hog maws & nigger links. Says Uni Q. Mical , Monday, August 11, 2008 at 2:05 PM, in

...emancipate urselves from mental slavery...

u can't
bury the word

NIGGER

but let the actions continue.

born on the back of porches
as savage and minstrel
words we never hear 2day
but still the package we live thru
seem since civil rights left
we been more backwards than kids’ shoes

thinkin if we got a few hunnids
in stacks and some crisp shoes
then we done made it big—
but still callin these cracklins our rich food
still plugged in2 the corners
niggas mackin when chicks move
but if she say nothin
she get attacked as a bitch—

PROVE

2 me
we somethin higher
cuz our mentals done expired
and this poverty’s stronger than physical
when
we think
we can't aspire
2 this upward mobility

these three year old girls be killin me
mean muggin from the womb
and we just laugh it off as silly
see
these school kids
who crackin on that boy
for doin arithmetic
screamin

YO BEIN WHITE!

but ask him for answers 2 the drill n shit
and we wonder why we payin students
2 bring a love of learnin
2 the skills they flip
not 2 be another dropout
draggin drug doe 2 the dealership

i sit and think round the clockers
where in this generation are our doctors?
our lawyers and our voices
our leaders that’ll watch us
but if i look around again
i see it’s WE we on a watch for
can't wait on y’all 2 act
cuz we’ll be sleepin in them boxes
days long gone from King dreamin
we need a scheme beyond the blocks y’all

but long as we scapegoats
we won't ever think we capable
long as u think u a nigger
ur mind and body gon’ stay lazy yo
frozen on the pa-tio
thinkin bout mercedes doe
they trapped us with the projects
so we can't pass on houses
2 the next generation yo
still redlinin our hoods
banks still don’t trust our paper yo
slicin us with credit cards
act now or debt’ll be the death of yo
got some grown ass rappers
who can't even pay their taxes
and little kids idolize em
stuffin bling bracelets under the mattress

but white folk kno just the hat tricks
feedin us MCs and athletes
don’t take no intellect 2 do this
so we stay suckin on this black meat

programmed 2 think this our only method
2 get out the street
ain't no
aspirin scholars
just chump dollars from this rap release
but the moment u fuck up,
fox news be lynchin on a laughin spree
they only let us niggas get but soooo far
before they crack our teeth
but with every reality
tv show
we proud of we
but just cuz our faces multiplied
don’t mean it’s positivity

SEE NIGGERS ALWAYS BEEN ON TV!
THIS SHIT IS FAR TOO EASY!

read from a script
grab a glock or ur dick
hoes make sure that weave is the slickest
and cuss him out too,
if need be

THERE’S MARKETS THAT KEEP OUR PALMS ALL KINDSA GREASY!

stereotypes carried over from the 1800s
back when mammy run it
now it’s rasputia who’s gruntin
now soulja boy spittin that shit
that even zipcoon can't stomach
but i don’t blame him—
he’s a gimmick
for when record labels push their buttons:

give ‘em the latest dance,
latest shuffle that they wantin
keep these niggers salivatin
but remainin in these slums &
feed ‘em finger-lickin pig feets,
red kool-aid 2 chase the rum
fast food joints on every corner
chokin on them sesame seed buns

see y’all white folks a trip
tellin’ us 2 eat organic
round here, that word’s a joke—

nigga, pass that bologna sandwich!

y’all hog all the whole foods 2 yaself
charge $10 for bananas
meanwhile a chicken box
ain't but $4.50
and THAT SHIT’LL DO SOME DAMAGE!

but we so full of itis
we can't even read the prices
thinkin we deserve this treatment
hood zombies livin lifeless
the ghettos just babysit us

don’t teach us 2
succeed but 2 survive this

weren’t taught 2 use
king and queen speak—
a long ways from Nefertiti and Isis

and it kills me 2 think
that it’s the 21st century
we still waitin on cotton paper
2 caress our hands so gently
and this decade,
IT AIN'T NO RACISM!
nobody pourin salt on me at diners
but it’s
1/4 niggas in bmore
behind barbed wire till their time’s up
it’s queens who gotta fight
2 have custody of their
vaginas
callin us murderers for abortions
cuz we can’t afford ur piece of the pie
it’s
that baby who woulda lived
2 repeat the cycle of his papa
missin in action
idolizin dribblin black men
with no respect for a woman
this side of the tracks i’m

