August 2, 2026 • 55 mins
Prince Shakur reads Margaret a story about revolution, repression, and survival for Black August
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Book Club Club, Club Club Club Club, book Club Clubs Clubs,
Books book Club.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Hello everybody, and welcome to Kool Zone Media book Club,
where I actually didn't have to chance by myself this time,
and the continued on synchronicity of zoom continues to entertain
at least me. Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 4 (00:27):
Book Club is the only book club where you don't
have to do the reading, because usually I do it
for you, but this time, my guest, Prince Shakur, is
going to do the reading for you.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Hi, Prince, how are you.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I'm good, I'm glad to be here. I've never done
a book club like this, so I'm excited.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I like this model because I read a lot, but
I still struggle with actual book clubs because then I'm like, uh, homework,
I can't do homework.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yeah, and it's good to read with other people. And
I guess I mean like studying literature and university. It
reminds me of being in literature class. And yeah, I
don't know. I always liked the communal nature of reading
or even workshops or reading like fresh writing with people,
so I feel like this just gives me, I don't know,
(01:17):
a bit of nostalgia.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
And you even have your own book that people have
probably read. But you're also a podcaster. You have a
podcast called The Dugout and a book. Do you want
to tell us about those things?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah? Yeah, So my book is a memoir. It's titled
When They Tell You to Be Good. I describe it
as my political coming of age, what it was like
growing up queer in a Jamaican family, getting radicalized, being
a part of different movements. A lot of it is
about Jamaic colonial violence, patriarchal violence, but I kind of
(01:50):
wrote it as like a what is it like being young,
queer and radicalized in today's America? And it is really
inspired by a lot of other like black power literature
and memoirs from like the Civil rights and Black power era.
And yeah, it's just like a project of love and
me trying to process a lot. And yeah, it came
(02:12):
out a few years ago, so folks want to check
it out. It's called When They Tell You to Be Good?
And I also do a podcast it's called The Dugout
of Black Anarchist Podcasts, and we talk about a lot
of things on there. We talk about news, we interview
lots of people black Panther Veterans Revolutionaries. Recently just interviewed
(02:34):
a cadre out of Minneapolis who were doing a lot
of like firearms training and community defense, and we interviewed
two of the defendants from like the Minnesota fifteen repression case.
So a lot of conversations, which I think is good
in this particular period of political chaos we're in.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
I'm really sad about the Minnesota fifteen, mostly because well
mostly because of the repression, but beyond that, because Damn
fifteen was right there. They're being accused of being part
of a group called Damn and that's really what matters.
Is that now, I obviously that's not what matters, but
people should check out what's going on with the Minnesota
(03:16):
fifteen or as no one calls them, the Damn fifteen,
because it's bad. Well, this month we are commemorating Black
August with guests, interviews, and special episodes on the show.
Black August is a month of remembrance, study, and revolution,
honoring black freedom fighters and the movements they supported for
prison evolution, decolonization, and the end of racial capitalism. Black
(03:40):
August was started by incarcerated black radicals in the San
Quentin prison in nineteen seventy nine to mark the deaths
of George Jackson and his brother Jonathan Jackson at the
hands of the state of California a few years earlier,
and today people honor many dates in August throughout the
whole month. This includes the August ninth killing of Mike
Brown in twenty fourteen. August thirtieth was Fred Hampton's birthday
(04:04):
in nineteen forty eight, and August twenty first was the
beginning of Nat Turner's rebellion in eighteen thirty one, the
rebellion that has come up so many times on my
history podcast, including last week, I think ended up talking
about Nat Turner because we were talking about black literacy,
and there's no possible way to overstate how much Nat
(04:25):
Turner's rebellion scared white supremacist all throughout the country. And
one of the ways besides just like, oh, they actually
can fight back and kill people, was just literally that
Nat Turner could read, which was illegal, right, and like
had read. He was a preacher too, and he had
like read the words that he was preaching. And that's
(04:45):
good the piss out of people. Anyway, That's what I
got about Black August do you guys think say about it?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's definitely a month of commemoration,
and it's a chance, like a lot of the reading
and kind ofnology around it says to not only reflect,
but do things to honor like these freedom fighters and revolutionaries.
So I think it's just for me, like a really
key reminder of like the necessity of abolition and kind
(05:14):
of re educating myself about abolition. A book that I
recommend folks check out if they want to like dig
into things more is Tip of the Spear by Urisan
me Burton. That's like something I've read a lot over
the last year or two, and it kind of follows
a lot of the timeline and movements and prison revolts
(05:37):
and uprisings and organizing around the nineteen seventy one Attica
prison uprising. And I think it just gives a lot
of context, and I love that there's a lot in
there about like the Black Liberation Army and Kuwasi Ballagoon
and other revolutionaries and just it really digs into a
lot of the details of just like this really explosive
(05:59):
period of of rebellion inside of prisons in jails. So
I feel like I'd really recommend that, but I think
like auguest is so necessary. There's been countless men in
my family who've been deported or in prison, and I
don't know, carse. Reality is fucking evil, and I think
people should be educated and check in with their education
(06:20):
around it and find community events and find ways to
organize with people on the inside or letter writing. Especially
with all of the ongoing repression cases happening right now,
it just feels really relevant.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Whenever I try to like really quickly explain prison abolition
to somebody. There's like a comic. I don't remember who
wrote the comic. It's like four panels long or something,
but it's just like someone comes over someone's house and
they're like, oh, don't go out of the basement. I
have a guy in there. And you're like wait what.
You're like, I kind of trying to steal my car
a couple of years ago, so he's just down in
the basement now, and you're like, well, that's that seems completely.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Fucked up, messed up.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Yes, Like every now and then, it just like really
hits me that if the wrong person hits the wrong
person just like punches them, just gets angry punches somebody,
which all of us have. No, I would never have
done such a terrible thing, but like all of us
have done. And you're like, oh, that could just especially
if like the system is out to get you for
various reasons. You're now spending years of your life in
(07:21):
a cage. You're just like, oh, I'm gonna put this
guy in a cage because he did drugs. You're like, wait, what, Yeah,
Like who's the evil one here?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah, Like it makes me think of like the Khalif
Browder case, like how he was accused of stealing a
backpack and spent years in like jail And.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Is that the like rikers and he was like it
was pre trial, but they just didn't get around to him.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yes, exactly. Yeah, And and like the point that you mentioned,
like it reminds me of I think it's like our
persons obsolete by Angela Davis, Like she talks about how
prisons one of their functions is to invisibilize people and
social issues, and so it makes me think about exactly
what you're saying, Like just hide the problem, throw in
a bunch of violence and misery and call it the
(08:07):
justice system.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Yeah, it's just yeah, yeah, real ironic name that they
picked for themselves. Well, we're not going to do nonfiction.
We're going to do fiction, which of course never has
any social value. That part sarcastic. I hear you have
a story for me this week?
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yes, I do. Today, we have a story and it's
titled What We Want, What We Believe, by Alex Smith.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
And if people are like Alex Smith, that name is familiar.
Besides the fact that it is almost a brilliantly generic name, Alex.
If you're listening, no offense to you here. We did
another story by Alex Smith in March. A story was
called Girls Who Look Through Class and maybe I'll remember it.
It was about a grocery co op worker who gets
swept up into a cosmic struggle for justice, and it
(08:55):
was really fun and psychedelic. So I'm excited to hear
this one. I got that chance to meet Alex earlier
this year at a panel in Philadelphia of radical fiction
writers and it ruled. So I'm excited to hear more stories.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Oh cool. Yeah, this story, I would say, is framed
through the Black Panther's ten Point program, which is also
called Like, as I mentioned before, what We want what
we believe, And it follows basically the aftermath of the
police execution of a fictionalized black panther. And it's about
revolutionary legacy and transcendental joy. And it's also, i would say,
(09:33):
about the painful after image of repression, incarceration, and state violence.
And just as a kind of disclaimer for listeners, this
story does discuss gun violence, intravenous drug use, hearing voices,
childhood psychosis, and kids in traumatic situations. Just wanted to
(09:54):
give that disclaim. Okay, okay, So let's begin. What we
want what we believed by Alex Smith one. We want freedom,
We want power to determine the destiny of our black community.
Regina Adams let her hair lick her face in the
pulsing rain. She ducked under a canopy near Lee's and waited,
(10:18):
her body drenched. Working down at the community college during
the day, taking classes at night, she was going to
be somebody, even if the long hours meant she couldn't
be somebody somebody. A car pulled up to the corner
and a man rolled down the window, one of them
long cars she thinks used to be white painted black.
Who are you out here for the man asked, excuse me,
(10:41):
Regina said, taken aback. She straightened her knockoff Pierre Cardon skirt,
tucked her satchel closer to her body, and shot the
man a look, bitch, don't let me get out the car.
The man said in a low tone. His one gold
tooth was noticeably dead and dull, but still somehow shown
in his rear view mirror as he suddenly adjusted himself.
(11:02):
Who in the car, Babe Randall from seemingly out of
nowhere called out. As he approached, he called himself rand X,
always reading, hanging with fives. What's happening? We have him
shrimp tonight. Oh that's your nigga. Huh, the man in
the car said to them. Ran shot him a look
that was all tight jawed and narrow eyed. Pulling Regina
(11:25):
in close. The ladies with me, he paused. Then, yeah,
I know who you are. I know you, with your
various entrepreneurial endeavors, don't have time to mess with decent
folks like us. So if you'll excuse the missus in me,
(11:46):
Rollo leaned back in his seat, tapping on the gas,
fixing his buffont hair in the mirror. You act to
as boys. He shook his head. Y'all ain't good for business.
Consider that a fair warning. You have a good Rollo's
fake slip car crept back up the street. Regina, lost
(12:06):
in the moment, suddenly tugged wildly away from Rand's grasp. Boy,
if you don't get your hands off of me, she demanded.
Rand had been trying to talk to her since freshman year.
She saw him change from a delinquent kid, a bag boy,
a stick up kid, and petty crimes to a man
walking through campus. He was not taking class one, just
(12:28):
using the school typewriters to make his little pamphlets. Sista,
no disrespect. I was just you were just tell you
what if you won't let me walk you home? Huh,
then he said, handing her a pamphlet. There was a
crude drawing of a black panther on it. Come down
to the YMCA on fifty second. There's something going down
(12:50):
and we need all the intelligent sisters like you in
the front row. You dig. Regina pursed her lips together
and gently rolled her eyes, crumbling the paper into her satchel.
