I have a link to share with one and all. It is called DBC Info TV and it provides various documentaries on many subjects. For example it currently has The Coconut Revolution from 2001 which shows the indigenous people of Bougainville and their fight against exploitation of the land. All the documentaries on the station are enlightening so be sure to inform yourselves.
DBC Info Tv
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
"Bury Me In a Free Land" by Frances Harper
Make me a grave where’er you will,
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;
Naje ut anibg earth’s humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.
I could not rest if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom.
I could not rest I heard the tread
Of a coffle gang to the shambles led,
And the mother’s shriek of wild despair
Rise like a curse on the trembling air.
I could not sleep if I saw the lash
Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
And I saw her babes torn from her breast,
Like trembling doves from their parent nest.
I’d shudder and start if I heard the bay
Of bloodhounds seizing their human prey,
And I heard the captive plead in vain
As they bound afresh his galling chain.
If I saw young girls from their mothers’ arms
Bartered and sold for their youthful charms,
My eye would flash with a mournful flame,
My death-paled cheek grow red with shame.
I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might
Can rob no man of his dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave
Where none can call his brother a slave.
I ask no monument, proud and high,
To arrest the gaze of the passers-by;
All that my yearning spirit craves,
Is bury me not in a land of slaves.
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill;
Naje ut anibg earth’s humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.
I could not rest if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom.
I could not rest I heard the tread
Of a coffle gang to the shambles led,
And the mother’s shriek of wild despair
Rise like a curse on the trembling air.
I could not sleep if I saw the lash
Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
And I saw her babes torn from her breast,
Like trembling doves from their parent nest.
I’d shudder and start if I heard the bay
Of bloodhounds seizing their human prey,
And I heard the captive plead in vain
As they bound afresh his galling chain.
If I saw young girls from their mothers’ arms
Bartered and sold for their youthful charms,
My eye would flash with a mournful flame,
My death-paled cheek grow red with shame.
I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might
Can rob no man of his dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave
Where none can call his brother a slave.
I ask no monument, proud and high,
To arrest the gaze of the passers-by;
All that my yearning spirit craves,
Is bury me not in a land of slaves.
Labels:
abolitionist,
america,
freedom,
literature,
modern day slavery,
motherhood,
poetry
Thursday, January 19, 2012
"The Slave Auction" by Frances Harper
The sale began – young girls were there,
Defenceless in their wretchedness,
Whose stifled sobs of deep despair
Revealed their anguish and distress.
And mothers stood with streaming eyes,
And saw their dearest children sold;
Unheeded rose their bitter cries,
While tyrants bartered them for gold.
And woman, with her love and truth –
For these in sable forms may dwell –
Gaz’d on the husband of her youth,
With anguish none may paint or tell.
And men, whose sole crime was their hue,
The impress of their Maker’s hand,
And frail and shrinking children, too,
Were gathered in that mournful band.
Ye who have laid your love to rest,
And wept above their lifeless clay,
Know not the anguish of that breast,
Whose lov’d are rudely torn away.
Ye may not know how desolate
Are bosoms rudely forced to part,
And how a dull and heavy weight
Will press the life-drops from the heart.
Whose stifled sobs of deep despair
Revealed their anguish and distress.
And mothers stood with streaming eyes,
And saw their dearest children sold;
Unheeded rose their bitter cries,
While tyrants bartered them for gold.
And woman, with her love and truth –
For these in sable forms may dwell –
Gaz’d on the husband of her youth,
With anguish none may paint or tell.
And men, whose sole crime was their hue,
The impress of their Maker’s hand,
And frail and shrinking children, too,
Were gathered in that mournful band.
Ye who have laid your love to rest,
And wept above their lifeless clay,
Know not the anguish of that breast,
Whose lov’d are rudely torn away.
Ye may not know how desolate
Are bosoms rudely forced to part,
And how a dull and heavy weight
Will press the life-drops from the heart.
Labels:
abolitionist,
love,
motherhood,
poetry,
slavery,
usa
Eurocentric Agenda in Arizona School District
An ethnic studies program has been terminated and books concerning "race, ethnicity and oppression" have been banned, even a play called "The Tempest" by William Shakespeare.
It is an attempt from America's side to create a perfect and pure still picture of the country which has never existed. Or "part of a curriculum change to avoid 'biased, political and emotionally charged' teaching" as CNN put it. It is a damn shame, America.
Read the full story here:
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
”Eliza Harris” by Frances Harper
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, 1825-1911, was a
dear poet and lecturer of the Anti-Slavery Society connected to the Abolitionist
movement, the Underground Railroad, the
Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and the A. M. E. Church. Her first volume, Poems on Various Subjects, was published
in 1854, and later followed by Moses: A
Story of the Nile (1869), Poems (1871)
and Sketches of Southern Life (1872).
Here you have the poem “Eliza Harris”:
Like a fawn from
the arrow, startled and wild,
A woman swept by
us, bearing a child;
In her eye was
the night of a settled despair,
And her brow was
o’ershaded with anguish and care.
She was nearing
the river – in reaching the brink,
She heeded no
danger, she paused not to think;
For she is a
mother – her child is a slave –
And she’ll give
him his freedom, or find him a grave!
It was a vision
to haunt us, that innocent face –
So pale in its
aspect, so fair in its grace;
As the tramp of
the horse and the bay of the hound,
With the fetters
that gall, were trailing the ground!
She was nerv’d
by despair, and strengthened by woe,
As she leap’d o’er
the chasms that yawn’d from below;
Death howl’d in
the tempest, and rav’d in the blast,
But she heard
not the sound till the danger was past.
Oh! how shall I
speak of my proud country’s shame?
Of the stains on
her glory, how give them their name?
How say that her
banner in mockery waves –
Her “star
spangled banner” – o’er millions of slaves?
How say that the
lawless may torture and chase
A woman whose
crime is the hue of her face?
How the depths
of the forest may echo around,
With the shrieks
of despair, and the bay of the hound?
With her step on
the ice, and her arm on her child,
The danger was
fearful, the pathway was wild;
But, aided by
Heaven, she gained a free shore,
Where the
friends of humanity open’d their door.
So fragile and
lovely, so fearfully pale,
Like a lily that
bends to the breath of the gale,
Save the heave
of her breast, and the sway of her hair,
You’d have
thought her a statue of fear and despair.
In agony close
to her bossom she press’d
The life of her
heart, the child of her breast: –
Oh! love from
its tenderness gathering might,
Had strengthen’d
her soul for the dangers of flight.
But she’s free! –
yes, free from the land where the slave
From the hand of
oppression must rest in the grave;
Where bondage
and torture, where scourges and chains
Have plac’d on
our banner indelible stains.
The bloodhounds
have miss’d the scent of her way;
The hunter is
rifled and foil’d of his prey;
Fierce jargon
and cursing, with clanking of chains,
Make sounds of
strange discord on Liberty’s plains.
With the rapture
of love and fullness of bliss,
She placed on
his brow a mother’s fond kiss: –
O poverty,
danger and death she can brave,
For the child of
her love is no longer a slave!
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