Martin Luther King's Fight for Economic Equality In the last year of his life, Martin Luther King, Jr. announced the Poor People’s Campaign to demand an “Economic Bill of Rights” for all Americans, regardless of color. But nearly a half-century later, that dream is still a dream deferred. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch and author and theologian James Cone join Bill to discuss Dr. King’s vision of economic justice, and why so little has changed for America’s most oppressed. Also on the show, poet Kyle Dargan talks about his efforts to reconcile disparate cultural environments through poetry. WATCH NOW       Homeless in High Tech's Shadow California's Silicon Valley illustrates striking disparities at the extremes of wealth and poverty in America.   Why Are Americans Going to Bed Hungry? Joel Berg of the Coalition Against Hunger explains what it means to be "food insecure" and how to fight hunger in America.   Slideshow: Poverty in Today's America See images of poverty from around the nation documented by photojournalists from AmericanPoverty.org.   MEDIA REFORM Watch the Champions of Media Reform Grab a front row seat at the National Media Reform Conference, an annual meeting of media experts and advocates. MORE     Image Credit: Peter Krogh © 2012 Moyers Media. All rights reserved.

THOSE FRIDAY NIGHTS IN SOUTHERN MARYLAND

Good Friday yesterday. I did a reading in Leonardtown, Maryland at the College of Southern Maryland (CSM). It was at the invitation of Wayne Karlin. The writer Neal Dwyer gave me a ride to the school. It gave us a wonderful opportunity to talk about life and writing. While in the car my cellphone rang - it was buddy poet Naomi Ayala calling. We hadn't talked in a few weeks. Naomi remains one of my closest literary friends in DC. We will always be Curbstone Press poets.

NAOMI AYALA photo by Ethelbert

Before my evening reading I spent an hour talking with students who had read The 5th Inning.
Good to see folks enjoying the book and reading it like scripture.

At the CSM reading I pulled poems from Ear Is An Organ Made For Love. I read several Omar poems from How We Sleep On The Nights We Don't Make Love. I like to read work by other writers so I included in my presentation work by Hal Sirowitz and Charles Bukowski. Since the students had been reading The 5th Inning - I read a few pages from it. I also read from Fathering Words. It was great to see the new edition of the book last night. Thanks to Black Classic Press my first memoir is back in print and also available as an Ebook.

THE WORLD IS A FUNNY PLACE THAT'S WHY WE NEED COMEDIANS.

In the old days it was Jesse Jackson seen overseas doing "quiet" diplomacy. Today it could be Beyonce and Jay-Z.  Ping-pong anyone or just Cuban cigars?

http://news.yahoo.com/beyonce-jay-z-turn-heads-havana-174840987.html

MAGYAR NARANCS Hungarian Weekly, Issue 2013-03-14

Translation of “Interview with E. Ethelbert Miller”

Translated by ZsófiaSuba (AC Budapest Assistant)

Edited by Katie Jo Hunt (AC Budapest Intern) and Erika Sólyom (AC Budapest Director)

Obama as a smartphone

E. Ethelbert Miller poet, literary activist

His thinking was shaped by the Civil Rights movement, the Black Arts Movement, and feminism. As a well-known writer, his themes vary from South-American dictatorships to the most recent Spanish economic restrictions. He is the director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University in Washington, and the board chairperson of the famous think tank, the Institute for Policy Studies. He was invited to Hungary by the U.S. Embassy and has given several presentations, poetry readings and held literary nights at a number of universities, high schools, and other platforms.

Magyar Narancs: Your poetry has a definite political tone. Why do you think that a poem is a more effective tool for changing society than an essay or a well-written speech?

E. Ethelbert Miller: Because it is much more memorable. Honestly, how many political speeches have you heard in your life that you could still remember their message? A poem is easier to remember because of the repetition, the alliteration, the rhythm, and all the other stylistic features. Moreover, poetry slows us down in this fast paced world. It requires patience, which is the basis of any kind of learning process. If you look at a poem and you don’t get its message, read it again! I always say that poetry is like weight lifting: it requires strength and it keeps you in shape.

