Notes of a Brooklyn Sun

The man could very well be a lunatic. Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi stood before the podium in front of the United Nations General Assembly assailing the institution. His nation was also for the first time carrying the mantle of  chairmanship at these proceedings. He spent an hour and a half ( far past the allotted length) of his life speaking to many who he knew were not listening to a damn word he said. Under attack from media and politician alike in the host nation because of past transgressions, instead of flying under the radar he decided instead to pitch a tent. No, really, like a real live tent. But after failing to get that tent pitched  he managed to pitch one at the podium.

He pleaded with the body to insert itself more forcefully in  issues like: the United States decision to go into Iraq, the Palestinian/ Israeli conflict, the unsolved Kennedy and Lumumba assassinations,  the Kashmir / India / Pakistan / Afghanistan clusterfuck, and revising the structures of the body. The beauty of it being that he spoke to what he believes is a broken system to essentially fix its self. In reading the  immediate reaction to is speech, much of the critique was on style and not substance. Most of the talk was on audaciousness of the man to come here how he did and to carry on how he did. Lost beneath the veneer of what may very well have been a rambling diatribe, the Libyan leader hit the nail on the head. The structure of the United Nations, the weight it gives to the Security Council and the lack thereof given to the rest of the General Assembly, make the institution non-representative of its constituents.

The topic du jour on the global stage is terrorism and terror will continue being abound whether from the  inability to gain a consensus on actions or unbalanced actions. A world body so beholden to the whims of so few can never hope to garner enough credibility to make sure forever and lasting cooperation,  forget peace. The United Nations as it stands is a wounded organization that is by design unable to correct its own structural inadequacies. Respect Gaddafi or not his words ring true.  With the body being nothing more than a conduit for the worlds most powerful actors it is less likely to ensure security and more likely to guarantee insecurity, forever and lasting.

If you look up the definition for the term innocence in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate dictionary you will find plenty of words that sound about right to the average semi-educated person like “blamelessness” and “freedom from guilt.” However, if you look a little closer than that you might find some terms that you don’t think you’d like to apply to yourself, “ignorance” being one poignant one. If you’re like most and not actually a student of history, finding out you’re ignorant to a glaring fact doesn’t hit you as hard as it can. If you were educated one way  and came to find out with lots of digging that a lot of it wasn’t true, who’s to hold it against you for not doing all that digging. You being ignorant to the fact is not your fault; you went through the motions and the proper schooling it just wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. The point of research and being able to proclaim yourself a student of history is not for the sake of gaining knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Partaking in knowledge is to gain a clear understanding of what the truth is –not your truth, his truth, or her truth but the truth.

Travelling to Ghana for the first time as a self-proclaimed “student of history,” not knowing who Marcus Garvey, George Padmore, W.E.B DuBois, Sylvester Williams, and Malcolm X are would be unacceptable. More so, if you’re going to travel from the United States knowing who those people are and not realizing who Kwame Nkrumah is well then you’re a bit of a fool. Not studying the man himself closely, you’d probably simply know the basics of his life story but with emphasis on his being the first leader of Independent Ghana. You’d know the man was considered (a bit presumptively) the “father of Pan-Africanism” and recognized as an icon throughout The Continent as the first guy to actually do it right and democratically. Why not waltz in, and try to gain a greater and more intimate understanding of man who by all accounts influenced many who were influential to you. My intentions of a close examination of his rule and how it was perceived both locally and in America were severely skewed just days into my arrival; the kool-aid kind of had a funny taste to it all of a sudden. True, I shouldn’t have had to go all the way to realize how much of an autocratic and subversive KN became  but hey, sometimes we choose not to see things right in front of us.

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Our Michael was distinctly different from their Michael. Our Michael was darker than the rest and always treated as the youngest of the bunch. He had an overbearing father whose commitment to excellence was often at the expense of his own children’s happiness. He was at once a child who, forced to live the world as an adult early, had no choice but to live a performance. He was born with the charisma and know how of an old soul; our Michael was a modern day “Benjamin Button.” So much so that as he grew older, he only seemed to yearn to be more and more child like. We had him in our homes before they did because he looked and dressed as we did; he was us. The Michael they saw was an amazing talent who could electrify a crowd and generate sales. To us, he was the soundtrack of our lives, constant and ever present.

The disconnect between their Michael and our Michael is insurmountable. They see him as “Wacko Jacko” while we see him as a boy forced to become a man prematurely. We are fiercely protective of our Michael, we see what they did to him because we’ve seen it before. Whether facts tell us otherwise, we will still see him as the little boy who was made a star and at their leisure was brought back down to earth. Their Michael ceased to be of value to them and consequently perished long ago. While to us, despite the physical transformations and eccentricities, our Michael reminded us of us.
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Here – at this final hour, in this quiet place – Harlem has come to bid farewell to one of its brightest hopes -extinguished now, and gone from us forever. ***For Harlem is where he worked and where he struggled and fought – his home of homes, where his heart was, and where his people are – and it is, therefore, most fitting that we meet once again – in Harlem – to share these last moments with him. For Harlem has ever been gracious to those who have loved her, have fought her, and have defended her honor even to the death.***

It is not in the memory of man that this beleaguered, unfortunate, but nonetheless proud community has found a braver, more gallant young champion than this Afro-American who lies before us – unconquered still. I say the word again, as he would want me to : Afro-American – Afro-American Malcolm, who was a master, was most meticulous in his use of words. Nobody knew better than he the power words have over minds of men. Malcolm had stopped being a ‘Negro’ years ago. It had become too small, too puny, too weak a word for him. Malcolm was bigger than that. Malcolm had become an Afro-American and he wanted – so desperately – that we, that all his people, would become Afro-Americans too.

There are those who will consider it their duty, as friends of the Negro people, to tell us to revile him, to flee, even from the presence of his memory, to save ourselves by writing him out of the history of our turbulent times. ***Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in this stormy, controversial and bold young captain – and we will smile. Many will say turn away – away from this man, for he is not a man but a demon, a monster, a subverter and an enemy of the black man -*** and we will smile. They will say that he is of hate – a fanatic, a racist – who can only bring evil to the cause for which you struggle! And we will answer and say to them : Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever touch him, or have him smile at you? Did you ever really listen to him? Did he ever do a mean thing? Was he ever himself associated with violence or any public disturbance? For if you did you would know him. And if you knew him you would know why we must honor him.

Malcolm was our manhood, our living, black manhood! This was his meaning to his people. And, in honoring him, we honor the best in ourselves. ***Last year, from Africa, he wrote these words to a friend: ‘My journey’, he says, ‘is almost ended, and I have a much broader scope than when I started out, which I believe will add new life and dimension to our struggle for freedom and honor and dignity in the States. I am writing these things so that you will know for a fact the tremendous sympathy and support we have among the African States for our Human Rights struggle. The main thing is that we keep a United Front wherein our most valuable time and energy will not be wasted fighting each other.’*** However we may have differed with him – or with each other about him and his value as a man – let his going from us serve only to bring us together, now.

Consigning these mortal remains to earth, the common mother of all, secure in the knowledge that what we place in the ground is no more now a man – but a seed – which, after the winter of our discontent, will come forth again to meet us. And we will know him then for what he was and is – a Prince – our own black shining Prince! – who didn’t hesitate to die, because he loved us so.

-Ossie Davis

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