Brooklyn Bedouin

Man almost jumps on Brooklyn bridge

Saying the mob was after him a black man threatened to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. I was heading uptown and passing by on my bike and snapped this clip with my trusty iPhone. Cops surrounded him as he dangled on the very edge overlooking the East River. He screamed and cried and demanded that the see the Mayor. It was a bizarre scene for sure. Eventually, he moved to the middle and the hopped onto a tall vehicle. Overall, after the screaming, yelling, and the shutting down of the walkway, he is now safe. Whew! It got tense.

Rainbows in Bed-Stuy

this happened this afternoon. :)

New Muslim Cool Premiers today on PBS!

Read the review in the NY Times:

Excerpt: “New Muslim Cool” possesses a kind of beauty that sneaks up on you: it is in Hamza’s humility, in the dignity with which he confronts so much of his misfortune, in his commitment to rehabilitating drug dealers because, in his mind, no one else will. Some of the most moving moments in the film take place during Hamza’s prison lectures. He is brought in to give faith-based talks at a Pittsburgh jail, but again, misperceptions about his past wind up scuttling his noble agenda.

Hamza approaches every human encounter as an opportunity to get closer to God; the film is an opportunity to access a closer view of human decency.

 

On most PBS stations on Tuesday night (check local listings).

Directed and produced by Jennifer Maytorena Taylor; Kauthar Umar and Hana Siddiqi, co-producers; David Sarasti, Jon Shenk and Mark Knobil, cinematographers; Kenji Yamamoto, editor. Produced by Specific Pictures in association with Latino Public Broadcasting and the Center for Asian American Media.

Right and Left Wing Pundits have it All Wrong on Iran

Why are the protests of IRAN anything different from what has happened here? 

can we say: Florida, 2000 or Ohio in 2004?

The American obsession with telling people what to do with their country has reached a fever pitch. With the banner of nobless oblige democracy Obama critics are asking for tough talk. The kind of talk that people do when they bully another people, or want to drive a wedge, divide and conquer.

The USA loves to spread its democracy seed. The main thing bothering me here is this: when we as US citizens show a similar zeal, and passion, responding to a “stolen election” or lost votes, then we are cast as liberal dissidents that are causing more trouble than we are worth.

If you have ever been to a rally in any major city in the country then you know that people are penned in like cattle and expected to stay within legally acceptable limits. Those same right wingers would NEVER get out and protest anything the government has done, unless it was a government run by the most powerful black man on the planet – Barack Obama.

The double standard is glaringly obvious. When we protest we are stuck behind gates and called anti-American. It seems legitimate protest is only for the “other” even here.

I am skeptical that the election results in Iran (eeRaaaan) were any less tainted than here in 2000 and 2004, or even 2008, who knows – the “establishment” is always the clear winner in any election. The banks failed here and were emboldened by Obama, the Federal Reserve gouges people and is given more power. In Iran, the clerics clamp down on the under 30 crowd, forgetting that they were once that crowd and that a true revolution does understand when it is their time to step aside and let another group come to power. Their establishment is still going to be feared by Israel, who could care less who is in power, Israel feels threatened by their own shadow and will continue their drumbeat for war against any and all people who criticize them even if they do have blood on their hands.

This global game of he said, she said. The nobles oblige of democracy… democracy is not the end, it is a process, the end is a just world that we are nowhere near. Iran and the USA are more similar than you think. Amazingly, we are at a crossroads where the past is rearing its ugly head. Now the crowds are losing steam and being described as leaderless, people in the USA are openly calling for the overthrow of the theocracy – but no matter how egregious the USA is the overthrow of our head of state is never anyone elses purview. It does not concern them. That is a USA matter – the same applies to IRAN.

Message to all the right wing pundits. President Obama is staying the right course. American involvement in this fight makes this fight more muddled than it already is. We messed with them in 1953 and that led to the 1979 overthrow. Leave IRAN alone and let them self determine what success and failure and democracy look like – for themselves.

about the photo: supposedly the kid wanted to see if Pres. Obama's hair felt like his

People are Faster than Google

yesterday i was looking for a Mayoral Candidate forum hosted by the Brooklyn Congregations United (BCU) a multi ethnic faith-based coalition of community groups. en route there i was a little lost and had to ask for directions three times. And literally all three times i was fiddling with my iPhone's GPS application and in no time, upon asking, and before the GPS could prove its worth - BAM - i was given my answer from a human being.

NOT this guy: InfluentialP, but he IS faster than google.

