History is a motherfucking trip. You can learn some shit that just freaks your mind. You will walk around madder than a motherfucker for the rest of the day if you have a brain. That is how I felt after leaving the Weeksville Heritage Center. The site contains so many memories for me it’s hard to enumerate all of them.
Megatron was shot in the head on Buffalo Avenue and Bergen Street.
On Bergen Street and Ralph Avenues is this well guarded complex for poor kids with mental disability. The shit is clearly a prison.
A few months back when I was visiting Rumble and Headstrong, we were accosted by police officers, all Black and all younger than we are, directly across the street from Weeksville in the Kingsboro Houses. As is my custom I let my smart mouth reminisce with these officers about the story passed down from my elders that it was greedy Africans who delivered the Blacks to the shores of Goree Island, and it was equally greedy Blacks who upon arrival to this land would act as whipcrackers to the plantation owners. The idea was that some Blacks couldn’t wait to get the whips in their hands as opposed to their hands on the whips. The cops weren’t impressed. I’m lucky I wasn’t arrested.
Weeksville resides on what was the border of “civilzation” for the occupiers settlers that came to the Americas. Blacks were encouraged to settle these tracts of land because they provided a buffer between the indigenous people and the Europeans. The Dutch needed the Blacks to make the area safe and habitable. The idea was that the Blacks would deal with the savages until a time when the land was cleared and arable. Then the Europeans would have the Blacks evicted and forced to settle elsewhere.
Fuck around and the 1700’s has become the 2000’s. Blacks are being evicted from the lands again to make room for the European(and midwestern) settlers. When people tell you that history will repeat itself they ain’t never lie. The photo above is of the high rise portion of the Kingsboro houses. Twenty five stories positioned on less than acre of land. Forty acres and a mule has become a New York Housing Authority apartment and a Cadillac Escalade. Just like the land agreements granted to Native Americans were surreptitiously altered I won’t be caught sleeping when these deals are changed as well.
Now, more than ever, I am determined to find a homestead in Brooklyn. The historical relevance at stake is too great. Freedom was never for free. Thanks to Dr. SHERILL D. WILSON for her history lesson of New York City that preceded the GAME Rebellion concert.
GAME REBELLION gets focused on the job at hand.
Family always comes first. GAME REBELLION is for the kids.
These dudes rock.
GAME REBELLION will be part of the Afro Punk festivals Wednesday night stage show and you can still copp their mixtape ‘Searching For Rick Rubin‘ online at iMeem.