MN: Aren’t you afraid of being labeled as a bard of one of the parties?

EEM: That doesn’t really happen in the U.S. It’s rather that they tend to label political writers as bad poets. They question our work from an aesthetic point of view. We can’t really hope for any Oscars. But I don’t care about that.

MN: As a child, how much did you talk about civil rights at home?

EEM: I am from a working class family, my parents’ biggest concern was to make sure there was food on the table and that I got good grades. They didn’t read the New York Times everyday, and they watched commercial shows rather than the news. As first generation immigrants, this topic would have been inappropriate. On the other hand, the Civil Rights movement started out in the South (in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi) and it only reached New York, where I grew up, later on.

MN: You have been the Director of African American Resource Center at Howard University since its creation in 1974. What were the main goals of the institution in the beginning?

EEM: When I got into Howard in 1968, there was no African American Studies major. Later on, as a result of the student protests and the assassination of Martin Luther King, the Ford Foundation sponsored the establishment of African American Studies departments throughout the country. We were the first ones to start recording lectures and talks within and outside of the university. This is quite widespread today but it was a new method back then and other institutions did not have the capacity to do it. The archives contain several recordings that are a rarity today. For example a video of Léon Damas, writer, literary activist and one of the founders of the NégritudeMovement.

MN: You are close with, or have been close with, distinguished writers like Alice Walker, Tony Morrison, June Jordan. You have written several poems about sexual abuse, violence against women,and breast cancer. How common was it for African American men to sympathize with the Women’s Movement?

EEM: It wasn’t typical at all! In the 70s not only men but also African American women stayed far away from mainstream feminism. This is exactly why Alice Walker came up with the termwomanism, instead of feminism. This idea of womanism included every woman. I’ve always believed that the issue of violence against women is the shared responsibility of men and women. But many people from the Black Movement didn’t like that I was talking about these problems as well. At the end of the 70s I edited a women’s poetry anthology titled “Women Who Survived Massacres and Men”. I still have a letter from Ismael Reet outrageously asking me: “Who are you? A man or slaughterer?”

MN: You regularly visit jails, you read your poems to the prisoners,you talk to them and encourage them to write.

EEM: That’s a very important project, especially today, when so many young African Americans are in jail. Personally, I think that if your own community matters to you, as a writer, you should go back and stay in touch them. Occasions like this change a lot of things inside me as well - this experience is completely different from giving a talk at a university. These people in jails need someone who cares about them and their future, someone they can get information and advice from. It’s really touching how they try put their thoughts in writing, struggling with the language and spelling. I have been in touch with some of them during their years in jail and today they are free, and their life has changed radically. The fact that they are exchanging letters with a writer means a lot for them. There are terrible conditions in jails today, they are crammed and they don’t pay attention to rehabilitation or education. If we want to prevent problems from recurring, we need to ensure that anyone who has made a mistake has the opportunity to return to society.

MN: In one of your presentations you have highlighted that the African American community is very heterogeneous.

EEM: On one hand, we are back to calling ourselves Black again, meaning the entire diaspora. There are black people living all over the world today and there is a so-called global black experience. On the other hand, however, the African American community, in a narrower sense, includes a lot of different traditions. Obama is a real African American since his father is from Kenya. My father, however, arrived from the West-Indies tohelp build the Panama Canal, and from there he came to the United States. So he’s West Indian American. Similarly, there are Haitian Americans, and so on. Moreover, the experience of a rich black person from California is radically different from the experience of poor black people living in a ghetto. The question is whether we bother to get to know the other person instead of jumping to conclusions based on their looks or their language. After the last elections Republicans have concluded that Hispanic voters were the key to the victory of the Democrats. Therefore, Republicans are now trying to solve the ‘’Hispanic problem’’. They pull Senator Rubio, but for God’s sake, he’s from Florida, his ancestors are Cuban. He’s not Mexican, Nicaraguan, not even Puerto-Rican. You can’t tell everyone who speaks Spanish to switch sides, that’s not how it works.

