of those pleasures. The federal government which is responsible for A) the initial enslavement of our people, Black African so-called Amerikkkans and indigenous peoples. B) the same federal government which was unwilling to protect so-called Negroes after Juneteenth, until the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the US entering WW2 at the behest of such event. President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked his cabinet and inner circle, ‘What will our enemies use against us as means of propaganda?’. The overwhelming answer? ‘The treatment of the (so-called) Negro in the South'. But let's be real, the failure to protect African so-called Amerikkkans didn't stop there either. Every time the National Guard is called, it is used to then quell rebel, revolts and revolution. It is never to protect the people but businesses, suburbs and private interests of the state. This is overly apparently during the Civil Rights movement as it was during BLM and the Free Palestine protests of recent day. C. The same federal government which doesn't WANT to recognize or reconcile or pay reparations, to those descendants of enslaved people for any of what happened. We are supposed to accept this not as a result of symbolism and liberal grandstanding, but it took the federal government 42 years AFTER the deep south, Bible belt state of Texas to even admit that the day of Juneteenth has significant meaning to a large chunk of the Amerikkkan people. Tabien

Honestly. What do you want me to do? What do you want from me? Do you not expect this type of talk from me at this point? I can only speak the truth as I see it… I can only look at history throughout the lenses of dialect materialism with a rage of an African so-called Amerikkkan man. I for one do not want to see a Malcolm X day, a Fred Hampton Panther Day… not when the situation within this fascist state has most definitely gotten worse. Maybe that makes me biased. This being said, the truth is never that. All I can do, is sit back, tell the truth and shame the devil. Ameen

Give a gift subscription

#arevolutionisbrewing

As salaamu alaekum Wa rahmatullhi Wa barakaatuhu

…We will end this (third edition) by listing what I still need to obtain in Puerto Rico moving forward. I will also expand on what my short- to long-term goals are moving forward, in addition to going back to university. I also need to at least begin to better plan to be able to start my tour throughout the Caribbean and Latin America, potentially beginning with the small but vibrant island of Grenada. Stay tuned for the fourth edition, which will be my very first real time take on life, politics, and—too soon—observations on Puerto Rico will have finally taken shape. We will use dialectical materialism, a Marxist lens, in order to put into perspective life on the island and all things that go with this.

Some of my closest friends and supporters, who have followed me as I grew my last IG (around fifth or sixth overall) page to such an extent that I had amassed almost 13K followers by the time it was zucked—as the kids would say nowadays—have been with me through a lot. In the past year and a half or so, I lost my apartment of three-plus years. I then moved to Parramore, downtown Orlando. I experienced a horrible slumlord situation, so painfully corrupted that I soon began to understand why Paramore as a district will change incredibly in the next five to ten years, even more so in fifteen to twenty years.

I immediately jumped at the chance to stay on the couch of a newly met acquaintance. I did what I said I was going to do, and contributed what was needed. I was even able to just start to save before the situation turned swiftly anti-Black and extremely dangerous. This particular situation will be more deeply explained in the next Unmasking Liberalism edition. Due to potential security reasons, some names in this piece will be changed or omitted.

From this volatile situation, I became semi-homeless, moving from hotel to motel to motel to hotel with a rag-tag group of people I honestly didn’t like nor trust very much for many reasons after a short while. It goes without saying that I was the main, sole reason why we all didn’t find ourselves homeless.

To fast forward a little bit, so as not to magnify the minute details: I had been planning to go to Puerto Rico for a while. This most current raging fascist administration and my financial situation at that time were some of the few impersonal reasons. Not to mention my own eagerness to not only move from Florida—a state where I have lived most of my life—but also to begin to explore, experience, and most importantly, learn the socialist history of the so-called Third World, the Global South. Of course, it was made possible only by the most generous and repetitive supporters of mine—some comrades from all walks of capitalism and life—to begin this incredible, at times crazed and turmoil-filled journey, and to even be able to move to Puerto Rico. At times, the given support, these contributions, just to be able to feed myself while living homeless those last few months in Orlando, caused so-called friends, ‘lackvists’ as I call them or some “donors”—better described as liberals—to suddenly become distant and hostile. This is a complication that I still do not fully understand, especially when it comes down to housing. I nevertheless will try to tackle this in the next edition of Unmasking Liberalism.

Let us move forward in this piece.

Back in Orlando, instead of sticking around with thieves and drug addicts who didn’t even try to hide their intentions nor their willingness to slip in and out of their sickness, leaving me as the sole contributor. I decided against continuing to be used as an unappreciated tool that kept the entire band off the streets. I decided against continuing to waste so much money on hotels and motels—money and contributions that were meant to see me grow and get to a place where I could find stable footing. Rather, it was being wasted on two fools who would not do anything for themselves until you placed your foot down and forced them to do just that. It was not worth the stress, time and energy.

One man, Oliver, was someone living with the crew just trying to get by, that I slowly began to trust. He was a father, a small-town man not from the hot streets of Florida—no more than I am from Maine. (I refer to Oliver as such, or Isaiah, interchangeably going forward.) Around this same time, perhaps a short time before, I finally was able to connect with a potential host in Puerto Rico.

Oliver is a father, a recovering drug addict who had recently come home, if you will, when I met him, and who needed to find his way back to his son. A man with many flaws, as we all have. But a man—much more than I can say for some people. With my food stamps and the masses of people who follow(ed) continuing to support me and my revolutionary vision, I promised Isaiah that I would do all in my power to support us, to take care of us as we focused on survival. I just needed to live dirty in order to save more money rather than wasting it always on hotels. If he was willing, he would be fed without having to wait in line and be served slop or stale seconds. We would no longer bear the torment if having the two other clowns That we would find him a way home and me Puerto Rico. As long as we stuck together and watched each other’s backs, we would both reach our short-term goals. So, we walked.

I also had contacts and resources throughout Orlando to help me out whenever they could swing it, as well as programs like the Respite House—one which I cannot more highly recommend. Oliver and I clicked almost instantaneously, and saying this would be a gross understatement. We both played to each other’s strengths, which, for not knowing each other but for about a month, was impressive.

The first thing I did was sign up for a Planet Fitness contract. Cheap at the time to sign up, for the first three or four months of course, now having more important and other pending priorities, it has set me back continued several hundred dollars (random approved transitions on my Cashapp card when there is money sitting there) in unpaid fees simply for not entering the gym, on top of accumulated late fees. At the time, it allowed us a place to relax—most nights the gym was open 24/7. We even caught some shut eye if and when the right employee was on the clock. It allowed us to exercise daily as well, but most importantly, to clean ourselves after a hot Florida, sweaty day in the showers. So, we walked, all across downtown Orlando and then some.

I tried my best to send Isaiah to the limited resources I knew of from working within a non-profit, if you will, for the houseless. Oliver, without an official ID, needed to get back to Maine as soon as possible. His legal issues at this time also made this more difficult—or not. His probation needed to be transferred from Florida to Maine, where his tribe would be able to keep an eye on him. So, we searched, contacted different organizations, and I continued to grow online and raise money not only for our constant survival but also for expenses including airfare and everything else I might need to move to PR.

For a week or so, me and the homie slept in a tent in a park by a school in a bougie-type neighborhood where I thought would be one of the safest spots in Orlando. I was right a little too right. The police, or as I call them, pigs—about eight or nine so-called officers in at least four to six OPD trucks—pulled up on us one night right before we normally set up camp, put up the tent, and settled in for a long night of sleeping on the ground. I stayed silent. Of course, this is seen as defiance by most pigs. Oliver was able to talk them down. Please note although Oliver is mixed with Indigenous blood, his skin appears white to the world—red hair, some freckles. Clearly a small-town, country white boy. Especially down south in the heart of Florida, where most white officers are from and live in the surrounding area of Orlando—all of whom hold less than tasteful views when it comes to race.

