Here it is spelled out: We are at war.
America, a country that comprises less than 5 percent of the global population, consumes (and wastes) most of the world’s food, resources, and energy. It is a nation fraught with a vulgar material excess that flaunts itself amid sheer poverty and utter desolation. A nation that destroys the most people, animals, plants, habitats, forests, ecosystems, and other nations in the pursuit of more… more everything. A nation that incarcerates and kills millions of its poor Black and brown citizens. A nation built on and maintained by the burglary of other people’s land and slave labor. A nation of which we are citizens.
How could this be, the land of the free, home of the brave
Indigenous holocaust, and the home of the slaves?
— IMMORTAL TECHNIQUE, “CAUSE OF DEATH,”
REVOLUTIONARY VOLUME 2
America is a nation of contradictions. Freedom, on one hand, and slavery on the other. Consider that these words—“All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”—were written, signed, and agreed upon by men who captured, bought, sold, and tortured my ancestors. Today America launches attacks on nations, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people in the name of “freedom and liberation.” As Indian novelist and activist Arundhati Roy writes, “free speech,” “free market,” and the “free world” in America have little to do with actual freedom. On the contrary, these terms grant America:
The freedom to murder, annihilate, and dominate other people. The freedom to finance and sponsor despots and dictators across the world. The freedom to train, arm, and shelter terrorists. The freedom to topple democratically elected governments. The freedom to amass and use weapons of mass destruction—chemical, biological, and nuclear. The freedom to go to war against any country whose government it disagrees with. And, most terrible of all, the freedom to commit these crimes against humanity in the name of “justice,” in the name of “righteousness,” in the name of “freedom.”
In an atmosphere rife with grotesque, state-sponsored contradictions, the fundamental question arises: Who will contradict the state?
[enter the artivist]
Who will stage a colorful resistance against the oppression and domination our government imposes on its Black and brown citizens? On the world? Who will promote self, sisterly, and brotherly love? Who will demand justice? Who will be the voice for the voiceless? Who will not only speak, but dance, paint, film, and sing truth to power? Who will contradict war and death? If not us—artivists—than who?
German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht, in his poem, “When Evil-Doing Comes Like Falling Rain,” gives us the tragic answer if we fail to adhere to these essential task:
The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out “stop!”
The artivist must challenge, confront, and resist this otherwise inescapable fate of torture, injustice, and inhumanity.
Synergy is the interaction or cooperation of two or more agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects. This is the idea that drives the artivist (artist + activist) to spend her days and nights feverishly creating in the face of ferocious destruction. It is this force that compels the artivist to encourage others to create as well; for the artivist knows that creativity is not reserved for the elite and therefore, as they often say in my birth country Zimbabwe, “If you can walk, you can dance, if you can talk, you can sing.” And it is this synergy that urges the artivist to make love in wartime.
The artivist uses her artistic talents to fight and struggle against injustice and oppression—by any medium necessary. The artivist merges commitment to freedom and justice with the pen, the lens, the brush, the voice, the body, and the imagination. The artivist knows that to make an observation is to have an obligation.
The artivist, having examined his role throughout history, is aware that the arts have always occupied a crucial and critical space in society and that “Even the worst picture,” as Goethe said, “can speak to our emotions and imaginations by setting them in motion, releasing them and letting them run free.” The artivist, then, as Ngugi wa Thiong’o points out in Barrel of a Pen, “tries to make us not only see and understand the world of man and nature, apprehend it, but to see and understand it in a certain way.”
The artivist is Paul Robeson who proclaimed to the world, at the height of his international stardom, in that commanding baritone, “I am today giving up my concerts to enter into this struggle which I call getting to the rank and file struggle of my people for full citizenship in these United States. So I won’t be singing, except for the rights of my people. No more pretty songs, no pretty songs. Time for some full citizenship.”
The artivist is Billie Holiday who, despite the very real threats on her life, insisted on telling the world that
Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves, blood at the root.
For Lady Day understood that socially cognizant art has the potential to not only inform, but transform our reality by raising awareness and exposing inhumanity wherever it dwells.
“The Negro in this country has to write protest, because he is a protestant,” declared Ossie Davis in his 1966 essay “The Wonderful World of Law and Order,” in which he spoke about the need for merging art with activism. Ossie bellows:
He can’t help but be [a protestant]. He cannot accept the situation in which he finds himself, so, therefore, he is driven to scream out against the oppression that surrounds him, that suffocates him…. It must irritate, it must shake. It must disturb. It must move the very bowels of compassion. It must be angry. It must be aimed at corrective action and now.
Indeed, there has been a rich history of artivism in African-American culture. This is partly due to the fact that the only sane answer to oppression is resistance. The Black artist, then, has to try very hard (by clenching one’s eyes tight and for as long as possible) not to be an artivist. Because of this outspoken artivism and the incessant exportation of American cultural products, Black artivists are looked upon for inspiration internationally. I can recall, while studying in London at the School of Oriental and African Studies, a Muslim student group that, during political discussions, quoted African-American artivists just as much as they quoted Muslim intellectuals.
