I, suspect there’s a black grief somewhere between the bristles and the floor between the first boom and the boom boom between me & my sons between my teeth and lips that would explode if i didn’t scrub the walls so hard from “I clean my house instead of rioting” by Joy KMT
The first time I watched The Wiz, I was maybe about five years old. I remember it vividly, not just because of Diana Ross’s transcendent voice and charisma, but also because it was the scariest thing (outside of Scooby Doo) that I had ever seen. Watching the munchkins come to life, their reanimated figures unsticking from schoolyard walls had me questioning every bit of graffiti I walked past. And of course, the iconic subway scene, where dolls, trash cans and columns all come to life was imprinted on my young mind and continues to haunt yet inspire me to this day. The Wiz is often left out of horror conversations, but I do think there is something to be said about using both horror and fantasy to critique the many ways in which Black capitalism fails us.
The earliest indication of this, usually interpreted as a celebration of Black excellence, is watching Dorothy and her gang only gain entrance to the Emerald City when she has something they want. Let’s not be too hard on the Emerald City Sequence though, which was one of my favorite scenes in the movie, how the sisters and brothers stepped with confidence, giving a cheeky nod to ballroom. Then of course, the opposite site of Black capitalism, the Wicked Witch of the West, Evillene, and her sweatshop of horrors (perhaps we save the conversation of featurism for another day). Evillene provides a more obvious example of the similar exploitation the Black working class would endure under Black capitalism, complete with her iconic song “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News.”
The soundtrack for The Wiz is one of my favorites, and when you have heavy hitters like Diana Ross, Michael Jackson and Mabel King doing what they do best, it inspires a whole generation of art (The Wiz 100% has daughters). As I return, time and time again to my favorite childhood movie, I find myself listening to Evillene’s anthem a little different: “ Bring some message in your head/Or in something you can't lose/But don't you ever bring me no bad news/If you're gonna bring me something/Bring me, something I can use.” How could a nightmare, herself, deny not only the nightmarish conditions she has imposed on a community, but any ability for said community to vocalize the living nightmare endured?
But that is the work of the oppressor, correct? To deny culpability, to move the goal post, affirm the right to their own comfort. I find it useful to return to fantasy and media to make sense of current events, of colonialism enduring, even in our imaginative spaces. For what is The Wiz without similar parallels to contemporary societal harms: punishment of children, a mistreated underclass, accumulation of riches, leaders lying through their teeth and the endurance of social capital?
The “Wiz”, later revealed to be a displaced man (Richard Pryor) from Atlantic City with failed political aspirations of his own, asserts his newfound power through illusion and deceit, launching a campaign against what is considered the “real” evil in Oz. In Discourse on Colonialism, Aimé Césaire writes “a civilization that plays fast and loose with its principles is a dying civilization.” What happens to the land of Oz after Dorothy leaves The Wiz to find his own way home?
So many poets I admire write about how hard it is to be depressed in California, a land where there is something always in bloom. It is easy, walking down the street, to be reminded of the aliveness of everything around you when trees maintain their leaves well into January, and the occasional succulent or fence crawling vine bears fruit. Even when the cold Rocky Mountain Air whipped my face, I was reminded of my own soul, and the souls that slumbered under the cold, Denver Plains, waiting to emerge again during spring. In the early 1920s, when asked about language differences, and why there was no explicit word for “animal” in his people’s language, an Indigenous elder from the Pit River nation, told a white physician: “Everything is alive. That’s what we Indians believe. White people think everything is dead.” Connecting this with Césaire’s analysis, and of course, the Haitian Zombie, if it is already dead, we cannot kill it even further.
After the political circus that was COP28, I found myself becoming more and more disillusioned with institutions that alleged commitment to designing a liveable future for all. Israel’s focus was less on their war crimes in Palestine and more on the promotion of “climate tech,” which their leadership claims to be pioneers for. Another oil executive is appointed for COP Presidency, downplaying the impact of fossil fuels on our environment. Instead, we are encouraged to learn how to live with less, to endure poison, to get used to frequent blackouts, water shut offs, higher rates of cancer and respiratory illnesses. Our deaths and decomposition are seen as fertilizer for their new world. Expendable lives, those of laborers, indentured workers, displaced land stewards, this is the carbon world leaders seek to offset.