MN: Don’t you feel that with Obama being elected as President, the Black Movement has come to an end?

EEM: Not at all. There is a growing interest towards African American culture nowadays and more and more issues are on the agenda. We became visible. Obama is a new role model, he paves the way for many young African Americans to become outstanding in their fields of interest. Certain social circles resist that. Michelle Obama is just as important. I’ve recently seen an interview in which three white, blond American women were asked who they thought the most beautiful woman in the world was and they answered Michelle Obama. Everything has been put under a new light as there has been a paradigm shift.

MN: The President didn’t mention African Americans at all in his most recent State of the Union speech. Wasn’t that disappointing for you?

EEM: Why would it have been disappointing? Obama is not the President of African Americans, he is the President of the United States. He represents the whole nation and if people do not feel that they are part of the nation because they are African Americans, then it’s their problem. People have to renew their thinking from time to time because one`s way of thinking does deteriorate. This is not the 1950s anymore. Unfortunately, it’s true for African American intellectuals as well, some of them can’t look ahead to the future. We have to understand that Obama can not be described using old categories. He’s like a new smartphone, the way he works is completely different. We shouldn’t use expressions like post-racial society. The point is that society is changing rapidly and we must try to keep up with it.

MN: ‘’I’d still bang you, even though you’re a Gypsy.’’[This sentence was uttered in the corridors of the Parliament by a right wing MP to a female Roma (Gypsy) representative.] If we were to exchange the word “Gypsy” for “Black”, when do you think was the last time something like this could have been said in the White House?

EEM: This way of speaking is always out there, on the streets, in everyday life. The problem is when public figures - who are supposed to represent a certain style in speech and in culture - make this unacceptable style the norm. There were all sorts of harsh racist outbursts and cartoons during Obama’s first campaign as well. This is a continuous struggle and it doesn’t go away by creating new laws. The question is whether we are going to do something about it or not. After a mild outrage, will that representative remain in office? Of course, it’s not easy to love and respect another community. It’s hard enough to love one single person – I know, this is my second marriage, and there are setbacks everyday. Just think what kind of reactions people would have had if it turned out that the perpetrator of the Newtown massacre was Muslim. We are living in a fragile world, if someone burns a Koran on one side of the world, there will be consequences on the other side.

THE SCHOLARS: An Interview with John Cavanagh (Director of IPS)

THE SCHOLARS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OBMNIry3Y0&feature=c4-overview&list=UUO0TLew_eanCz5XjAG78RdA

THIS IS ALL YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO THIS WEEKEND

http://www.jazzonthetube.com/videos/keith-jarrett/over-the-rainbow.html

THE E GROUP

So who is responsible for the The Scholars - the new television show on UDC-TV.
I bet it's the E-Group.

ED (E3), ELENA(E2) and ETHELBERT (E1)

 

MICHON'S WORLD

MICHON BOSTON

 http://www.eclectique916.com/2013/04/04/42-in-99-a-home-run-with-44/

E-NEWS

E. Ethelbert Miller will give the Commencement Address at the Bennington Writing Seminars on June 22, 2013.  (Mr. Miller delivered the Commencement Address at Bennington in 1996 and 1999)

This month E. Ethelbert Miller joins The George Washington Libraries Development Advisory Council.

IF IT'S OF NOTE - IT'S GRACE ALI

GRACE A. ALI photo by Ethelbert

OF NOTE:
http://www.ofnotemagazine.org/

Ethelbert at 62

I've decided to spend the rest of my life studying the Negro Race.

