A conversation between men...



flags of division

"I ain't going no 10,000 miles to help murder and kill other poor people. If i die, I'l die right here, fightin'! You my enemy, not no Chinese, no Viet Cong, no Japanese. You my opposer when I want freedom! You my opposer when I want justice! You my opposer when I want equality !!!" Muhammad Ali said in the late 1960's.

He was facing 5 years in prison and loss of this title, but it was not enough to make him small, or shy from his commitments to high principles, his family structure or his people.

It is important to reapply his words into the core of a man's manhood as a stance of power. Ali's manhood shook the pillars of the country and supported the freedom fights and fighters in Africa fighting against Colonial powers. Today, the illusion of freedom is expressed and popular in the mouths of white Americans saying simple minded phrases like, "Freedom ain't free" in efforts to justify invasions and costly bloodletting without a moral base. Afraid to develop one's manhood fails the women, disappoints the children and supports the oppression so keenly felt by one's own people in this system of government... - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories  [March 30, 2016] 

water spring to life is the healing journey avoided, but needed by men of war.
the principal element is the 'she' of womanhood the 'he' came from and needs to balance the
ache to war against other men. without the 'she of the water element men will engulf themselves in the
flames of war.

dawn wolf, keeper of stories 6.19.16
Luxuria Girls and Heels 

I continue to be amazed in this day and age, than many of us (Africans, Blacks, Nubians, the Original People or however we refer to ourselves) still don't get the point: "If you're not seated at the table, then you're on the menu".

Muhammad Ali took a principled stand when he refused to go to Vietnam to fight; it was a stand protected by our Constitution, and for which he was ultimately vindicated. It was his Constitutionally protected right. However, it is equally the right of those that choose to, to serve in the armed forces. In many regards, Africans all around the globe are still fighting the battle fought in America's Revolutionary War: "No government without representation." How much injustice would occur if Africans didn't have representation in government; medicine; law and law enforcement; media and entertainment; corrections; science and technology; education; sports, and the list goes on. How can we even begin to think of ourselves as having global significance when we want to limit our scope of development and influence?

We have become too fascinated with the most outspoken; the most articulate; the most glamorous and charismatic, so much so that we erroneously believe that they alone write history. For every Ali that refused to go fight, there were hundreds of thousands that did, that fought against racism within the armed forces and made it better for other Africans at home and abroad whose names and deeds remain unknown; I know because I was one of them. Don't fight just for one right for people: fight for them ALL. - Bruce Cox 3.30.16




gun carried by a Marine we imagined as a woman in the Armed Services. I said that because when the thought of white women in the military began to take hold on the country's disbelief in the notion the first and only image that any of us could envision was a scantly clad woman with a gun on the front line having her period! There were so many jokes around that visual to the point it initially defeated the idea. It couldn't be taken seriously. The thing was it was white women pushing this and if there was any group unqualified it was white women! That was the estimation of those women among Black folks, who ridiculed the idea. White women were not taken seriously by Blacks because they came across as weak, and the idea of a super hero type woman was more likely than not going to be a Black woman, or an African one; not some weak kneed blond with a perm and a tendency to feign helplessness! - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 1/23/17

I remember the impact upon the country when Ali made that stance. Black people were different back then. There was a shared sense of challenge to what enslaved the thought process. Unlike today fear was overcome as a collective and individually. Today, fear is embraced and passed off in an indifference to what is important: redefinition of the meaning of being free! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 3.30.16




gun carried by Angie Vu Ha in a jungle (2010)