They were “interested” in the bedding I decided to throw away because of its weight, due because of the recent rain. Any homeless person knows that if its usage is not immediately needed, it can either be stashed away or thrown away. You would have thought I made a drug drop or threw away evidence from a recent murder. I also did not want to say anything that would make the cops search any of my things, because I had at least an ounce and a half of weed, amongst other things that could lead to more charges. (Having bud to smoke while being homeless, allows to be to stay out of jail. I kept my hands visible by drinking Gatorade that I brought to rehydrate. Isaiah, while the pigs were running our names for any active warrants, explained that we were obviously homeless, that we didn’t want any trouble, that we were searching for a way quickly off the streets. The lead officer—you could tell by the number of times he asked, specifically me questions and threatened to escalate if I didn’t cooperate—replied to Oliver that being in city parks was illegal after dark and was punishable by a trespassing order and a fine. I didn’t appreciate this, and I did not try to hide it. But I did hand over my state ID after being told why I was being detained and did my best to pack without sudden movements and without sulking. We were eventually told that that we were ‘able’ to leave, that we shouldn’t be in public parks, especially in an influent area, as if being houseless and wanting a quiet and out of the way resting spot for a few hours a night was a crime of some kind. The pigs were most likely called by neighbors in those handful of nights that we stayed in that park in that tent. The pigs never asked to search any of our belongings, Alhamdulillah.

After this, our blessings continued to flow. We moved much closer to the gym and began to sleep next to other homeless folks near the downtown hospital. Oliver made contact with a resource that could secure him a ticket to his hometown in Maine. Without his official ID, he had to travel by bus, and he was more than overjoyed by this. Being able to get out of Florida and get back to what he is used to, to move closer to the motivation that will see him stay clean—off drugs and troublesome activities. I was elated for Oliver, seeing how far we had come in such a short time.

At this same time, ***** was messaging almost daily, even sending me a donation of twenty dollars once to help me out as best she could. At this point I didn’t know too much about her, other than what she had asked of me—that her political beliefs were supposedly similar to mine. I remember her suggesting that I come before or during hurricane season, but I do admit that I became delayed more than once for the same recurring reason: financially, I simply could not afford it. Being homeless, I could do the most random of tasks and jobs for money and did such, but consistent income was far and in between. So, I survived based purely on the belief of the people.

At the same time, I saw Big Oliver off, a blessed comrade sent me enough bread to truly get my journey started. After being able to relax and celebrate—if you will, a bit too hard, may I add—I was able to get a cheap deal on a hotel room for a few days to recover. I then successfully paid for my airfare, more than three hundred dollars, and tried to give myself sufficient time to set everything else in order. I was scheduled to finally take off near my pop’s birthday, which I saw as a sort of omen.

I had many things to get in order, including my cat’s paperwork, if you could believe it. Turns out, I didn’t give myself enough time. I still have multiple boxes of books, clothes, and other items that I eventually need to send for—in Orlando with a comrade. All too quickly, I said and smoked my goodbyes and was on my way. On a flight to the unknown—Puerto Rico—with my cat screaming on top of his lungs under, or next to, my seat for most of the traveling. Three hours or so later, as I was smacked temporarily by the actual tropical humidity—being from Florida—I had finally, after such tribulation, arrived.

-

Glossary

· Zucked – Slang for having a social media account (especially Instagram or Facebook) banned, shadowbanned, or removed by Meta’s algorithms or moderators.

· Slumlord – A landlord who neglects property maintenance and tenant rights, often exploiting low-income or vulnerable renters.

· Parramore– A historic district in downtown Orlando, Florida, known for its Black cultural heritage, economic marginalization, and ongoing gentrification pressures.

· Unmasking Liberalism edition – A reference to a previous or planned installment in this series, focusing on critiquing liberal politics and behavior from a leftist perspective

.

· Respite House – A all-inclusive house, a non for profit, temporary housing program for people experiencing the stresses of life, a place where one in Orlando can find some reassurance, rest or simply some freedom; the author recommends it highly.

· Pigs – Derogatory slang for police officers, common in radical leftist and anti-authoritarian circles.

· OPD – Orlando Police Department.

· Dialectical materialism – The Marxist framework that analyzes social and economic change through the conflict of material forces (e.g., class struggle) rather than ideas alone.

· Marxist lens – Viewing social, political, and economic issues through the theoretical framework developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, emphasizing class, labor, capital, and historical materialism.

· Global South – A term referring broadly to countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania that have historically been colonized or economically exploited by the Global North/ Western imperialism.

· Comrade – A term of solidarity used among socialists, communists, and ‘leftists’ to indicate shared political struggle.

· ***** – The potential host in Puerto Rico mentioned in the narrative. (Add hyperlink as needed)

· Big Oliver / Isaiah – The friend and temporary companion from Orlando, a father and recovering addict returning to Maine.

• -By BROTHA AMP

I would like to start this piece this way. The numbers I will be using in this study, I do want to set stern perimeters, a controlled case study if you will. We will be studying the timeline of Obama’s presidency. This alone marks 8 years, but we will also be looking at a short period of time, roughly the 6-8 months BEFORE his presidency (from election night to official inauguration), as well as some individual key events in the lead up to his election or while he was on the trail and also AFTER his presidency during Trump’s first term. (I will be addressing the 6-to-8-month period after Trump’s inauguration.) Brotha (another) note that needs to be stated, I do not blame Obama for what he did not create or could not possibly control. Obama did not stroke the flames of hate, nor did he have a hand in creating Amerikkkan racism or the history of such. Even if he did, somehow, stroke the flames, 240 plus years after the creation of Amerikkka, how come this issue hasn’t been stamped out of existence? Also why was the son of an African immigrant, tasked by white liberals to challenge the underlying racial divide or end racism in the Divided States of Amerikkka. It would be a journalistic 1st degree felony for me to place on Obama’s shoulder, for what has been here since the creation of the first settlement in Jamestown, Virginia. I have many more things I could place at Obama’s feet to show how bloody his hands are, a few which will be stated here in this piece.

But first:

As a kid, first in middle school and into my high school years, believe me I could always be found bumping Young Jeezy’s, My President remix at any point in time,

“My president is Black, my Maybach too/ and I’ll be damn if my diamonds ain’t blue.”, citing the lyrics in every school hallway I found myself walking through.

In my latter years of public school though, I grew rapidly disillusioned. I blame this on learning ALOT about the Honorable Malcolm X starting in the 6th grade as well as my constant need to read and research to be able to know everything about anything. As you could tell, I like to be right and be able to prove my claims outright. Imperialism, the hideous betrayal of Palestinians/ Gaddafi, these are amongst Obama’s worst crimes, but it does not undermine what happened to Black people in the states during his back-to-back terms. Let us jump in, shall we?

Share Brotha Amp

From Joe Biden’s, Obama’s own running mate, blatant racism and misidentification. The Democratic Party lists president Obama, Jesse Jackson and Mrs. Kamala Harris as a so-called African Amerikkkan. Obama is white and African, and although born in the US, he has never had proven ties to past or present enslaved Africans, now born here in Amerikkka. Harris is Jamaican and Indian, with the same result as Obama, she is also apparently African Amerikkkan, but you can see how confusing this can be to anyone who thinks too hard. (It’s like the Democratic Party loves to attach themselves to the one body of people who keep them in power, while benefiting the majority of the permeant underclass of Amerikkka, the African so-called Amerikkkans, none) To the constant racial and political cheap shots aimed by the current president, Donald Trump, some 9 years after Obama left the Oval Office. Let us not forget to mention the repulsive and false claims by many White Christian Nationalists that Obama was the Antichrist (one being my adopted white mother, more on this later), but somehow also a secret Muslim (again makes so much sense, one simply cannot be a closeted Muslim, when is in Islam, you are to submit your will to Allah) only because his step father allegedly happened to be such. Of course no one can forget the many misogynistic, transphobic, and appalling racial comments that are said to this day about his wife, Mrs. Michelle Obama. This is said to this day, with very little pushback from neoliberal or white Democrat politicians. I believe this shows or proves, whichever you do approve, that while the Democrats were quite ‘willing’ to use his black face as some sort of false symbol of racial progress, none of these lifelong mostly white liberal or even neoliberal politicians wanted to truly make a difference or change when it came to racism and anti-blackness in Amerikkka. The reality may be a little different, due to Obama’s early life connection with the outgoing president, Bush and his family, including Bush’s father, also a former US president for one term. Obama, while he may have been Black in the context of colonized Amerikkka, he was also seen as a safe and stable pick… this is coming from the same party that found the late Rev. Jesse Jackson to be too radical when he chose to run. I would like to insert a Malcolm quote here, from a speech obviously long lost in most Black communities in Amerikka, ‘Take the white liberal support away from a (Black) neo-liberal, what is he?’. This alone should have been our first glaring red flag… instead, Black folks were a large part in why he was elected twice.

