The system isn't broken

it was designed to be fuckt, we don't even know what has been taken from us.

maggots eating my brain, keep repeating refrains , while i'm greasing my chains, and preaching for change reaching for rage so i can feel something at all.

"Angel Dust" Complete Lyrics-Gil Scott Heron

The lyrics to this song by Gil-Scott Heron are incomplete on the internet.
I have taken it upon my self to rectify this. I posted these back some time ago, but this time I made sure the whole song is up for us.

I own no copy right... this is for educational purposes only
here you go:

Angel Dust X4

He was Groovin', and that was when he coulda sworn the room was moving
but that was only in his mind
he was sailin', he never really seemed to notice his vision failin',
cuz that was all part of the high
the sweat was pouring, he couldn't take it
the room was exploding he might not make it


Angel Dust, Please, Children would you listen
Angel Dust, Just ain't where its at
Angel Dust, you won't remember what you're missing
but down some dead end streets there ain't no turning back

dust X2

they was standing
everybody in a circle, the whole family,
listenin' to the preacher's words
sis was crying
she alone held the secret about his dying
tears falling to earth
maybe her fault, he was so trusting
god only knew why
they were dusting

Angel dust
please, gonna be the death of you children,
Angel Dust
just ain't where its at,
Angel Dust
you wont remember what you missing but down some dead end streets there ain't no turning back
Dust
believe me sister
Dust
don't mean no body no good no how

sweat was pouring, he couldn't take it,
the room was exploding, he might not make it
Angel Dust
please children it's hard to listen but,
Angel Dust
I ain't trying to run your life
Angel Dust
might seem like just one more good time but,
down some dead end streets there ain't no turning back

Angel Dust
please children I know it's hard to listen but,
Angel Dust
I ain't trying to run your life
Angel Dust
don't mean no body no good no where, and down some dead end streets there ain't no turning back or away from
Angel Dust
Please children would you listen to me
Angel Dust

On my way to the Bakery...

I woke up early this morning, and I got out of bed, and I took the dog to "A Taste of Denmark" on the corner of 34th and telegraph. This is a surprisingly dodgy corner.
As I crossed the 34th Street Overpass, which passes over the Train Tracks, a bit of ghraffiti caught my eye.
The graffiti said-
While i was at the bakery, I got something called a chess pie. It makes me feel like homer Simpson... precious venus....gaarrahrhrhr.....sweet sweet can.... it makes me wish I had another one right now!

And i got a coffee. The coffee, was not good. I still have some, and it's making me sweat and wishing I had more Chess pie.


The Graffiti said "The system isn't broken. It's Fuckt!"
This i understand to be a revolutionary statement.
It implies that the system did not 'break', that things have not gone 'wrong'.
I don't interpret this as saying things work, or being a denial of the problems. I take it to be more of a way to say society is functioning the way it was set out to function. The problems we are having are not an accident. Amerikkkan society has not somehow gotten off track.

Kanye West was wrong. It's not just black people Amerika doesn't give a shit about. It's all people.
And as far as it goes, Amerika cares about black people to the extent that 'black people' can be of use to the machine. So Kanye West was doubly wrong. Even though he's a genius, a genius, a goddamn genius.

And to take this to it's conclusion, we are successfully hoodwinking ourselves with our own rhetoric.
Amerikans like to focus on how we 'freed' the slaves, have a free democracy, and are the greatest fucking country on the planet.
And I am coming to think that this is a way to brush what is really going on under the rug. We can say we are working to end racism, and making things better for women, and even giving homosexuals their civil rights.
But whats really happening is the human animal as a whole is being degraded further. We no longer have open slavery, but there continue to be people existing in virtual wage slavery.
A 'black' man can be president, but a black man can still be shot in the back by the BART police who get off with man slaughter charges.
And we can say we live in a 'post racial' society and this means we don't have to deal with how racist we are.
Ever one knows Asian women can's drive. Obama isn't 'black' enough because he speaks English well. Hillary Clinton is a high priced call girl who can be a powerful women who acts like a man.
So what's really happening here?
All I can say for sure is that it isn't a broken System,

Fuck Getting Hit

This line comes from "One Mic' by one Nasir Jones.
What does it mean? and why do I repeat it?
Let's see if we can place some meaning on this, and we should probably begin with the end, because the first word is 'fuck' which as we all know is not a word with clear meaning.