She watched him walk away, dapping and shaking hands with
other black men. Tipping an imaginary hat to rain soap
black woman as he ambled up the street, disappearing into
(13:13):
the night. This Maya, what kind of name is that?
Speaker 1 (13:18):
You?
Speaker 2 (13:19):
African? Kill them? Maya sits down on the mattress. She
grabs the belt, tying it around her arm tight. The
loop feels like an extension of herself. She holds her
hand out impatiently toward one of the boys. There they
put the syringe in her hand. The two boys sit
beside her, on either side, barely men. A husky ambient
(13:44):
debris waffs off the bed. The entire thing is encrusted, peeling,
just like the room. Walls thick with dried blood, burnt
yellow with cigarette stains. Roaches scamper at the weight of
the young men. Kill them both. Maya ignores the young men,
swivels to one side and back to the other, avoiding
(14:06):
their grabby hands. Why she liked that, yo? Why she
acting like that? They don't deserve what you possess? Would
you just shut the fuck up? Maya rises, stabs one
of the boys in the face with the needle. She
kicks trash about the room. The other boy searches the mattress,
(14:27):
slapping newspapers and condom wrappers into the air. He finds
another needle and slowly plunges it into his arm. This
bitch stab me in the eye. Yeah, I seen that.
Something seems to wrap itself around her body, something wispy
and shaky, a filament of a thing. It feels cool.
(14:47):
It's the drug, she thinks, the come down. She wants
the long, warm drink of an opiate in her veins.
She sees blood leak from the boy's eye, the other
swollen with red tears and anger. He's foaming at the mouth.
Maya stares at the door and realizes she has never
noticed its dimensions before, that its frame was once a
(15:09):
sturdy oak, its splintered and ripped and vacant. Now just
a doorway. The hall, just a pitch black, never ending
hole that seems to retract from her vision the longer
she stares. Why had she never noticed it before? Something
about time, the piles of newspaper, the rotting clothes, the
(15:31):
rusting nails sticking out of the floorboards, and no windows.
She has not thought about leaving that place for weeks,
weeks like years, folded into her sallow skin, the feeling
over her morphs into something darker. Can she see it?
All squiggly lines and rotten, jagged teeth and encasing her.
(15:54):
It swirls around her, seizes her. The boy lunges at her.
Then the thing evaporates, twisting in the air and materializing
in the hallway about ten steps beyond the door, as
a little white girl in an orange dress floats in
the darkness. The dress hovers and curls around the child's body.
She steals her face, raises a finger and motions for
(16:17):
Maya to come. The boy grabs her shoulder. Maya steps
out of the door and feel her feet beating a
path toward the girl. The child's lips draw back like
dry sacks. Her eyes sink in. The child's face is
all jagged, monstrous teeth. They don't deserve your skin. They
(16:38):
don't deserve your drug. Maya freezes. Then suddenly she is
ripped back into the room by a pair of black hands,
back into the sad void of the young man's face,
screaming hot breath on her cheek. Number two, We want
full employment for our people, Regina, Regina, get up a
(17:03):
beach in California, maybe a warm sun, A seagull chimed
in the afternoon air, aloft but losing feathers. Regina's dressed
danced on the breeze alive. Who is this smallish, dark
black man running panting his way up the short mounds
of sand on this beautiful beach? Regina Regina was under
(17:27):
a desk. She looked up through the bullet holes and
the angled turned over tabletop. She held a double barreled
shotgun in her tiny brown hand. Draped over the desk
was Harold Martin, and over him was Jerome Pratt. Beside
her was a skinny Chinese man with soft o eyes
named Tet Tet, bunching his chest where blood soaked his
(17:48):
fingers through the brown fishing vest he seemed to wear
every day. Regina, Regina get up. She could hear him
in her head, somewhere rattling down its labyrinthine caverns, but
she couldn't see his face. Regina searched the room. Her
senses felt nothing but her own breath. There, behind a
(18:08):
foul cabinet, he was carrying an ingram mac tent. The
poor man's busy, she thought to herself, analyzing the gun.
Proud she got it right, rand X. When he fired
his gun. She knew she got it right. A thundering
round ripped through the air. Regina, go to the back
room now before bullet's tour back at rand Was he hit?
(18:32):
Wasn't she just lying there cradled in a strangely terse
yet weirdly doey arms. Was he not holding her the
same way he had done every time? Weren't they snug
on the couch watching Lieutenant and her kiss that white
man on star trek at a reception after a rally
on Temple's campus. He was there right when she did
(18:54):
her best impression of Brother Huey while carrying the new
bullhorn she bought on South Street with her financial aid money.
And she was putting sandwiches and bananas and grocery bags
to get to the neighborhood kids for the Sunday meal
programs they started that summer at the gun range. He
was always gripping her up from behind, whispering some mess
(19:15):
in her ear, playing all the time, Yeah she been
read that ridiculous red book. Randall, if you don't get
your ass in this bed, I'm going to show you
a red book. Show you right, the moon hung low
and the sky that night looked like a searchlight in clouds.
When the smoke from the incense hit it. Don't worry
(19:37):
about me. You have to get out of here, go
to the safe house. Another bang and another bang. Ran
spun around with a sharp, contorted jerk. Regina saw his
body gracelessly drift towards the floor through the sludge of
gravity and time. Regina, please, She turned toward the side door.
(19:58):
It was not the one Ran wanted her to go through.
She cocked her shotgun that she put her mind back
on the gun range. That was where he proposed. The
bullets ripped through paper when they reeled it in. He
made a quip about changing all the target outlines for
pictures of Commissioner Rizzo. She fingered one of the bullet
(20:21):
holes and licked her lips. Not bad, he said to her.
Not bad, She smirked. I'll show you not bad. She
kicked the door in a supply closet, a stool, up
on top of the stool and out of the small
top window. Could she make it, she rubbed the slight
bump of her belly. She would have to. She looked
(20:43):
out of the window and into the street. The crowd
had gathered a few blocks up. Their nervous anger was
trained on the front door of the building. Regina was
trapped in. Just to the far opposite side of the
horde was an alley. A black cat walked spryly. They're
a very small pool of rotting juice from the garbage bins.
(21:04):
It arched its back and stretched. It looked free.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
But do you know what, dear listeners makes you free?
Like that cat? Your ability to hit the forward fifteen
seconds button as many times as it takes before you.
Speaker 5 (21:20):
Hear Prince's voice again. Because here's ads.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
And we're back.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
The bed, though, that's where it wants to lie, lies
on the bed, not supposed to be on the bed,
but it's the best place to look up at the
ceiling because the entire room opens up from there, a
portal maybe where all manner of things can come pouring out,
things like bouncy. Why do I wear a suit because
(22:04):
I am dignified? You see, I wear a suit because
I want to walk into town with a gorgeous woman
on my arm, perhaps spinner around in the aisle at
Bergdorfhin the Goodman's by her, the finest furs at Macy's
serenade her in the hoisery section at Kmart. Only the
best for her. You understand the finest silver, the finest goal,
and lots and lots of diamonds. But you're a bunny.
(22:28):
Tut tut. That's neither hair Snack's nick nor there I'm
a creature of class, a man of grace. After all
we've been through together. Surely you can see that sits
on the bed and sighs, weary of bouncys ridiculous proclamations.
And Bouncy pushed that third grader into the creek, almost drowning.
(22:51):
The boy let the rabbit stick around, despite the fact
that it was that got a beating for it, ran
my wa or out, couldn't sit down for a week,
couldn't watch Fat Albert all that year. When Bouncy stole
some candy from mister Griffin's store, he left holding it
(23:13):
a long hot ride in a policeman's car. Another beating
and the hushed whispered tones in the living room. Later
the boys got problems for the show Knafelise, but I
don't know what to do with them. My daughter dropped
him off and I ain't seen her since. I've been
reading about all these disorders. They've been discovering something about
(23:35):
the attention deficit. Maybe he needs some counseling. Counseling not
my blood. Haha, you can forget that. Wouldn't hear the
end of it from Hattie down at the church? Mm hmm,
I know that's right with their sorry ass potato salad. Well,
it was just a thought. Nothing a belt can't fix.
(23:56):
You want to open this, don't you? Bouncey stand in
front of Grandma's dresser like a game show hostess. His
fur is matted and I dangles sloppily from underneath a patch.
His suit rags. A dirty white foot pokes through the
gaping mouth of his floppy shoe. Still there's a manic
(24:18):
composure about him. Stands and pushes Bouncy aside. They aren't
even supposed to be in there, not on the bed,
not playing around in the dresser. Again, just leave me alone.
You're bad news, Bouncy. Why bad news? Here's the thought?
Why I would Bouncy Stumbling on his messed up shoe,
(24:42):
falls forward into the dresser. It pops open cranes neck
to peek a piece of crimson, a snatch of soft
pearly white, go on, go on. Yes, The room darkens.
The rabbit stands in a dim light, then by itself.
(25:03):
The dresser rumbles open soft cotton, wonderful velvet grandmothers panties
are as exquisite as imagine them. Gently runs fingers over
the fabrics. The clothes seemed to grip small hands. Soon
(25:24):
is wrapped up in them. Flailing on the bed, has
forgotten about Bouncy. Bouncy Bunny calls out, come, lie on
the bed with me. Bouncy sits on the edge of
the bed and peers over the darkening corner of the room.
There's Bouncy, only under a fading net of light, can
(25:47):
still see the rabbit's mangy face. A maggot crawls in
and out of Bouncy's ear. Bouncy sports as soft a
smile as he can muster. He dips in a solemn bow,
tips his hat, and fades into the darkness. Three we
won an end to the robbery by the white men
(26:09):
and the capitalists of our black community. And a diner
in Chelsea, a warbling tune by First Choice clicked on
the jukebox with the force of a hammer. It snapped
Regina out of her daze. She had been wearing the
same sweatshirt and baseball cap for the past two days,
all gray, a slate of banality. The crowd was small,
(26:34):
but there was indeed a crowd, customers who seemed more
like patients, zombie like and damaged, as they guzzled coffee
and folded newspapers with Regina's face splashed all over them
in bold print. There was no rhythm to their movement.