The main reason I wanted to start this study a little bit BEFORE president Obama took office is ironically my mother. Nowadays, she can be extremely, disturbingly bigoted and racist, but also forgetful and her mind is nowhere as ‘sharp’ as it once was. This was a woman who was able to read through the much confusing legislation language to tell my pops, ‘If you vote (in this matter), this will allow for MORE illegal aliens to be let into the country.’. In my young 11–13-year-old mind, that was a phenomenal and intriguing prospect. For more background, this would be my adopted mother, bismillah, that this woman WAS not my blood. Instead of taking comments like, ‘Put some sunblock on, you are getting too dark’ or ‘Stop talking like, you don’t talk like that, I didn’t raise you like that.’, instead of taking these comments to heart, luckily my autistic brain couldn’t comprehend any importance or intelligence of whatever she was complaining about. I did, however, learn it was best to code switch around my mother, both my parents by extension, there is a first time for everything you may say. My mother during this time period was paranoid, for no reason other then, she never nurtured her mind, but she always found a way to repeat negative affirmations. She even scolded a young Black Taco Bell worker, a night after Obama was elected, for ‘glaring at her for asking for extra sauces’.’ She added as we pulled away, “She’s (uppity) because of Obama being elected.”. As a lower middle class disabled mother, married to a Black man, she always found herself living in the suburbs, there was no true reason for her to be so nervous when her every need was almost always met. Still, whilst a hoarder she was and still very much is, she also attempted to make herself out to be a doomsday prepper (it resulted in us and the home being over prepared, rightfully so for any hurricane), a conspiracy theorist and someone that SAID to be against the repressive ways of the US government, especially after 9/11. She absolutely loved all the TV shows that boosted her ego such as Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura. Mind you, around this time, was the most official ‘early days’ of what would be known as the group; ‘QAnon’. (Ironic for a Muslim hating group to name their cause so closely to the religious book of Islam, the Quran) My mother was unfortunately, unofficially one of its early day followers. Yes, this ended, leading her to vote for Trump the first time he ran. She also lets it be known that she dislikes my chose in religion. She never informs me who she votes for nowadays, although I am now far less interested. At the time in 2016, a hot head 20-year-old, it caused me to hurl my phone like a baseball. I throw a perfect strike but would break my only line of communication with the outside world, seeing how I was homeless at that time. As a minor, whenever I was punished, for whatever it may have been that time, my mother would attempt to use the psychological approach. She would take the very little of entertainment I had and leave me with absolutely with nothing to do but to read my two versions of the Bible. It was a children’s translation of the scripture and the King James version. At the same time, I was also obsessed with the fictional series, Left Behind, due to only being allowed to read what my mother approved, like it was Nazi Germany. From this, birthed my very elementary understanding of scripture at THIS time and of the Christian belief of end time prophecy. I quickly grasped how it would be nearly impossible for Obama to be a frontrunner to be the Antichrist. Of course, unless Barack is holding out information like having a great, great, great ‘Roman’/ Italian grandfather. There is very little chance that he would be the antichrist, those that said or still say this have a very poor understanding of scripture. So, ironically, I blame my adopted mother, and by extension, Obama, for creating this drive and passion you see nowadays. I had to from a very young age, fight disinformation while living in my own childhood home. My mom, while married to a Black man, was not always a fan of Black men, no matter what she claims, but especially those with African or ‘Muslim”, basically different sounding names. For a woman who proudly sprouted her German- Polish (and sometimes, eventually Jewish) roots around us children, non-white people doing the exact same in their way never made her feel terribly comfortable. Unfortunately, I couldn’t gauge my adopted mom’s response to someone like Rev Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton or James Warren of the Socialist Workers party, running for president, I was not yet born.

Subscribe now

We need to note this same time of Obama running for president, images of burning or hanging, life sized dolls of Mr. Obama appeared on many college campuses as well as church grounds which continued into his second term. Mind you, this was done by people who attend their local white majority churches and call themselves, ‘born again Christians’. In April of 2008, months before election night and long before Obama was sworn in, using a Bible that he owned, the NAACP called a state of emergency. They did such while citing police beatings and shooting deaths of unarmed Black people as central to that declaration. The bigots, mostly of the Republican party will argue that Obama somehow single-handly, ‘brought racism/ the racial divide back to Amerikkka’, which is extremely hilarious in hindsight, seeing how he without EVEN attempting to do so, simply exposed Amerikkka for what it has always been, an anti-Black institution. Which IS Amerikkka, ever since its founding documents were signed. It has always stood for such and its gardeners, as Malcolm would say, have very little to no desire to change such. Yes, this includes JFK who was actually an unpopular president until he was murdered by the same government he was elected to ‘lead’. According to a Times report in 2019, we happened to be more segregated in 2019 than in 1990 or any other time in Amerikkka. This is supposedly a so-called diverse nation, the alleged melting pot. Let me remind you, we haven’t even BEGAN to start touching the years Obama was in the Oval Office.

Leave a comment

Now mind you, before President Obama even took the oath or sat in the chair in the Oval Office, he was the target of many racist, bigots and even, ‘misspoken words’ by the elder members of his OWN party. Passive aggressive racism notwithstanding, one of the key topics throughout his 8 long years of being president, was obviously police brutality. We are speaking about the freshly 17-year-old kid, Trayvon Martin, whose murder would birth the start of the movement, in July 2013 with the acquittal of George Zimmerman. Even with a Black man as president, justice would never be served hot to the former and current slaves of Amerikkka. Tell me how the first Black President being elected was also partly the cause of the biggest human rights movement since the civil rights era being birthed. Unfittingly, since 2020, the Democratic Party has brought and paid for, the national organization, BLM. Before his terms, there are very few compilations of data that show a complete statistical analysis of not only police shootings but also police discrimination which is but one clog in what has become to be known as, ‘systemic racism’. August 5th, 2008, thanks to a lawsuit, NYPD released one of the nation’s first race data pertaining to police shootings. What they CHOOSE to release was as damning as the Black and Brown people of New York said it would be, for more than a century. It showed that about 90 % of those who were shot at were Latino or Black/ African so-called Amerikkkans. This was further, more nationally proven, once again by a non-NYPD entity at Fruitvale station, all the way on the other coast of Amerikkka in Oakland where Oscar Grant was shot and killed by a BART police officer on New Years Day in Oakland California, a mere 19 days before Obama was sworn in. Do you remember Sean Bell? Where three white officers were acquitted, in the worst case of recorded police brutality since Rodney King? That happened while Obama was still running. Nowadays, there are many ‘public’ police shooting databases such as the - PoliceShootingsData.com and The Washington Post, although many of these databases did not truly start accurately recording data until 2016, on Obama’s way out of the Oval Office.

Suspicious deaths/lynchings of many Black people that are often ruled suicides, these cases have yet to have any kind of centralized reporting. Even with the ever increasing, alarming rate of unexplained homicides of seemingly healthy, young Black individuals, from slumber parties in the suburbs, Black boys being found drowned, badly beaten and decomposed when the last known family he was with was a white local playmate, Black bodies found in gym mats at public high schools, or 16 year young girls hanging from trees in Massachusetts, to even back down south on a college campus (even with the families independent autopsy done, I had to search and fight to get that proper link.); the national birthplace of the Amerikkkan art of lynching, Big ole Mississippi. Allah only knows how many police murder cover ups and lynchings, to this day, have gone unnoticed, quite intentionally, in the most rural places in Amerikkaka. But also, how many more that were lost without the accessibility of the internet where one can pull up an article in a few seconds. Documented and highly publicized cases—from Trayvon Martin in 2012 to Philando Castile in 2016—represent a fraction of the total victims, as comprehensive national data collection did not exist during most of this period. Independent journalists, civil rights organizations, and eventually the Obama administration itself worked to document what the federal government had long failed to track systematically. Let us not get started on the many Black men activists that lost their lives under suspicious circumstances, during the height of the BLM era especially in places like Ferguson, Missouri or Baltimore. Any other half-way competent federal agency would see these many patterns across all fields of subjects brought up here in this paragraph and find out if there was any merit behind these many cases.