Meanwhile, Israel’s US-funded genocide in Palestine has generated over 281,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide just through bombing and air fuel alone. If one were to include the emissions produced from the entire war supply chain, the true carbon footprint could be five to eight times higher than currently reported.
The military’s environmental impact overshadows any other industry, yet is largely ignored by climate scientists and politicians alike (for obvious reasons). Military detritus continues to plague water sources and the soil, leaving toxic, environmental and human health impacts that will affect generations to come. I think of the disabled children born in the years after the Vietnam War, the babies born with sludge in their veins from the nuclear testing on Marshall Islands, Vieques, Pennsylvania, the list goes on and on. But this is the goal of the empire, to normalize mass death, to render war as just a sad fact of life, to condemn the violence and the tears of the oppressed, to say “things aren’t really that bad, we’re living during one of the most economically prosperous eras ever,” while people sleep on the streets, and you can get fired, doxxed or worse for even uttering the phrase “ceasefire” in the wrong company.
Now, when I hear a song like “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News,” I think about how mass death has been normalized, and continues to be normalized through obscurification and an unwillingness to have difficult, often grief laden conversations. Necropolitics normalized, desensitization to violence, an encouragement to look the other way. Preying on trauma – how are we to build towards a livable future if we are so focused on surviving in the present? And for those of us who do survive, what lives will we have to lead given the unmitigated spread of a virus that can lead to loss of cognitive function, compounding the trauma of infection and living through mass extinction, rendering our population stagnant and confused?
Even before the pandemic, for so many years, I felt like a Debbie Downer, a killjoy. I always wondered what it would be like to be in the company of Nina Simone and her band: “we never talked about men or clothes. It was always Marx, Lenin, and revolution – real girl's talk,” instead of silenced, or the recipient of a cutting eye roll every time I dared remind folks that we are, so to speak, the fishbowl that’s being shaken, violently by the little kid who wants to see what would happen. I take no joy in speaking on such heavy topics — it is however, because of my joy, because of my zest for life, my desire for more, for better, for a Black radical future, that my mouth fixes itself to always be on the lookout for change.
We are at a crossroads of fascist decline or radical transformation; dystopia feels less like an escapist fantasy and more like a present reality. Octavia Butler (author of Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents and other notable Afrofuturistic works) knew this. She wanted her books to reach people before it was too late. No one took her seriously. And those who did heed her message were written off as fanatics. It is an isolating existence to be the dark skinned preacherman in the street, thumping at the Bible and howling beyond the stars. Hindsight I guess, truly is 20/20.
Every day, I am swollen with a different grief. Butler predicted all this. She did not wish it into existence, but if a prophecy is uttered into material, how could it be stopped? This is not me giving up, but attempting to find a place to channel what Césaire calls a “cosmic rage,” a persistent desire to decry banal acceptance of the “natural order of things.” My forebears wrote feverishly, fully cognizant that the scars of the past would reopen into the wounds. America, as it was created, was never meant to survive. We need an entire reset.
“No Bad News” is code for don’t talk about it in polite company.
It is our job to rattle the cages, to make those in power uncomfortable, at a minimum. Right now we are dormant, not dead, and we must mourn our fallen siblings, while fighting like hell for the living. Get to know your neighbors. Start a mask bloc (more information for Oakland/East Bay residents soon!). Make seed bombs and throw them in vacant lots. Start guerrilla gardening. Skill share. Organize teach ins. Create community care networks. Show the empire how alive and vibrant we really are.
STRIKE IS ONGOING! REFRAIN FROM MAKING ANY PURCHASES THROUGH JANUARY 28TH. ORGANIZE SUPPLY SHARES WITH YOUR FRIENDS/COMMUNITY MEMBERS.
Personal announcements:
Check out my interview with Dr. Taylor Byas (PhD) in Split Lip Magazine about her award winning book, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times
I will be reading at Happy Endings on February 13th at 7 pm PST, come say hi and wear a mask!
I will be reading at Cobalt Series (virtual) on February 20th at 7:30 pm PST.
I am facilitating an environmental futures workshop with Young Black Climate Leaders Dream Lab on February 22nd at 10 am PST, register here (participants capped at 75).
As an additional piece of my newsletter, I’ve decided to start sharing what I’m currently reading:
Savage Ecology by Jairus Victor Grove
Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources by M. Kat Anderson (I am looking for more books of this nature BY Native authors, so any recommendations are greatly appreciated)