The bell over the doorway jarred her each time a
new face entered and an old face exited. She was
(26:57):
grateful for that wretched bell, though she didn't want to
fall asleep there, just waiting for Yes. This woman a stout,
dark skinned creature with an outdated Madam C. J. Walker perm,
long coat and beads, not very conspicuous, but they told
her that she wouldn't be wanted. Posters be damned. Regina
(27:21):
perked up her eyes, darting savagely under her tinted glasses.
The woman past her table and headed for the lunch counter,
then huffed slightly as she read a menu. Regina began
to peel herself out of the booth, a difficult feet
under the weight of pregnancy sit. The woman said, irritation
in her voice. Take off those goddamn glasses. He looked
(27:43):
like a fucking fool. The woman wouldn't look at her,
She just sighed. Regina sighed too, and took off the glasses.
Over easy, Please decap The waitress tagged the board with
the mysterious perm wearing woman's order. I looked like a fool. Ooh,
Regina thought to herself. You will go to the address
(28:04):
written on the third napkin and the holder in the
booth near the door. Yes, I know there's a white
family eating there. If you weren't wearing that ridiculous get up,
it would not be a problem to ask for a
few napkins, would it. Once you're up there, you will
go to the back door, enter through the kitchen, and
go up the stairs to the second floor bathroom. A
(28:25):
tub will be there. It will be filled with warm water.
Lavender rose and liec petals will steep in the water.
Two women will wait for you there naked. They will
rub you with alo hum gently. You'll drink the elixir
in a vial on the rim of the tub. This
will relax you. Don't worry about what's in it. Just
(28:47):
do it. You will float there breathing. It will be painful,
but they will be there to ease your pain. Worry not.
Your journey begins at six o'clock tonight. Take care, restless child.
The coffee grew stale, the eggs waited there, and the
chili diner air. Regina just stared at them. A wave
(29:09):
of panic rippled through her when the white family nodded
and smiled at her as they grabbed their things and
headed to the door, the children making a racket, the
father winking at their waitress, the wife pretending not to see.
There were bald up napkins on the table. Regina darted
over to their table, rifling through their plates. Hey, what
(29:31):
are you doing over there? Trying to steal my tips? Bitch?
Regina tucked all the napkins into her sweatshirt, ducking her head.
Fuck your tips. She tossed another three dollars on the table.
When the door chimed upon her opening it, the sound
rattled her bones. She looked up at the bell and wondered,
And she was just like everybody else, coming into this
(29:54):
diner on a ball me Tuesday morning, each soul ringing
this bell announcing their presence. I was in this place,
she reminded herself. Four. We want decent housing, fit for
shelter of human beings. Bitch, yes, stay girl, Yes, Mother
(30:17):
sits in the chair. No one else can sit in
mother's chair. The girls sit on couches, some sit unfolding chairs,
Some stand not in the chair. They wag fingers and approval.
Some snap where did she get that glorious blouse that
sheer top of, billowing wigh the fuck up around the
(30:38):
arms and cutting off right below the tummy, fitting like
a glove over shoulders so broad they could tag in
for Atlas himself. The burden they carry, Maya thinks is
no less impossible. But there the bitch go dancing. She
spins around and stops, nearly completing a one a degree turn,
(31:01):
only to complete the rest of her half circle in
a slow motion. Now pose a slender Puerto Rican man
waves a fan, prosses his legs. He sits beside mother,
speaking two and for her. The girl and the blouse
poses magazine sharp. Her jaw line clinches tight, hands on
(31:22):
her hips. Now those hands are cinching her breasts. Then
they are in the air, arm straight, practically walking on
air to pull down clouds. The music stops. Was there music?
Maya looks over to mother. The cron's hands raised. All
of the girls and all of the boys stop, their
(31:42):
faces once jovial, clownish, now stoic and hushed. A pause,
and Mother speaks, ten, you heard her. The man beside
her erupts, his fan flitting wildly across, down and over
his face. The music roars back, a pulls beat like
none Maya had heard before. It drones and hypnotizes, tends
(32:06):
across the board. Then a new girl dances. Maya watches
wide eyed. Mother leans into the man beside her and
whispers into his ear. The man looks directly at Maya,
a face like a joker's, mischievous and determined, and he nods. Five.
(32:28):
We want education for our people that exposes the true
nature of this decadent American society. We want education that
teaches us our true history and our role in the
present day society. Push push, you can do it, Okay, now, relax, relax,
(32:49):
there you go. Relax, We got you, We got you.
Let the let the water gently. It's a. Maya digs
her hands in the dirt. The peer is quiet, except
one sound. Amari screams, where are they coming from? Why
(33:11):
she covered in blood? The beautiful dirt, Why is it
such a pure thing to her? Why do the caps
from the sprite bottles and empty Senca packets, used condoms
and the sea offers such a perfect potpourri? Why is
she drifting here? And what is she dreaming of? Amari screams, down,
(33:33):
twist She's given you, Banshee. He watches her twist in
the moon's light, covered in the thin haze of that
rocky hue, silhouetted against the backdrop of a calm wave.
This isn't the beach she'd dream of, This is a stage.
Amari kicks his feet in the sandy earth cunt, Her
(33:55):
faded jean shorts ride up over her milky golden thigh,
her crop t shirt, once white stained now just a
few weeks ago, when she walked into London's Ball, she
draped her body in the plastic deture of a replicated ive.
San Laurent carried an umbrella that she tied glow sticks around,
(34:17):
and pranced down the tattered floorboards in the basement of
an African American community center. She tried a few new
moves that night, Amari was cruel bitch of luck. She
landed an airplane chopped, Maya leaps into the near dark air.
She kisses space. That lone second that she is up
(34:38):
there feels like a world being berthed. From her place
in the sky, she can see everything. A dog lying
by its dying homeless owner, the dangling neon signed by
the Chinese spot where she first met Amari after a
hair and fueled night. The steps to the Silvia rivera
community center downtown with its now crumbling societ, girded by
(35:01):
steel canopies and littered with junkies. Then she is falling
back to the wet earth a split. She falls onto
her back dramatically, her hands pointed as elegantly as the
craning neck of a swan. It's about time, bitch. My
name is Maya, now, she told him. Then, my name
(35:22):
is Maya, And like I said, it's about time. Bitch. Oh,
oh my god, Maya bitch hell. Amari grasps at his throat. Scaly,
flaking alabaster hands reach over and grab him. They have
(35:43):
poles in their hands, swinging violently crack on top of
a Mari's skin. Maya grabs at their sticks pulling them away.
They were alone out here, she thought, where did these
men come from? Were they John's? The girls sometimes shared
the peer with businessmen and lawyers and satisfied at home
(36:06):
on the routine hunt for some dicks to suck, some
bodies to feel up, to get their rocks off, or
they pimps, thugs, rednecks. Maya grabs one of them, wraps
her hand around his neck, lifts him up into the air.
He kicks and struggles. She slams him onto the ground,
head first and drags him out to the sea, a
(36:29):
searing hot blow to her head. Then it all goes black.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
But do you know what, dear listener, Maya probably saw
when all went black. I'm willing to bet, Prince, I'm
willing to bet that it was the siren call of
the products and services that support this show. And we're back.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Six. We want all black men to be exempt from
military service. The filter was overflowing hot water blistered on
her right hand. The pain snapped her back. The rink
smell of stale robustica coffee, overcooked beans and cigarettes s
flooded her senses. Shit, she explained. The counter was a
(37:27):
mess from the overpore. She sighed, tossed the filter, poured
the greeny brew from the flask into a cup, and
served it Turkish coffee, she explained. A mousey woman in
a turtleneck sweater cupped it as if it was a
forbidden elixir and she was dying from some ancient disease.
(37:47):
There's too many grains in this, The white woman squeeked,
It's yeah, it's Turkish coffee. The two women stared at
each other for an eternal three seconds, until the white
woman turned away and sat back down out. Just clean
the counter, Regina, Just clean the counter. Make these weird
hippie burnouts their coffee, Smile at their art that looks
(38:08):
like a baby shit itself, laugh at their poetry about
their souls burning up in the s and M dungeon
of corporate America, and just breathe for your child. North
Carolina is a long way, isn't it. The white man,
sitting at a table near the window, said, I'm sorry,
Regina replied, a bit uneasy. What did you say? Strange place,
(38:33):
isn't it, he said, straightening his glasses. He looked like
Clark Kent. That somehow made Regina nervous duke's coffee, Regina asked,
throat quavering, A bit, a little, I'm used to it.
The man took a sip of his coffee. Did Janice
serve him before she'd clocked out? I bet you are.
(38:55):
She wanted to ask, Cracker, do I know you? Instead,
she let a tense line crack, her robust lips shaking.
She went to wash a few dishes. She watched a
minute go by on the large clock by the door.
She watched the door five point thirty. The clock read
half hour until Sunday close, a sweet two hours earlier
(39:19):
than during the week, but still somehow just as achingly long.
She picked up a knife. Look at this shit, the
man called out from behind a newspaper. The mousey white
woman shifted in her seat, buried her face in a
highlights magazine. Listen to this. We believe that black people
should not be forced to fight in the military service
(39:40):
to defend a racist government that does not protect us.
We will not fight and kill other people of color
in the world, who, like black people, are being victimized
by the white, racist government of America. Blah blah blah.
Can you believe any of this shit? The mousey woman
had gathered her thing induct out of the door, an
(40:02):
uneasy smile on her face. Huh, what's that from a
wave of calmness brushed over Regina. The man had shown
his hand. There was no mystery left, just her and him.
He folded the newspaper calmly and tucked it into his
tan leather satchel. He took his glasses off. I have
a feeling, he said, giving his temples a deep massage.
(40:26):
He looked directly at her, locking eyes. Regina clinched her jaw.
I have a feeling. You already know where this is from,
don't you. It's not exactly esoteric knowledge. I mean, I
know this is a small town in good old North Carolina.
