R.I.P. K-SWIFT!!!!!! Says Uni Q. Mical , Monday, July 21, 2008 at 5:43 PM, in

If you havent heard of b-more club, maybe you're just a cynic who can't dance.
It's NOT music that you listen to in your cars at noon--well, unless you're from B-more, cuz we can do that--but it's specifically for shaking your limbs until they fall off. And it don't matter if you can't dance. Just wail. We'll appreciate it if you can't do the Spongebob, or rock off in general.

Hell, to be honest, I can't.

But the one woman who's perfected her craft and catalogue, who has been booked from clubs to high school proms all across b-more (SHOUT OUT BALTIMORE CITY COLLEGE SENIOR PROM '05!), who puts out a CD once every season just to keep our collection fresh (yo, why you still bumpin Hey Ryders?), is DJ K-Swift. She commanded a crowd much like Kool Herc in '73, and showed all the women in B-more that, beyond the cliche, WE CAN DO THIS TOO. We don't need to just be the ones bent over on the dance floor, simulating gettin a train ran on us, or even homegirl on the wall, scopin out the scene. We can be up there, rockin the golden headphones, slicin the record until it screams out from the bass thumpin.

And that's y you, yeah you readin this, should be on the lookout for me n my homegirl mel o. mind droppin next year.

But beyond that...R.I.P. K-SWIFT. you did it for us. I'm FOREVER indebted to you for your work, your beats, your voice on 92Q...DAMN. I'mma miss it all, man. Far too young, and far too soon of a loss. This shout out is to you.

OSA Pt. 2: EITHER STAND TALL OR SITCHA ASS DOWN. Says Uni Q. Mical , at 5:40 PM, in

What catches me off guard, and boils my blood essentially, is the exploitation of our ugly, racist history (AND PRESENT) for your sick, twisted benefit. And, being it’s the south, to poke and evoke lynching and God in the same sentence…WORKS!!!! Every. Time. For many people.

Then have the AUDACITY to call us racist, after, of course first being accused of being racist…you don’t have to call me a nigger to be a racist (though I know it’s on the tip of your tongue). I’ve honestly been trying to wrap my bigass head around this overtly white, patriarchial, Jesus-freak camp coming to a predominantly African-American city and lacing their pamphlets with pictures of bright brown eyes and ponytails staring back, with the title “Where have all the black children gone?”

I don’t know, but I know where they’ll be.

The girls, give ‘em 16 years, of living in the same deficient, uprooted housing, eating with the aid of food stamps and relatives and “boyfriends”; of suffering in a classroom that doesn’t have a trace of their histories in them as victors, only as survivors, who never saw the true meaning of education other than a recess from reckless and hectic home life; whose textbooks don’t even touch the crack era, printed in 1981; whose health class (if applicable) doesn’t even highlight the current crack era, or safe sex, or positive displays of healthy sexuality, so she searches and searches for love, with every hymen re-torn and every demand to them to wear a condom, thinking she’s unworthy to challenge him when he says oh-so-smoothly “no”…for every week the stomach grows, every week the anxiety shows. And when she runs to the clinic, draped in sunglasses, white tees and grey sweatpants, they believe that four men and women invading and swarming on her circle will convince her to rethink her decision. And, what they see as reframing her worldview. But in reality, that’s one less burden she has to endure.

The guys, simply, no daddy, searching for him on the street corners, peering through the cracks in the cement while playing cee-lo, behind the bulletproof glass at liquor stores, through the hennessy plastered in the windows, and the lime green Newport ads on the walls…through the nets on the basketball courts, none of which are ever there. So he finds belonging in his boys, when trading pokemon and yu-gi-oh becomes fresh teenage pussy…though he must never show his vulnerability. His sensitivity. That he just might be falling for her. Cuz then, he’s a faggot. Not a pimp. So girls are tossed like Luv(s). Meanwhile, she’s still asking if the Jordans means he really loves her.

So that’s where they’ve gone. And where’s OSA when you need ‘em?

Manhandling the prisoners, behind every standardized test, tallying up the number of failing fourth graders to calculate the number of jail beds they’ll need in, say, 10 years.
Make your mark heavy and dark, be confident in your failure! Come on, we know u wanna do it! GO OUT WITH A BANG!

They’re shooting at u from inside your car, JESUS, I had no idea buckling my seat belt was a cause for instantaneous death penalty.
They’re punching passers-by in the face for recording harassment of a black teen on the cell phone, and keepin it movin onto toying with some other uneducated negro who fumbles through the streets alone.

They’re turning you away from privatized hospitals, only reserved for the true, hard-working, God-fearing citizens of America who can afford insurance premiums. And who even know what the fuck an insurance premium is.

Medicaid may as well just cover baby bottle nipples. Cuz we couldn’t even get a new pair of glasses with it.