Emery Wright

excerpt from Paradise Pedestrian

Ode to fresh fruit…

Winter never looked so,
    Far, interred in memory.
On the last breath I know, the now.
A lovers time.
Tall trees speaking in pairs,
 A companion, a friend from the eons of light
Speaking to the waves, magic mists, blue-

Found these dreams,
Olive tinted, fluttering legs in the crush
Body glide, never tasted so good;

Fresh fruit…

Fruit on a tree in Brooklyn, Bed-Stuy

Brooklyn Angle Sports with DJ Chaz-O and ibrahim #2

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and read my Pillars of Wisdom for the Finals.....

Culture / Needs / Wants

Culture and questions of wants, needs, love, honor and respect have been dominating my thoughts. So, the other day I needed to relax.

I walked out of my house with no bag, papers, or an umbrella. It rained all day but I still decided to rock sandals. I headed to the mosque for Friday prayers. After praying I engaged in a classic debate with some of the brothers outside the bakery about the level of engagement that Muslims should play in politics and society. Afterwards I ran an errand and went to my favorite coffee shop to chill and literally do nothing. I sat there not thinking, not moving, barely breathing until I received a text from another friend who asked me if I was going to some esoteric hip hop book opening. I shrugged my shoulders and headed to DUMBO to check that out. It turned out that the evening was a lovely one. Great conversation, lovely food, and engaging personalities.

Then came Saturday. I did another lazy early part of the day. Sitting around the house, cleaning, pondering, poking around my empty kitchen. Then my sisters, and mother texted me to go to the BAM Muslim Voices festival. I got on the bus and went there. it was a lovely day strolling with my family, feeling the Brooklyn Bedouin vibes. I strolled up to fulton, sat outside with some of the brothers selling shirts, chatting about nothing in particular, looking at beautiful women walking by and getting my one good glance in before it got all “nafsy” and generally enjoying myself. I ran into a few ladies i kinda know and squatted on the corner with them until we collectively decided to walk up to the Brooklyn Museum. I led the way through my old hood, talked about the changes in Brooklyn, the differences from the Bay Area to here and generally enjoyed myself. At the last second I bailed on going to the city to Bembe and jumped back to the hood where I strolled a little while longer, ran into more lovely people, and then jumped on the B26 bus to home.

The moral of this tale is about Culture. I am a black American Muslim from NYC but raised upstate as well. I played football at a predominately white New England University where I excelled on and off the field. I love art and music and sports, and I like all different types of people. Culturally you can place me in a number of boxes but I simply do not fit in them. AS a friend told me this morning; I am a Martian. Me and Lil’ Wayne. Martians to the end.

Culturally I wonder… I asked my self that question in a manner like this: where do I feel uniquely comfortable. Not where do I “fit in” because those are totally different. I fit in in many places for many different reasons. But where do I actually settle in, relax, and feel like I can be my true an authentic self.

I was told today by another friend that I need to listen to my intuition more and be honest with myself and those affected by me. That was a generous piece of advice from a woman that has every right to be unhappy with me and I was thankful because it dovetails nicely with the overall question of me being able to be my total self, to manage those expectations with the way that I interact with the world, and to be simple and plain with people. I will not make everyone happy, nor will I actually fit in in MOST settings. In fact, my disdain for alcohol and car culture make me very much anti-most people’s culture.

My culture is a hybrid of faith, art, and convenience. I see people when I see them. I am a pedestrian. I move about the world in a wandering adventurer sort of way. I love to tell stories and I love sharing meals with beautiful people that love to tell stories.

Another older brother type buddy told me this about successful relationships. He said that people tend to agree to disagree. I think I found this once, and the sweetest spot of a badly constructed relationship came after we had exhausted all of our will to physically disagree. We came to a consensus of calm. I exited at that moment because it seemed to be the best way. I determined that being of my culture, the ibrahim-style, that martian existence that I inhabit, excluded me from engaging any further – what I also realized that I am very difficult to be with, difficult to please, and will consistently let people down. Those realizations are hard to ingest. Hard to swallow. Difficult to pass. I am still mulling over what It means to be a martian now. How am I to be on this planet when it seems as though I simply do not belong. And what person or people will want to walk this seemingly endless and directionless path that I am on?