Time after time though, the FBI refuses to get involved or ends up agreeing with local or state law enforcement, without so much as an investigation. Yes, so we are to believe young men like Nevan Baker, Trey Reed and others who were just mysteriously found shot, with no DNA being found on the alleged weapon used to commit this suicide and somehow have a footprint on their back or hung themselves from trees in full public view. A near two century old tactical and vile act done by local KKK since its inception with Confederate deserters at the tail end of the Civil War. Not an action taken by too many Black people seeking to end their lives by unaliving themselves in the most humiliating way possible according to our historical record in Amerikkka.

Multiple independent investigations and analyses during this period revealed severe racial disparities:

(Did not include links, I thought it best just to add the sources and the numbers, this short bullet list should be researchable enough for all)

• A ProPublica analysis examining federal data from 2010 to 2012 found there were 1,217 deadly police shootings across the United States. Their research concluded that Black people were 21 times more likely to be killed by police than white people.

• The Mapping Police Violence project, compiled by data scientists and activists, found that in 2015, 41% of people killed by police in the largest U.S. cities were Black, despite Black people making up only 20% of the population in those cities.

• The Guardian’s “The Counted” project documented 306 killings of Black people by law enforcement in 2015, and 136 such killings in the first half of 2016 alone.

All throughout my childhood, and into my teenage years and even now, I read. That was the one thing that truly saved me as a student as well as just staying out of more trouble than I normally found myself in. I placed first or top three or so multiple times in what was known as ‘AR points’, in third grade and onwards, until we moved back to the Bradenton Florida area. These were tests after reading a book, that would give you an overall score and these aforementioned ‘AR’ points, if you were able to earn a C average or higher. I got so good at knowing what the questions would be, even before reading the book. I would at times skim a book, find the main plot etc. main characters, sub plot etc., and be able to pass the test with a B or higher on average. At this very young age, I understood comprehension of almost any text very well (provided that there were no biased thinking or viewpoints filtered in while reading) and even began to finally form my own thoughts on anything I may have read or consumed. Attempting to fully understand anything I may have read, I would toss it around in my own mind, eventually creating my own characters and sub plots to enhance and remember the story. Moving back towards the Tampa area did wonders for me, if I was being honest. I was finally able to leave the band and hefty instrument in Lakeland (loved it, truly but nobody looks sexy with a bass clarinet.) This also marked and began the opening stages of my most rebellious years. I am not just talking about the books I found time to read or my hair. Nevertheless, thanks to me standing up for what I wanted and my pops also reinforcing that for the most part at the barber shop. I was able to escape the fate that was bestowed to my adopted sister whose hair had so many chemicals due to the constant usage of straightener and heat rods and flat irons, it is permanently negatively affected. A small Afro that I loved to rock was deemed okay but never longer than that and long hair was absolutely a no-no. Mind you, my mother was also always justified in her mind, to control what I could read or watch. I couldn’t even watch Star Wars Episodes 2 or 3 until I was much older because of certain scenes of science fiction, and a ‘hooded scary dude’ on the cover of Revenge of the Sith. (Darth Sidious). Which is absolutely hilarious, seeing how the original trilogy which SHE INTRODUCED ME TO, had the same hooded figure. Darth Sidious makes a short appearance in Episode 5, and he also graced the cover in Episode 6, just as he did in RoTS. (Revenge of the Sith) In addition to this, anytime my sister and I would beg our pops to take us to the nearby public library, you can guarantee she would soon be in our rooms, examining the books we would check out, shortly after the fact. If anything on the back cover, or cover flap or anywhere else disagreed with her hypocritical Christian views, just know my sister and I could never read whatever it may be. It would be dropped off at the library at my pop’s earliest availability. Mind you this the same person who would allow me to read the entirety of the Bible, which mentioned murder, war, rape, explained the gates of hell, even the so called children’s version, talked about the Biblical historical figures having, ‘sexual relations’, as well as the dark happenings and events that will happen in the Tribulation period as it’s known in Christian circles, in Daniel and the book of Revelations'. The same parent who encouraged me to spend the allowance or gift money she would ever allow me to spend or ever see, to find and collect the entire Left Behind series. The adult and teenage version of this book series feature beheadings, assassinations, the LITERAL devil indwelling himself into the antichrist etc. If you are becoming as confused as I was, in any point of my own upbringing, I fully understand, believe me. I was there, living it in real time. In my last year of middle school, I began to develop a routine that quickly picked up in just my freshman year in high school. I would get books from the school library and keep them in my personal locker. I didn’t know which books would be approved or denied. So, I thought it best to just hide them all, it seemed to be the safest bet, it would always turn out correct. While my high school library didn’t have an extensive selection, like in the county’s public library. It would also give me a reason to be in the library and start at a very young age to properly research the things I found interesting in school. My freshman history teacher encouraged me to apply for AP classes going forward. Which I did, and although my grades in science and math would take a hit, I believe it deeply benefited me. This suggestion happened because I would often ‘skip’ his classes because I was already finished with the entire history textbook for the year. I could literally answer any question on any given assignment or test at any point of the year. I also had a near perfect A grade in his class, plus I found my classmates to be stuck up, ignorant gossipers who failed to realize that they were blowing a chance to learn from the history teacher who found a way to make learning about HIS-story intriguing. It goes without saying that the most incompetent of these little kids would find a way to sit next to me during tests or finals. He would eventually find me on a computer in the library, reading, and he threatened to write a referral for skipping his class. Instead, the next day he pulled me aside and gave me a copy of the Communist Manifesto, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (which I read already but was glad to have a copy of my own) and The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. He said, ‘You are going to be a rebel one day… if you ever want to go to the library again, you don’t even have to ask me, I’ll personally talk to the staff…just pop your head in so I can take your role and mark you present.’.

Share

Unfortunately, this will be the last deeply detailed personal tadbit you will be getting from this piece. Little did I know how quickly this statement of, “You are going to be a rebel.”, would ring true. February 26th, 2012, my world changed forever with the death/manslaughter of the young 17 years old for 3 weeks, Trayvon Martin. Some of my homies at school knew mutual friends of Mr. Martin. Although there was a cloud that followed me throughout the rest of my high school, this marked the first time that I bucked the system. I began to sit through the cynical pledge of allegiance. It officially began the moment George Zimmerman was found not guilty and lasted until my last day of school. It got me in trouble several times, but since it was done most of the time during homeroom or during morning announcements and it was done silently, so it fell under protected 1st amendment speech and there wasn’t anything anyone could do.

An African so-called Amerikkkan man, I recently met in Puerto Rico had this to say about Trayvon Martin; “Every Black person felt ‘the same’ (similarly) to Trayvon Martin… I was here (Puerto Rico) when it happened and I can remember just feeling scared for my little brother, who was the same age, lived in the same neighborhood and went to the same store, sometimes in a hoodie.”.

I did not fully explain my stance to anyone but the students in homeroom. Not even the school’s administration knew of the entire reason for why I was not standing. I was successfully in getting more than half of my homeroom from that point forward, some from pure laziness as well as a case of, monkey see, monkey do. But my simple explanation of, if Trayvon couldn’t get justice, then why stand for a false pledge to anything, that cannot hold true to its most fundamental line, ‘and justice for ALL.’. This incident and miscarriage of justice led me directly to select two specific AP electives the very next year, AP Psych and Law Studies. These studies in high school have nowadays led me to settle and finally push to go back to school for a doctorate in sociology. Since my graduation, I have endured countless years of instability, extreme poverty and houselessness. All under Obama, the first AND now second Trump as well as the brief one term Biden administration. As one would expect, I quickly grew disillusioned with both so called parties, or what I like to more accurately describe it, the duopoly. The same exact coin, just two different sides of such. For the longest, I tried my best to not become too political, even when it was the current politics that was crushing my soul and my will to live. Although reading and research never once ceased to be a hobby and a passion of mine if you will. So, I knew and could always diagnose the problem even if I didn’t always choose to voice these opinions. I was still very much blind to the concepts of socialism from graduation onwards, but my previous readings became more relevant as I stepped into the role of a so-called activist in 2020 in the local Orlando area, soon after the death of George Floyd.

