We Are In This Place For A Reason

An introduction to
All Things Censored, by Mumia Abu Jamal
by Alice Walker

“This is why we became soldiers. This is why we remain soldiers. Because we want no more death and trickery for our people, because we want no more forgetting. The mountain told us to take up arms so we would have a voice. It told us to cover our faces so we would have a face. It told us to forget our names so we could be named. It told us to protect our past so we would have a future.

This is who we are. The Zapatista Liberation Army. The voice that arms itself to be heard, the face that hides itself to be seen, the name that hides itself to be named, the red star that calls out to humanity around the world to be heard, to be seen, to be named. The tomorrow that is harvested in the past.”

“The Acteal Massacre” All Things Censored

I will not write any longer about Mumia Abu-Jamal’s innocence. Millions of people around the world believe he is innocent. I will not write any longer about how he was framed: the evidence speaks for itself. I will not write any longer about the necessity of a new trial: that is obvious. The State intends to take Mumia’s life for its own purposes; for all our love and work, it may succeed.

In every generation there is a case like Mumia’s: a young black man is noted to be brilliant, radical, loving of his people, at war with injustice: often while he is still in his teens, as in the case of Mumia, the “authorities” decide to keep an eye on him. Indeed, they attempt to arrest his life by framing him for crimes he did not commit, and incarcerating him in prison. There, they think of him as something conquered, a magnificent wild animal they have succeeded in capturing. They feel powerful in a way they could not feel if he were free. Imprisoning such a spirit prevents their knowing how much of the natural, instinctive, loving self they have lost, or have had stolen from them. Whether by abusive parents, horrendous schools, or grim economics. They do not know they have encaged their own masculine beauty, their own passionate soul.

This is immediately apparent when one enters the prison where Mumia is kept. The apprehensive, bored guards. And Mumia, in his orange prison uniform, alert to every spark of life on a visitor’s face; seemingly interested in everything. His essays, many of them in this book, demonstrate his engaged attention to what is going on in the world; his identification with those who act against injustice and who suffer. His great love of truth and what is right. It is his integrity, in analyzing dozens of events, that makes it possible to sense he is not a murderer. Certainly not a liar. They will have to kill Mumia to silence him; he has lost his fear of death, having been threatened with it so many times; he is a free man, at last.

A man who is free, whose life has been signed away several times already, is a man I can listen to. What does such a man, unrepentant of his beliefs, have to say? And what places in the listener’s soul are fed by his words? As we push off into the next thousand years, which I personally feel are going to be great, what is the fundamental voice we need to hear to start us on the journey? It is the voice of those, like the Zapatistas, like Mumia, whose love outweighs their fear.

So I will ask you to read at least one of Mumia’s books, as a way to begin to feel your way into this new millennium. He has written and published books while on death row, an amazing feat, and of course he has been punished for doing so. I will encourage you to listen to his voice. Losing that voice would be like losing a color from the rainbow. I will tell you we have a reason for being here, in America, and that Mumia reminds us what it is. It is to continue to delight in who we are, because who we are is beautiful. Who we are is powerful. Who we are is strong. Mumia is us, this amazing new tribe of people that being in America has produced. With plenty conciousness, plenty beauty, plenty intelligence, and plenty hair.

We are like the Zapatistas of Southern Mexico in many ways: vastly outnumbered, many of us poor, humiliated on a daily basis by those in power, feeling ourselves unwanted, unseen and un-named. Mumia helps us know how deeply and devoutly we are wanted; how sharply and lovingly we are seen; how honorable is our much maligned name. And like the Zapatistas, who are an indigenous people still trustful of Nature, we too can rejoice in knowing it is not too late to take direction from the Earth.

Therefore: The Ocean has told me to tell you this: As Lovers of the Life of Mumia Abu-Jamal, we must be prepared for three things: to see Mumia murdered by the state; to see him left to languish on death row indefinitely; to see him freed. What is our responsibility in the face of these things, all of them designed deliberately to cause great emotion in our hearts? Emotion that, in the past, has predictably sent us mad into the streets; our anger and frustration making us careless in our pain; set up, once more, to become victims of our grief.

If Mumia is left to languish in prison indefinitely, we must continue to try to get him out. But if he is murdered by the state or if he is set free by the state, there is something else we must do.

Ocean Says: Bring his spirit and yours to me.