The most amazing things happen to me when I am  staunchly present. Stubbornly un-determined. My intuition, it seems, is the strongest thing I have. The next internal conversation is now afoot alongside this one. This one pits the things that I want vs the things that I need. Wants Vs. Needs. I am no longer interested in what I want. I am keenly interested in what I need. If I defined culture as the spaces where I am uniquely comfortable, then what do I need to be comfortable?

AllahuAlim.

In the Cholla Garden / Joshua Tree Reflections

Deserts bewilder the senses, cacti of all varieties sprout copiously in many areas. From the minor evidence of rock transforming before your very eyes life springs out from where there seems to be nothing. They all have marvelous qualities they have learned and developed, evolving over time, to combat the intense heat, the stark opposite nights in cold, and the lack of water save the trickles of the last rainy season. The Creosote bush secretes a substance which prevents anything from growing within a particular radius around them – protecting themselves and making sure that their species will forever dominate. Allowing them to grow they will terrorize all the other plants much like Sumac in the northeast -  that is all you have; fields and fields.

Even in ground down and blasted rock, rolling up an down contour lines on 7 minute maps, rows and rows of bushes pop up like planned communities, leave the land be for a moment, and you get the sense that all in the world will remain just so, if we would only let it be.

Other, more famous, desert plants use stinger to prevent would-be predators from stealing their precious commodity – water – that they have meticulously stored for those searing hot days and dry barren nights. In the end it is all about survival. One species wipes out another then draws itself inner and closer to protect what they have adapted for.

Take the cholla cactus for example: Come upon them in the desert you tuck in your clothes, change your shoes, and tip toe past – not wanting to disturb them at all. Pointed dagger-like stingers jump out as you pass!

Cholla have cylindrical rather than flat stem segments. They actually seem to jump out at you from their ball like extension, jabbing like you stole something that belongs to them, injecting their own protective solution into your skin. Stung only once and you will never want to be stung again and if you remember you will be able to steer clear from disturbing their desert existence..

            The stingers can even pierce the bottom of your boots.

Arrayed across vast stretches of a once wet desert, sucked dry to quench LA’s thirst as it grew and expanded, are thousands of these cholla cactus’s. They clump together in patches called Cholla Gardens.

This is also good climbing country. And although the rock looks smooth nooks jab and stick all day long. Climbers have to keep their hands well protected for nothing will save you from drawing blood on these quartz monzonite faces. Faces that draw thousands of visitors each year.

Others take to the mountains and walk to find what it means to let out primal screams in the land of the primordial. They come to connect themselves with Creation. 

Graduation Day

How do we define freedom. The western way of life that I am immersed in, was raised in, is actually the negation of freedom because it subjugates us to various ‘false gods’ that take the place of our knowing ourselves and understanding the Unity of creation.

In terms of self-definition and using that as a first step in determining with whom to go deeper and have more intentional connection – or family – and using those deeper relationships, I am curious to determine what is the criteria? Who do we go deeper with?

We are whom we gaze upon. We become the people we spend most of our time with. Some husbands and wives begin to look like one another. Our family is our family because their presence reminds you that you are grounded to some peg of earth somewhere and therefore you have a stake in this planet, this universe, and this overall experience. Your familial responsibility defines who you are even if you do not like them or interact with them, because we represent thousands of years of history – some call it evolution, and we are then the best or at the very least, the latest version of our line. Our family is sometimes all we have.

Here’s some of mine:

 

Adilah, Tauhirah, Ali – on Adilah’s graduation day from Stony Brook!

 

My father looking out at the Masjid that he is essentially helping to build. It is perhaps the most ambitious Masjid establishing project that he has ever been a part of (and my dad has a way of getting involved in the building of houses of worship for Muslims). As his son, I am very proud.

Brooklyn Angle Sports With DJ Chaz-O and ibrahim

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 Download the original podcast here! this is the first one kids, don't sleep!

Traffic on Church Ave

Look who is parked in the middle of the road!

Ali looks on at Adilah's graduation

First in a series, Adilah graduates and the family is in the mix!

Just Another Black Male Unemployed In New York City

The other day I became aware of a statistic: 50% of Black Males in NYC are unemployed. Well that number stuck with me because technically, I am one of that 50%.

The last 9 months or so I have applied for jobs, worked temporary gigs ranging from advocacy work, freelance writing, production work, and driving friends around – all to make money to stay afloat. I suppose I am what we would call UnderEmployed – I make barely enough to pay my bills and keep food on the table and I am constantly looking for new opportunities and sifting through old ones to stay on top of places I have pitched myself to.