'Getting hit' could mean a number of things. The context has always suggested hit with bullets, or hit with something heavy and hard. But most likely it's bullets. The purpose of Bullets is to punch holes in things at high speeds, and if the thing that is being hit is alive, the holes being punched can kill it, or maim it.
Therefore, to say 'fuck getting hit' could mean 'I don't care if I get shot and die.'
However, being shot does not universally mean death.
And, if we actually die, then it probably won't matter if we got shot or not, because I do believe that we will have other, more pressing concerns the very moment we die.

In this case, 'fuck getting hit' might mean, 'I don't care if get shot and live.' (and frankly, this strikes me as being profoundly more nihilistic then the other. It's like, i don't give a damn whether i live or die, it's all the same to me.)

'Fuck Getting Hit' seems to be more of a 'I expect there are going to be consequences for this, but I'm going to do it any way, or i have to do it anyway.....'
And this strikes me as being in a sense hopeful.
if you are in a situation where your life, your health, the life and health of your community are threatened, then sometimes you do indeed have to do things which you might rather not. But that's kind of what makes us human, or that represents the spirit of humanity to push back, find a way, squeeze through the cracks of an oppressive system and society and survive.
Moreover, 'fuck Getting Hit' might suggest that you can hit me, you can even kill me, but you can't kill the part of me that is eternal. You can't control my mind, and my heart.

And I don't picture this being simple bravado, or saying, 'I don't care' when I DO care.
It's more of a way of saying I DO care, and it doesn't matter what you do to me, I will still care

the five primary vices

and the cause of our separation from both from g-d and our fellow human beings:
lust
anger
covetousness
attachment to worldly things
pride

It does stop hurting, at least for longer periods of time.

Knowledge isn't always desirable, truth doesn't always set you free. sometimes it fills you with incapacitating terror, and then uncontrollable rage

Homefullness

Why is homefullness important?

In attempting to answer this question, I am forced to ask it of myself outloud a number of times.
at first it seems like a silly question.
It seems silly because the answer is so obvious.
and as soon as i say that, i realize it isn't.
Homes provide a sense of security (sometimes), some form of protection (from the elements) and a sense of wholeness.
I use the word 'wholeness' probably incorrectly. I just moved at the beggining of november, and we are finally settling in, sort of, in my new house. It is starting to feel like home, and it sort of centers my life in a sense, gives me a place to put my embers as it were, in case the fire out there goes out.
I have spent much of my life without having a 'home' but it was different because I most often had a place to be. It wasn't home, but I had a place indoors to be, where i could leave my blanket and notebook. Now, i have a house where i 'own' two desks, two clock radios, a futon, a washing machine, and a snake in a glass cage. All of these things were given to me in the past 4 months, and i am realizing all this now, which does effect my thought process. I bought the washer, along with an electric dryer, (which I cannot plug in, due to it's high voltage requirement,) for 140 u.s. dollars. I then carried it across the yard, to the foot of the stairs.
The power has worked well, and while the water takes awhile to heat, and the toilet requires a little understanding, things function very well.
Vegetables sometimes rot in the fridge before they are gotten to.
I have a pet, a snake, who i actually named partly after queen Nandi, she eats rats, which I have to buy and then dangle in her face so that she can bite and wrap them, and them slowly suck them down into her body.