Therefore: On the afternoon of his release, whether into our waiting embraces, we his global family, or whether into the infinitely vast arms of the loving Universe, let us prepare to welcome him into the place of honor his own life has created. Let us observe silence. This will be the hardest thing to do; but we can do it; and it will strengthen us. We can prepare to be silent, by making arrangements before hand. Let us dress, if we can afford it, in white. White, because it is the color of potentiality, of emptiness, and also because, in America, it has so often been the color of our despair. Let us carry candles in all the colors of the rainbow, representing our multicolored family who have found such joy and inspiration in Mumia’s life. Let us carry four stones, symbolic of Mumia’s and all the ancestors’ bones, and of the four directions. Let us carry sage, incense, flowers and oranges. Let us carry, as well, a small paper photograph of Mumia and one of Judge Albert Sabo, who showed Mumia no mercy as he sentenced him to death, and another of Governor Thomas Ridge, who signed Mumia’s death warrant almost the moment he took office. The fourth photograph should be of Mumia’s lawyer, Leonard Weinglass, whose dedication to saving Mumia’s life has been brave and unfaltering. These four men are linked for all eternity, and we should honor that. Let us, with our friends and family, and especially all the little children - each child entrusted with a flower and a single orange - make our way to the ocean. Any ocean. And if there is no ocean where you live, go to rivers, creeks, rivulets and streams. These will eventually reach the ocean, just as you yourself will, someday.

Compose your altar there on the beach; Sabo’s photograph to the left, reminding us never to forsake our hearts, and Governor Ridge’s to the right, reminding us that force is not our way. Place Mumia’s and Leonard’s photographs in the center, to reassure us of the possibility of trust, friendship and freedom. Use the rocks, the bones of the ancestors, to hold the photographs in place. Light your candles, place them on either side of the photographs. Light sage or incense and smudge each other. And now, in whatever way Spirit moves, facing Ocean, speak. Mother Ocean is so immense that she touches every shore; She can accept your tears, they are of her substance, and She can hold them.

After speaking, return to silence. Burn the photographs. Sabo’s first, in gratitude for having been spared his life and his fate; Governor Ridge’s next, in joy that your descendants will never need to remember you as someone who wished to kill, or who actually did kill, the Beloved. Then burn Mumia’s and Leonard’s photographs together, reminding us that those who work for justice are seldom without allies. Bless these ashes, all of which are made holy by your love and your restraint, and send them out to sea. Ask the children to let their flowers accompany them. When your ceremony is finished, hopefully at sunset, sit on the sand, facing the ocean, and share the oranges, symbolic of the sun that those in prison rarely see; a sun so generous in its nature that men have had to build prisons to hide other men away from it. Go home, gather around a good, light meal, no part of which was tortured or enslaved. Answer every child’s question thoroughly and with patience. Speak of Angelo Herndon, Hurricane Carter, Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X. Read Mumia’s censored radio commentaries aloud. Meditate together on whatever action you need to take. In remembrance of our people, in their thousands, who are imprisoned: If there is anyone in your family who is in need, abandon judgment and commit yourself to helping them.

The meaning of our life is Life itself. As mysterious and as precious as That to which we belong.

Remember to look directly into each other’s eyes throughout this long day. Embrace at every opportunity. Touch often.

Alice Walker
Northern California
January 2000

Copyright © Alice Walker 2008

Everyone's A Victim

What I remember most about being shot is how quick it was. Like a streak of lightening, searing my right eye. One second I was an intense, whole, and scrappy eight year old, the next I was down on the tin roof of our makeshift garage writhing in unfathomable pain, a victim of my brother’s pellet gun, needing to be led off the roof by another brother, never to be the same again. It is this moment that I relive when I think of the children in the world who are harmed by war; some are bombed or shot or napalmed outright, killed instantly, others are maimed. I lost the vision in the affected eye and it would be years before I received proper medical care. It is of this I also think, as the countries to which children belong are obliterated and they are left to fend for themselves.

I think of my brother, given a “toy” gun by our parents before he was wise enough to use it, who was never able to say he was sorry for what he had done, and whose guilt turned into bitterness against all females and lack of honor toward himself. Later in life, violence and cocaine were his crutches of choice, until he died an untimely death, quite recently.

After 9/11, when the U.S. government chose to bomb Afghanistan – as if no children lived there (this is what small children believe: that of course if grownups who bomb countries knew that children lived there they would not bomb) – I was distraught to discover there were 700,000 disabled Afghani orphans. Many of these children were blinded; many had lost hearing and limbs. Who would they turn to, where would they go? I wondered. Who would feed them, take them to safety, put them to bed? Now we know their orphanages were not spared. We, who paid for this destruction, must live with this.