But I bet you've heard of some of these kooks,
(40:46):
the weather Underground, one group calling themselves the what was it,
Simbonese Liberation Army, people like Joanne Chesamar Geronimo Pratt. I
know you've heard of them. What do you want, Regina demanded, calmly,
raising her voice to crest over his got I've got
work to do. I've got to wrap these croissants. I know,
(41:10):
I know, I'm sorry, he insisted. Listen here, here's my
card if you ever want to talk. He held the
card out toward her, but she stayed there, frozen, arms crossed.
I'm not with the FBI, I'm not with the government.
I just I want was best for you, Regina. The
sound of her name chilled her. I'm with an agency
(41:32):
that can help you and your child. Child, Regina, Child, Regina, child, Regina.
We can help you. Our experiments with getting people like you, criminals,
terrorists into our deep programming tanks have been highly successful.
(41:53):
We can offer you total immunity with your compliance. She
had been so careful. She watched the men rise his
coat over his arm, satchel tight across his body, and really, Regina,
there's nothing to think about. Just we're trying to help you.
If we don't hear from you in forty eight hours,
(42:13):
we will call the police. It's that simple. And he left,
no take care, no scene, ceiling quips. He simply left
and disappeared down a quaint street, where he got into
a black car that sat there for a minute before
turning onto a windy road through the college campus. When
Gina locked the door, ran to a payphone. Now do
(42:37):
it now, she screamed into the phone. She did not
wait for the last bus as she normally would. She
ran home power walked through the white neighborhoods. The moonchased
her as the sun disappeared into the seams of dust.
I'm Maya, she screams. A tube is in her arm.
(43:00):
There's a man in a white lab coat standing at
the foot of the bed reading a chart. Three pairs
of black arms are resting on hers. Mother is in
the corner. The man in the lab coat jumps as
Maya stirs awake. You're awake. Welcome back to the world,
Miss Maya. The black faces belonging to the black hands echo,
(43:24):
Miss Maya. The doctor corrects himself. Sorry, this is well,
it's paul new to me, he laughs nervously. They certainly
don't teach this kind of stuff in medical school. He
returns to his chart. Brown eyes in a flock of
blurry brown faces narrow at him. The brown eyes and
brown faces turned back to Maya. Where's Amari? Amari? One
(43:51):
of them asks, girl, who is Amari? He almost died,
miss thing. Why are you always fighting white boys? Girl?
How is he? They all look at each other. The
girls squint and shake their heads, shrugged their shoulders. One
of them, an older one, says, how do you know Amari,
(44:12):
skinny Puerto Rican pretty boy? Convogue for days? Mother? How
she know Amari? That was way before your time? In
this house? Where is he? Maya insists her jaw is
a swollen, pulpy mash of flesh, and teeth cuts lace
her forehead. Where is Amari? Amari? The older one slowly speaks,
(44:35):
Mari is dead, child. He died of pneumonia two years ago. Seven.
We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder
of black people. The door exploded open. Gina rushed from
room to room, calling out her child's name. A young
(44:56):
woman in a dashiki stood at the kitchen table. Regina,
She exclaimed, Regina, I've taken care of it. You're all packed, Crystal,
I need a car now. Look, okay, you not going
to just come running up in here yelling at me.
The two women stopped, breathed, A tear flowed down Crystal's eye.
(45:17):
I'm sorry, Crystal, where Crystal pointed a shaky finger up
the steps. Regina tore up the steps and stopped by
the child's room, so small she thought no time. She
ran to her room. Searching for her bags. A suitcase
flush with the steel and forced back and wheels about Yahai.
(45:41):
She tore it open and discarded all of the clothes,
wieled it back to the other room, grabbed the child
by the arm, thrust the kid into the suitcase, zipped
it up, and climbed out the window. Crystal Regina thought
to herself, you know what to do. In the living
room down stairs, Crystal lit a match. She shrugged and
(46:03):
sniffed through some tears. She watched the flame dance a bit,
a small bulb licking the air, longing to touch something,
to grow wilder calmed her a bit. She tossed the
match onto an old ready couch. It was soon engulfed
in flames. It's dark tight. Every few minutes there's a
(46:25):
bump and a bigger bump. The small bumps go unnoticed.
A strong stick pokes through the darkness bricks. The arm
sounds vibrate through thin canvas walls, filling the air with
a redolent creepiness. There are only snatches of them. A
chorus of men laughing and show nothing. All muffled bass,
(46:48):
a radio buzzing like small insects, A heavy humming car
engine that sometimes sputters, sounding like distant fireworks over a
calm field. Can breathe through a hole just above head
if neck cranes just a tad, can see stars flit
(47:09):
by an a static kaleidoscope. Suddenly there's no ground. It's
floating in space, drifting for a second or two until
landing in a huff. A long stillness, no sound. Something
pokes a tiny hole that reveals the black sky. Something snickers,
(47:31):
gnashes quietly, a sound like thin translucent paper tearing, Then
a loud rip, and it's as if someone has unzipped
the universe and opened up the blackness into another dimension.
Standing before in a clean press suit, its sparkly eyes
gleaming sunk into its bobbing, fat white head as a rabbit,
(47:55):
Hey there, gasps with a start. Pardon me, lad, yes, yes,
could you just yes, just a bit there. The rabbit
enters into the cramp space, gently pushing to one side
and zipping the suit case back up. Hi bouncy bunny esquire,
(48:18):
it is just The bunny adjusts its bow tie, pats
down the suit, checks its pocket watch, all while folding
itself around time and space. Well, it's just fantimically tastic
a Roney to finally meet you heard so much about
yet the ranch and shakes and tremendously. We're going to
(48:39):
have some fun, aren't we, old chum.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
And I think that's where we're going to leave it
for this week. At this fantastic moment, not just a
fantastic moment, a fan tibbally tastic a Rooney moment in
this story, dear listener, both of us spent a long
time trying to figure out exactly how to pronounce fantom
bibili tastic a Rooney in order to bring me to
this story.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
It was hard.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
Yeah, this story is fascinating. I like didn't like psychedelic
fiction all that much when I was a kid. I
think it has to do with my own personal neurotype
where I was like everything has to make sense and
it should be in order, you know. And I've come
around in the past couple of years and like just
the stuff that Alex is doing throughout this, like the
(49:27):
idea that when this little kid is completely disassociated from themselves,
they don't even have a name, right, They have like
static instead of a name, and they don't even have
a pronoun right, there's just static instead of a pronoun.
They don't have an identity, and so they like meet
this bunny and I think with the like it's Maya. Now,
(49:50):
I'm assuming she transitions and joins the vogue scene, right
the scene. Okay, that's my read on what's happening.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Yeah, I mean, I I love how intimate all of
this writing feels. How I think one of my favorite
scenes so far was definitely that diner scene. I mean,
I guess the diner scene where she meets.
Speaker 3 (50:14):
The non fed.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
Yeah, yeah, the non fed and like we can test
you and deprogram you. And I just find like the
psychedelic nature of this. I think it really suits like
the times, like trying to think through all of the
kind of mind altering experiences people were having. And I
(50:38):
mean there's definitely like a clear kind of theme of
trauma and how these characters are dealing with and processing
trauma or like the traumas that they're running away from.
And I feel like writing that provides a filter through
which the main character, the narrator, is seeing the world.
(51:00):
I think it just makes it that much more effective
because it's like these people are trying to survive these
social systems, these traumas, these other elements happening around them,
and it makes sense that reality is kind of breaking
apart totally.
Speaker 3 (51:17):
Yeah, I've always assumed that if I, like in really
bad situations, my go to is just to stop interacting
with reality properly, you know, which I don't know. It
ties into prison. As we were talking about the very
beginning to work. Yeah, well, we're going to do way
more talking about this story once the story is done,
which is going to be after next week, because this
(51:39):
was only part one of two, and we'll be back
next week to finish up what we want, what we
believe by Alex Smith. And who's Alex Smith? You might
be asking. I want to know more about Alex Smith,
you might be asking, And fortunately we have a bio.
Alex Smith aka Alexoteric is a writer, artist, curator, musician
(52:04):
that gets an Air quotes, musician, slash noise maker. Living
in the cosmically kinetic city of Philadelphia. His work reflects
that dichotomy. Stark beautiful, wrought with afrotopian tension, avant garde
fashion and assemblage, and dynamic visual presentation. His sci fi
inspired worlds collide with afro queer and radical reimaginings of
(52:25):
the fantastic. He is a founding member of the Philadelphia
based sci fi arts collective Metropolarity, a central personnel in
Philadelphia's early afrofuturist community, from collage work to zines, to
bands and solo music performances, to promoting other bands and
performers via curation and cultural critique and arts reporting, Smith
(52:46):
transcends the concept of renaissance man and works from the
afrofuturist vision all things, all the time, each aspect of
his work in forming the other. Smith won the twenty
twenty Pugh Fellowship of the Arts, presenting works such as
his short story collection Arc dust Roserium Publishing, which, by
the way, is where you can find this story if
(53:07):
you want to read it, because sometimes with like psychedelic work,
you might want to read it too. Writ his experimental
art punk bands Rainbow Crimes, Solarized, Spectral Forces, Glitch Proverbs,
the cyberpunk superhero indie comic book series Black Vans, among others.
His work appears in anthologies such as Stories for Chip,
(53:28):
a tribute to Samuel R. Delaney, Rosarium, Black Quantum Futurism,
Volume two, black Punk Now Soft Skull and the Black
Fantastic Library of America. He invites you to join him
in the chromatic exploration of the unknown, his art a
visual portal to that limital space. You can find Alex
Atpatreon dot com, slash they are Birds or they Are
(53:51):
Birds on Instagram and my guest co host my reader
this week talking to me about this fun story. Prince.
Where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (54:01):
People can find me on social media on Instagram, I
am Sweet Black Prince. I also do a YouTube channel
where I share a lot of political education video essays
about organizing direct action. That's just my name, Prince Shakoor.
You can also find me through the podcast that I
(54:22):
mentioned earlier, the Dugout of Black Anarchists podcast and Yeah Yeah.
Speaker 3 (54:29):
As for me, you can find me on the internet too,
Margaret Kiljoy, I have a newsletter I write almost every
week and take care of each other. Fuck Ice so far,
at every prison so and every dead Men Free.
