justlainguages

For Black August, a small collective, via the Black Socialist Formation, is studying Orisanmi Burton’s Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression and the Long Attica Revolt. Earlier this week, we discussed the second chapter, “Black Solidarity Under Siege.” The chapter focuses on the third stage of that Revolt (the first two happening at The Tombs in Manhattan and Branch Queens, respectively) and stretches across the fall of 1970 into at least the late spring of 1971 at Auburn Prison in NY, although state records place it as November 2-4, 1970. One of his larger points on how we need to look at history, Burton challenges the ruling class story telling which limits a revolt simply to the time period where there is direct conflict with their state and points us to a more subtle and intricate examination that boots out linear timelines and challenges a study group to read closely to seek underlying dynamics…

The phrase “toxic masculinity” is attributed to Shepherd Bliss, a psychologist, writer and participant in what began in the 1980’s as largely professional class White men gathering in conferences, retreats, articles, and books in a movement Bliss named the Mythopoetic Movement. A pivotal figure in this movement, the Minnesota poet Robert Bly, authored one of the key texts of the movement’s initial period, the 1990 NY Times best seller, Iron John, A Book About Men.   The title references the Germanic tradition’s Grimm’s Brothers Fairy Tales’, and one of its stories “Iron John.” In Iron John, a young boy grows to manhood via punishment, conquest and patronage from a wealthy father figure  and rewarded with wealth, a wife and rulership. Resembling Daniel Moynihan’s 1965 report blaming the “tangle of pathologies” in Black communities on single mother led households, the movement included a rebuke of the feminized man that was developing because of men being raised in single parent households. Bliss understood “toxic” masculinity as an abusive masculinity and thus sought its “antidote,” a diverse masculinity with healthy, even earth saving outcomes. But Bliss could still be heard to advocate for a masculinity in which men were generative and women nurturing. 

October 7th, 2025 was the second anniversary of Al Aqsa Flood, the HAMAS led, Palestinian attack on Israel aimed at freeing Palestinian political prisoners and winning their struggle for national liberation from Israel’s U.S. sponsored, illegal and murderous occupation of Palestine. October 7th was also the day, after passing a security clearance, receiving an advance set of rules, providing identification, passing at least three checkpoints and going by rolls and rolls of what looked like razorsharp barbed wire, I attended the “Day of Responsibility” (DOR)  held at S.C.I. Cole Township presented by the Lifeline Association…

Habari Gani?! Ujima! Collective Work and Responsibility -"To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers', sisters', and siblings' problems our problems and to solve them together." On Christmas Eve, with the “cooperation” of the Nigerian government, the U.S. fired more than a dozen Tomahawk missiles into Sokoto State, Nigeria. According to news reports these came from a warship off the coast of Guinea, and this warship would have been under the control of AFRICOM, the U.S. Military Command in Africa.