The African-American tradition of artivism reaches back to the djeli tradition of West Africa. Known in French as “griots,” djelis were traveling poets and artists who not only included, but focused on the politics of the day and the condition of the people as a primary function in their work. When artivist Amiri Baraka says, “We learned that Osiris, the djeli, raised the sun each day with song and verse,” he’s commenting on the role of the artivist; to shed light, to encourage all life-forms, to promote growth, to provide warmth, to let us imagine and dream, but most important: to create and to have a palpable impact in the real world.
How will history, and our children’s children, look upon the arts of this dark era? An era where we are under attack by those who degrade life. This war—between those individuals and institutions who seek to destroy humanity and those individuals and institutions who resist that destruction—places all of us in a crucial position in which we must choose between obliteration and restoration, life and death.
African-Americans, of course, are not in any way, shape, or form alone in this. For around two-thirds of the entire world doesn’t have enough food to eat! It is fundamental for all who care to identify themselves with other struggles for justice. When this is done, the stronger we all become. Artivist painter Elizabeth Catlett reminds us that we can’t
wrap ourselves in “blackness,” ignoring the rest of exploited humanity for we are a
n integral part of it. Blackness is important as a part of the struggle—it is our part—not only of blacks in the U.S., Africa, and the Caribbean, but of Chicanos and Puerto Ricans in the U.S., and the peoples of Asia and Latin America exemplified at the moment by the Chileans and Vietnamese. Through art we can bring understanding to black America, Chicano America, Puerto Rican American, etc. of the character of racism, the need for its elimination, our mutual problems and our differences. The graphic and plastic image is invaluable, more so because of the extended illiteracy and semi-illiteracy among us.
Regardless of the race of an artist, what needs to be understood, first and foremost, is that all art and artists—ALL—are political, even if their politics are disguised as indifference. It is silence—on the critical issues of our day—that supports the system of oppression and injustice. Artistic silence, in times like these, is the same as approval. As Ngugi warns, “the arts, through the use of images, function as a form of knowledge about our reality, but never are we to assume that these images are neutral.”
If our art does not challenge and confront, fight and tussle, wrestle, grapple and stand up against oppression, then our art is actually aiding that oppression. Neutrality, or the perception of neutrality, only helps the oppressor, never the oppressed. In a world where human beings are denied their humanity, the artivists must—by depicting the humanity of the oppressed—bring value back to human life. If we are oppressed and our art doesn’t counter this oppression and challenge this oppression, then it is, by default, supporting the oppression.
We cannot afford, nor could we ever, to make art just to be makin’ it. This is what Black Panther artivist Emory Douglas meant when he said, “In order to create accurate images of awareness we must participate in the changing of society and understand the political nature of art, because there is no such thing as art for art’s sake.” The idea of art for art’s sake, now and in past times, has been a luxury that all of those who seek to fight oppression simply do not have. We, on the contrary, are engaged with art for the people’s sake. How can one entertain the idea of art for art’s sake in a world that cries out for the artist to save it? When the late Max Roach, the great jazz drummer, took the stage, people knew that he was with them and when they listened, they heard themselves—the mass of Black voices that screamed We Insist. It was impossible for people to think that Max Roach was drumming just to be drumming, for the sake of drumming. Today, with so much the same, it should be unfathomable for artists to squander the great opportunity to make a statement, and from that statement evoke the emotion needed for positive action. For nothing is worse than the artist, through inaction, to be a silent partner in his continued oppression.
Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have, should have acted; the indifference from those who knew better; the silence from those who had a voice; and the indifference when the stakes were highest, that made it possible for slavery, oppression, and exploitation to thrive. The artivist “acts” through the page, screen, city walls, subway cars, stage, or whatever else we can express ourselves on… and against! And now.
Artivism is about time—and the times we find ourselves in. Poet Asha Bandele, in her poem “No Turn Backs,” writes:
Oooh—
And if I cld
I wld write luvpoems all day
Burn incense
Watch my candle glow
And tell u stories of only beauty
But such choices r not mine 2 make
When the times demand of me this ritual
The times, as Bandele illustrates, have demanded that the ritual become the voice of the voiceless. Again, the motivation of the artivist in the context of time can be seen when a CBS reporter asked James Baldwin: “Mr. Baldwin, do you think you’ll ever write something that doesn’t have a message?” Baldwin responded:
I don’t quite know what that means. In my view, no writer who has ever lived, could have written a line without a message, you know. It depends on, what you’re asking me, I think, is to what extent do I intend to become a polemicist or a propagandist. Well, I can’t answer that because the nature of our situation has imposed on everybody involved in it things that one wouldn’t ordinarily do, you take risks which you wouldn’t ordinarily take. I don’t think of myself as a public speaker or a civil rights leader or any of that, but I’m not about to sit in some tower somewhere cultivating my talent.