My sweetheart, a Viet Nam veteran of Korean-Norwegian descent, tells me harrowing tales of his tenure there. Drafted at eighteen, he was ordered to come to the induction center to arrange for re-classification of a student deferment. Once there, he was steered onto a bus and sent off to boot camp, without even, he says, a toothbrush. There, he was confronted with the rigors and horrors of training, hardened men giving crude and shocking orders to teen-agers who had no recourse but to obey. Within a short period of time he was sent halfway across the world to fight people he barely (expect for the News) believed existed. What is more, because they were Asian, they looked like him. He tells me something I have never heard before: that though in boot camp the army issued each recruit a gun with a heavy wooden stock, a necessity for hand to hand combat, in Viet Nam the soldiers were issued guns with lightweight plastic stocks, made by Colt but designed by the toy manufacturer, Mattel. Against the heavy, wooden-stocked AK 47s of the Vietnamese combatants (supplied by the Chinese communists) these guns that jammed, misfired and often shattered on contact, were almost useless. Frightened and frustrated soldiers appealed to their superiors for Thompson 45 caliber machine guns, antique relics of previous wars, and wrote home for their father’s and grandfather’s sawed off shotguns, and went out to fight “the enemy” with those.

He tells me of the immense suffering of soldiers. Of the rivers of heroin, supplied by the Chinese communists – who were helping their Vietnamese communist comrades on this front too - that flowed into camp, and how this “medicine” that soldiers turned to in order to blot out the terrible things they had seen and done, became a poison that turned everyone involved in its sale and use into demons of instability and pain. He tells me of the young man he was at nineteen, alone, far from home, at the mercy of a war he didn’t understand, forced to live by his wits, even as he deliberately scrambled them with what he thought was cocaine, but was, in fact, 94-97 percent pure “China White” heroin, one of the deadliest drugs known. He tells of being put in a metal box for 21 days and “cooked” at 114 degrees, to cure him of addiction. A torture many of his mates did not survive. He tells me of the suicides.

I weep with him, and hold him, as he tells me these tales. This was nearly forty years ago, and he is still suffering, deeply. Why haven’t I heard these stories before, I ask. Because nobody has wanted to hear them, he replies. Some people have. In remembrance of some of those people we watch Born on the Fourth of July (one of my favorite films), The Thin Red Line (the most lyrical of war films) and Platoon. We watch the compassionate masterpiece Coming Home. There have always been people who understood everyone’s a victim in war. May our numbers increase.

I wrote this as an op-ed piece while promoting my book for children, WHY WAR IS NEVER A GOOD IDEA. Illustrated by Stephano Vitale. It was never published.

Copyright © Alice Walker 2008

Dear Brother President (Elect),

You have no idea, really, of how profound this moment is for us. Us being the black people of the Southern United States. You think you know, because you are thoughtful, and you have studied our history. But seeing you delivering the torch so many others carried, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, only to be brought down before igniting the flame of justice and of law, is almost more than the heart can bear. And yet, this observation is not intended to burden you, for you are of a different time, and, indeed, because of all the re-lay runners before you, North America is a different place. It is really only to say: Well done. We knew, through all the generations, that you were with us, in us, the best of the spirit of Africa and of the Americas. Knowing this, that you would actually appear, someday, was part of our strength. Seeing you take your rightful place, based solely on your wisdom, stamina, and character, is a balm for the weary warriors of hope, previously only sung about.

I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for bringing the world back to balance. A primary responsibility that you do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. Not to mention your brave and precious grandmother.* And so on. One gathers that your family is large. We are used to seeing men in the white house soon become juiceless and as white haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate. One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is only what so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not clear to them yet that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone.

I would further advise you not to take on other people's enemies. Most damage that others do us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion. We must all of us learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise. It is understood by all that you are Commander in Chief of the United States and are sworn to protect our beloved country; this we understand, completely. However, as my mother used to say, quoting a Bible with which I often fought, "hate the sin, but love the sinner." There must be no more crushing of whole communities, no more torture, no more dehumanizing as a means of ruling a people's spirit. This has already happened to people of color, poor people, women, children. We see where this leads, where it has led.

