Guest Post: Cornelius Eady's "Tearing Down the Master's House" & Michael Brown

Cornelius Eady, Distinguished Poet and Playwright, Co-Founder of Cave Canem.
Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Cornelius Eady offers his song, "Tearing Down the Master's House" (which you can hear here; lyrics below photograph), the The New York Times timeline "Michael Brown's Shooting and its Immediate Aftermath in Ferguson," and the following statement: 

“Tearing Down The Master's House” was written in response to the shooting by police of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO and the protest which followed. It is less about violent response than the belief that the true solution to a racist society is a dismantling of the system that feeds it. Despite the results of the 2016 election, I still firmly believe that progress moves forward, however messy, not back. From the streets of Ferguson came “don’t shoot,’ then “Black Lives Matter.” This is what happens when people decide to rewrite the script.

Photo by Jamelle Bouie

Tearing Down The Master’s House

Words and Music: Cornelius Eady

A half-loaf is better than no loaf

You do you think you are?

A bad attitude and a frank opinion

Won’t get you very far

The Nat’l guard wants you off their yard

But I was too busy

Tearing down the master’s house

There’s two sides to every riot

Whom do you think you are?

If you don’t believe it, come down and try it

They’ll kiss your hair with stars.

The Pastor said to keep a cool head

But we were too busy

Tearing down the master’s house.

Summertime and the living is cryptic.

Where do you think you are?

The streets are broken but they never fixed it

The old crow didn’t fly far.

The men at the gate will ask you to wait

But we’re all too busy

Tearing down the master’s house.

CE: Acoustic and Electric Guitars, Beats, Vocals

Robin Messing: Vocal

Charlie Rauh: Electric Guitars

Concetta Abbate: Violin

With: Max Abrams, Saxes

Saxes arranged by Max Abrams    

John Lewis Wins the National Book Award for March: Three

Image from "March: Three" by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell. 

The Nation reports that Jeff Sessions, whom #NotMyPresident will nominate for Attorney General of the United States, has a long record of wrongly prosecuting civil rights activists and making overtly racist (and misogynist) statements. Ari Berman writes, when he was nominated to be a Federal Judge: "Gerry Hebert, who worked in the Department of Justice’s Voting Section, told Congress that Sessions had called the NAACP and ACLU 'Communist-inspired' and 'un-American,' and labeled the white civil-rights lawyer Jim Blacksher 'a disgrace to his race.' Thomas Figures, a black assistant US Attorney in Mobile, said that Sessions had repeatedly referred to him as “boy.” Figures said he heard from colleagues that Sessions 'used to think [the KKK] were OK' until he learned that were 'pot smokers.' Sessions admitted to calling the [Voting Rights Act] a “piece of intrusive legislation.”

The alt right, white supremacists #NotMyPresident has surrounded himself with know that Sessions will roll back civil right and civil liberties and further attentuate the Voting Rights Act. 

Meanwhile, the hallowed Rep. John Lewis, along with Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell, was awarded the National Book Award for March, Lewis's graphic memoir of fighting for voting rights and civil rights that Sessions undermined with his legal authority. I offer you Lewis's moving acceptance speech:

You can listen to Rep. John Lewis interviewed on the Diane Rehm Show and read an excerpt of March: Three here.

C.P. Cavafy vs. Homophobes

C.P. Cavafy, 1900

Gay Star News reports that William H. Pryor, Jr., whom (not my President-elect) Trump wishes to nominate to the Supreme Court, seeks to criminalize all sex that is not between heterosexual married couples, that is, to jail homosexuals for having sex at home. Yet Trump says that marriage equality is settled. Each new man (and they are men) he has selected for a post is a bigot whose goal it is to a violate a group's civil and human rights. 

I offer you my translation of C.P. Cavafy's "Hidden Things," which appears in The Collected Poems of C.P. Cavafy: A New Translation (W.W. Norton, 2016).  

HIDDEN THINGS

From all I did and all I said

Let them not find out who I was.

An obstacle stood before me and transformed

my acts and my way of life.

An obstacle stood before me and stopped me

so often from what I was going to say.

My most unnoticed acts

and my most veiled writings—

only from these will they know me.

But maybe it’s not worth it to devote

so much care and effort to knowing me.

Later—in a more perfect society—

someone made like me

will certainly appear and act freely.

[1908]

The Collected Poems of C.P. Cavafy:A New Translation