Baldwin spoke of “the nature of our situation.” It’s essential that we realize that we, the budding artivists of today, are bound by the times we find ourselves in. Indeed, this time is not all that different from Baldwin’s time. “We must not fall into the age-old cliche that the artist is always ahead of his/her time,” as Chicano artivist Malaquias Montoya warns. “No, it is most urgent that we be on time.”
Additionally, we must recognize that the arts, like spoken languages, can vary in form, tone, and medium. Indeed, one can think of each artistic genre as a language used to communicate with a group that understands that language. To give a personal example, when my first book, Like Water Running Off My Back, was published, I found myself in the Bronx talking with one of my cousins.
“So, I heard you got a book out?” he asked.
“Yeah, man. It’s out, my first book,” I told him as I nodded, proud.
“Shit, I don’t know why the hood don’t read,” he stated bluntly, deflating my energy. “I mean, no disrespect,” he clarified. “They watch TV and movies and shit, but a lot of the niggas I know, including me, don’t read at all,” he told me.
My cousin’s statement was not a dis. He was simply stating the reality that there are a vast number of people who have great difficulty comprehending the language I choose to communicate in. Rather than be deterred from writing books, I confronted the reality that if I wanted to reach my cousin, I was going to have to learn a new language—a language that could speak to him in a way he’d understand. That language or medium was filmmaking and I realized through making films that I could in fact reach him and others whom I’d previously been unable to reach. Different people. People who might not pick up a book, but who have become well-versed in sitting in front of screens. This is the power of art as language. There are some who understand the language of poetry, others who do not. Some who understand the language of hip hop, others who do not. The artivist must not be afraid to learn a new language in order to inspire and empower new people—by any medium necessary.
To artivists throughout the world, write—because you can’t not write; paint—because you can’t not paint; film—because you can’t not film; and create because you can’t accept what not creating means. Let us unfold our arms out of the fragile stance of spectators. Let us use our tools, sometimes like a scalpel and other times like a sledgehammer, in the service of the oppressed—liberation through imagination. Let us be courageous and without fear as we know, from the Kenyan freedom song, that “too much fear encourages oppression.” If Picasso said “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth,” I say art is the emotional truth that makes us realize who’s lying.
As the late Palestinian poet Tawfiq Zayyad reminded us, all we have is “a flute’s melody,” “a brush to paint my dreams, a bottle of ink,” and “an infinite love for my people in pain.”
The ghetto is a prison with invisible bars.
Politicans know the problems, but they never get solved.
— DEAD PREZ
No matter how they confine your body,
they can’t imprison your soul.
— TRADITIONAL SAYING
When comedian Chris Rock told a packed Apollo Theater, “If you Black, you get more respect coming out of jail than school,” they erupted in laughter, just as I did. Those who had the privilege of knowing Langston Hughes often talk about how much he laughed. “He laughed a lot. He liked to laugh and he liked to make people laugh,” remembers Gertrude Jeannette, a friend of his and founder of the H.A.D.L.E.Y. Players theater group in Harlem. Hughes revealed in
his 1940 autobiography The Big Sea that he was often “Laughing to keep from cryin’.” When we consider the brutal reality that hides itself behind Rock’s raucous routine—that a generation of young, gifted Black men and women have been wiped out as a result of mass incarceration—we find ourselves, just as Hughes did, “laughing to keep from crying.”
Being Black in America means that you probably know, all too well, what it’s like to have a friend, family member, or loved one come home after “serving” a bid in what writer and death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal calls “hi-tech hell.” Sad as it is, comin’ home—because of the attack on poor urban Blacks by an unjust “justice” system—has indeed become a tradition, one that gnaws at the flimsy fabric of our already deeply fractured families. It has become, especially for young Black males, a kind of rite of passage into what poet Sonia Sanchez dubs a “makeshift manhood.” Despite all of this, however, nothing beats having a formerly incarcerated loved one come home. Last June, my lil’ cousin’s homecoming was no exception.
The sun blushed across the sky as I waited for the mouth of the prison, made-up of stiff gates, to open wide enough to allow my cocoa-colored cousin to walk out. As I waited, I tried not to think about the fact that he’d be walking out of one prison and into another kind of prison. The correctional officers (COs) that patrolled his cell block were now police officers patrolling his block. The bars, like teeth that kept him confined to his cell, now covered most of the windows on most of the skinny houses in our neighborhood. The jobs available to him were, in scale, as low paying as the twelve cents an hour he earned in jail. The anger and frustration that boiled the blood of optionless inmates now paints the streets of Philadelphia red. One finds the same general sense of entrapment and nihilism inside and out—a double sentence. The late French philosopher Michel Foucault, in his observation of Attica prison in New York, observed that:
It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation Page 19
