THE RASTAFARI COLLECTIVE--JULY ARCHIVES
THE MONTH OF
EMPEROR HAILE SELASSIE I THE FIRST
KING OF KINGS & LORD OF LORDS
CONQUERING LION OF THE TRIBE OF JUDAH
| The RastafarI Collective:
An Interactive Paper Made by InI The People, For InI The People. "...learning only stops at the grave." H.I.M EMPEROR HAILE SELASSIE I THE FIRST |
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Sunday, July 1, 2001
to Saturday, July 7, 2001 Volume 1, No. 32 WEEKLY EDITION |
INI MUST REPATRIATE!!!
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THIS WEEK'S FEATURE STORY
WHY BLACKS IN AMERICA SHOULD FIRE BURN 4TH OF JULY?
The 21st Century is a makeover of centuries past for Blacks in America. As Blacks could not walk in the street without a pass from their masters, the same way today they cannot drive in the street without being pulled over. As Blacks were seen as 2/3 of men and women, so their children are born today with their birth certificates belonging to the Department of Commerce. As we were brutalized yesterday, so we are brutalized today and tomorrow. Many Blacks that have found favor in this system have become "whiter than snow" as the house niggers were of yesterday. While Blacks still pray to a God not of their making to forgive those who they believe "know not what they do", they suffer quietly in the life made for them in a country that does not belong to them or the masters that have brought them here.
Many will spend this week preparing to BBQ flesh to celebrate their partaking in the bloody feast with no regard of the present troubles caused by a country that has gained its independence on the 4th of July. Any Black person today that feels America will continue to exist with the stress cracks that have developed through years of pressure, are only fooling themselves. As Marcus Garvey had asked, "Now what can the American Negro expect out of America for justice, for equality, for Constitutional rights when even your candidates for President believe in White Supremacy?" The brain washing is so strong that there are Blacks who say to other Blacks, "If you don't like America, why don't you leave?" The funny thing is so much efforts for Black Africans to repatriate have been attempted, yet the same people that don't want us, refuse to let us go. So the question becomes, why when we, the Black Africans choose to leave, we are held up by the proud Americans? This can be proven through history by the amount of monies that were sent from the time of Ulysses S. Grant in the Civil War Era to the time of H.I.M Emperor Haile Selassie I in the 20th century and until now we are still here being held against our will through the hands of poverty.
The following speech was given by Frederick Douglass putting a fire on the 4th of July. Though for the record, he made a speech years later stating that Blacks in America can start to see that their position was beginning to improve. Still in this day, would Frederick Douglass turn in his grave to see what the "improvements" have brought?
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap as an hart."
But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you, that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation (Babylon) whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin.
Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!"
To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world.
My subject, then, fellow citizens, is "American Slavery." I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing here, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July.
Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity, which is outraged, in the name of liberty, which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery -- the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate - I will not excuse." I will use the severest language I can command, and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slave-holder, shall not confess to be right and just.
But I fancy I hear some of my audience say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother Abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more and denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slave-holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to like punishment.
What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments, forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read and write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then I will argue with you that the slave is a man!
For the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading, writing, and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that we are engaged in all the enterprises common to other men -- digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave -- we are called upon to prove that we are men?
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand? How should I look today in the presence of Americans, dividing and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do so would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
What! Am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? No - I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman cannot be divine. Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may - I cannot. The time for such argument is past.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.
Go search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
Frederick Douglass - July 4, 1852
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| The RastafarI Collective:
An Interactive Paper Made by InI The People, For InI The People. "...learning only stops at the grave." H.I.M EMPEROR HAILE SELASSIE I THE FIRST |
|
Sunday, July 8, 2001
to Saturday, July 14, 2001 Volume 1, No. 33 WEEKLY EDITION |
INI MUST REPATRIATE!!!
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THIS WEEK'S FEATURE STORY
The war against Rastafarians, though fruitless, has been here since the beginning. Anywhere in the world, a conscious person is despised by those who choose to "play dead" (un-conscious). Rastafarians, who are conscious people, choose the road of love to live the life of a natural human being. As such, we are included within the natural structure of the human family. Bearing this in mind, Rastafarians who seek to serve their purpose through works and faith have the right to serve in a position to better himself and herself along with his and her human family. Fed Ex, as other places, choose to deny this right.
