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Akbar Pray Foundation For Change

WE ARE THE SOLUTION TO OUR OWN PROBLEMS

Issue 5

October 30, 2012

Thug Life
There is hardly an hour that passes, a record sold or a phrase coined that the so-called thug life or the game has not glamorized or embellished. Thug Life is not organized crime. More often that not it is disorganized crime, perpetrated by those of us who through choice or chance have taken to the streets in search of fame or fortune. In our rush to convey or perpetrate an image of thugs of gangsters we have become our own worse enemy, coconspirators in our rapid rate of incarceration. Where other nationalities have sought to distance themselves from the images of thugs or gangster, we readily and happily embrace this image, seeking to convey this impression of ourselves to onlookers. Is it any wonder that we make up nearly 60 percent of the prison population? Is it any wonder that tone out of every three black males between the ages of 16 and 27 are either in state or federal custody or on probation or parole? Our child-like obsession with image rather than substance, helps to fuel a far more insidious plan. We are not the only nationality to be trapped below the social economic ladder of society. Nor are we the first or only nationality to be targeted by the media as gangster, hoodlums, or roustabouts. During the 1920s sometimes referred to as the Roaring Twenties, Irish and Jewish gangsters and thugs were the rule not the exception. Then, names like Hymie Weis, OBannion, Lepke Bulchalter, Meyer Lansky and Arnold (the Brain) Rothstein were frequently splashed across the newspapers of their day. Where are the Jewish and Irish gangs of today? Why is a Jewish of Irish kid a rarity in the criminal justice system? Is it these other nationalities commit no crimes? We know that that is not the case. Note the answer simply stated as this: members of these groups who through choice or chance found themselves immersed in a life of crime, recognized that their criminal undertakings were to be a catapult or a spring board to a different or better life. They knew that these enterprises were to be vocations, not avocations. It was meant to be

a means to an end, not an end in itself. They never tried to glorify and enshrine this lifestyle. They never held themselves up for emulation for the children. Subsequently, the vicious cycle of crime and incarceration more often than not passed them by.Even those of us that are fortunate enough to escape the gravitational pull of the streets i.e. our athletes and entertainers, seem hell bent on emulating a self-destructive lifestyle. Suffering no doubt under the misimpression of keeping it real. Not surprisingly those who this label could conceivably apply to seek to dodge this stereotype as if it was a heat-seeking bullet. It has been said, those that do not learn the lessons of history are destined to repeat them. Our collective landscape is littered with the lives and hard lesson of those that came before us. What then compels each succeeding generation to make the mistakes of their predecessors? How many life without parole or thirty year sentences must we endure before we begin to distance ourselves from this selfdestructive and prison beckoning image? Akbar Pray

IF NOT YOU, THEN WHO? IF NOT NOW, THEN WHEN?

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Issue 5 October 30, 2012

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THE YEAR 2012 We have made it through the Middle Passage, Slavery, Jim Crow and now Benign Neglect to the year 2012! But do we truly realize and understand its historical significance to us? No, it isnt the highly promoted end of the world prophesized by the Mayan calendar. Nor is it the Obama-Romney sideshow. No, it cant be that because, though we have a black President inside the White house, our lives are worse than ever: unemployment, drugs, guns, gangs, incarceration, death by the police vigilantes- you name it! And no, its significance is definitely not the annual BET Hip Hop Awards ( no hell no!) Well, if its not the Mayan Prophesy. the presidential race or the Hip Hop Awards, then what is it? 2012 is the expiration date for the infamous Willie Lynch experiment. Yes, thats right family. Its been 300 years exactlya damn tricentennial! Finally, the experiment has run its courseor has it really? Ummmm.I wonder. By the looks of our present predicament, I doubt it. Just like the AIDS virus, its evil effects could linger with us another 400 years, if we fail to get our shit together. SLICK WILLIE I assume by now most of us know who Willie Lynch was. But for the few who dont, Willie Lynch was the cruel and demonic slave-maker who devised the divide and conquers system of playing us off, one against the other. As you can see at a glance, the system has

By Rudy Williams
Ignorance aint bliss - Its hell!
For close to 66 years the same buzzards have been deceiving us and yet we still love and trust them more than we love and trust ourselves, or each otherwe do so more than ever. So, what the hell is wrong with us? What exactly is our problem, that we allow perfect strangers to into our homes to divide and conquer us? It seems we enjoy being eaten by wolves in sheeps clothing. We even trust them with the lives and minds of our babies. They once called themselves missionaries. Now they call themselves social workers. These social workers, family counselors, psychologist, psychiatrist and so on, which bang on our doors and enter our homes, promising to save us from ourselves can we honestly believe that their hands are clean? No they are not. Under the pretense of welfare, their hidden agenda is and always has been to destroy us from within and with the support of our willful blindness and cooperation. Wake up brothers and sisters. Smell the blood on their mouths and their hands. Instead of continuing to run towards these wolves in sheeps clothing for aid, we must solve our own problems and differences. Stop letting these buzzards infiltrate us at will! We can save our own. We can do it because we possess the brains, the talent and the greatness to do anything.

been wildly fruitful. Thus, its nefarious creator deserves a big seat in infamy besides no less a vampire than Mayer Amchell Rothchild, the founding patriarch of the infamous bloodsucking, international banking dynasty that is behind nearly all our past and present miseries, from the enslavement of our ancestors, to the present loss of our homes, jobs and minds. But that is, as they say, water under the bridge. The important question for us now is: What are we going to do for ourselves to shed our current shackles and chains? Are we going to continue to run to the buzzards and wolves to save us from ourselves or are we going to man-up and save ourselvesfor once and for all times? As a people and as individuals, we are always under severe pressure- even when we dont know it. Yet we always respond to it by going for ourselves, or doing me, instead of banding together. But running from our problems, ourselves or each other is not the solution because, at the end of the line, we are all we have, and certainly all we ever had of any real worth. Yet we constantly, egotistically, kill and abandon each other for trinkets under pressure. Remember: although our good brother Samson was probably no the first one of us to do me and get destroyed, he is certainly the most famous. And though pressure breaks pipes, it also makes diamonds. Again, at the end of the line, we are all we have. More importantly, we are all and everything we need to restore our former greatness, if we stop trusting blindly in wolves dressed in sheeps clothing.