Now, You might be asking, why the hell are you telling me this.
and i respond, because it shows a certain level of stability, a certain economic comfort, and i believe reflects the assumtion that electricity are running water are things I expect to have.
The fact that I can keep and feed a snake, surely a superflous creature to keep in a cage, implies i am not starving myself, and that I have enough control over the environment to ensure she is not going to freeze.
COnsidering this, if we go a little further, and consider how important professional sports are to many Americans, it becomes apparent that the entire way of life in this country centers on having electricity. Watching tv, drinking cold beer or soda, facebooking, texting, video games, music, it all demands electricity, a place to plug in, and perhaps a sofa to sit on and engage in all of these electricity sponsered activities.
None of these things, except for music (in my opinion) are important, or crucial to our survival. Yet this is what we do in this country. This is what is 'average' or 'normal.' it is what you can 'expect' when you meet an amerikan male. He will watch sports, and probably drive a car.
(And with one stroke, I've left out everybody who can't afford cars, or dare i say, Gas.)
The entire structure of life, the centers around which people orient themselves are all dependant on electricty and they can all be marketed to you, so that you have to buy something with that logo so that everybody knows which gang you are down with.

I have never really owned much. I don't buy things for their label, and while i have often worn sports apparel, It is not out of loyalty or even awareness of who's number i was wearing. Or which sport...
But everything I just mentioned is what Amerika is about for me. and that picture doesn't include folks with no money. Because if you have just a little money, there are 1000 ways to get it from you (lottery tickets, malt liqour, strippers, scotch, cocaine, breast implants to name a few.) Modern day economic slavery.... I see this as you give a person a house, which they rent from you, they work for you, so you pay them just enough so that they can pay your rent, and buy products from stores which you own.... and they will never have enough left over to get the hell away from wherever they are.
Poverty is such a motherfucker. It makes people do terrible things, and I bring up strikers and scabs, undocumented workers, and down right coercion to do unspeakable things. For example, i will submit Mark, who told me when he used to live on the train tracks in Las Vegas, gangsters would pay him to disolve bodies in battery acid. If he didn't do the job, they would kill him, and he had no where else to go, and he needed money to buy crack. So what are you going to do now? Having a house can at times distance you from that element.
it is a form of protection, seperation from the predators.
Which is not to say that a house is certainty of anything... fire, flood, earthquake, gorrilas, drunk man coming home, confused about his house, so he breaks into the wrong one and gets shot by the inhabitants, and shoots them and all three end up in the hospital.
Anything can happen, but having a house is usually a good thing.
Mark also talked about how liviing out gave him a sense of freedom.
and i want to hold that up here and mention he was a single white man with no children to care for.
And really while we are talking about Mark, his homelessness was i suggest selfishly based, dealing primarily with his addiction to crack, not economic hardship... which is of course entirely different form being systematically kept poor.

I might suggest Homefullness is a human right, but its not a right people actualy have in Amerika. I have mentioned living in doors as the same as having a home, but that is not necessarily true. Some folks like to live out doors, but then i suggest it is important to have a connection to the land where you are.
And for some reason land in this day and age is seen as 'property' and a few people own it all, and the rest of us just live here. The idea that people cold be gathered up and driven out of the city and dropped off somewhere 50 miles away being considered a soultion to the 'problem' of homeless people.... is fucking amazing to me. Someone can Own the LAND and have other people who sit down on the side walk arrested?
I don't know what the hell it means, but it sure ain't right.
I guess you could say that in this country, in this age, people are simply not as important as money. I don't care why you're poor. and I don't care whether you eat today or not. I only care about my money, and if you can't pay me, we have some large gents to escort you on out of here.
That attitude is part of why homefullness is important. No one should have the right to come and drive you off, drive you out and forclose your house. or tear it down to build a parking lot, that shoppers pay to use. Homefullness as a right would encourage us to consider the impact of our actions, how we were living and what it meant.
So the thing we are missing is not just decency, but the fundamental respect for life of human beings. People are not trash. and the fact that people and their health matter less than money is a crime against humanity.
How can society charge one person 900 dollars for a one room flat and keep a straight face? How can it cost 1000 dollars for a person to go to the hospital for a pulled muscle?
Simple: Might makes right, prosperity gospel, Individual rights, self righteousness.