They’re spraying down your government-subsidized lawns with west nile pesticide at 4 am, as if waking up at 9 and inhaling its remains is any healthier.
They’re infiltrating your supermarkets with an aisle dedicated to Pork n’ Beans, next to the Kool-Aid smile aisle, the back swimming in bologna and hog head cheese, racks of bloody, fresh-off-the-truck, frozen-in-their-guts chicken wings, and all the mercury you could wish and pray for in your catfish and lake trout.
Round these parts, the word organic is a JOKE. Y’all hoggin all the whole foods and trader joes to yourself.
(Throw some flour on that bitch.)

They’re putting petrolatum and mineral oil in ALL your babies’ head products, knowing you won't check the ingredients…if it say “super gro”, I want it. Nevermind that the gunk stays there until you wash it. And the whole “gro” part of that title? Impossible when the follicles can't BREATHE from being slapped down with luster’s FABULOUS pink oil moisturizer.

Blue Magic has lost its tricks.

I could go on and on and ON about who they are. What’s sad is they don’t even recognize who they are, all up in OUR kool-aid, don’t even care about the poverty that won't allow us to buy kombucha. And the mental poverty that conditions us to believe we’re not worth anything more than red sugar in a packet.

But I know who they are, because I’ve been victimized, whether directly or indirectly, by the institutionalized racism that attacks us. And while they’re busy debating whether or not their organization is racist, or whether they individually are racist, I can't help but see the disturbing similarities between bombing clinics, or standing on corners with dead fetuses to protect these innocent babies from the wrath of clinics…to the rhetoric of protecting their innocent white women from the wrath of savage negroes that justified EVERY lynching ever (un)recorded.

Maybe it’s me. But my blackness/womanness/queerness/poorness won’t allow me to lie to you. I’mma air it out before they write off me, my body, and my rights, like they’ve been trying to do to us countless times before my spirit even descended. They gon’ try to strike us, whether we hide behind silence or not. So whom shall I fear?

Operation Save America, I wipe my ass with your pamphlets. Says Uni Q. Mical , at 5:26 PM, in

I can't even fathom what kind of week this has been. Flat, subjective statement, yes. But honestly.

If I can talk to you people about the rights that I believe in and hold dear to me, then everyone else falls into place, like jenga blocks tumbling to hardwood.
Or shooting straight thru the cerebrum while the pawned body still stands.

I already know everything you’re going. To. Say.

It’s a baby.
Rebuttal: But it’s a baby.
We’re spreading God’s word, and the bible says murder is wrong.
Rebuttal: But murdering a small, innocent life is wrong.

Your time’s up. Anymore uninformed, generalized, empty statements for the jury?

But what catches me off guard, and boils my blood essentially, is the exploitation of our ugly, racist history (AND PRESENT) for your sick, twisted benefit. And, being it’s the south, to poke and evoke lynching and God in the same sentence…WORKS!!!! Every. Time. For many people.

For others, not so much, such as the capped black woman in the white tee and capris, when approached with a pamphlet, shouted, almost on command:
FUCK THAT! YOU GON’ HELP ME RAISE THIS BABY? WHEN THE MOTHER ON DRUGS? U GON RAISE A RETARDED BABY? FUCK THAT.

Rebuttal: Silence.
*********
Day five. The man in the denim Jesus cap says I have a choice to go to hell. I scream, filled with the rage of all those who did and did not have an opinion, those 95% of pro-choice folk (statistic penned by david lackey) that couldn’t be there for various reasons of living just enough for the cit-aaaay, YOUR SOUL IS NOT EXEMPT! YOU HAVE A CHOICE TOO! Banging down for emphasis on the newspaper stand, throwing a fuck or two in there. (Not helpful. But they bring you to that point, mommy.) Slinging my quarter-filled vitamin water bottle and neon orange SAVE ME FROM POVERTY poster up in the air, storming across the street flipping him off for interruption’s sake.

If you’re going to heaven, I don’t WANNA go.

Later, here comes Rodney, handing me a hug and a cigarette in the shade I ran to for comfort and calming. Hands shaking, I inhale the Newport like the last breath of an asthma attack.

And we continued on, three days in a row:
CHRISTIAN FASCISTS
KILLING DOCTORS
THAT’S THE WAAAAAAY THEY GET TO HEAVEN
CHRISTIAN FASCISTS
KILLING DOCTORS
AND THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME

THERE’s A WHITE ONE
AND A MALE ONE
AND A WHITE ONE
AND A MALE ONE
CHRISTIAN FASCISTS
KILLING DOCTORS
AND THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME

CHRISTIAN FASCISTS
BLOCKING HEALTHCARE…

Along with
SEXIST
RACIST
ANTI-GAY
CHRISTIAN FASCIST
GO A-WAY

Over his YOU HAVE A CHOICE TO GO TO HELL speech, having the absolute testicles to come to the side of the street we stood on, directly facing us…it was the most preposterous symphony I’d ever witnessed. And as he drowned in his own words, we only got louder.

