By Jawanza Phoenix

We need scarecrows

ones with big red beady eyes

arms extended wide

clothes faded yellow

and long pointy hats

We need them to scare away rednecks who gun down

African American joggers and church goers

By Minami Williams

Page 2 Auctions

Page 4 Master Please!

Page 6 Chains and Shackles

Page 8 Punishment

Page 10 Stripped to the Bones

Page 12 Where Are We Now?

By Halford H. Fairchild

The “not guilty” verdicts awarded to Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old White supremacist who murdered two unarmed people and seriously wounded another, is confirmatory.  It confirms what we’ve known all along.

The United States of America was founded in 1776 in the spirit of White male supremacy.  The “Founding Fathers,” most of them, were slave holders.  Or to put it less succinctly, the Founding Fathers (George Washington, et al.) held other human beings in lifelong captivity and profited from their uncompensated labor.  Their justification for doing so? The ingrained belief in the supremacy of White men.  Native Americans and Africans were defined as “savages” deserving of genocide and enslavement.  This barbarous behavior was given license in The Constitution of the United States.

By JaRon Eames

In 1934 Cole Porter, one of America's greatest composers, wrote a song titled 'Anything Goes'. The world has gone mad today, he sang, and goods bad today, and blacks white today, and days night today, etc. Porter had no idea how our nation would live out any of this today. We are now in an era of pervasive untruths. Fake news. It's like we’ve lived past the time for critical thinking and making sense out of all of this nonsense. Take, for instance, the entertainment culture.

By Robert Beveridge

THIS IS WHAT WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT

We peeled the fruit

expected to find flesh

but underneath there was

another layer of rind

so we peeled it again

and again

and every time we found

perfect, unblemished skin

and it never got any smaller

“On this October 30, 2004, we, the Faith Community of St. Augustine Catholic Church, dedicate this shrine consisting of grave crosses, chains and shackles to the memory of the nameless, faceless, turfless Africans who met an untimely death in Faubourg Treme. The Tomb of the Unknown Slave is commemorated here in this garden plot of St. Augustine Church, the only parish in the United States whose free people of color bought two outer rows of pews exclusively for slaves to use for worship.”