Speaker 1 (54:48):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or Wherever you listen to podcasts,
you can find sources for it could happen here, Updated
monthly at coozonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Book Club Club, Club Club Club Club, book Club Clubs Clubs,
Books book Club.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Hello everybody, and welcome to Kool Zone Media book Club,
where I actually didn't have to chance by myself this time,
and the continued on synchronicity of zoom continues to entertain
at least me. Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 4 (00:27):
Book Club is the only book club where you don't
have to do the reading, because usually I do it
for you, but this time, my guest, Prince Shakur, is
going to do the reading for you.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Hi, Prince, how are you.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I'm good, I'm glad to be here. I've never done
a book club like this, so I'm excited.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I like this model because I read a lot, but
I still struggle with actual book clubs because then I'm like, uh, homework,
I can't do homework.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yeah, and it's good to read with other people. And
I guess I mean like studying literature and university. It
reminds me of being in literature class. And yeah, I
don't know. I always liked the communal nature of reading
or even workshops or reading like fresh writing with people,
so I feel like this just gives me, I don't know,
(01:17):
a bit of nostalgia.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
And you even have your own book that people have
probably read. But you're also a podcaster. You have a
podcast called The Dugout and a book. Do you want
to tell us about those things?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah? Yeah, So my book is a memoir. It's titled
When They Tell You to Be Good. I describe it
as my political coming of age, what it was like
growing up queer in a Jamaican family, getting radicalized, being
a part of different movements. A lot of it is
about Jamaic colonial violence, patriarchal violence, but I kind of
(01:50):
wrote it as like a what is it like being young,
queer and radicalized in today's America? And it is really
inspired by a lot of other like black power literature
and memoirs from like the Civil rights and Black power era.
And yeah, it's just like a project of love and
me trying to process a lot. And yeah, it came
(02:12):
out a few years ago, so folks want to check
it out. It's called When They Tell You to Be Good?
And I also do a podcast it's called The Dugout
of Black Anarchist Podcasts, and we talk about a lot
of things on there. We talk about news, we interview
lots of people black Panther Veterans Revolutionaries. Recently just interviewed
(02:34):
a cadre out of Minneapolis who were doing a lot
of like firearms training and community defense, and we interviewed
two of the defendants from like the Minnesota fifteen repression case.
So a lot of conversations, which I think is good
in this particular period of political chaos we're in.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
I'm really sad about the Minnesota fifteen, mostly because well
mostly because of the repression, but beyond that, because Damn
fifteen was right there. They're being accused of being part
of a group called Damn and that's really what matters.
Is that now, I obviously that's not what matters, but
people should check out what's going on with the Minnesota
(03:16):
fifteen or as no one calls them, the Damn fifteen,
because it's bad. Well, this month we are commemorating Black
August with guests, interviews, and special episodes on the show.
Black August is a month of remembrance, study, and revolution,
honoring black freedom fighters and the movements they supported for
prison evolution, decolonization, and the end of racial capitalism. Black
(03:40):
August was started by incarcerated black radicals in the San
Quentin prison in nineteen seventy nine to mark the deaths
of George Jackson and his brother Jonathan Jackson at the
hands of the state of California a few years earlier,
and today people honor many dates in August throughout the
whole month. This includes the August ninth killing of Mike
Brown in twenty fourteen. August thirtieth was Fred Hampton's birthday
(04:04):
in nineteen forty eight, and August twenty first was the
beginning of Nat Turner's rebellion in eighteen thirty one, the
rebellion that has come up so many times on my
history podcast, including last week, I think ended up talking
about Nat Turner because we were talking about black literacy,
and there's no possible way to overstate how much Nat
(04:25):
Turner's rebellion scared white supremacist all throughout the country. And
one of the ways besides just like, oh, they actually
can fight back and kill people, was just literally that
Nat Turner could read, which was illegal, right, and like
had read. He was a preacher too, and he had
like read the words that he was preaching. And that's
(04:45):
good the piss out of people. Anyway, That's what I
got about Black August do you guys think say about it?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's definitely a month of commemoration,
and it's a chance, like a lot of the reading
and kind ofnology around it says to not only reflect,
but do things to honor like these freedom fighters and revolutionaries.
So I think it's just for me, like a really
key reminder of like the necessity of abolition and kind
(05:14):
of re educating myself about abolition. A book that I
recommend folks check out if they want to like dig
into things more is Tip of the Spear by Urisan
me Burton. That's like something I've read a lot over
the last year or two, and it kind of follows
a lot of the timeline and movements and prison revolts
(05:37):
and uprisings and organizing around the nineteen seventy one Attica
prison uprising. And I think it just gives a lot
of context, and I love that there's a lot in
there about like the Black Liberation Army and Kuwasi Ballagoon
and other revolutionaries and just it really digs into a
lot of the details of just like this really explosive
(05:59):
period of of rebellion inside of prisons in jails. So
I feel like I'd really recommend that, but I think
like auguest is so necessary. There's been countless men in
my family who've been deported or in prison, and I
don't know, carse. Reality is fucking evil, and I think
people should be educated and check in with their education
(06:20):
around it and find community events and find ways to
organize with people on the inside or letter writing. Especially
with all of the ongoing repression cases happening right now,
it just feels really relevant.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Whenever I try to like really quickly explain prison abolition
to somebody. There's like a comic. I don't remember who
wrote the comic. It's like four panels long or something,
but it's just like someone comes over someone's house and
they're like, oh, don't go out of the basement. I
have a guy in there. And you're like wait what.
You're like, I kind of trying to steal my car
a couple of years ago, so he's just down in
the basement now, and you're like, well, that's that seems completely.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Fucked up, messed up.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Yes, Like every now and then, it just like really
hits me that if the wrong person hits the wrong
person just like punches them, just gets angry punches somebody,
which all of us have. No, I would never have
done such a terrible thing, but like all of us
have done. And you're like, oh, that could just especially
if like the system is out to get you for
various reasons. You're now spending years of your life in
(07:21):
a cage. You're just like, oh, I'm gonna put this
guy in a cage because he did drugs. You're like, wait, what, Yeah,
Like who's the evil one here?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah, Like it makes me think of like the Khalif
Browder case, like how he was accused of stealing a
backpack and spent years in like jail And.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Is that the like rikers and he was like it
was pre trial, but they just didn't get around to him.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yes, exactly. Yeah, And and like the point that you mentioned,
like it reminds me of I think it's like our
persons obsolete by Angela Davis, Like she talks about how
prisons one of their functions is to invisibilize people and
social issues, and so it makes me think about exactly
what you're saying, Like just hide the problem, throw in
a bunch of violence and misery and call it the
(08:07):
justice system.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Yeah, it's just yeah, yeah, real ironic name that they
picked for themselves. Well, we're not going to do nonfiction.
We're going to do fiction, which of course never has
any social value. That part sarcastic. I hear you have
a story for me this week?
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yes, I do. Today, we have a story and it's
titled What We Want, What We Believe, by Alex Smith.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
And if people are like Alex Smith, that name is familiar.
Besides the fact that it is almost a brilliantly generic name, Alex.
If you're listening, no offense to you here. We did
another story by Alex Smith in March. A story was
called Girls Who Look Through Class and maybe I'll remember it.
It was about a grocery co op worker who gets
swept up into a cosmic struggle for justice, and it
(08:55):
was really fun and psychedelic. So I'm excited to hear
this one. I got that chance to meet Alex earlier
this year at a panel in Philadelphia of radical fiction
writers and it ruled. So I'm excited to hear more stories.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Oh cool. Yeah, this story, I would say, is framed
through the Black Panther's ten Point program, which is also
called Like, as I mentioned before, what We want what
we believe, And it follows basically the aftermath of the
police execution of a fictionalized black panther. And it's about
revolutionary legacy and transcendental joy. And it's also, i would say,
(09:33):
about the painful after image of repression, incarceration, and state violence.
And just as a kind of disclaimer for listeners, this
story does discuss gun violence, intravenous drug use, hearing voices,
childhood psychosis, and kids in traumatic situations. Just wanted to
(09:54):
give that disclaim. Okay, okay, So let's begin. What we
want what we believed by Alex Smith one. We want freedom,
We want power to determine the destiny of our black community.
Regina Adams let her hair lick her face in the
pulsing rain. She ducked under a canopy near Lee's and waited,
(10:18):
her body drenched. Working down at the community college during
the day, taking classes at night, she was going to
be somebody, even if the long hours meant she couldn't
be somebody somebody. A car pulled up to the corner
and a man rolled down the window, one of them
long cars she thinks used to be white painted black.
Who are you out here for the man asked, excuse me,
(10:41):
Regina said, taken aback. She straightened her knockoff Pierre Cardon skirt,
tucked her satchel closer to her body, and shot the
man a look, bitch, don't let me get out the car.
The man said in a low tone. His one gold
tooth was noticeably dead and dull, but still somehow shown
in his rear view mirror as he suddenly adjusted himself.
(11:02):
Who in the car, Babe Randall from seemingly out of
nowhere called out. As he approached, he called himself rand X,
always reading, hanging with fives. What's happening? We have him
shrimp tonight. Oh that's your nigga. Huh, the man in
the car said to them. Ran shot him a look
that was all tight jawed and narrow eyed. Pulling Regina
(11:25):
in close. The ladies with me, he paused. Then, yeah,
I know who you are. I know you, with your
various entrepreneurial endeavors, don't have time to mess with decent
folks like us. So if you'll excuse the missus in me,
(11:46):
Rollo leaned back in his seat, tapping on the gas,
fixing his buffont hair in the mirror. You act to
as boys. He shook his head. Y'all ain't good for business.
Consider that a fair warning. You have a good Rollo's
fake slip car crept back up the street. Regina, lost
(12:06):
in the moment, suddenly tugged wildly away from Rand's grasp. Boy,
if you don't get your hands off of me, she demanded.
Rand had been trying to talk to her since freshman year.
She saw him change from a delinquent kid, a bag boy,
a stick up kid, and petty crimes to a man
walking through campus. He was not taking class one, just
(12:28):
using the school typewriters to make his little pamphlets. Sista,
no disrespect. I was just you were just tell you
what if you won't let me walk you home? Huh,
then he said, handing her a pamphlet. There was a
crude drawing of a black panther on it. Come down
to the YMCA on fifty second. There's something going down
(12:50):
and we need all the intelligent sisters like you in
the front row. You dig. Regina pursed her lips together
and gently rolled her eyes, crumbling the paper into her satchel.
