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Showing posts from November, 2009

A New Documentary: W.A.R.. Stories:Walter Anthony Rodney

W.A.R. Stories/span>: Walter Anthony Rodney: This film covers the life of world renowned, historian, author, and activist, Dr. Walter Rodney who was assassinated on Friday, June13, 1980, at age 38, in his native Guyana. It’s a story of a man who dedicated his life, and ultimately, gave his life in the struggle for equal rights and justice. He did so through his considerable intellectual gifts and actual grassroots involvement everywhere he went. He went everywhere. The people who knew him weave a tale of how they related to him and him them. In the process we see the growth of their friend, his ideology and how that changed over the years from his coming of age in racially divided Guyana through the cold war, the Black Power Movement, Pan-Africanism, Caribbean independence, and the idea of self emancipation. It’s about the influence of places on him and him on places as evidenced by the riots in Kingston, Jamaica, his role in Southern Africa's struggle for independence and ...

Jack's Revenge

M y father died in 2007 from complications caused by diabetes. It was not a good thing. He was 85 years old with a mind that could last another 15 years, easily. So whenever I meet folks and they say, sometimes so casually, that they are diabetic, I ask questions. Everywhere in the Diaspora, Africa, the Caribbean and particularly North America, our people are under siege from this epidemic. So when recently in Clarendon Hills, close to the beginning of the Rio Minho, Auntie Nuncie mentioned here condition, I listened. Frankfield, Clarendon, Jamaica is deep country in terrain and lifestyle. Yam is King and the pig queen…., no Jack. Stories are told over a meal of roast yam and roast salt fish washed down with boiled rainwater and Auntie Nuncie is a skilled proponent of all but not since the diabetes, the arthritis, and the ‘pain in the flesh’. But a story, well, she can still tell and she has plenty like them pills she takes one for the ‘pain in the flesh’, one for the blood press...