Recently, 3 Rastafarian brethren were fired in New York from Fed Ex because of their livity. They were told that their locks must be removed or else. The latter was the consequence of not being promoted and in fact taking a pay cut. The Rastafarian brethrens are now suing Fed Ex for discrimination. Fed Ex states that they have dress codes to accommodate every culture and religion.
This type of "Rasta-hating" does not come from corporate America alone. As a fact, in Virginia state prisons, brethrens and sistrens are being held in solitary confinement for refusing to trim their locks. The NYPD once released a classified report about Rastafarians, who they are and what they do. There are many more examples of governmental institutions globally who have big interests in seeing the Rastafari way of life come to naught.
The worse of all fruitless attacks on Rastafarians, as well as other conscious people, is from their own kind. Rastafarians are represented by all colors of humanity. In all the colors, the destruction comes out of laziness. Most people won't take the time to learn in general, much less a subject in particular that speaks towards anything that is contrary to their thinking. They only take time to learn the "tid bits" so they can get by "those people." These divisions become the tool for people who need divide and rule to continue their personal advancement. Rastafarians whose life represents love and unity, destroys all selfish plans. INI will never be tolerated by "those" who choose to rule unjustly, for we are the good.
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The RastafarI Collective: An Interactive Paper Made by InI The People, For InI The People. "...learning only stops at the grave." H.I.M EMPEROR HAILE SELASSIE I THE FIRST |
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Sunday, July 15, 2001 to Saturday, July 28, 2001 Volume 1 No. 34/35 WEEKLY EDITION |
INI MUST REPATRIATE!!!
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THIS WEEK'S FEATURE STORY
The choice of this age and the very future of humanity is simple: collective survival, or collective extinction. When the stark choice is thus revealed in all its naked horror, dare we hesitate as to our choice? The choice we know; the means we can rediscover in a re-invigorated and mature United Nations. The will to act, and the courage and determination to implement the decisions we must take, matter. Let this session be the re-birth of the United Nations, and the re-affirmation of our faith in the ever-continuing validity of the purposes and principles for which it was established. A grave responsibility rests upon us: to ensure our own collective survival, and the future of unborn generations.
May the Almighty grant us the wisdom, courage and determination to rise to this supreme challenge and reap a rich reward!
H.I.M EMPEROR HAILE SELASSIE I THE FIRST
October 24, 1970
As InI prepare to give Glory to Our Father on HIS Earthday July 23, InI the Babe and Suckling.com would in love take this opportunity to stress to ALL AS ONE that Our collective survival is the most important topic that should be discussed by ALL. How good and how pleasant it is to see that we would all gather together to sing praises and give glory to King RastafarI. Should we not also take this opportunity to reason and explore amongst our brethrens and sistrens the vast amount of ideas that can bring the unification of InI as RastafarI people to do our part in humanity? What greater praise can we truly give than the praise which is given through faith and work? Who can deny that the greatest legacy H.I.M has given us all in humanity IS His words and works? It is honorable to speak of H.I.M's livity, but how do we as His people show our livity? Should it not be by setting the same example? Should it not be by speaking the same? Should it not be by doing the same? Or would we stand as those hypocrites who follow religion so blindly, that they can only see themselves as sinners and not as the image of the Almighty? Can we who claim that H.I.M is the richest man on Earth, continue to dwell in poverty because of no collective survival? When we speak of Our oath as Nyahbinghi, Bobo Shanti, Twelve Tribe, Orthodox, EWF, UNIA, the hungry must be fed, the naked clothed, and the aged must be cared for. How will any of these words manifest flesh without action? How can we make Babylon fall, when we continue to hold it up? Should we all fall like the 40 million careless Ethiopians that the Rt. Hon. Marcus "John the Baptist" Garvey prophesied?
WHEN WILL INI AS THE CHILDREN OF ONE FATHER, IRRESPECTIVE OF RACE, COLOR, AND CREED, REALIZE AND KNOW THAT WHEN WE LIVE AS JAH RASTAFARI, LOVE WILL BRING EVERYTHING AFTER?
InI The Babe And Suckling
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