She watched him walk away, dapping and shaking hands with
other black men. Tipping an imaginary hat to rain soap
black woman as he ambled up the street, disappearing into
(13:13):
the night. This Maya, what kind of name is that?
Speaker 1 (13:18):
You?
Speaker 2 (13:19):
African? Kill them? Maya sits down on the mattress. She
grabs the belt, tying it around her arm tight. The
loop feels like an extension of herself. She holds her
hand out impatiently toward one of the boys. There they
put the syringe in her hand. The two boys sit
beside her, on either side, barely men. A husky ambient
(13:44):
debris waffs off the bed. The entire thing is encrusted, peeling,
just like the room. Walls thick with dried blood, burnt
yellow with cigarette stains. Roaches scamper at the weight of
the young men. Kill them both. Maya ignores the young men,
swivels to one side and back to the other, avoiding
(14:06):
their grabby hands. Why she liked that, yo? Why she
acting like that? They don't deserve what you possess? Would
you just shut the fuck up? Maya rises, stabs one
of the boys in the face with the needle. She
kicks trash about the room. The other boy searches the mattress,
(14:27):
slapping newspapers and condom wrappers into the air. He finds
another needle and slowly plunges it into his arm. This
bitch stab me in the eye. Yeah, I seen that.
Something seems to wrap itself around her body, something wispy
and shaky, a filament of a thing. It feels cool.
(14:47):
It's the drug, she thinks, the come down. She wants
the long, warm drink of an opiate in her veins.
She sees blood leak from the boy's eye, the other
swollen with red tears and anger. He's foaming at the mouth.
Maya stares at the door and realizes she has never
noticed its dimensions before, that its frame was once a
(15:09):
sturdy oak, its splintered and ripped and vacant. Now just
a doorway. The hall, just a pitch black, never ending
hole that seems to retract from her vision the longer
she stares. Why had she never noticed it before? Something
about time, the piles of newspaper, the rotting clothes, the
(15:31):
rusting nails sticking out of the floorboards, and no windows.
She has not thought about leaving that place for weeks,
weeks like years, folded into her sallow skin, the feeling
over her morphs into something darker. Can she see it?
All squiggly lines and rotten, jagged teeth and encasing her.
(15:54):
It swirls around her, seizes her. The boy lunges at her.
Then the thing evaporates, twisting in the air and materializing
in the hallway about ten steps beyond the door, as
a little white girl in an orange dress floats in
the darkness. The dress hovers and curls around the child's body.
She steals her face, raises a finger and motions for
(16:17):
Maya to come. The boy grabs her shoulder. Maya steps
out of the door and feel her feet beating a
path toward the girl. The child's lips draw back like
dry sacks. Her eyes sink in. The child's face is
all jagged, monstrous teeth. They don't deserve your skin. They
(16:38):
don't deserve your drug. Maya freezes. Then suddenly she is
ripped back into the room by a pair of black hands,
back into the sad void of the young man's face,
screaming hot breath on her cheek. Number two, We want
full employment for our people, Regina, Regina, get up a
(17:03):
beach in California, maybe a warm sun, A seagull chimed
in the afternoon air, aloft but losing feathers. Regina's dressed
danced on the breeze alive. Who is this smallish, dark
black man running panting his way up the short mounds
of sand on this beautiful beach? Regina Regina was under
(17:27):
a desk. She looked up through the bullet holes and
the angled turned over tabletop. She held a double barreled
shotgun in her tiny brown hand. Draped over the desk
was Harold Martin, and over him was Jerome Pratt. Beside
her was a skinny Chinese man with soft o eyes
named Tet Tet, bunching his chest where blood soaked his
(17:48):
fingers through the brown fishing vest he seemed to wear
every day. Regina, Regina get up. She could hear him
in her head, somewhere rattling down its labyrinthine caverns, but
she couldn't see his face. Regina searched the room. Her
senses felt nothing but her own breath. There, behind a
(18:08):
foul cabinet, he was carrying an ingram mac tent. The
poor man's busy, she thought to herself, analyzing the gun.
Proud she got it right, rand X. When he fired
his gun. She knew she got it right. A thundering
round ripped through the air. Regina, go to the back
room now before bullet's tour back at rand Was he hit?
(18:32):
Wasn't she just lying there cradled in a strangely terse
yet weirdly doey arms. Was he not holding her the
same way he had done every time? Weren't they snug
on the couch watching Lieutenant and her kiss that white
man on star trek at a reception after a rally
on Temple's campus. He was there right when she did
(18:54):
her best impression of Brother Huey while carrying the new
bullhorn she bought on South Street with her financial aid money.
And she was putting sandwiches and bananas and grocery bags
to get to the neighborhood kids for the Sunday meal
programs they started that summer at the gun range. He
was always gripping her up from behind, whispering some mess
(19:15):
in her ear, playing all the time, Yeah she been
read that ridiculous red book. Randall, if you don't get
your ass in this bed, I'm going to show you
a red book. Show you right, the moon hung low
and the sky that night looked like a searchlight in clouds.
When the smoke from the incense hit it. Don't worry
(19:37):
about me. You have to get out of here, go
to the safe house. Another bang and another bang. Ran
spun around with a sharp, contorted jerk. Regina saw his
body gracelessly drift towards the floor through the sludge of
gravity and time. Regina, please, She turned toward the side door.
(19:58):
It was not the one Ran wanted her to go through.
She cocked her shotgun that she put her mind back
on the gun range. That was where he proposed. The
bullets ripped through paper when they reeled it in. He
made a quip about changing all the target outlines for
pictures of Commissioner Rizzo. She fingered one of the bullet
(20:21):
holes and licked her lips. Not bad, he said to her.
Not bad, She smirked. I'll show you not bad. She
kicked the door in a supply closet, a stool, up
on top of the stool and out of the small
top window. Could she make it, she rubbed the slight
bump of her belly. She would have to. She looked
(20:43):
out of the window and into the street. The crowd
had gathered a few blocks up. Their nervous anger was
trained on the front door of the building. Regina was
trapped in. Just to the far opposite side of the
horde was an alley. A black cat walked spryly. They're
a very small pool of rotting juice from the garbage bins.
(21:04):
It arched its back and stretched. It looked free.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
But do you know what, dear listeners makes you free?
Like that cat? Your ability to hit the forward fifteen
seconds button as many times as it takes before you.
Speaker 5 (21:20):
Hear Prince's voice again. Because here's ads.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
And we're back.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
The bed, though, that's where it wants to lie, lies
on the bed, not supposed to be on the bed,
but it's the best place to look up at the
ceiling because the entire room opens up from there, a
portal maybe where all manner of things can come pouring out,
things like bouncy. Why do I wear a suit because
(22:04):
I am dignified? You see, I wear a suit because
I want to walk into town with a gorgeous woman
on my arm, perhaps spinner around in the aisle at
Bergdorfhin the Goodman's by her, the finest furs at Macy's
serenade her in the hoisery section at Kmart. Only the
best for her. You understand the finest silver, the finest goal,
and lots and lots of diamonds. But you're a bunny.
(22:28):
Tut tut. That's neither hair Snack's nick nor there I'm
a creature of class, a man of grace. After all
we've been through together. Surely you can see that sits
on the bed and sighs, weary of bouncys ridiculous proclamations.
And Bouncy pushed that third grader into the creek, almost drowning.
(22:51):
The boy let the rabbit stick around, despite the fact
that it was that got a beating for it, ran
my wa or out, couldn't sit down for a week,
couldn't watch Fat Albert all that year. When Bouncy stole
some candy from mister Griffin's store, he left holding it
(23:13):
a long hot ride in a policeman's car. Another beating
and the hushed whispered tones in the living room. Later
the boys got problems for the show Knafelise, but I
don't know what to do with them. My daughter dropped
him off and I ain't seen her since. I've been
reading about all these disorders. They've been discovering something about
(23:35):
the attention deficit. Maybe he needs some counseling. Counseling not
my blood. Haha, you can forget that. Wouldn't hear the
end of it from Hattie down at the church? Mm hmm,
I know that's right with their sorry ass potato salad. Well,
it was just a thought. Nothing a belt can't fix.
(23:56):
You want to open this, don't you? Bouncey stand in
front of Grandma's dresser like a game show hostess. His
fur is matted and I dangles sloppily from underneath a patch.
His suit rags. A dirty white foot pokes through the
gaping mouth of his floppy shoe. Still there's a manic
(24:18):
composure about him. Stands and pushes Bouncy aside. They aren't
even supposed to be in there, not on the bed,
not playing around in the dresser. Again, just leave me alone.
You're bad news, Bouncy. Why bad news? Here's the thought?
Why I would Bouncy Stumbling on his messed up shoe,
(24:42):
falls forward into the dresser. It pops open cranes neck
to peek a piece of crimson, a snatch of soft
pearly white, go on, go on. Yes, The room darkens.
The rabbit stands in a dim light, then by itself.
(25:03):
The dresser rumbles open soft cotton, wonderful velvet grandmothers panties
are as exquisite as imagine them. Gently runs fingers over
the fabrics. The clothes seemed to grip small hands. Soon
(25:24):
is wrapped up in them. Flailing on the bed, has
forgotten about Bouncy. Bouncy Bunny calls out, come, lie on
the bed with me. Bouncy sits on the edge of
the bed and peers over the darkening corner of the room.
There's Bouncy, only under a fading net of light, can
(25:47):
still see the rabbit's mangy face. A maggot crawls in
and out of Bouncy's ear. Bouncy sports as soft a
smile as he can muster. He dips in a solemn bow,
tips his hat, and fades into the darkness. Three we
won an end to the robbery by the white men
(26:09):
and the capitalists of our black community. And a diner
in Chelsea, a warbling tune by First Choice clicked on
the jukebox with the force of a hammer. It snapped
Regina out of her daze. She had been wearing the
same sweatshirt and baseball cap for the past two days,
all gray, a slate of banality. The crowd was small,
(26:34):
but there was indeed a crowd, customers who seemed more
like patients, zombie like and damaged, as they guzzled coffee
and folded newspapers with Regina's face splashed all over them
in bold print. There was no rhythm to their movement.
