The Bandana Republic A Literary Anthology by Gang Members and Their Affiliates Edited by Louis Reyes Rivera and Bruce George, Foreword by Jim Brown.
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From the Foreword by Jim Brown
"The Bandana Republic is the most provocative, researched, educational, opinionated piece of work that I've ever read . . . In its own provocative way, The Bandana Republic makes you think, reflect, cry. I recommend to all of you, and to all people who purchase this anthology: read it, learn from it, try to draw your own conclusions. What you have in front of you is a reflection of every revolutionary, every victim that ever lived in this country. Color, gender, race, religion . . . it does not matter. Only the individual dealing with correctness, fairness, love and caring, multiplied a billion times, will ever bring about the proper change in human behavior. Read this anthology, and then check yourself."
K-Swift, Jiwe, Mel Jackson, Bruce George, Philip "Senistar" Muhammad, "Gotti" Cherry, David "Dj" James and Supa Nova Slom. Book Signing at the Hue-Man Book Store in Harlem, NY - June 9th, 2008
About the book:
The Bandana Republic, A Literary Anthology by Gang Members and Their Affiliates, edited by Louis Reyes Rivera and Bruce George with a foreword by Jim Brown focuses on creative literature written by adolescents from such contemporary gangs as by Chaplains, Bishops, Sportsmen, Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings, Black Spades, Neta, Black Gangster Disciples and others. Includes work by former gang members who have gone beyond gangbanging and into the social and cultural arenas. The anthology showcases writing by Senistar™, Alicia Benjamin-Samuels, Oscar Brown Jr., Chairman Fred Hampton, Jr., Commander, Comrade X, Layding Kaliba, Dead Prez, Ruby Dee, Shaggy Flores, Erica Ford, The Last Poets, Jesus Papoleto Melendez, Akua Njeri, Willie Perdomo, T. Rodgers, Luis J. Rodriguez, Leila Steinberg, Kublai Toure, Ted Wilson, Malik Yoba, and many more all of whom have either come from urban gangs or were closely affiliated with street-based organizations.
Like many adolescents, they initially attached themselves to the available rough-n-tumble street role models, becoming active gang members and adopting the ways of the street. Inside of this framework, and in spite of the stereotypical conventional wisdom concerning street gangs, they were also reared into the creative aspirations of their respective communities. Not just dancing and styling, but reading and studying, learning to develop the gall to give voice to the voice.
Louis Reyes Rivera is among the more respected underground poets, having assisted in the publication of over 200 books. Known as the Janitor of History and a living bridge between African and Latino Americans, he has taught courses on Pan-African, African-American, Caribbean, and Puerto Rican literature and history, as well as Creative Writing. In addition to solo recitals and lectures, he has worked with jazz bands (Sun Ra All Stars Project, Ahmed Abdullah's Diaspora, Ebonic Tones, and his own, The Jazzoets), appeared on HBO's DEF Poetry, and hosts Perspective on WBAI, 99.5 FM. Other works by Rivera include Scattered Scripture, In Control of Spelling (Four Editions), This One For You, and Who Pays The Cost. His CD releases include Live @ Sistas' Place, A Jazzoetic Jam (anthology with Atiba Kwabena), Ahmed Abdullah's Dispersions of the Spirit of Ra: Traveling the Spaceways, and YO! He has also edited the following anthologies: Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam (with T. Medina), Portraits of the Puerto Rican Experience (with Adal Maldonado), Womanrise, Love: A Collection of Young Songs, and Poets in Motion.
Bruce George is a visionary, executive producer, writer, poet, and activist born and raised in NYC. He has written testimonials for the likes of Essence, Emerge, and Class magazinea, Harlem River Press, and others. Bruce is the co-founder of the critically acclaimed Russell Simmons's Def Poetry Jam. He has won several awards including a Peabody Award and a Milky Award for Def Poetry, an Upscale Showcase Award, a Trail Blazer Award, and others. As an activist, Bruce has been and currently is associated with major grassroots organizations that foster and uplift people in struggle. Bruce comes out of gang culture and is committed to anti-gang-violence initiatives. He has served on numerous panels (Hampton, Harvard, The New School, Fordham University, Medgar Evers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture) and has judged hundreds of poetry/spoken word competitions.
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Initiation: Seven Immortals, 1972
by J. Sheeler
Circle of girls on the night sand,
boardwalk a glowing line behind us.
Gloria wraps the belt around her fist
as I pull my t-shirt up and off,
naked to the waist,
arms crossed,
hands spread out to cover the sides of my breasts.
Watching the dirty, undulate CI beach
roll down to the dirty ocean water,
I wait for seven strikes of leather on bare skin
to close out my individual life.