    - E. Ethelbert Miller

British Anti-Austerity March Hopes to Break Iraq Rally Record Tom Peck March 30, 2013 The Independent (UK)   ‘People’s Assembly’ hope to unite those angered by the Government’s economic decisions
	, www.theupcoming.co.uk ,
	The new “People’s Assembly Against Austerity” will march through London on 22 June, and, with the help of the Stop The War Coalition, intends to break that group’s record for the largest public rally in the nation’s history. Backed with trade union cash, and fronted by comedians, unionists, activists and MPs from different parties, the group claims it will be “an alternative democratic forum to a Parliament that has failed the people it is supposed to represent.” It will be, they hope “the launch-pad for mass resistance to austerity”. The Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas, Labour’s Katy Clark, the Director of Executive Policy at the Unite trade union Steve Turner, the head of the National Union of Teachers Kevin Courtney, comedian and disabled activist Francesca Martinez, as well as Independent columnists Owen Jones and Mark Steel, are the figureheads of a group they hope will appeal to anyone against austerity, regardless of background. “We are not radicals,” said Francesca Martinez, who is most recognisable for her role in Ricky Gervais’s Extras, “the Government are the radicals. Stop people in the street and ask them are you in favour of the NHS, for example, and they will say ‘yes’”. The People’s Assembly are of the view that there is an alternative to austerity which is not being articulated by the three main “corporate-led” political parties, or “corporate-led” media. John Rees, a national officer for the Stop The War Coalition, said the planned march on 22 June would “have to be bigger than the ‘stop the war’ march”, which took place on the 15 February 2003, in protest at the growing likelihood of an invasion of Iraq, a march which “we now know” he says, “came very close to stopping the war”. Estimates for numbers at that rally range from 750,000 to 2,000,000 people. This movement, its leaders hope, will create momentum “powerful enough to generate successful co-ordinated action”. “If you’ve ever yelled at the television while George Osborne is on, or fumed at how the poor are made to pay for the mess created by the bankers,” comedian Mark Steel said,“sign up to the People’s Assembly”. The group represents a challenge not just to the governing Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, but also to Labour, whose “austerity light” they feel does not represent a credible alternative. It is astonishing, they argue, that five years on from the global crash there is there is no mainstream alternative to austerity, and this group will fill a chasm in British politics. Among its backers are the former Labour Cabinet Minister Tony Benn, several Labour MPs and the heads of the country’s largest trade unions. The filmmaker Ken Loach has also supported the group, in the wake of the release of his Spirit of ‘45 film, which evokes the tenacity of a Labour Government who took over a tired country at the end of the Second World War, but who nonetheless set up the NHS and the welfare state. Loach has expressed a lack of faith in the current Labour party achieving anything similar, as has Len McCluskey, the head of Unite.

SPORTS

Of course it's only one game but the Washington Nationals looked good on Opening Day.  This has to be the team to beat. What will happen when all the bats are clicking?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—NEW ISSUE OF POET LORE IS OUT!

How quickly we forgot the morning, The morning that old unread Ottoman script (Either from left to right with a butterfly, Or with a reed from bottom to top) Would be rapidly erased. —MelihCevdetAnday

The Spring/Summer 2013 issue begins afar. It leads with a portfolio of twelve poems by a defining voice in contemporary Turkish poetry, Melih Cevdet Anday, in translation by poet Sidney Wade and Efe Murad. In pared-down, vernacular language, Anday’spoems speak from within the thick of life's distresses with a deeply human voice—one which Sidney Wade frames in the feature’s introduction as a “compelling and imaginative and constantly moving plane.”

I feared it would rob me of something, purity, the ability to listen, solitude, the shape of memory. I held it off without knowing it. Gadgets spread; I distrusted them all, even in the hands of friends. —Adrienne Su, from “Technology”

Seventy new poems follow. Arranged in a narrative arc by editor Ethelbert Miller, these poems refocus moments from everyday life—picking up pupusas after church;a lesson on the mechanics of hearing aids;the second life of a taxidermied bird. Other highlights include poems by Rita Dove, D. Nurkse, Michael S. Harper, Nathaniel Mackey, and Robin Becker. The issue ends with an essay by Dallas Crow and three reviews, including Susan Deer Cloud’s deeply-felt take on Ai’s last collection, No Surrender. 

ABOUT POET LORE

Poet Lore was established in 1889 and is the oldest continuously published poetry journal in the United States.  Now in its second century of publication, Poet Lore presents well-crafted poems from established poets alongside the work of emerging writers.  In recent decades, Poet Lorehas published early poems by poets who now receive national recognition—Terrence Hayes, Carolyn Forché, and Kim Addonizioto name a few. The journal is published semi-annually by The Writer’s Center in Bethesda and edited by E. Ethelbert Miller and Jody Bolz. Submissions for the magazine are accepted year-round. For more on our history and submission guidelines, please visit: www.poetlore.com.  Also, visit us on Facebook. 