spittin the puckerin truth
go ‘head and try 2 taste this

nowadays,
u ain't got-ta call me a nigger 2 be a racist

just grow up far away from us
with ur only representation
bein weezy/t-pain/new york/maury and flava flav
and tell me i speak so articulate,
i’m so well behaved!
runnin fingers thru my hair
2 feel the knots,
u’re so

amaaaaazed

at how we do it
turn bein poor in2 a movement
but if them crack dollars ain't invested
bro, u just look FOOLISH
don’t think we worthy of our accomplishments
so we wear chains of self-hatred
though we make that shit look maaaad fly
inside fear still dominates us

the diagnosis?
post traumatic slave disorder
and they still can't medicate us.

dekLaration of pens wit difference. Says Uni Q. Mical , at 2:01 PM, in

MY NUMBER EIGHT...JEAN GRAE SALUTE. DONT SLEEP.

ppl listenin
n think my rhymes r nonsensi--
cal--but im cooler than the stars in november
27th runnin pleasant no achin archnemesis
so imma drop definitions u gon’ remember kid
fuck bein bout cleanliness
im grittier than a chicostick
dipped in sand art castles wit sharpeners full o pencil mist
raspier than ur drunk aunt talkin shit while the glass of whiskey drips
ready to whoop ass at cookouts if SUMBODY don’t get these kids
ladylike don’t sit well in my stomach like month old chitterlins
so lil miss priss can trip over stilettos from her bitterness
eyes beatin me to grounds cuz i embody all u wish u is
but y wrap urself in hate like white folk who slaughter christmas meanins
so used to mean muggin-well i respond u wit a different greeting:
hi, my name is kLef, i understand u sensitive n teethin
angry u can't place me, threw TANtrums cuz i don’t switch wit sweetness
carryin no purses/skirts/or burstin out the tits wit cleavage
cuz im on a mission 2 bring this rap game outta nigger season
and for all my actions, yo, u must feel that im sick wit treason
but i missed that class on cloning—sick w/ fever while they wrists r freezin
distanced from this drama so on the really bitch just please get
off the shoestrings draggin-im restricted n can't lift my feet up
2 jump back onto my planet where rays is beamin but the mist is ether
peace followers-im outta here-and HELL naw i won't miss u neither.

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.

SAVE AMERICA FROM OPERATION SAVE AMERICA!!!! Says Uni Q. Mical , Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 9:51 PM, in

So we pretty much experienced the time of our lives today...coming from Baltimore, i'd never up close and personally experienced confronting the people that are most against me, and that fuel my activist fire, until today. This pro-life, right-wing, ultra-Christian, anti-gay, anti-abortion anti-(fill-in-the-blank-with-your-oppression-here) group Operation Save America came to Atlanta to spread the good ol' backwoods news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, topped off with a cherry of "Jesus is the standard." They'll be here for all of next week, July 12-19, in their attempt to "save" us from the evils that, I'm assuming, they're saved from themselves. I'm not too certain what Jesus they praise, or partner with in their personal (and private) lives, but I doubt he'd wail around posters with dead fetuses on them to rub in people's faces. Really, it's all so sensational.

I, along with five other beautiful ladies from and affiliated with SPARK (Mia, Paris, Ally, Erin, and Darlene), wanted to make our presence MORE than known to them in their comfy abodes at the Best Western Hotel. We started out at an intersection in front of a Denny's, draped in our fabulous pro-choice sweat and pink blankets of "WELCOME TO REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE SUMMER, OSA", in addition to other "Honk for Reproductive Justice" and "Sex/Justice is the Standard" signs. After near fainting, we realized we should relocate across the street from the hotel in the shade, where our impact would not only be seen, but heard. We didn't even give them a chance to wrap their cold, heartless bodies in the hotel towels for a quick post-travel shower without them hearing our chants from the megaphone across the streets of "SAY YES TO JUSTICE!!! SAY NO TO OSA!!!!" and "SAVE US FROM POVERTY!!! SAVE US FROM IGNORANCE!" and the like.