Gloria doesn't hold back,
swings like a batter at the plate,
ninth inning,
all eyes on her,
whirls into a whipping that draws out of me
nothing but blood.
To call out, to cry, that is to fail.
And to fail
is to invite the watching circle to close in,
deliver the real thing,
give me something to cry about.
That's how my father would say it.
He trained me well for this initiation.
Years of unmeasured violence honed my weapons:
blank face,
bone-dry eyes.
Seven strikes across the back,
counted out,
witnessed and paced.
This is a sure thing.
A bet I have no way to lose.
The girls don't know this.
Gloria doesn't like me,
wants to stay the only white Immortal on Coney Island,
uses all her crazy-white-girl muscle
to whip some kind of sound out of me
but she can't,
of course she can't,
and the circle counts out loud,
feeds into the frenzy
"four, five, six"
a laughing scream at seven,
and I swing around to face my initiator.
Welcome, Seven Immortal
Gloria says, calm and blank at me,
dropping her belt to give me a complicated handshake.
The circle breaks up, drifts off.
I walk the dark beach down,
alone,
to the water,
wet my shirt to wash the blood
then wash the shirt and pull it over my brand-new back:
the red, the shredded black, the rising blue.
My first jacket. My primary colors.
by Jaha Zainabu
The scene opens on an exterior daytime view of an old California neighborhood in Long Beach. Not Snoop and Warren's Long Beach. In fact, it's seventeen and a half minutes northwest of 21 and Lewis. The west side, thugly called "The Weak Side" because the drama, to the naked eye, pales in comparison to the so-called East Side (the video). Overly congested with multi-family dwellings, barber shops, storefront churches and liquor stores.
More, Auntie's and Nana's Long Beach, where housewives still shell peas and barter sugar for apples and watch each other's children and everyone respectfully greets Mrs. Jones whether or not she cares to respond. Indeed, all of this in the crazy '80's, and I, still a child, high school, innocent enough, was unknowingly blessed to bear witness.
At St. Luke's in the daytime, the grounds were well kept and the church secretary's blue Toyota Corolla sat parked in the same spot everyday. Everyday she had coffee and read her favorite passage of Psalms, all in time for All My Children. Then she'd begin her duties of typing reports on the church's income and expenditures, and on members who had come by later or those who sought baptism. Notes of the inside. For and by the saved. Slightly contrasting Christ's commandment to "Go Ye, therefore..."
This was St. Luke's by day, but the moon brought a different vibe. Still does. Spooky. A comfortable familiar, however, to those drawn to the underground.
Brian McKinny was one. His moniker was Big Mac. Corny now, but nineteen years ago it was the name to have and Big Mac was the man to know. He could get the goods. Guns. Pussy. Dope. At seventeen and six feet, dimpled and jheri curled, light skinned (west coast fine), he was well read for a man his age, for a cat with his rep. Big Mac, smooth and a poor decision-maker soon to run out on his luck, traits many youngsters possessed, was caught slippin'. He, a Long Beach Crip, had strolled aware and careful in L.A.'s Bloodland. Not his first time, still not a habit. This time he was not visiting some chick. Not seeking revenge. Not stopping for gas. This time, per his mother's demands, he was, by bus, visiting his grandmother, who just wasn't ready for him to leave yet. And asked in voice only poets and big mamas and ministers wives with big hats and round bellies could muster, if he could stay at least until the end of Wheel of Fortune. Please. And he, looking into the eyes that had read Revelations before Genesis was thought about, could not say No to her. She wouldn't understand how those bloods be trippin'. Bloods?
Or that he and Lil Scoops had crazy beef. She would send him to the bus stop well fed with blessed oil on his forehead and pray over with faith that in the name of Jesus and John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., he would get to the bus stop unstepped on. Even remain safe until she'd again see him Thursday after next, if God should say the same.
But no. Brian McKinny was shot and killed that night by another man and woman's boy. That heavy on his mother's neck, somehow not being enough, today she goes about her days remembering that on the eve of her only child's services, while his body waited alone and cold beyond a comforter's cure, his murderer, captured only by karma (maybe), tossed his body. Spray painted his casket in red letters, old English font, now tattooed on the chest of her memory, fresh until forever ends. And why? Over what?
This story is about the courage it takes to look beyond his gang status and see that he was her boy. Always kissed her goodnight. Ate greens with ketchup. Loved fish with his grits. The hole in her heart now is filled only with the comfort in knowing that at least he is safe.
Return to St. Luke's.
By now, everybody knows the routine. Same show. Different star. White roses to contrast the midnight robes. Tears rioting down faces, looting smiles. For some, the air is laced with questions of the fairness of God. For others, near the rear there is a stench of doubt regarding existence. The preacher tries to preach. The deacon tries to sing. But it all seems for naught amidst the mother's screams.
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