A good model of how to "work with the enemy" internally is presented by the DaLai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet. Because, finally, it is the soul that must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible leader. All else might be lost; but when the soul dies, the connection to Earth, to Peoples, to Animals, to Rivers, to Mountain ranges, purple and majestic, also dies. And your smile, with which we watch you do gracious battle with unjust characterizations, distortions, and lies, is that expression of healthy self-worth, spirit and soul, that, kept happy and free and relaxed, can find an answering smile in all of us, lighting our way, and brightening the world.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

In Peace and Joy,
Alice Walker

* Obama’s “brave and precious” grandmother made her return to the Great Source a day before her grandson’s historic turn of the historical wheel. We imagine her flying, smiling, free. Well done, Grandmother. Those of us who intuit your greatness, send our thanks.

Copyright © Alice Walker 2008

Finally It Is Here

Election Day, November 4, 2008
By Alice Walker

Finally it is here, November 4th, election morning. This election will change the face of the planet, if Barack Obama wins the presidency. All last week I was thinking of my father, and of Christmas. When I was a child Christmas was the most exciting event of the year, and that is what these last weeks have felt like, getting ready for Christmas. We didn’t know it then, but all the shoe boxes from the shoes my parents bought us, had been carefully saved and stored somewhere. The week-end before Christmas morning, my father had gone into town and bought our Christmas gifts. We had all gone into the woods together to find our perfect tree. We had decorated it together, using lots of red and white crepe paper for the streamers, and for the ornaments and star, tin foil.

The anticipation leading up to Christmas morning was intense. We knew it would be good, and it always was. In each child’s shoe box would be a stick of peppermint candy, raisins, a scattering of brazil nuts, a bunch of grapes, and the most wondrous thing of all, an orange. The smell alone sent one into ecstasy. Because I had been feeling this sensation of “Christmas Gift” (which is what neighbors called out as they visited our yard on Christmas day) I thought I would not have been able, last night, to sleep. I did, though. Soundly, and well. We have, all of us, done all that we can peacefully do, to bring about this present shift in the consciousness of the world, and therefore deserve our rest. As do the Obamas, who have fought the good fight, with courage and class.

It is only now, entering my sixty-fifth year, that I begin to realize how little I understood anything while I was growing up. A child’s job is simply to be, perhaps to observe, certainly to play. But now, watching this election, I think of how little I grasped – there was no way I could – my father’s quiet heroism. Who knew what monsters he encountered buying those oranges and those grapes, walking in the town’s streets, where he was not really welcome. And his constant faith that he and my mother, out of almost nothing, in today’s terms, could nonetheless create a Christmas that would make every member of their large family happy.

My father was one of the people who trusted this day would come: I think of him laughing, now, at the sheer wonder of it. A man of shining dark skin, in a white work shirt and blue bibbed overalls, his large brown eyes filled with....the quiet peace of completion. He probably thought it was impossible, but at the same time, he was waiting for this day; if only to give his children, who are still living, a feeling they had almost forgot: hope for the blessing that is change, when it is fueled by devotion, generosity, courage, and love.

Copyright © Alice Walker 2008

A Wedding Ceremony

Marrying Good Men
By Alice Walker

A month ago, I married two good men. To each other. You can imagine how this must have shocked my grandparents, with whom I continue to have a close relationship, though they died half a century ago. Two good white men, at that. Which must have made my grandparents, and parents, also deceased, incredulous, to say the least. In their time, living black in the deep South, there were no good white men, except Jesus and Santa Claus. One of my favorite things about being me (though this isn't about me) is that I had both my parents while I was growing up; loving them, fighting with them, and orchestrating my little high school affairs without their knowledge, and so on. I also had both grandparents, who lived near enough to be run away to. There they sat, implacable in the face of life's challenges, their tiny shack completely hidden from the world, their lives also. Nothing seemed to faze them; besides, everything was so far away. Still, in my lifetime, I've managed to rattle them a bit. I've enjoyed doing it because I know they actually enjoy a good shock to their placid systems, and are, like most Southerners, entertained by whatever's odd about any situation; just as I am delighted by their swift recovery time. These folks are hip, I always think.

And the way they sound.

I love hearing them say, time and time again: Baby Alice done what?

So there we all were, about a hundred of us, at the beautiful Bel-Air Hotel in Los Angeles, down by the lake that is home to several swans. One groom-to -be's mother had already been ushered to her seat by a best man; the other groom- to- be's father had been brought forth by another. I was waiting at the altar, having been specially ordained to perform the service. I had explained to The New York Times, where notice of the event would run, that no, I was not a clergywoman or a minister, but a priestess. A priestess is like a minister or clergyperson, but is of the Pagan persuasion, or, more baldly, a worshiper of Nature and especially the Earth. They were having none of it. In fifty years, of course, this usage, even in the Times, will be routine. This is how Aquarians think. Anyway, coming toward me were Scott and Brad, handsome and vulnerable, strong of heart and very sweet. My hands went out automatically to touch theirs, reaffirming the reality that we are all in this together. New territory, new conviction, new life-ways, and that it is as exciting as anything.