The bell over the doorway jarred her each time a
new face entered and an old face exited. She was
(26:57):
grateful for that wretched bell, though she didn't want to
fall asleep there, just waiting for Yes. This woman a stout,
dark skinned creature with an outdated Madam C. J. Walker perm,
long coat and beads, not very conspicuous, but they told
her that she wouldn't be wanted. Posters be damned. Regina
(27:21):
perked up her eyes, darting savagely under her tinted glasses.
The woman past her table and headed for the lunch counter,
then huffed slightly as she read a menu. Regina began
to peel herself out of the booth, a difficult feet
under the weight of pregnancy sit. The woman said, irritation
in her voice. Take off those goddamn glasses. He looked
(27:43):
like a fucking fool. The woman wouldn't look at her,
She just sighed. Regina sighed too, and took off the glasses.
Over easy, Please decap The waitress tagged the board with
the mysterious perm wearing woman's order. I looked like a fool. Ooh,
Regina thought to herself. You will go to the address
(28:04):
written on the third napkin and the holder in the
booth near the door. Yes, I know there's a white
family eating there. If you weren't wearing that ridiculous get up,
it would not be a problem to ask for a
few napkins, would it. Once you're up there, you will
go to the back door, enter through the kitchen, and
go up the stairs to the second floor bathroom. A
(28:25):
tub will be there. It will be filled with warm water.
Lavender rose and liec petals will steep in the water.
Two women will wait for you there naked. They will
rub you with alo hum gently. You'll drink the elixir
in a vial on the rim of the tub. This
will relax you. Don't worry about what's in it. Just
(28:47):
do it. You will float there breathing. It will be painful,
but they will be there to ease your pain. Worry not.
Your journey begins at six o'clock tonight. Take care, restless child.
The coffee grew stale, the eggs waited there, and the
chili diner air. Regina just stared at them. A wave
(29:09):
of panic rippled through her when the white family nodded
and smiled at her as they grabbed their things and
headed to the door, the children making a racket, the
father winking at their waitress, the wife pretending not to see.
There were bald up napkins on the table. Regina darted
over to their table, rifling through their plates. Hey, what
(29:31):
are you doing over there? Trying to steal my tips? Bitch?
Regina tucked all the napkins into her sweatshirt, ducking her head.
Fuck your tips. She tossed another three dollars on the table.
When the door chimed upon her opening it, the sound
rattled her bones. She looked up at the bell and wondered,
And she was just like everybody else, coming into this
(29:54):
diner on a ball me Tuesday morning, each soul ringing
this bell announcing their presence. I was in this place,
she reminded herself. Four. We want decent housing, fit for
shelter of human beings. Bitch, yes, stay girl, Yes, Mother
(30:17):
sits in the chair. No one else can sit in
mother's chair. The girls sit on couches, some sit unfolding chairs,
Some stand not in the chair. They wag fingers and approval.
Some snap where did she get that glorious blouse that
sheer top of, billowing wigh the fuck up around the
(30:38):
arms and cutting off right below the tummy, fitting like
a glove over shoulders so broad they could tag in
for Atlas himself. The burden they carry, Maya thinks is
no less impossible. But there the bitch go dancing. She
spins around and stops, nearly completing a one a degree turn,
(31:01):
only to complete the rest of her half circle in
a slow motion. Now pose a slender Puerto Rican man
waves a fan, prosses his legs. He sits beside mother,
speaking two and for her. The girl and the blouse
poses magazine sharp. Her jaw line clinches tight, hands on
(31:22):
her hips. Now those hands are cinching her breasts. Then
they are in the air, arm straight, practically walking on
air to pull down clouds. The music stops. Was there music?
Maya looks over to mother. The cron's hands raised. All
of the girls and all of the boys stop, their
(31:42):
faces once jovial, clownish, now stoic and hushed. A pause,
and Mother speaks, ten, you heard her. The man beside
her erupts, his fan flitting wildly across, down and over
his face. The music roars back, a pulls beat like
none Maya had heard before. It drones and hypnotizes, tends
(32:06):
across the board. Then a new girl dances. Maya watches
wide eyed. Mother leans into the man beside her and
whispers into his ear. The man looks directly at Maya,
a face like a joker's, mischievous and determined, and he nods. Five.
(32:28):
We want education for our people that exposes the true
nature of this decadent American society. We want education that
teaches us our true history and our role in the
present day society. Push push, you can do it, Okay, now, relax, relax,
(32:49):
there you go. Relax, We got you, We got you.
Let the let the water gently. It's a. Maya digs
her hands in the dirt. The peer is quiet, except
one sound. Amari screams, where are they coming from? Why
(33:11):
she covered in blood? The beautiful dirt, Why is it
such a pure thing to her? Why do the caps
from the sprite bottles and empty Senca packets, used condoms
and the sea offers such a perfect potpourri? Why is
she drifting here? And what is she dreaming of? Amari screams, down,
(33:33):
twist She's given you, Banshee. He watches her twist in
the moon's light, covered in the thin haze of that
rocky hue, silhouetted against the backdrop of a calm wave.
This isn't the beach she'd dream of, This is a stage.
Amari kicks his feet in the sandy earth cunt, Her
(33:55):
faded jean shorts ride up over her milky golden thigh,
her crop t shirt, once white stained now just a
few weeks ago, when she walked into London's Ball, she
draped her body in the plastic deture of a replicated ive.
San Laurent carried an umbrella that she tied glow sticks around,
(34:17):
and pranced down the tattered floorboards in the basement of
an African American community center. She tried a few new
moves that night, Amari was cruel bitch of luck. She
landed an airplane chopped, Maya leaps into the near dark air.
She kisses space. That lone second that she is up
(34:38):
there feels like a world being berthed. From her place
in the sky, she can see everything. A dog lying
by its dying homeless owner, the dangling neon signed by
the Chinese spot where she first met Amari after a
hair and fueled night. The steps to the Silvia rivera
community center downtown with its now crumbling societ, girded by
(35:01):
steel canopies and littered with junkies. Then she is falling
back to the wet earth a split. She falls onto
her back dramatically, her hands pointed as elegantly as the
craning neck of a swan. It's about time, bitch. My
name is Maya, now, she told him. Then, my name
(35:22):
is Maya, And like I said, it's about time. Bitch. Oh,
oh my god, Maya bitch hell. Amari grasps at his throat. Scaly,
flaking alabaster hands reach over and grab him. They have
(35:43):
poles in their hands, swinging violently crack on top of
a Mari's skin. Maya grabs at their sticks pulling them away.
They were alone out here, she thought, where did these
men come from? Were they John's? The girls sometimes shared
the peer with businessmen and lawyers and satisfied at home
(36:06):
on the routine hunt for some dicks to suck, some
bodies to feel up, to get their rocks off, or
they pimps, thugs, rednecks. Maya grabs one of them, wraps
her hand around his neck, lifts him up into the air.
He kicks and struggles. She slams him onto the ground,
head first and drags him out to the sea, a
(36:29):
searing hot blow to her head. Then it all goes black.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
But do you know what, dear listener, Maya probably saw
when all went black. I'm willing to bet, Prince, I'm
willing to bet that it was the siren call of
the products and services that support this show. And we're back.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Six. We want all black men to be exempt from
military service. The filter was overflowing hot water blistered on
her right hand. The pain snapped her back. The rink
smell of stale robustica coffee, overcooked beans and cigarettes s
flooded her senses. Shit, she explained. The counter was a
(37:27):
mess from the overpore. She sighed, tossed the filter, poured
the greeny brew from the flask into a cup, and
served it Turkish coffee, she explained. A mousey woman in
a turtleneck sweater cupped it as if it was a
forbidden elixir and she was dying from some ancient disease.
(37:47):
There's too many grains in this, The white woman squeeked,
It's yeah, it's Turkish coffee. The two women stared at
each other for an eternal three seconds, until the white
woman turned away and sat back down out. Just clean
the counter, Regina, Just clean the counter. Make these weird
hippie burnouts their coffee, Smile at their art that looks
(38:08):
like a baby shit itself, laugh at their poetry about
their souls burning up in the s and M dungeon
of corporate America, and just breathe for your child. North
Carolina is a long way, isn't it. The white man,
sitting at a table near the window, said, I'm sorry,
Regina replied, a bit uneasy. What did you say? Strange place,
(38:33):
isn't it, he said, straightening his glasses. He looked like
Clark Kent. That somehow made Regina nervous duke's coffee, Regina asked,
throat quavering, A bit, a little, I'm used to it.
The man took a sip of his coffee. Did Janice
serve him before she'd clocked out? I bet you are.
(38:55):
She wanted to ask, Cracker, do I know you? Instead,
she let a tense line crack, her robust lips shaking.
She went to wash a few dishes. She watched a
minute go by on the large clock by the door.
She watched the door five point thirty. The clock read
half hour until Sunday close, a sweet two hours earlier
(39:19):
than during the week, but still somehow just as achingly long.
She picked up a knife. Look at this shit, the
man called out from behind a newspaper. The mousey white
woman shifted in her seat, buried her face in a
highlights magazine. Listen to this. We believe that black people
should not be forced to fight in the military service
(39:40):
to defend a racist government that does not protect us.
We will not fight and kill other people of color
in the world, who, like black people, are being victimized
by the white, racist government of America. Blah blah blah.
Can you believe any of this shit? The mousey woman
had gathered her thing induct out of the door, an
(40:02):
uneasy smile on her face. Huh, what's that from a
wave of calmness brushed over Regina. The man had shown
his hand. There was no mystery left, just her and him.
He folded the newspaper calmly and tucked it into his
tan leather satchel. He took his glasses off. I have
a feeling, he said, giving his temples a deep massage.
(40:26):
He looked directly at her, locking eyes. Regina clinched her jaw.
I have a feeling. You already know where this is from,
don't you. It's not exactly esoteric knowledge. I mean, I
know this is a small town in good old North Carolina.
