RIP, Glen Ford

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blindpig
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RIP, Glen Ford

Post by blindpig » Wed Aug 04, 2021 2:50 pm

Glen Ford and the Black Radical Critical Tradition
Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor 04 Aug 2021

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Glen Ford and the Black Radical Critical Tradition

Glen Ford carried on his devotion to the liberation struggle until the end of his life.

It's easy to run with the herd, especially when it can bring possible career advancements and even significant monetary gain. That is why, for so many, making decisions to find a way into the mix, to play the game in order to advance one’s individual objectives, does not present any internal moral debate. It is just common sense.

But for the oppressed and their radical intellectuals and activists, accommodationism is not an option without surrendering one’s soul. Glen Ford and many of our generation refused to do that.

Glen made the decision to devote himself to being a truth teller on the side of the people back in the 1970s, at a historic moment when it was very easy to be an opportunist. Co-optation, an aspect of the state’s counter-revolutionary response to the new forms of Black radicalism that emerged in the 1960s, was an important element in the state’s repertoire. That along with, of course, systemic repression.

But Glen made a conscious decision to take, as Kwame Nkrumah framed it, a “revolutionary path.” That path is always more difficult, for not many take it. As a result, the path is quite narrow, no more than a trail through the forest of normalized reaction projected to the masses as supposed “common sense.” When one takes that path, very few accolades nor real economic stability, retirement funds or clear paths forward are available.

It might end with one laying in a hospital bed for two weeks, while furiously pounding out two issues of Black Agenda Report, suspecting they may be the last few you will have a hand in shaping and passing quietly on the morning the next issue was due to come out.

When I spoke with Glen a few weeks ago, before he entered the hospital, I intended to talk him into relinquishing some of his responsibilities with BAR, so he could concentrate on trying to extend his stay on this planet and with us. Yet, in the course of our comical banter about morality and the meaning of our lives—a discussion that can only happen when you know you are rapidly approaching the end of your journey—I never raised the issue of stepping back a little because Glen made it quite clear how he wanted to depart this earth. “Ajamu, I am going out struggling.” For him, BAR was his most significant contribution to the “struggle.” Even though he was not healthy, Glen was proud of the work the BAR team had developed and he was satisfied it was continuing.

I spoke with him again about a week later to give him another lame excuse as to why I wasn’t going to get an article to him that week. Unbeknownst to me, he had already been a week into his hospital stay. But he assured me he had been there before. Glen sounded good, so I didn’t really take note. Plus, BAR had come out and I had no reason to believe anything was out of the ordinary.

So, I was floored when, a week later, I got a text message from his daughter, Tonya. When I called back, I was somewhat relieved when she shared that he was still with us, even if he was not doing well. But two days later, he was gone.

Glen’s transition to an ancestor has left a huge hole in our movement, not to mention in the hearts of so many of us. He was the last of a kind. Someone who loved his people, who loved life and had enormous hope for the future. He said to me in our final conversation how happy he was to have lived long enough to bookend his life, starting with the uprisings of the 1960s that developed our belief that we could win, not yet realizing what the state and the system had in store for us to sustain itself. The other bookend brings us to today, where it has become absolutely clear we are seeing the end of global white supremacy and that he and BAR have been playing a role in bringing us closer to that conclusion every day.

The way we honor Glen and Abdusshahid “Baba” Luqman, another valued member of our community and beloved member of the Black Alliance for Peace, is to intensify our resistance. To re-dedicate ourselves to ending the organized barbarity that is the ongoing criminal enterprise known as the United States of America and its European colonial allies.

For Glen, we will continue to tell the truth, to engage without fear in the ideological battle for our people, and to build the structures that will lead us to the new world we must build.

Ashé, Brother Glen and Brother Luqman. Know that as long as we are also on this planet—and in opposition—there will be no compromise and no retreat of our forces.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/glen- ... -tradition
https://www.blackagendareport.com/glen- ... olutionary

https://www.blackagendareport.com/glen- ... mperialism

https://www.blackagendareport.com/glen-ford-memoriam

We all gotta go sometime, but damn...
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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kidoftheblackhole
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Re: RIP, Glen Ford

Post by kidoftheblackhole » Wed Aug 04, 2021 3:00 pm

Damn damn damn this sucks

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blindpig
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Re: RIP, Glen Ford

Post by blindpig » Thu Aug 05, 2021 2:02 pm

…For Brother Glen
BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner 04 Aug 2021

…For Brother Glen

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…For Brother Glen


…For Brother Glen

“When an elder dies, a library burns to the ground…”

—African proverb (gender-adjusted)



I.

No bald “Build Back Better” slogans for

a burned Bruce library—

a Glen library gone—Pick up the ashes,

Carry on… spreading them on new crops…



II.

I couldn’t breathe…

black cat dander, goober dust, rabbit foot

spook-ism; viral droplets of Madison Ave.

messaging: “Yes, we Can and bottle Jim

Jones Juice for regime Change you can

believe in…”



I couldn’t breathe…

droplets of dung from charlatans riding

bareback/backwards on donkeys

Every 2-4 years—Trapping Negroz in pigment

of their imaginations—whooping, hollering,

Happy dancing on ice…for The Audacity of Dope



I couldn’t breathe…

Ecstasy/rhapsody of nodding icons—swept up

in rapture of Kool-Aided colonial euphoria—

Mentors becoming bus brutes when facts f-up

their highs…



I couldn’t breathe…

quarantined, on timeout, socially-distanced, isolated;

Unappreciated—wasting away out West—killing me

softly for my words, my poem “**The Coming of Christ”



Yet, one slow blues Saturday a steel, velvet-wrapped

Voice of spirit-stirring

North Star stripe issued from the radio snapping me

to attention!

It possessed thunderous timbre—Freedom’s Journal,

Liberator, Emancipator tone snatching my collar!

It held Douglass DNA infecting my marrow! It had

Shedded—reading newswire copy on-the-air at age 11—

it harnessed horsepower even the Godfather of Soul

had to “Say it loud!” when rechristening it: “Ford!”

Ida B-like it commanded KPFA’s colossal signal—

showering ice-cold Wikileaks over 1/3 of the Golden

State

It flared up in hot blue flames melting masks of mis-

leaders guarding freezers stuffed with corporate cash…



It possessed laser precision—surgically removing word

walls metastasized in the mind of a slutty professor; And

Taught lil’ Negroz in Teddy P-tones,“You gotta let him go,

if he looks like another Booker TKO—Or, more effective Evil!”



And it crescendoed from studios, stages, street corners, churches,

bookstores, bars, lecture halls, flatbed trucks—speaking truth to

The People

igniting conscious explosions with its 4 word fuses:

“POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!”

“POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!”



Well done, Brother! May the Ancestors be pleased

with you kneeling near the 7 mounds; saluting the

7 trees guarding them on African Burial Ground; as

You leave Lower Manhattan, seeing Sun Ra, Saturn/beyond…



**https://youtu.be/XfHYkoMUOk4



© 2021. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/brother-glen
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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