How did this happen?

I met Scott Sanders when he came to my house to ask if he could produce a musical of my novel, The Color Purple. I said I didn't think so. I liked him though, and over time he won me over. We worked closely together for eight years to bring this story – in which I got to hang out a lot, in imagination, with parents and grandparents – to the public; first in a showing in Atlanta, Georgia, and then to New York City and Broadway. At each of these events I ran into Scott's mother, Leona, and she would comment on the beauty and power of the play, and I would comment on the upstanding character of her son. Never once in all that time did Scott ever let me, and the ancestors, down. He carried the story like the fragile and nourishing egg it is, with reverence and respect. For this, he became one of the family the story created. Which was one reason I knew my grandparents and parents might roll over once or twice in their heavenly naps as they contemplated the wedding, but would soon see all was well with my marrying Scott to the man he loved, and go back to sleep.

I liked Brad as soon as I met him. Others before him had had their charms, but I knew right away that Brad was the right man for Scott. The son of a Quaker minister, and someone who's known the suffering of substance enthralldom, Brad has become a Bodhisattva who goes back into the perils he left behind to show others, entire families, the way out. I could see Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth in the work that he does, and this endeared him to me. I also saw that, unlike certain earlier suitors, he properly appreciated the good man with whom he was associating, in Scott.

So one pre-dawn day on a talk show stage somewhere, maybe in Cleveland or Chicago, as Scott and I were preparing to pitch our play to the early rising viewers, I said to Scott, just before the cameras rolled: "You know Scott, Brad's really the right one for you; and if you ever want to marry him, I'll marry you." Where did this audacity come from? I hadn't the faintest notion what I'd have to do to accomplish this. Scott's jaw dropped. It would be two years before Brad popped the question, and Scott would say yes. Of course they thought about asking Brad's dad, a minister, to marry them, but in the end, Scott and Brad asked me. I was terrified and thrilled, which I think I like.

The ceremony, designed to the last flower by Scott's best friend and best woman, Susan, was beautiful in its totality, but if I tell you everything that happened, it will be too long. I will just say that, with Scott and Brad beside me at the altar, I was able to welcome the community that came out to witness their marriage. Reminding them that we were lucky to be in the safest place of all: a place where love and freedom were honored. For, ultimately, that is the only safe place to be. I then recited the following poems: the first one for Scott, the second for Brad.

New Face

I have learned
Not to worry
About love:
But to honor
Its coming
With all my heart.
To examine the dark mysteries
Of the blood
With headless heed
And swirl,
To know the rush
Of feelings
Swift
And flowing
As Water.
The source
Appears to be
Some inexhaustible
Spring
Within
Our twin
And triple
Selves.
The new face
I turn up
To you
No one else
On earth
Has ever
Seen.

While Love Is Unfashionable

While love
Is unfashionable
Let us live
Unfashionably.
Seeing the world
A complex ball
In small hands;
Love
Our blackest
Garment.
Let us be poor
In all but truth
And courage
Handed
Down
By the old spirits.
Let us be intimate
With ancestral
Ghosts
And music
Of
The undead.
While love
Is dangerous
Let us walk
Bareheaded
Beside
The great
River
Let us gather
Blossoms
Under
Fire.

I wrote these poems out of the love I felt for my own non-black husband, a good man I married in 1967, a time when our marriage was illegal in the American South where I was born.

Then, after Brad and Scott exchanged exquisite vows to each other and received their rings, came the words that I felt privileged to offer them in this beautiful, changing and challenging time we are living in: By the power vested in me by the state of California (loud cheering) and a loving universe, I now pronounce you husband and husband. You may kiss the groom.

Once upon a time, long ago, when I knew no gay people as friends, I still found it reassuring to see two men kiss -instead of fighting and shooting each other – which men used to do all the time in the Castro, in San Francisco. I wrote about this wonder in an essay called "All the Bearded Irises of Life," which is how such men kissing each other struck me. Like flowers, and, like the iris, some have beards. Now, years later, witnessing my two friends kissing each other, I, like so many others in the gathering, wanted to cry, because we were experiencing collectively something that is spiritually as well as physically, profound: that love is always holy. Only I found I couldn't cry, I was too happy.

Copyright © Alice Walker 2008