Women United Against Genocide Invites All Sisters to Our September Monthly Zoom Meeting

September 7, 2023, 8pm ET, Celebrating Black August and Women Political Prisoners

Honoring the courage, determination and resilience of political prisoners and their vital contributions to resistance and revolution

 With Special Guest Speakers Thandisizwe Chimurenga and Laura Whitehorn

Thandisizwe Chimurenga is a longtime activist, independent grassroots journalist and Revolutionary New Afrikan Nationalist, based in South Central Los Angeles, California. She is a writer, creator and co-creator of grassroots community media including newspapers, cable tv, and radio. Her activism includes electoral organizing; anti-police terror work; freedom for political prisoners and prisoners of war and opposing violence against women .She will be speaking on the history and present day activities celebrating Black August.

Laura Whitehorn spent 14+ years in federal prison as a political prisoner for actions against the U.S. invasion of Grenada,  police killing of Black grandmother Eleanor Bumpurs and in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and more.  She continues today to defend political prisoners and helped found RAPP, Release Aging People in Prison. She will speak on her experiences and those of late Black Panther political prisoner and organizer Safiya Bukhari, including from Safiya’s book Laura edited, “The War Before.”
Join Us! Voice your questions and comments
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUudu2tqzktHdPJDwtYJlD9evVRQJ-1oLsM

Book Launch

Dancing Diaspora in the San Francisco Bay Area

The Violin Conspiracy, A Book Review + author’s playlist
By Wanda Sabir

I hadn’t known this work prior to its selection by Alameda Free Library’s Mystery Book Club.

I found the organization a bit hard to follow after the crime, but after a few chapters, it started to work.

In any event, I was committed. My favorite parts of the story were times Ray and his grandmother shared inky space and when the gifted artist preformed. I loved his interior landscape (externalized). What he was hearing. The racist remarks and how he tried with eventual success to learn how to get even without losing his righteous form.

I didn’t like his mother or uncles and aunt. One of his aunts was okay. The paralegal. I liked his mentor and coach too. She did not have to tap the boy with heart minus opportunity and give him that opportunity because she had access.

But she did and Ray never forgot. We see him doing just that at clinics, games and at debriefing. He shared inspiration and encouragement with kids like himself. He never forgot what it was like, a kid who loved to play yet he could only play in school. The school instrument had to be returned at the end of the semester. His music teacher never encouraged him and used his voice to ridicule.

But this kid, Ray practiced and tried out for opportunities to play larger audiences. Even the judges laughed at him, but he preservered.

A classmate invited Ray to perform for $200 at a wedding. He was excited and when he arrived, the host kicked him off his property. Later, after he performed he was once again threatened and so he left. It was his Black skin. The Asian boy was okay. Ray was an imposter, yet his performance that afternoon was remarkable.

Racism is blinding, but love, Ray’s love for the music, the stories he sang in his heart as he played transported the naysayers to places they could not imagine. Stranded they swam back to polluted shores.

Ray’s mentor was able to provide for him, what she hadn’t achieved professionally.

Racism and sexism is a thing and the author does an excellent job exploiting both (probably because he experienced it). The author is a Black musician in a white world. However his character is not the first artist to break the sound barrier.

All the clichés are out at this party. No closeted anything. Reparations. Folks who owned Ray’s family still claim his worth and value.

The instrument can’t play itself.

This instrument saved his great grandfather’s life. The enslaved man was valuable because he could ease his master’s pain and bring him delight and comfort. This man who probably fathered him. This man who allowed his overseer to mutilate his great uncle and allows his wife to beat and torture Ray’s great grandfather’s mother.

The slave master’s wife was jealous and used brutality to mask her fear. Slavery was hell. It’s a hell that still grips this nation.

It’s so crazy insane, I could believe the author, who is a classical musician speaking from experience here. While everyone praises the boy, his family considers his music noise and his mom wants him to get his GED so he can leave high school early, go get a job and help her buy a flat screen TV.

!!!

I’m like what?

Do these people exist off the page? The author had to have an equally insane white family to counterbalance Ray’s. Only then could we see what Ray was up against.

When Ray’s granny passes on the family heirloom (Stradivarius) . . .no one wanted to learn to play, the older adults are jealous. Ray’s great grandfather is given the violin he grew up playing. With his owner’s blessings when he was manumitted.

When Ray’s grandmother introduces the two– her grandson to a legacy longer than he is old, he meets his mate. Ray’s commitment is a spiritual connection. He no longer feels isolated and alone.

Slavery is not whitewashed and shellaced here. The author does an excellent job through Ray explicating the problem. Dr. WEB Dubois said the problem of the 20th century is the color line. It’s the problem of this century too.

This is a Black and white issue. Other races borrow the language and benefit from the litigation and passage of laws beginning with the Emancipation Proclamation. The horrors are documented in the bones of Ray’s great grandfather.

Ray is othered and dehumanized with ever audition and performance. He has to prove he is worthy over and over again. He trusts the untrustworthy which is how his violin is stolen. It’s COINTELPRO all over again, except it’s systemic racism that sets him up and fuels the operation. People who want what he has without the work. Without his innate genius. Genius cannot be stolen. It’s bigger than one’s equipment. He learns to sing with a substitute violin. His girl is irreplaceable. The go-fund-me gets annoying. Especially Ray’s insistent promotion, but he has to raise the ransom money.

We do not want to be anything like the mean people, the gatekeepers who patrol all the marked avenues– “you do not belong here”, is a clear message. Ray gets his grandmother’s message and great grandfather’s lesson with a few slip ups and so do we.

Black people, listen up: Another person or people’s evil does not give us permission to be evil too. We shun the evil doers with good deeds.

You will never guess who stole the violin? No, I’m not telling.

Ray is young and isolated, but a fast learner who listens to sound advise. Readers: you’ll root for him, especially when his companion is lost, especially when another conductor underestimates his capability. I am pleased to read how much his audience loves him.

Ray is profiled by police too, kneeling in the dirt on his way to a concert; another time in cuffs when the white family tell police Ray took their instrument.

Hand it over. . .

We could certainly see another episode. After all he solves the crime. There is plenty room on the Black detective floor, especially one with a classy violin worth over $10 million.

Clichés paper the walls. Ray’s family are neighbors with Bebe’s Kids. His mother should be charged with genocide. She is intent on squashing all Ray’s dreams.

The boy has a hardwork work ethic from practicing his chords to bagging groceries. We wonder if Guardian Angels depart when their protégés succeed. The question is answered towards the end.

The ancestors walk with Ray and he knows it. Ase.

(See Chevalier Baptiste violinist film on Hulu. It’s a true story.) Here is Brenden Slocum, the author’s playlist (5 hours of his favorite music). Enjoy.