But I bet you've heard of some of these kooks,
(40:46):
the weather Underground, one group calling themselves the what was it,
Simbonese Liberation Army, people like Joanne Chesamar Geronimo Pratt. I
know you've heard of them. What do you want, Regina demanded, calmly,
raising her voice to crest over his got I've got
work to do. I've got to wrap these croissants. I know,
(41:10):
I know, I'm sorry, he insisted. Listen here, here's my
card if you ever want to talk. He held the
card out toward her, but she stayed there, frozen, arms crossed.
I'm not with the FBI, I'm not with the government.
I just I want was best for you, Regina. The
sound of her name chilled her. I'm with an agency
(41:32):
that can help you and your child. Child, Regina, Child, Regina, child, Regina.
We can help you. Our experiments with getting people like you, criminals,
terrorists into our deep programming tanks have been highly successful.
(41:53):
We can offer you total immunity with your compliance. She
had been so careful. She watched the men rise his
coat over his arm, satchel tight across his body, and really, Regina,
there's nothing to think about. Just we're trying to help you.
If we don't hear from you in forty eight hours,
(42:13):
we will call the police. It's that simple. And he left,
no take care, no scene, ceiling quips. He simply left
and disappeared down a quaint street, where he got into
a black car that sat there for a minute before
turning onto a windy road through the college campus. When
Gina locked the door, ran to a payphone. Now do
(42:37):
it now, she screamed into the phone. She did not
wait for the last bus as she normally would. She
ran home power walked through the white neighborhoods. The moonchased
her as the sun disappeared into the seams of dust.
I'm Maya, she screams. A tube is in her arm.
(43:00):
There's a man in a white lab coat standing at
the foot of the bed reading a chart. Three pairs
of black arms are resting on hers. Mother is in
the corner. The man in the lab coat jumps as
Maya stirs awake. You're awake. Welcome back to the world,
Miss Maya. The black faces belonging to the black hands echo,
(43:24):
Miss Maya. The doctor corrects himself. Sorry, this is well,
it's paul new to me, he laughs nervously. They certainly
don't teach this kind of stuff in medical school. He
returns to his chart. Brown eyes in a flock of
blurry brown faces narrow at him. The brown eyes and
brown faces turned back to Maya. Where's Amari? Amari? One
(43:51):
of them asks, girl, who is Amari? He almost died,
miss thing. Why are you always fighting white boys? Girl?
How is he? They all look at each other. The
girls squint and shake their heads, shrugged their shoulders. One
of them, an older one, says, how do you know Amari,
(44:12):
skinny Puerto Rican pretty boy? Convogue for days? Mother? How
she know Amari? That was way before your time? In
this house? Where is he? Maya insists her jaw is
a swollen, pulpy mash of flesh, and teeth cuts lace
her forehead. Where is Amari? Amari? The older one slowly speaks,
(44:35):
Mari is dead, child. He died of pneumonia two years ago. Seven.
We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder
of black people. The door exploded open. Gina rushed from
room to room, calling out her child's name. A young
(44:56):
woman in a dashiki stood at the kitchen table. Regina,
She exclaimed, Regina, I've taken care of it. You're all packed, Crystal,
I need a car now. Look, okay, you not going
to just come running up in here yelling at me.
The two women stopped, breathed, A tear flowed down Crystal's eye.
(45:17):
I'm sorry, Crystal, where Crystal pointed a shaky finger up
the steps. Regina tore up the steps and stopped by
the child's room, so small she thought no time. She
ran to her room. Searching for her bags. A suitcase
flush with the steel and forced back and wheels about Yahai.
(45:41):
She tore it open and discarded all of the clothes,
wieled it back to the other room, grabbed the child
by the arm, thrust the kid into the suitcase, zipped
it up, and climbed out the window. Crystal Regina thought
to herself, you know what to do. In the living
room down stairs, Crystal lit a match. She shrugged and
(46:03):
sniffed through some tears. She watched the flame dance a bit,
a small bulb licking the air, longing to touch something,
to grow wilder calmed her a bit. She tossed the
match onto an old ready couch. It was soon engulfed
in flames. It's dark tight. Every few minutes there's a
(46:25):
bump and a bigger bump. The small bumps go unnoticed.
A strong stick pokes through the darkness bricks. The arm
sounds vibrate through thin canvas walls, filling the air with
a redolent creepiness. There are only snatches of them. A
chorus of men laughing and show nothing. All muffled bass,
(46:48):
a radio buzzing like small insects, A heavy humming car
engine that sometimes sputters, sounding like distant fireworks over a
calm field. Can breathe through a hole just above head
if neck cranes just a tad, can see stars flit
(47:09):
by an a static kaleidoscope. Suddenly there's no ground. It's
floating in space, drifting for a second or two until
landing in a huff. A long stillness, no sound. Something
pokes a tiny hole that reveals the black sky. Something snickers,
(47:31):
gnashes quietly, a sound like thin translucent paper tearing, Then
a loud rip, and it's as if someone has unzipped
the universe and opened up the blackness into another dimension.
Standing before in a clean press suit, its sparkly eyes
gleaming sunk into its bobbing, fat white head as a rabbit,
(47:55):
Hey there, gasps with a start. Pardon me, lad, yes, yes,
could you just yes, just a bit there. The rabbit
enters into the cramp space, gently pushing to one side
and zipping the suit case back up. Hi bouncy bunny esquire,
(48:18):
it is just The bunny adjusts its bow tie, pats
down the suit, checks its pocket watch, all while folding
itself around time and space. Well, it's just fantimically tastic
a Roney to finally meet you heard so much about
yet the ranch and shakes and tremendously. We're going to
(48:39):
have some fun, aren't we, old chum.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
And I think that's where we're going to leave it
for this week. At this fantastic moment, not just a
fantastic moment, a fan tibbally tastic a Rooney moment in
this story, dear listener, both of us spent a long
time trying to figure out exactly how to pronounce fantom
bibili tastic a Rooney in order to bring me to
this story.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
It was hard.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
Yeah, this story is fascinating. I like didn't like psychedelic
fiction all that much when I was a kid. I
think it has to do with my own personal neurotype
where I was like everything has to make sense and
it should be in order, you know. And I've come
around in the past couple of years and like just
the stuff that Alex is doing throughout this, like the
(49:27):
idea that when this little kid is completely disassociated from themselves,
they don't even have a name, right, They have like
static instead of a name, and they don't even have
a pronoun right, there's just static instead of a pronoun.
They don't have an identity, and so they like meet
this bunny and I think with the like it's Maya. Now,
(49:50):
I'm assuming she transitions and joins the vogue scene, right
the scene. Okay, that's my read on what's happening.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Yeah, I mean, I I love how intimate all of
this writing feels. How I think one of my favorite
scenes so far was definitely that diner scene. I mean,
I guess the diner scene where she meets.
Speaker 3 (50:14):
The non fed.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
Yeah, yeah, the non fed and like we can test
you and deprogram you. And I just find like the
psychedelic nature of this. I think it really suits like
the times, like trying to think through all of the
kind of mind altering experiences people were having. And I
(50:38):
mean there's definitely like a clear kind of theme of
trauma and how these characters are dealing with and processing
trauma or like the traumas that they're running away from.
And I feel like writing that provides a filter through
which the main character, the narrator, is seeing the world.
(51:00):
I think it just makes it that much more effective
because it's like these people are trying to survive these
social systems, these traumas, these other elements happening around them,
and it makes sense that reality is kind of breaking
apart totally.
Speaker 3 (51:17):
Yeah, I've always assumed that if I, like in really
bad situations, my go to is just to stop interacting
with reality properly, you know, which I don't know. It
ties into prison. As we were talking about the very
beginning to work. Yeah, well, we're going to do way
more talking about this story once the story is done,
which is going to be after next week, because this
(51:39):
was only part one of two, and we'll be back
next week to finish up what we want, what we
believe by Alex Smith. And who's Alex Smith? You might
be asking. I want to know more about Alex Smith,
you might be asking, And fortunately we have a bio.
Alex Smith aka Alexoteric is a writer, artist, curator, musician
(52:04):
that gets an Air quotes, musician, slash noise maker. Living
in the cosmically kinetic city of Philadelphia. His work reflects
that dichotomy. Stark beautiful, wrought with afrotopian tension, avant garde
fashion and assemblage, and dynamic visual presentation. His sci fi
inspired worlds collide with afro queer and radical reimaginings of
(52:25):
the fantastic. He is a founding member of the Philadelphia
based sci fi arts collective Metropolarity, a central personnel in
Philadelphia's early afrofuturist community, from collage work to zines, to
bands and solo music performances, to promoting other bands and
performers via curation and cultural critique and arts reporting, Smith
(52:46):
transcends the concept of renaissance man and works from the
afrofuturist vision all things, all the time, each aspect of
his work in forming the other. Smith won the twenty
twenty Pugh Fellowship of the Arts, presenting works such as
his short story collection Arc dust Roserium Publishing, which, by
the way, is where you can find this story if
(53:07):
you want to read it, because sometimes with like psychedelic work,
you might want to read it too. Writ his experimental
art punk bands Rainbow Crimes, Solarized, Spectral Forces, Glitch Proverbs,
the cyberpunk superhero indie comic book series Black Vans, among others.
His work appears in anthologies such as Stories for Chip,
(53:28):
a tribute to Samuel R. Delaney, Rosarium, Black Quantum Futurism,
Volume two, black Punk Now Soft Skull and the Black
Fantastic Library of America. He invites you to join him
in the chromatic exploration of the unknown, his art a
visual portal to that limital space. You can find Alex
Atpatreon dot com, slash they are Birds or they Are
(53:51):
Birds on Instagram and my guest co host my reader
this week talking to me about this fun story. Prince.
Where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (54:01):
People can find me on social media on Instagram, I
am Sweet Black Prince. I also do a YouTube channel
where I share a lot of political education video essays
about organizing direct action. That's just my name, Prince Shakoor.
You can also find me through the podcast that I
(54:22):
mentioned earlier, the Dugout of Black Anarchists podcast and Yeah Yeah.
Speaker 3 (54:29):
As for me, you can find me on the internet too,
Margaret Kiljoy, I have a newsletter I write almost every
week and take care of each other. Fuck Ice so far,
at every prison so and every dead Men Free.
Speaker 1 (54:48):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or Wherever you listen to podcasts,
you can find sources for it could happen here, Updated
monthly at coozonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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