Trump’s administration, the many police killings of Black men but minorities in general, this was all the direct result and retaliation for the 8 long Obama years that these white folks had to supposedly suffer through. You don’t have to take my word for it, look at the plenty cases of pigs being caught on camera talking about gearing up for a race war, the numbers comparing Obama’s outgoing police killings and when Trump became president, the dip in those numbers, while the overwhelming evidence still showed Black people being killed at a disproportionate rate. Take the words of Black veterans who would come to work for the imperial empire during Obama’s admin, just to see the portrait of President Obama turned facing the wall. Take the current steps by this current administration, to roll back many civil liberties, revoking the 14th amendment which gave former enslaved people, MY PEOPLE, our second-class citizenship. To slashing government watchdogs, gutting or disabling organizations or reversing civil rights executive orders. As Childish Gambino once said, this is Amerikkka. And trust, truer words have never been spoken.

(Down below you will find short, compiled lists of separate research I’ve done and their sources and sometimes links. These are all the numbers I couldn’t find a space necessarily fit into the piece, but I wanted to bless y’all with more statistics, if you somehow find yourself needing more evidence than what has ALREADY been provided.)

The Statistical Landscape: National and State-Level Data

Florida: A Case Study in Systemic Disparity

The Tampa Bay Times conducted an exhaustive investigation covering 2009 to 2014, collecting records from all 400 law enforcement agencies in Florida—a state where no official tracking system existed. Their findings were damning:

• 40% of people shot by police in Florida during this period were Black, while African Americans made up only approximately 15% of the state’s population.

• 156 people were shot while completely unarmed—no gun, no knife, no vehicle. Of these, half of these cases were Black.

• Unarmed Black people were twice as likely as unarmed white people to be shot by police.

• In questionable circumstances—where people were not actively committing violent crimes or threatening officers with weapons—72 Black people were shot between 2009 and 2014, compared to 31 white people. That is approximately one such shooting every month in Florida alone.

Specific Patterns of Disparity in Florida

The Tampa Bay Times investigation identified several specific scenarios where Black people were disproportionately shot:

Scenario Disparity

• Shot while unarmed Blacks outnumbered whites 2 to 1

• Shot during traffic stops for perceived reaching 5 out of 6 victims were Black

• Shot during foot chases while unarmed All 4 victims were Black

• Shot in the back Blacks were 4 times more likely

• Shot while suspected of minor crime (e.g., smoking pot, shoplifting) or no crime Blacks were 3 times more likely

Case Example from Florida:

• Dontrell Stephens, 20, West Palm Beach (2013): Stephens was riding his bicycle on the wrong side of the street. Within four seconds of the stop, an officer began shooting. Stephens was shot in the back while running. The officer claimed he thought Stephens was reaching for a weapon—he was holding only his cell phone. The shooting left Stephens paralyzed from the waist down.

The Ferguson Report: Federal Confirmation of Systemic Racism (2010-2014)

In March 2015, the so-called, U.S. Department of ‘Justice’ released its investigation into the Ferguson Police Department following the August 2014 killing of Michael Brown. The report covered the period from 2010 to 2014 and provided federal confirmation of racist policing practices.

Key Findings from the DOJ Investigation:

• Racist Emails: The DOJ uncovered multiple racist emails sent by Ferguson police officers and court officials, including:

  An email depicting President Obama as a chimpanzee (April 2011)

  An email stating that “what black man holds a steady job for four years” (November 2008)

  An email describing Black people as “mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can’t speak English”

• Racial Disparities in Stops and Arrests: Despite making up 67% of Ferguson’s population, African Americans accounted for:

• 85% of vehicle stops

• 90% of citations

• 93% of arrests

• Search Disparities: African so- called Amerikkkans were more than twice as likely as white drivers to be searched during vehicle stops yet were found with contraband 26% less often.

• Use of Force: Nearly 90% of documented use of force cases involved African Americans. The DOJ found 161 excessive force complaints filed between 2010 and 2014; only one was “founded,” and no officer was disciplined.

• Canine Bites: In every canine bite incident for which racial information was available, the person bitten was African American.

High-Profile Cases of Unarmed Black People Killed by Police (2009-2016)

During Obama’s tenure, numerous cases of unarmed Black people killed by police sparked national protests, federal investigations, and millions of dollars in settlements. The following cases were documented by contemporary sources:

2012: The Killing That Sparked a Movement

(Victim, Age, Location, Date, Circumstances)

Trayvon Martin, 17, Sanford, FL. February 2012. Killed by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman while walking home unarmed. Zimmerman was acquitted. The case sparked the Black Lives Matter movement.

2014: The Year of Reckoning

(See above)

Eric Garner, 43, New York, NY. July 2014. Placed in chokehold by police for suspected illegal cigarette sales. Repeated “I can’t breathe” 11 times. Grand jury declined to indict. Family received $5.9 million settlement.

Michael Brown, 18, Ferguson, MO. August 2014. Unarmed teenager shot by officer Darren Wilson. Death sparked weeks of protests and the DOJ investigation revealing systemic racism in Ferguson policing.

Tamir Rice, 12, Cleveland, OH. November 2014. Shot while playing with toy gun. Officer shot within two seconds of arriving. No first aid for four minutes. Family received $6 million settlement.

2015: The Pattern Continues

(see above)

Walter Scott, 50, North Charleston, SC. April 2015. Shot 8 times in the back while running from traffic stop. Bystander video contradicted officer’s account. Officer charged with murder. Family received $6.5 million settlement.

Freddie Gray, 25, Baltimore, MD. April 2015. Suffered fatal spinal cord injury in police van. Death sparked riots and protests. Six officers charged: four acquitted. Family received $6.4 million settlement.

Justus Howell, 17, Zion, IL. April. 2015 Shot twice in the back while running. Police initially claimed no weapon found, later produced a gun.

2016: Final Year of Obama’s Presidency

(see above)

Alton Sterling, 37, Baton Rouge, LA. July 2016. Killed by police while selling CDs outside convenience store. Death sparked national protests.

Philando Castile, 32, St. Anthony, MN. July 2016. Shot during traffic stop while reaching for license. Told officer he had legal firearm. Death was livestreamed by girlfriend. Death also sparked national protests.

Share

The Cleveland Massacre: 137 Bullets (2012)

A particularly egregious case during this period occurred in Cleveland, Ohio, in November 2012. Police pursued Timothy Russell, 43, and Malissa Williams, 30—both Black—after mistaking a car engine backfire for gunfire:

• 62 police vehicles joined the pursuit

• 13 officers fired 137 bullets at the unarmed victims

• Officer Michael Brelo alone fired 49 shots, including 15 while standing on the hood of the victims’ car

• Both victims died from multiple gunshot wounds

• In May 2015, a judge acquitted Brelo of manslaughter, ruling there was insufficient evidence to prove his specific shots caused death

• A December 2014 DOJ investigation found that Cleveland police “routinely use excessive force and are unaccountable to the public”.

Accountability Crisis: Rare Prosecutions and Convictions

The Institute of the Black World 21st Century, citing investigative reporting, documented the near-total impunity for police who killed unarmed Black people during this period:

• Between 2005 and 2015, only 54 police officers nationwide were charged with murder or manslaughter for on-duty shootings.

• Of those, only 11 were convicted, and convictions often resulted in short sentences—average of 4 years.

• A former federal prosecutor noted that “court precedents preclude prosecution of killer cops except under the most extreme conditions”.

Obama’s Response: Acknowledgment and Limited Action

Throughout his tenure, President Obama addressed police violence against Black Americans in measured terms, acknowledging systemic racism while stopping short of declaring it endemic.