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Issue 5, October 30, 2012 issue, date

THE AMERICAN NIG **** FACTORY

Bobby E. Wright one of our wisest ancestors, defined mentacide as a form of insanity that leaves many of us thinking out of the mind of the European as if it were our own. Mentacide is the state of being psychologically brain-dead and having one's thoughts replaced with alien ones, a state relative to being a zombie. Most of us wonder why we (Black folks) are so self-destructive, so illogical and so unpredictable. The answer rests in the fact that we have to conquer our poor self-esteem and identity problem(s). Many of us have become ashamed of what we have become. Some of us are so pathologically damaged that they maybe lost forever. We have a festering subculture among black youth in our communities that thrives on criminal or what we've been led to believe is criminal behavior; a crimogenic society that has no 'real' moral base, but has normalized power, control, domination and exploitation by any means available to them, as they continue to subjugate the mind-set of impressionable children, who only seem to know hopelessness. This is a genocidal strategy, which has worked to exploit and turn our youth against themselves, the elders, racial identity and pride. The youth now work in the service of those who historically have worked to destroy them. The impact of mass media has diminished the influence of family, culture and self-identification. The music our children listen to, the images they absorb all have a menticadal socialization that can only have negative outcomes on the future of us a people. Someone has an agenda to purposely sabotage their intellect and their ability to intuitively see CLEARLY. Mentacide is most often an undetectable psychological illness. Its sufferers have no clue to it's impact, so they consequently don't know who their enemy is and why they have an enemy in the first place. Our children don't know why they are miseducated, dis-educated; how slavery, Jim Crow (Amerikan apartheid) and continued distortions of historical facts are systemic designs managed by those who repress and deprive them of their humanity that and dignity. instead corruption, greed and the political/economic systems they've spawned. Anyone paying attention, anyone not afflicted by the mentacidal condition would CLEARLY see these systems are on the precipice, soon to fall into the abyss. Wake up from Morpheus (i.e; a nod, dormancy, sleep), ignite your inner vision. It's too dangerous for a Black man/ woman/ child in Amerika to have no focus, no clue to have no idea of how to develop children so that they can have some knowledge of who they are historically, which will give them a fighting chance. To have no philosophy other than that which has been imposed on you by other than you is a recipe for cultural disaster! It's dangerous for Black folk to be ahistorical, apolitical to have little to no knowledge of that which can change, modify, impair and harm your life. When this is your condition you are easily manipulated. Study His-story, study Our-story as it wil all become a basis for self-criticism, selfunder/inner/over-standing, but more importantly will allow you to know the motives and psychology of others. Wake up from the mentacidal slumber before the Amerikkkan nig** factory crushes you! To be C.L.E.A.R. is to be in Conscious Life Energy Advancing Righteousness. M.M. Ankh HERU Ma'at,Nebhu Allah.

A HEALING FROM THIS MENTCIDAL CONDITION IS A CORE ELEMENT IN A HEALTHY RENEWED SENSE OF SELF.
If this psychosis were exposed as I am attempting to do now, those of us who suffer from this dis-ease would know not to pretend they are Amerikan when everything in Amerika dismisses them unless they integrate, assimilate or otherwise bend to the will of the Amerikan machine. Bending to the 'will' of an oppressive system is done so at the expense of selfidentity and the continuation of the original Black way of hu(e)man social interaction, choosing

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APFFC Board of Directors

Issue 5 October, 2012 issue, date

Director of Operations Milagros Harris

Qasim S. Abdul Karim

Director of Finance

Director of Human Resources Rahman Muhammad

Director of Public Relations Toni Johnson

MISSION STATEMENT
The Akbar Pray Foundation For Change (APFC) is a not for profit grassroots organization, dedicated to redirecting the lives of our urban at risk youth. It has been and remains our organizations mantra that " we are the solution to our own problems." It is our core belief that there are those within our communities, if so engaged, who can help turn the tide of crime, delinquency and recidivism which grips the lives of so many our inner city youth. Operating from the premise that to effectively attack or address any problem you must start at its root, we have begun a program in some of our citys schools and group homes, where we supply speakers, mentors, CDs and written material from the organizations founder, which cuts to the heart of the problem experienced by many of these youths. Some times working with former gang members, inner city icons and others that have what is referred to as street cred, we have been able to achieve remarkable results. Expanding on our mission, we continuously recruit individuals from various work disciplines to aid in educating young men and woman with marketable skills. To those ends we have engaged people both inside and outside our community to come to our classes and or workshops to share and discuss the ups and downs, ins and outs of a wide range of work disciplines and careers. Never favoring one career path over any other, we have invited professors, urban fiction writers, successful members of the hip hop industry, general construction contractors and a Superior Court Judge to these open discussions and Socratic Circle seminars. Again, it is our core belief that "we are the solution, to our own problems." In closing. We invite your participation in this noble undertaking.

IF NOT YOU, THEN WHO?

Death the Author of of the Game

From

Akbar Pray Foundation for Change

Executive Director Akbar Pray