Not to forget Sir Jesse, holdin it down for the Eric Rudolph Fan Club. Now these folk can deny all they want (omg! Isn’t denying an elementary textbook euphemism for LYING? Oooh, u goin to HELL!) that they have no connections to the crazed death-row fucks that blew up the clinics…but we know better than to believe such a blanket statement. Their world view, though, is entirely black and white (minus the occasional demonic token thought), so I’m not so sure who to believe anymore.

Even the spawns, who already have it set up in their minds that they’ll be submissive to their husbands at 13, since GOD SAID MAN THEN WOMAN and he can protect me…but when discussing healthy sexuality, I guess the homeschool teacher hasn’t gotten to that lesson just yet. When asked what an orgasm is, the girls responded “I don’t know…if I should be learning about this just yet…If you guys are gonna start talking about this, we should go back to the other side of the street.” Now at this point, it’s my duty as an American citizen to reference the Europeans. (In this context, I can dig ‘em). To have healthy, natural conversations surrounding sex and sexuality from a younger age is MUCH more beneficial than, whoa, who woulda guessed? KEEPIN EM IN THE DARK. It keeps their birth and abortion rates low. But here, we just love hoggin onto the puritanical days, as if they’ve ever did anything positive for our country besides confuse and repress and shame us, Scarlet Letter style. Until that promise ring that made waiting till marriage seem SO achievable is snipped off and hurled to the Hefty at 17. Regardless, curiosity’s gonna strike.

And the commercials of kindergartners playing with condoms, to the fine chiseled buttcheeks getting venereal shots, would give any right wing parent the heart attack they hoped would never happen before they saw their child reach the altar.

And for that reason, we were out there TODAY handing out free condoms. The streets ate ‘em up like gum on the sidewalks. Meanwhile, this white-haired fellow who I specifically singled out and called REPRESSED for labeling me as having no respect for myself for having premarital sex, who stated the public FOOL system promotes fornication, who slipped up and called us racist for promoting the death of black babies (see above for what I think of that), though in the same sentence referred to black women as not having respect for themselves for not being abstinent…stands loyally in front of the holocaust/slavery/dead baby slide of their exhibit. We parade around, happily and healthily shouting SAFE SEX SAVES LIIIIVES! Giving out condoms to any and all passers-by. And lube, and dental dams, which were terribly hilarious to demonstrate on. And as their “justice for the unborn” flag waved, we tried to prevent anymore simulated babies from being on their posters by telling folks to wrap it up, b.

*************
And the many others in between the spectrum of completely vulnerable, impressionable, slaves to religion and SOLD off any auction that has God in the title, to the abhorrent, grossed out, faces flooded, coming-over-to-the-other-side-of-the-street-and-thanking us-for-being-SANE…are the reason I do this. I do it for the black women workers who confused us today with being a part of them because of the “SAFE SEX SAVES LIVES” sign…who later hugged us after she realized she aligned us wrongly. I don’t know if any of us explicitly stated that we weren’t with them, she just got a wiff after 5-7 seconds.

I do it for the countless queer brothers and sisters who come past, drive past, skate past, strut past, even stop past to help us out and hold signs with “sex is the standard” on ‘em, who will occasionally snarl at the graphicness of their glowing red arm baby posters, but nevertheless write off the group as deranged, completely disregarding their warm blanket of sweet baby Jesus conversations.

I do it for the older white woman who did this back in ’77 and never budged or broke down to these extremists, and DARED them to touch her nowadays, who came down on her work break to hold up the KEEP ABORTION LEGAL sign, and thanked us for being young and continuing the movement.

I do it for the woman who, after hearing from a passer-by, that our womb is a graveyard, who RAAAAAN with it: oh, it must be Halloween down there…(lifts up leg exaggeratingly) who wants some caaaaan-dy???
And my flailing to the ground showed my enthusiasm.

For the stubborn, conditioned to Eurocentric, southern evangelistic, patriarchial privileged thinking (black) men, who shout “don’t want a baby? Don’t spread your legs”, “Stop killing babies”, “Go eat your cheerios” and whatever else they felt was necessary to spit at us in their five-second passer-by soundbyte…I do this for you too, because you love to hear yourself speak. And will immediately pull the emasculation card if we approach them. But that’s a whole ‘nother topic I don’t feel like exhausting at the moment. I’ll just pose this question instead: how can a slave own a slave?

For the one blonde white young woman in the white jag who specifically gave us the finger, and our running up to her window and shaking the HONK IF YOU LOVE SAFE SEX signs to her…she honked for all the wrong reasons, of course, but we took that as a sign of appreciation.

For the countless hi-fives, hugs, yeeeeeeahs, whoooooos!, honks more than traffic jams on 95 that we received, this lets us know that it’s not us at ALL that are at fault. It’s our lives that are at stake though, truly, and this is why this week is not in vain, but that the work and organizing must only continue. It’s a lifelong struggle, both sadly and thankfully.

But this voice is too deep to ever waver.