In July 2016, following the killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, Obama stated:

However, the Institute of the Black World criticized Obama’s framing, writing in April 2015 that:

“When President Obama insists that racism is not, and has never been, ‘endemic’ to this country, he is simply identifying himself as an active participant in the ongoing slaughter”.

Policy Initiatives

In December 2014, Obama formed the Task Force on 21st Century Policing to examine police-community relations, what it did, I am not even sure. In May 2015, the White House launched the Police Data Initiative, tasking 21 cities with using data analysis to understand police behavior and improve accountability.

Subscribe now

IACHR Report: International Recognition of Systemic Discrimination

In March 2019, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) released a report on police violence against Afro-descendants in the United States covering the Obama years and beyond. The Commission found:

• A “persistent situation of structural discrimination against people of African descent”

• “Deep-seated racial disparities in policing and the criminal justice system”

• Issues of “over-policing and racial profiling,” “militarization of police forces,” “excessive force,” and “impunity in cases of police killings”

Conclusion

The evidence from independent sources, federal investigations, and contemporary reporting demonstrates that during Barack Obama’s presidency (2009-2016), Black people in the United States were subjected to systemic police violence at rates far exceeding their white counterparts. Key findings include:

1. Black people were 21 times more likely to be killed by police than white people (2010-2012)

2. In Florida, 40% of police shooting victims were Black despite being 15% of the population

3. Half of all unarmed people shot by police in Florida were Black

4. DOJ investigations confirmed racist policing in Ferguson and excessive force in Cleveland

5. Only 54 officers were charged with murder or manslaughter for on-duty shootings nationwide between 2005 and 2015

6. The IACHR documented structural discrimination and impunity as systemic features of U.S. policing

The Black Palestinians: A Deeply Sourced History of Heritage, Displacement, and Double Discrimination

This article and research paper explores the story of Afro-Palestinians, a community whose roots in the region stretch back centuries, predating many modern-day political conflicts. They are a people forged by the complex history of the Islamic world, the Ottoman Empire, and the modern Palestinian struggle. Their identity is uniquely Palestinian, shaped by African heritage, deep ties to Islam, and the shared experience of displacement and occupation.

1. Introduction: Who are The Afro-Palestinians?

Afro-Palestinians, obviously, are specific Palestinians of Black African heritage. Prior to October 7th, 2023, they made up approximately 1% of Gaza’s population, with an estimated 11,000 people living in Al Jalla’s district of Gaza City, in a neighborhood historically referred to as “Al Abeed”. 1 Smaller communities exist in Jerusalem– where 200 to 450 reside in the historic enclave known as the “African Quarter” or “Little Harlem” in the Muslim Quarter, as well as in Jericho (Arīḥā), Acre (Akko/Akka) and other parts of the West Bank.

They are a marginalized group that has faced “double discrimination”; systemic marginalization and bureaucratic obstacles from Isn’t Reali authorities, alongside social prejudice and racism within Palestinian and broader Arab society.

2. Origins; A Multi layered history of arrival

The presence of Afro-Palestinians is not the result of a single migration event but a tapestry woven over more than millennia through several distinct waves. While there are some studies, scriptures and writings, proving the existence of Black bodies in the so-called Middle East, we will not be going past the 7th century in these findings here today.

1. The Early Waves: Pilgrimage, Scholarship and enslavement (7th - 15th century)

• The Arab slave trade/Golden Age of Islam: From the 7th century onward, under the Rashidun and later the Abbsid Caliphates, enslaved Africans were transported to the regions. The Red Sea slave trade and the Trans-Saharan slave trade brought people from the East and West Africa to work as laborers, soldiers and domestic workers (some things never change). By the 9th century, an estimated 3 million Africans were resettled in the so-called Middle East.

• Pilgrims: Simultaneously, a distinct wave of free Africans arrived as Muslim pilgrims. As early as the 12th century, pilgrims from Sudan, Mali or Central Africa (modern-day Chad), traveled to Mecca for Hajj and then visited Jerusalem (Al Quds) to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Some chose to stay, settling permanently and marrying into local families. This practice became more common as Islam spread throughout Africa in the 15th century.

2. The Ottoman Era: Soldiers, Laborers, and the Waqf (16th century-20th centuries)

The Ottoman Empire which ruled Palestine and other surrounding regions from 16th century onwards, until WW1, this era solidified the community’s presence.

• Continuation of slavery: The Ottoman administration continued the practice of importing enslaved Africans via Egypt, with the last official ship arriving in the port of Haifa in 1876. Slavery in Palestine and throughout the colonially named middle east, in the early 20th century , with only 8 individuals officially registered as slaves in the 1905 census. However, a League of Nations report as late as 1934 noted that slavery was still practiced among Bedouin shaykhs under the guise of clientage.

• The Jerusalem Ribats: Many Africans came to serve as guards for the Haram al-Sharif. The community in Al Quds were eventually granted residency into two historic Mamluk-era buildings (built 1267-1382) called Ribat al-Mansuri and the Ribat of Aladdin. These were originally hostels for pilgrims. During WW1, the Ottomans converted them– infamously known as “the Blood Prison” and “the Hanging Prison”-- where they executed political dissidents during the war.

• Granting of Residency: After the Ottoman rule ended, the Islamic Waqf (religious trust) took control of the ribats. The Palestinian leader and Mufti of Al-Quds, Amin al-Huesseini, formally rented these compounds to the African community at a nominal rate in the early 20th century as a sign of gratitude for their loyalty as protectors of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

3. The British Mandate and the 1948 Nakba (20th century)

The final major waves of African migration occurred during and after WW1 and the 1948 Arab- Isn’t Reali War.

• Conscripted Laborers (WW1): According to historian Abraham Milligram, many Africans from Nigeria, Sudan, and Chad arrived as conscripted laborers during General Edmund Allenby’s British campaign against the Ottomans. They were employed in building railroads and infrastructure.

• The 1948 War/ Ethical cleansing/ The Nakba: a group of Afro-Palestinians trace their lineage to soldiers who came with the Arab Salvation Army to fight in the 1948 War surrounding Isn’t Real’s creation. For many others, the war and the subsequent establishment of Isn’t Real led to their permanent settlement. Borders closed, and the African pilgrims who were in Palestine at the time were trapped, forced to make the country their home. The 1948 Nakba, and the subsequent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes shaped the Afro- Palestinians identity just as it did for the broader Palestinian population. Many became refugees, ending up in Gaza and other enclaves.

  

3. Treatment: Yesteryear and Now

The treatment of Afro-Palestinians is a story of resilience against both overt and subtle forms of discrimination, layered on top of the challenges faced by all Palestinians under occupation.

A. Social Discrimination and Racism within Palestinian Society

Afro-Palestinians have historically faced prejudice from some within Palestinian and Arab communities.

· Derogatory Terminology: A persistent issue has been the use of the Arabic word abeed (slaves) to refer to Black people. The neighborhood in Gaza where many lived was even called “Al Abeed,” and the Jerusalem enclave was sometimes called “habs al-abeed“ (the slaves’ prison).

· Marriage and Social Integration: Mousa Qous, director of the African Community Society in Jerusalem, noted that objections can still arise when a Black Palestinian wishes to marry a “white “Palestinian woman, although intermarriage has become more common in recent years.

· Contrasting Experiences: Community leader Ali Jiddah, a former PFLP member, has stated that he never personally experienced prejudice from Palestinian Arabs and that any such racism is due to ignorance, which this statement alone literally contradicts itself entirely. The ignorance factor may play a role but it is not the full cause. Colonialism plays another role, but again its acceptance is appalling to say the least when it comes from Muslim brother who has also been under the thumb of colonialism and white supremacy. Proving this point, others, like Mohammed Obaid, a dabke performer from Gaza, reported having to “prove himself twice as much“ and work twice as hard to join his dance team due to his skin color.

B. Systemic Discrimination and Treatment by Israeli Authorities

A more consistent and structural form of oppression comes from Israeli authorities. Thus proving that antiblackness is a global matter in itself.