It wasn't before long we gained the attention of one kind fellow named John from OSA, who continued to reiterate his Puerto-Rican heritage to us, so as to demonstrate how much he loathed racists and racism. Nevertheless, we reiterated to him numerous times that his organization, despite HE not being racist, was avidly racist in its approach. We also all detected a big queer stamp on his forehead after hearing his tale of not having his first kiss until the altar at 34, which we respected...but, like many right-wingers don't tend to do, we looked beyond the surface of this issue, and more than likely, there's some repression in that thar soul.
There's a thin line between being nice and coming to speak, and trying to distract us from our agenda at hand, which is to protest the presence of ignorance, oppression, and control on our bodies and our city. So, Mia kept her finger on the megaphone button, and continued to shout through to the balconies of the hotel.

Soonafter, we drew quite the numerous crowd of zealots--all donning their electric red "Jesus is the Standard" t-shirts, and overwhelmingly white, middle-aged, and male. The one female carried the gold-paged, coffee-table Bible in her hands, as an armour against us demonic folks. Many of them didn't say much, but they liken their presence to be intimidating at the least, which...just doesn't work for six loud-mouthed, passionate queer women (sorry!). One came over to me, and began to interrogate about my presence here, as well as my stance being pro-choice...he loved when i broke down the terminology and described fetus as a "latin" term, stating that "baby" was more appropriate. Though diplomatic, the conversation continued on, he reiterating that "the rights of the poor, innocent baby had no right to be thwarted", my "the rights of the poor, oppressed woman had no right to be thwarted". At some point, I felt severely surrounded, but nevertheless spoke loudly and explicitly that i'm SICK of people telling me what to do with my body. Then, I look over to the left and there's Flip, the classic religious NUT who's been in OSA since jump (who doesn't mind getting arrested), telling us how "pathetic" we were that it was only six of us in attendance. Fortunately, I wasn't around to hear much of the verbal holy diarrhea he had to spew, with the other ladies catching the bulk of it. Ally took quite the in-your-face sex approach, asking them if there were two gays doin' it in the middle of the streets, would that be seen as sinful...Erin later pointed out no one commented on her "Sex is the Standard" sign...to break it down, they all just need one good freaky ass night. With each other. And their lives can be muuuuuch happier, and they can get out of our pants and uteruses.

On the way out, after announcing we're headed to a Dyke, Dick, and Drag Derby in the Park, with Paris giving them DETAILED directions of how to get there just in case they wanted to shake up some funnnnnn, one of the old white guys shouted we needed to save our souls, yadda yadda yadda...my response being "let he who is without sin cast the first stone". Now why did i say that...you say one scripture, they have 100 coming back at you. He even questioned my Jesus, assuming it was some other Jesus I worshipped...honestly, it must be.

Then...the cops came. And we weren't the ones they were after. You should've seen 'em scatter across the streets! No conversation, just movement...the disturbingly alarming dead fetus photo even crawled across, at the hands of the woman holding it.

I just honestly can't believe people like this exist. They'll be around all next week, protesting clinics like a swarm of locusts, holding daily Bible studies, as if they need to remind themselves ANYmore of the same 24 verses they'll throw at us, and most of all, disguising their oppressive behavior as "rescue". Well, we're woman enough for 'em. They might've gotten away with murder (ah! murder!) twenty years ago when they came to Atl, but this go 'round, it's not that easy. We, women of color, queers, pro-choice, women who go to those clinics, any and everybody else who's down with standing up for our bodies...are a force to be fucked with. Come check us at the press conferences on black women and abortion (Monday @ 9am), film festivals, and of course, in the streets. With signs and church fans. Holluh.

this is the christenin. ppl, i hope ya listenin. Says Uni Q. Mical , Wednesday, July 9, 2008 at 4:16 PM, in

so, welcome to my bloggggg!!!! this goes out 2 all those folks that said i should start one. i'm a ridiculous, scatterbrained sagittarius, ascendant in gemini, moon in pisces (yep, took it there...shit is real). but i got dreams, man.
but--there are ground rules. i'm not big on capital letters, unless for emphasis, like THIS. that's minimal tho.
more importantly, for all those that kno me and those that don't, kno that i'm one of the most passionate ppl u could ever encounter when it comes to my views and writing...but this doesn't mean i'm closed to any new ideas. i love a good intellectual jerkoff just as much as the next book-beat college student. what i hold dear to my heart, tho, so nunnayall get it twisted, is my body. and no, not sexually (well, when the time is right), but my body, meaning the personal IS political. meaning whatever affects black people, women, the poor, the queers, the gays, the lezzies, the trans...affects me, too. my life is dedicated to breaking the silence surrounding our bodies and our liberation, and putting us one step closer to our self-determination and the telling of our OWN stories. whether this be through me writing about it, organizing, collaborating with others that think alike...we're gonna get closer. don't be fooled by the scapegoating. hell, we ARE closer. kno that.
annnnd, with all that being said, i wanted to share witchall this op-ed article i wrote a few weeks ago for The Atlanta Voice for my pheNOMenal internship with SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective in Atlanta this summer...right now. it was in response to an article by Judie Brown from American Life League who was ECSTATIC about their spreading awareness around how the birth control pill is not a contraceptive, but an abortive...ah, it speaks for itself. read on.