POET LORE does what poetry journals are

supposed to do: it gives new voices a place

to sing and old voices a place to harmonize.

—A.B. Spellman

THE SCHOLARS- UDC-TV

An interview with the South African scholar Phiwokuhle Mnyandu.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqtVWb3FTeA

THE SCHOLARS -UDC-TV

Here is a link to one of my new shows. The topic is South African history with the scholar Sonja Woods.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLuWWf6PGA8

Color Lines

Is race a state of mind?
W. Ralph Eubanks, author of our new cover story, contends that in light of DNA ancestry testing, race is more a social construct than a biological fact.

FROM JERRY WARD

Poetry in 1988: A Research Note

Twenty-five years ago, Naomi Long Madgett edited and published A Milestone Sampler: 15^th Anniversary Anthology (Detroit: Lotus Press, 1988).  The book is a collector’s item. Pictured on the front cover are Lotus Press poets who participated in the fifteenth anniversary celebration in Detroit, June 25-27, 1987.The back cover informs us that

The press has held, as a major part of its philosophy,  respect for the independence of its black poets in their choice of style and subject matter.  As a result, its products demonstrate remarkable variety, determined not by editorial biases but by technical competence.

We learn more about the philosophy of the Lotus Press from the first paragraph of Madgett’s foreword.

In a culture which does not revere its poets and does not purchase and read their works, any press that limits its activities to the publication of good poetry would seem doomed to failure.  The major publishing houses publish very little poetry, and the small presses that have survived usually include other, more profitable genres (if they publish poetry at all).  If commercial success had been the goal of Lotus Press when it was founded in 1972  -- or in 1974 when I assumed ownership  -- it surely would have died in its infancy.

The twenty poets sampled are

Samuel Allen

Houston A. Baker, Jr.

Jill Witherspoon Boyer

Tom Dent

Toi Derricotte

Beverly Rose Enright

Naomi F. Faust

Ray Fleming

Agnes Nasmith Johnston

Sybil Kein

Dolores Kendrick

Pinkie Gordon Lane

Naomi Long Madgett

Haki R. Madhubuti

Herbert Woodward Martin

E. Ethelbert Miller

May Miller

Mwatabu Okantah

Philip R. Royster

Paulette Childress White

A photograph of the poet prefaces each of the samplings.

My copy was a gift from Tom Dent, whose note of September 17, 1988 I recently found in the book---

                                                                                                                                Saturday

                                                                                                                                Sept. 17

Jerry,

     Came in last night on the way to Greenville, thanks. I may be returning tomorrow night or Monday, but with Worth Long & Co. there I’ll probably hang around.

     These are copies of Naomi’s Anthology, of which she sent several.  If I miss you will call next week.

                                                                                                                Thanks,

                                                                                                                Tom

A Milestone Sampler is a valuable document of time past and a prelude to time future. It is a site for the discovery of forms unknown.

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.                                                                            PHBW BLOG

March 28, 2013

BASQUIAT

http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/883285/basquiats-ex-girlfriend-reveals-major-trove-of-unseen-works

SPORTS

Bob Turley (1930-2013)

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"...there is increasingly no such thing as a high-wage, middle-skilled job - the thing that sustained the middle class in the last generation. Now there is only a high-wage, high-skilled job. Every middle-class job today is being pulled up, out or down faster than ever. That is, it either requires more skill or can be done by more people around the world or is being burden-made obsolete -faster than ever."

    - Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, March 31, 2013

The number of Americans age 60 and over in debt is alarming. A recent report by the AARP's Public Policy Institute and the research organization Demos revealed that Americans over the age of 50 carried substantially more debt on credit cards - an average balance of $8,278- than those under 50, whose average balance was $6,258.

- The Washington Post, March 26, 2013