· Bureaucratic Obstacles: Afro-Palestinians in Jerusalem, like Mousa Qous, are not Israeli citizens and face immense bureaucratic hurdles. They hold Jerusalem residency cards, which can be revoked if they leave the country for too long or apply for a foreign passport.

· Restriction of Movement: The African Quarter in Jerusalem is now sandwiched between Israeli checkpoints, effectively sealing off the neighborhood and causing severe economic loss. Residents report increased harassment at these checkpoints.

· Racist Slurs from Security Forces: Community members have reported that Israeli police and soldiers call them “kushis,” a derogatory Hebrew term for Black people .

· Targeted Arrests: The community has faced specific targeting. In 2022, Mohammed Firawi was released from a five-year prison sentence for throwing stones, only to be re-arrested and expelled from Jerusalem for a week after the community celebrated his return .

C. Modern-Day Socio-Economic Status

Economically, Afro-Palestinians are among the most disenfranchised groups. In Jerusalem, they live in small, aging housing and many young people leave school early to support their families. In Gaza, they faced the same poverty, blockade, and political instability as all Gazans, compounded by social marginalization . As of 2024, the community in Gaza has been caught in the crossfire of the ongoing war, facing displacement, casualties, and the potential for their unique community to be torn apart.

4. Conclusion: A Resilient Identity

Despite these layered challenges, the Afro-Palestinian community remains fiercely proud of its dual heritage and deeply integrated into the Palestinian national struggle. Their identity was forged through centuries of migration, pilgrimage, and forced displacement.

Ali Jiddah encapsulated this sentiment when he said, “More Catholic than the Pope? We are more Palestinian than Palestinians”. Their story is an integral part of the broader Palestinian narrative, highlighting the often-overlooked diversity within the region and the complex ways that race, history, and national identity intersect under the pressures of occupation.

The month of Ramadan was great to me, as I continue to build back. Most appreciation, to those who have continued to show up and make that possible, in all different ways. I have done many of the things that have needed to be done for about two going on three months now, since I was made homeless in PR. Firstly, legal documents, ‘cause a nigga always needs these things nowadays’, in Puerto Rico or elsewhere for that matter, especially for a nigga who talks the way I do. In the very, very, very near future, I hope to gather all of the legal documents that I still need, being topped off with another passport. Secondly, I have secured employment, in the restaurant industry if you will. The space is one of the most modern-day, tourist set ups that bougie Puerto Ricans also tend to enjoy, I have yet to experience, on the more small-time scale, at least for now. The chef also happens to be an African so-called Amerikkkan from Orlando, Florida. (What are the odds) Of course, I will continue to update my supporters and international comrades as I see fit. That much I can promise, but for those who show no concern for my health, do not provide constant support for my work or for my well-being. Not to mention security, some uploads with pictures or details of where I work, chill, live or spend my days will be placed behind a paywall or just not available to some for a long while. Lastly, I have begun to buy a couple things to feel more at home, including that medicine if you know what I mean. This also includes a laptop charger for my ThinkPad, FINALLY, so more work and articles coming your way. I still have to obtain about 66% of what was stolen/ of what is needed. Including transportation (electric bike due to PR’s hilly terrain, a refurbished PS4 or 5. I know I can manage obtaining a small monitor. I visited a local pawn shop, and it just may be cheaper than I originally thought and can be done avoiding Amazon all together. At least the PS5, controller, monitor and perhaps a couple games. DM me for more information.

Share Brotha Amp

San Juan is more my speed… ‘Why?’, you may ask. Why, does an autistic man love the rumble and grind of the vastly crowded city more than peace (not really, its Puerto Rico), and the extremely laid-back pace and almost countryside feeling of Arecibo? I couldn’t even begin to fully answer these questions if I was totally being honest. I will say this; I have grown to take to all of the cities that I have had the pleasure of being impoverished in one way or the other. It is not a coincidence that I have found myself houseless in Tampa, Orlando, Valrico, Holiday, Arecibo … believe me, to hear the sound of the world washing over me, this is truly the only way I can stay alert but also rock myself to bed.

San Juan unfortunately is not all butter and sweets. It’s still somewhat difficult to find a groove. It is amazing tho, and it is extremely eye opening of the evil exploitation, specifically the tourist industry. Truly disgusting. Like all cities, the wide gap of the rich and comfortable, tired and impoverished working class. It is clear to see for all who are willing to look AND see. The second week of being in the new place, turns out Ampster, and my room perhaps have fleas. I may have to continue to do battle with these pests, but the good thing, I have dealt with this before and luckily, we have tile flooring. Truly, at the moment, the pay and how quickly raises come that will be offered to me soon, will decide how long I stay at this specific job. I need to be stable; this job should pay my bills, and I should be able to have a bit left over to start to save.

At this very early stage of my journey throughout socialist Latin America and the Caribbeans, I feel as if Grenada will be my very first temporary stop on my long journey. First and final reason; they primally speak English, which will be great for my beginner level skills in Spanish. It is also the revolution, after Cuba’s of course, that is the one I am the most interested about. Much more information in the states about Cuba’s revolution and struggle, due to Amerikkka’s constant attempts to strangle the island and its proximity to the mainland. The island is mostly visibly ‘Black’, African people and when the socialist revolution came to Grenada, it most definitely had Washington pissed. Seeing an island, made up of mostly dark bodies, practicing socialism in this hemisphere, and MAKING it work for them. There was no doubt that allowing oppressed peoples, especially Black people, in the states to see this successful revolution would spell doom for those in power and those of much wealth in the devilish United States.

Subscribe now

***Some of the topics and subjects I will be discussing will be further expanded upon, in a separate Substack, also made available for all to read and share.***

For some, Puerto Rico may be the paradise as it is advertised to be. Yet, racism, classism (ironically) and anti-blackness is JUST as prevalent as it is in the states, if not more at times. No matter what any random native-born Rican may try to convince you of. Don’t believe them, trust me. In my brief five, going on six months on the island of enchantment. I’ve been; made homeless, brought to court on a phony protection order from a mentally deranged host that literally threaten my life, I have been sexually assaulted twice, have had my shit stolen on two separate occasions, already been discriminated against much like the states, followed around the store and stopped at the door of such store (Walmart) by private security and asked to see a receipt while everyone else was able to scurry out the door, not asked to show proof of purchase. Crazy work seeing how Walmart not only has private shoppers and hundreds of cameras. There was honestly no clear reason why I was singled out but that I am African so-called Amerikkkan, have locs etc. I was literally with a physically disabled, new roomie of mine, like… and honestly, not even the half of it.

I’ve even been asked, several times, why I moved to PR, when I don’t fluently speak brotha (another) colonizer’s language. It’s amazing, seeing how they would never ask that of a Jake Paul, or any other white man for that matter. What’s crazy and ironic, is the same is said to Latinos who don’t speak fluent English in the mainland, States. Hypocrisy to the highest degree. My bigoted adopted mother asked me, ‘Do you regret moving to-’, I cut her off before she could even finish. ‘Of course not. No, I don’t.’, and it’s not just my stubbornness. I wasn’t going to satisfy her ignorance but even so. One, two even ten individuals, does NOT speak for the entire island. Especially on an island with over 3 million people, 2 million alone, just in the capital city of San Juan. I trusted the wrong motherfucka to host Ampster and I (much more on this coming REAL soon, only on Substack) whose was only concern was what I could provide for her and her fuck buddies habits, her failed art career (in every way imaginable) with little to no concern for my needs, whatever they may be if it did not benefit her in some way. I was homeless my last few months in the mainland and since I was a senior in high school, I have always dealt with some kind of houselessness. I had my own apartment, in Orlando for about three years, but truly I never truly felt secure. No more than I do now, typing this up in my jail cell like room (without the toilet, or I wouldn’t be able to move around) that doesn’t break the bank that I don’t have. So, I say all of that to say this, this isn’t my first rodeo. Just my first not understanding the local language as well as I’d like too. Just my first rodeo where I am not facing down this poverty in Florida. So, same ole bull, same ole shit, just a different arena if you can dig it…

Subscribe now

Oh no, I have had more than enough people who by the grace and will of Allah, who have more than looked out for me. As much as there are nasty people, who will more quickly steal from a homeless man, then try and help. There 2 times that amount that have attempted in their own way to help me. Whether that was giving me an air mattress to sleep on in an abandoned building, feeding me a free succulent meal a day, to random strangers who knew nothing of my situation, stopping to give me food and one time, needed hygiene and essentials, helped me with obtaining medicine or even invited me to lunch. I was shown love by the most unlikely of people, I do have to believe that many folks have faced the same or similar situation I was, at some point in time. Although, I have been assaulted and had my possessions stolen, I have to thank Allah, after the second assault where I had to defend myself as I saw fit. Nobody has tried to rob me or physically put their hands on me. I guess being Black and 6’3, at times has its advantages, even in one of the tallest countries per average of Lain America. Regardless, Amerikkka will have you scared as a so-called minority, walking about in a commonwealth, the oldest, still existing colony this side of the hemisphere.