Today I discussed with a friend the challenge that this has done to my psyche. We talked about how in our capitalist society we tend to define ourselves based on what we produce. I have been no different. I see friends who have employment and are able to pursue a cause or an agenda relentlessly because they have the backing of a larger institution. That is not the case when you are unattached. People do not pay attention to you when you are unattached.

For those of us in the Underemployed category our conversations and interactions are a constant negotiation of strategic interests and timing. When people ask: “what do you WANT to do?” a sharp shiver shoots up my spine that prevents me from responding the way I WANT to respond. When you have been looking for work as long as I have the conversation about what you WANT to do changes dramatically. I WANT to write novels and be creative. Is that a reality at the current moment?  – No.

My MPA degree has placed me in direct competition with a legion of discharged bankers and their business world refugees. Legions of these men and women are now looking to the relatively safe service and government sectors as bunkers in these hard times. They apply for management positions and look better equipped to take on higher levels of responsibility than others. While this may or may not be true, the overall obsession with people with business experience is bankrupting our civic and public sectors. Those business rejects have only come to mission driven work out of a need to bridge the gap not to do the work.

As I enter into a very thin freelancing period I continue to be humbled. Not only is making ends meat increasingly difficult, but staying focused difficult as well. I know few people that have, in these economic times, maintained a certain lifestyle while having virtually no safety net. I am not eligible for unemployment benefits and have no person to bail me out. I have gained personal momentum in this time and confidence but that wanes in the daily onslaught of reality – choices must be made.

Two things stand out to stay mindful of:

1. I put myself in this situation – whether consciously or not.

2. I need to remember that it is not what we produce that defines our existence as human beings; it is the quality and nature of our human relationships. I am a brother, a son, a friend, etc.

Congressman Weiner Fields Q's on Waxman Climate Bill

I thanked the congressman for looking out for democracy in the term limits fight and then asked him what protections were to be in place that would make sure that financial gains from a cap and trade market based carbon reduction plan would not dominated by industry groups and front groups?

He said he really likes spending that money on mass transit- good answer!

Monday Morning Wakeup Call

I just heard that the principle of the Queens school that contracted the dreaded pig fever died.

visual representation of "our way of life" right now. the freedoms that we hold so dear are threatened from the same things that we have been protected by. Industrial food? we need local good food. and animals that are treated with honor. We need pedestrian living and safer transportation systems not addicted to fossil fuels.

 

Guess who's name is carved into the Brooklyn Museum?

In the 1980’s I waited on the corner of Washington and Eastern Parkway, diagonal the Museum, for the school bus that would take me to P.S. 307. Out of school I was allowed to go– with no adult supervision – only three places: the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Public library, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I particularly liked to fall asleep in the Cherry Esplanade and hideout in the Japanese Garden, I loved books, but I think my favorite was wandering the museum for hours in my own imagination.

I lived three blocks down from the museum, before they changed the original City Beautiful front for a modern one with exploding fountains and glass and steel. I still miss the cobbled stones that provided an entrance in days gone by. Anyways, the Museum…

I was walking by their late one night when I looked up, like I had done many times before, and saw the statues with names of famous men underneath. For many days in my childhood I would stare at those names and think about whom they were and what it took to get your name carved in stone thousands of years and miles from when and where you lived.

Well, the other day, I noticed another name that [perfectly] did not have a statue above it and [curiously] did not belong to a European derived great thinker. He was on the left side of the part of the museum that faces Eastern Parkway, on the same side as Laoste and Confucious. A man that billions understand is the Seal of the Prophets...

See for yourself:

 

CAIR's Annual Banquet and Fundraiser

MC Fatima Ashraf and honoree Imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur-Rashid against the CAIR digital backdrop in the heart of the NYU Law School.

Waterboarding

I woke up strapped to a flat board in a freezing room. My body was naked and on fire. They said nothing as they removed the hood. The light was unbearable. They forced my eyelids open and one fisted me an uppercut on the chin and I bit my lip so that it began bleeding. My body was on fire. It was hard to breath. They pulled the board and me over to a vat of water. I could hear it sloshing around. They dunked me into the water still strapped onto the board until I could barely breathe. The water was salty. Pulling me out they said nothing before dunking me in again. I came up, they still said nothing. I cannot recall how many times they repeated this before taking me to a cell...

Oh liberty, where art thou!

  photo by dustin ross who was going through the archives not long ago and came across a shot at one of the first Rudemovements parties we did. Circa 2003. Hard to believe that’s a throwback…check out his latest adventure here