On reading Judie Brown’s “Revisiting ‘The Pill Kills’ Day!”, I must say it astonishes me how visibly upset and defensive pro-lifers become when they discuss such sensitive and necessary topics as birth control and abortion. Truthfully speaking, I should be more astonished, as a young black woman who must live and breathe in the same country as the members of the American Life League who, in reality, couldn’t care less if my child was aborted or alive.

The “Protest the Pill Day” is a movement that intends to tug at the moral heartstrings of many Americans, coercing them to believe that birth control is not at all a contraceptive, but an abortive that shatters the life of an egg inside of a woman’s uterus. Pro-lifers such as Judie Brown, in her attempt to expose “the ugly underbelly of the culture of death” surrounding abortion in this country, fail to locate themselves in this fight, namely their race, class, and gender positionalities. Of course, in their cases of extreme privilege, one would not expect them to see or even acknowledge the people who live in conditions that do not mirror their comfortable, autonomous lives. However, due to my positionality as a black woman, I am forced to not only be fully aware of my present and my history, but also that of my oppressors’. Because of this, I can only use my history as a reference point to the necessity of birth control for black women.

For black women, birth control is not just representative of the right to choose nor the right to privacy, but to self-determination, and liberation from the history of someone else deciding what we do with our bodies for us. In slavery, our bodies were mere vessels for us to produce, for the benefit of the masters, and the economy in terms of production. Though slavery was legally outlawed in 1865, the racist beliefs pervaded in the 20th century through public policies, with the black woman’s response being that of protecting her body by any and all means.

Since abortions were illegal, many women, regardless of race, went to desperate lengths to perform abortions, many of them self-induced. As stated by Loretta Ross in “Black Abortions,” Between 1965 and 1967, in Georgia alone, the black maternal death rate was fourteen times that of white women due to illegal abortions. The breakthrough was, indeed, the Griswold v. Connecticut ruling in 1965 of a woman’s right to sexual privacy, as well as Roe v. Wade in 1973.

While pro-lifers such as American Life League tend to entrench themselves in the rights of the fetus, I believe this deters attention away from the true issue at hand, which is a woman’s right to self-determination. When Judie Brown outlandishly uses such phrases as “culture of death” to describe what abortion ultimately leads to, this prevents a thorough analysis of the culture of death that occurs everyday in cities of concentrated poverty, due to structural and institutionalized racism. The schools in these cities are the best example of such institutionalized racism and sexism.

With schools that have federally-funded “abstinence-only” health programs, it is impossible for young black women to accurately understand themselves sexually, or the engendered power dynamics behind sex, which prevent them from ever becoming sexually autonomous. Judie Brown so eloquently describes sex as “belonging exclusively to the domain of marriage,” but these beliefs are not at all steeped in the reality of this country, and the health classes should mirror our realities, not our insurmountable hopes.

It is in any woman’s best interest, but particularly women of color, to have access to birth control as a sexual human right. For far too long, someone else’s story has clouded our own, that of whites, that of our husband’s, that of the Right believing they are speaking for us. For far too long, black women have had to walk thin lines, such as controlling their fertility against their boyfriend’s permission, while still believing in the same moral fabric as many Right-wingers who proclaim it is a sin to abort a fetus.

In the struggle against racism, sexism, and classism, black women and other women of color exist in a multi-layered world of oppression. Consequently, if this right to birth control is evident of our right to self-determination, it will certainly impact all women in the US as well. Once we have solidified our sexual autonomy, access to proper health care and information, proper and extensive education surrounding healthy sexuality, basic needs such as stable employment, income, food, and shelter, and for women on welfare, assistance with child care and welfare to work training, then and only then can we concern ourselves with what constitutes a “culture of death” in our society. The urgency of these needs in an already failing economy is no longer just a matter of choice, but a matter of survival.