Leave a comment

Author’s Note: I want to take a space here too personally thank those supporters and donors who continently gave. It allowed me to be able to not ONLY eat and survive while on the streets, but it also allowed me to escape houselessness in a far shorter time span then I was truly expecting. (Considering the circumstances)

I will no longer be shying away from the story that has me on this path this far, one of being chronically homelessness since I was 17 to the rampant anti-Black man abuse I at times endure due to being steadfast in my ethics, beliefs and idealism. At times for no reason at all but pure racist abuse in my opinion. I have served as the co-president of YAS of HSN Orlando for quite a while, but sharing my story to non-for-profit executives has not benefited me at all, not as well compensated as I feel I should have been. May Allah award this honesty with the needed people/ support that I could use to more easily go forward with my mission. To bring revolutionary, educational greatness to all to those who have ears and will listen. For more ways to help, please check out Linktree where my new Revolutionary Needs list has been updated on my Amazon wish list and much more. This may even earn you a free subscription here on this platform or the many others I expected to start and have steady growing before the end of this 2026 year.

https://linktree//AmpDaTruth.x

ins Allah, ameen.

1. The Dead are Arising Wiki (Author Les Payne spent 30 years on the project with daughter Tamara Payne finishing the project after his death). It is one of the best well researched reading materials on Brotha Malcolm’s life. It easily has over 125 pages of purely just sources.

2. Malcolm X: The documentary

3. The Last Speeches Book

4. Malcolm X 1972

5. The Black Revolution …

100. Do not recommend it/ it is perhaps a decent read whenever first learning about the Brother Malcolm X : Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X. There are several reasons for this, first and foremost, it has long been rumored that Alex Haley was a rat. Even Alex’s first interview with Malcolm was taken with suspicion. From Alex Haley’s fraudulent, ‘Roots’ project 1, to the inability to stay true to his word to not alter Malcolm’s work while co authoring the book with Brotha Malcolm or El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz as the brother was named by this time. The autobiography was recorded over several interviews during 1963-65, after dear Malcolm’s departure from the NOI (Nation of Islam). Source 2

Not ONLY did Alex ‘pay me’ (sorry I had to do it) allegedly make up parts of Malcolm’s life, murking the waters when it comes to truly knowing Malcolm’s life in entirely, or at least how El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz saw fit, to omit three chapters, he did it to ‘sell the book better’. Source 3

It is very difficult to start to truly know where Malcolm’s recollection ends and Haley’s retellings begins. It helps to fact check other writings but then again Haley’s version has led to some terrible retellings of Malcolm’s life:

As well as several others… but we are not here to discuss the horrible retellings of Malcolm’s life.

I. Early Life and Family Background (1925-1941)

- A. Birth and Parentage: Born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska. His father, Earl Little, was a Baptist preacher, handyman, a man of many skills when it came to physical labor and staunch supporter of Marcus Garvey as was his mother, Louise Norton Little, was NOT just a homemaker. She supported her husband immensely in his work, being the only one to actually be able to read Garvey’s writings, kept attendance in meetings and much more in attempting to organize local so-called Negroes in the country to begin to look beyond Amerikkka and towards Africa as hope for liberation and a better life.

- B. Early Childhood Trauma: Family faced harassment from white supremacist groups, EVEN before his birth, in 1925 Omaha, Louise Little courageously faced down the KKK when they came after her husband for preaching amongst ‘the Negroes in town, stirring up all the good niggers’. Although she was pregnant with Malcolm and had three other small children in the house to care for alone, she went outside and stanchly informed them that her husband was gone preaching out of town. (This happened to be the Black Legion offshoot of the Klan, which could be found in different variations throughout the northern states). The family moved to Milwaukee then afterwards Lansing, Michigan, a city just outside of Detroit which would prove to play a large role in Young Malcolm’ childhood and adolescence.

Read more

*THIS DOC CAN BE REUSED BY ANYONE AT ANY POINT IN TIME TO REBUKE FALSEHOODS ABOUT THE PEACEFUL RELIGION OF ISLAM*

Disputing claims about Islam requires going …

Read more

Now this piece will be bit shorter than the first edition of Unmasking Liberalism. It will be more personal though I will try not to get too personal.

As promi…

Read more

The brazen invasion and illegal kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro is a vivid and criminal manifestation of imperialist gangsterism, orchestrated by the same thugs that have long sought …

Read more

To start, I propose that it’s only fair to describe what exactly IS a ‘false flag’ event or attack. Through Google, this is what Wikipedia has to say, ‘A false flag operation is an …

Read more

In this piece I will be back tracking a bit, unfortunately, at least for all those who have followed me for a longer period of time. This absolutely needs to be done due to recent uptick in followers on socials, specifically Instagram. I would like to make sure that everyone understands going forward, where I stand. Why the need for confusion if it simply can be avoided? I do not regularly organize with those who would refer to themselves as liberals (some elders notwithstanding) or anarchists, who I believe are more alike than not, especially when referring to those in the West, North Amerikkka. This work also normally involves mutual aid for the local community, ‘progressives’ at Pro Palestine rallies/ protests etc. Regardless, I view liberals and liberalism by extent, correctly, as a simple centrist idealism that kills more than it claims to defend and protect, often times throwing those same subjects, topics and agendas to the wolves when these liberal politicians quickly abandon ‘democracy’ for fascism or the people for exploitation of labor and resources, being the first to defend a genocidal state to wage war; why, because it benefits, upholds and defends capital. Many of liberal politicians here and abroad in places such as Germany or France will and have done the same, as seen all throughout history.

Quoting the US Holocaust Museum:

‘The National Liberal Party’s compliance with the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany can be understood through the historical context of the Weimar Republic and the political dynamics of the time. The party’s cooperation with the Nazi Party was often pragmatic, as it aimed to maintain its position in the political arena and avoid further fragmentation. However, this cooperation was not without its complexities and tensions, as the party’s leadership had to navigate the delicate balance between supporting the Nazi regime and preserving its own political viability.’

These liberals today, especially those in power, will support apartheid in Isn’t Real as they done in South Africa, all the while claiming to practice democracy at home. At all times throughout Amerikkka’s imperial history, you will find civilians who would just as fast call themselves liberals in the same breath then defend and justify slavery or the genocide and the subjection of another people. While I can acknowledge the popular so-called campaign promises of recently elected younger libs and their Democratic Socialist pals in Amerikkka. At the same time, I do believe it’s just as important, not to mention fair, to point out the walking back of the most crucial points, whether that be before or shortly after taking whatever office they were elected to. In this lengthy piece, as well as several follow up editions, analytic pieces I will explain historically what liberalism has meant for oppressed peoples here in the states or abroad, in the so-called third world or global south. I will do my best to share my personal grapple also with liberalism. I will wrap such up by proving what all Marxists attempt to do, convince all who read, all that can see and those who have ears and can hear, that the only path forward is socialism. That the very bright future if we so choose it, that future will be Marxist.

Read more

Peace be upon you,

I come to you here today, not only as a Muslim. Not ONLY as a Black man whose ancestors …

Read more

Read more

Read more

***Please consider that this (political and social rant) was written at a time of early political awakening. The time is 2020 in the midst of BLM, probably just before spending 5 d…

Read more

(X2) (Stars and stripes), martyrs dressed in white

Read more