Seriously, If those poor people stopped using drugs and whoring themselves out they could get a job and a house too. They are just lazy and stupid and probably have syphilis and why should i pay tax money to feed these cretins?

And I might ask, how can anyone really say that about people? How can anyone have so little compassion for people in need? I suggest insecurity and fear..... because to treat other people like dirt means you can't possibly respect your self, as a human being.

I don't know what to say. i think homefullness is important because it helps people stay human and have boundries, and protection.
But then again, maybe we should all live outside, in a big yert. If we stopped viewing housing as a comodity, somethign to buy, maybe the world would be better.
Thats another thing I have really had to look at here. My family, reolutionary people of color as they are, have always worked to educate and help other brown people get knwledge and skills, which ultimately helps them to assimilate, fit in, get money to buy things.
ANd i wonder if that isn't actually just serving the machine.
I think it's important to keep thinking and not be too hard on ourselves when we realize we may not be working towards liberation as much as we'd like to think.

That said, Profa Tiny, It is ironic that I would be writing this for you due to a course at a Graduate Institution. Somewhere along the line, someone messed up. You aren't suppoed to be telling us these things in graduate school. As different as SKSM may be, you're not supposed to tell people these things. No one wants to say, Yeah, I'm privilegded. Yeah i ignore poor people. yeah, I think i'm closer to right and good than poor people.
Hell, You're not supposed to be saying what you're saying anywhere. It suggests the system missed something.
And you asked early on what did I learn?
And i said, not that i hadn't learned anything, but rather that if i didn't absorb it, than it wasn't real learning.
What have i learned?
I learned most about myself I think. Your reflections asked me to look at how I use language, and as it happens, i am ready to admit how i have internalized some of the patriarchy, and certainly ableism and even sigh, classism.
Leroi helped with that.
and the day yall came and did your in a circle thing... i forget the details, but i saw how I don't always consider perspectives coming from different places. I may reject Amerikan Culture and myths, but that doesn't mean I understand what it means to be poor in Amerika. So there you go.
I learned about thinking, and how I fit into this crazy world. And i saw myself try to avoid some of the harshest pieces, when you asked us to think. And we were all afriad to really say the shit, and you pointed it out.
So thanks for that.

More to come Profa.... More to come.





Profa,
This is the real bullshit, as they put it. Its not just the bomb itself which destroys and kills things. The fallout is the real bullshit.
And what we are talking about here is this unspoken area of society of people whom society doesn't give a shit about. If they weren't lazy, they'd have jobs etc....
(althogh with the 'economic downturn, things are changing fast.)
But the sentiment is "those people are so lazy." I have wrestled with this, actually hearing people say this.
And i guess if we are going to be honest I am situated very clearly in the privilegded world, even though I have lived in all kinds of places with all kinds of folks. The perception that is expressed in public places is not .'look how hard those folks work' or 'look at how fucked up the system is' its usually 'homeless people like living that way' or 'mexicans are the laziest people on earth.'
I know the former attitudes from the peopel i would associate with if i stayed within the scoail class i go to school with. And in fact thats also an attitude I have heard in bars, and when i worked on the Grounds crew at princeton.Even though they would often hire day workers who worked harder than anyone, for less money.
I also noticed that the most dangerous and most difficult work paid the least.
So okay. I went arond the block a couple times.
I spent time in Boulder and in Barcelona a little bit in Den Hagg and in Berlin, and then in San Francisco with the 'homeless.' And then i have been working with the Faithful Fools ion Hyde street. And in each of thiose places i learned about 'homelessness'
But what i want o say here is that it took me going to graduate