Artists offer relief at 9:30 Club

If the energy artists Anthony David and Fertile Ground stirred up at Friday’s Hurricane Katrina Benefit at the 9:30 club could be channeled to New Orleans, a minimum of five blocks in the Lower Ninth Ward would have restored electricity and heat.

Anthony David, with guitar and raspy voice, pulled the mingling audience from conversation, drinks at the bar, and nachos at the “Food Food” counter to sing and sawy to a few of the smarter cuts from his debut album “3 Chords and the Truth”: the sensuous “Yes,” reflective “Part of My Life,” and “Smoke One.” "Smoke one," is a track from his sophomore album due out in the spring. Though David apologized for performing without back up vocals, there really was no need, as the line of fans (with more than a few of them women crooning beneath his boyish charm) across the stage served just as well.

By the time Baltimore-based Fertile Ground took stage, the audience was poised to dredge floodwater and disinfect mold with shaking hips and sharp clapping. In ceremonial dress and feathered crown, the first note lead singer Navasha Daya sang commanded weary souls strengthened, and breached levees repaired. The energy Daya and band-members James (keyboard), Freddy (Trumpet), Ekendra (Percussion), Craig (Tenor Sax), Mark (drums) and Joel (Guitar) conjured was electrifying. The audience responded to every song and direction, especially Daya’s “ClapClap! And then ya boogie!” And on she did herself, often astounding in her endless energy and commitment to dynamic performance.

The benefit was a much a celebration of music as it was an indictment of political leadership’s mangled and disorganized response to Hurricane Katrina. Between acts, host Eric Roberson led the audience in extemporaneous songwriting, bridging a gap between song creation and audience contribution. Responding to the audience’s request for a song on karma, Roberson began, “I think our president is an idiot/I think our president is illiterate.” The moral of the jingle: Bush botched this one, and it some shape or form, it will come back to him.

Off-stage, Roberson clarified what rhyming restrictions had prevented him from articulating. Conceding Bush probably can read, he affirmed“he’s definitely an idiot.” “We probably won’t see the full consequences [of the Hurricane and the response] for ten to fifteen years,” he predicted. Roberson will perform in DC at H2O on Thursday, December 29, 2005.

On the Execution of STWilliams

I even surprised myself at my reaction to Stanley Tookie William’s execution: do it.

For most of my politically-conscious years, I have opposed capital punishment. It is unjustly applied, does not deter crime, and gives the state too much authority to regulate life or death. No one should play God.

Even in conversations with supporters positing hypothetical murder of my family members, I held firm to my opposition. I would want them to die, I argued, but the state should not have the right to determine when someone plays God.

And then Stanley Williams, co-founder of the Crips. I can’t keep my fingers from typing the words “kill ‘em.” In less than two hours, the wardens at San Quentin prison will. Arguments on Larry King will cease, Anderson Cooper will stop reporting, candle-light vigilants will blow softly and go home. And I still wonder…

At stop lights, in line at Benetton, at Busboys and Poets, why do I want Williams to die? The Crips. For what his mind was capable of conceiving, and his hands and spirit willing to realize: a gang to terrorize folks. Of sorts, a death squad.

I am not from Los Angeles and have not known Crips in a way to make me change my wardrobe, avoid specific McDonald’s, or avert my eyes. I haven’t ever confronted a gang on a street corner, or a school hallway, and don’t think I will at the age I am. I’ve never yanked out my earrings, dropped my bookbag, or commanded someone to hold me back! The sentence itself rings hollow from inexperience. I’ve never been there.

The battle I fight is internal. I carry it around with me in my head, and it begins in my dreams. For years I’ve had more than occasional nightmares of being caught in the crossfire or similar situation where gun barrels and hyper-masculine men figure prominently and escape is only through waking up.

Full Afro, Mr. Universe physique, prison denims, contented misery in his glare: this image of Stan Williams I see on the news, on the web. It scares me. The image propels hate, vengeance, power, madness, and relentless pursuit of victims. They are the emotions I confront in my dreams, and linger in my head during the day.

His presence is as recent as it is powerful. I didn’t know who he was before last week, before I glanced at a link on CNN.com. Of his existence I was not concerned in the least. The association with the Crips pushed his name from fleeting headline read in 3 seconds, to serious consideration. Now, I can blame him for some of the rage I feel about the pervasive violence in The City. The fact that house after house of people in LA, NYC, Miami, and Chicago experience a shivering danger in their own neighborhoods can be attributed to him. Stanley Tookie Williams. Pinochet. Mbutu. Saddam Hussein.

This feeling leads me to unsettling thoughts, to questions I don’t want to consider, and certainly don’t want to type. Is one life as valuable as many lives? Does embedding fear and violence in our collective psyche merit death, while a single murder does not? A graduated death scale: a few people, life in prison; but many people and psychological torture, death.

And then the question of redemption. As is well known, Williams experienced a cleansing of mind and spirit, began writing children’s books warning against gang violence, and negotiated a truce. Should I feel compassionate towards him? Feel a degree of sensitivity? I do not. The destructive energy he introduced still seeps through the air, through conversation, through body language. His books attempt at reconciliation, an alternative. I appreciate that.

But am not entirely moved by it. If I felt more safe than I do, if five people weren’t shot in one night in DC over the weekend, if children weren’t shot in schools, I would have more compassion for him than I do. I would have grief for him. But my grief is with my dead student, found in an alley. For the curly-headed teenager found shot in his car. The neighborhood grandmother shot in her armchair while watching television.

God teaches us to be forgiving. I am not unhappy he is now dead. It gives me comfort that his evil is no longer with us. What does that make me? I leave room for the potential to feel differently tomorrow.

World AIDS Day at Home

I spent World AIDS day, Thursday, December 1, 2005, not contemplating the magnitude of the virus’s damage on a global scale, but on a very local scale of half million people in a small town around the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers. I was in the crowd of cast and crew of “Multitude of Miseries,” a short film on a DC church’s experience with AIDS in their community, as it debuted Thursday night on BET. (An encore presentation aired today at 1 pm).

As joyous as the crowd was and should have been at their accomplishment—the realization of a dream to make a movie—the facts of the matter quickly sobers champagne sippers.

• 1 in 20 adults in DC are HIV positive.
• 1 in 50 adults in DC have AIDS.
• DC has the highest rate of AIDS cases of cities of 500,000 people or more, Baltimore and New York respectively second and third.
• Nationwide, DC accounted for about 2% of AIDS cases reported nation-wide for the two-year period, 2001-2002.

In the film, adolescent parishioner and HIV positive Jabari, ignites the debate over how the church should respond to AIDS. More interesting to me than the church’s ultimate response is the issue of AIDS in the DC youth community. Anne Wiseman, program director for youth AIDS education organization MetroTeenAIDS, described the scope of the problem, obstacles, and reasons she feels hopeful.

Wiseman lays out these facts: The CDC estimates between 2500-3000 youth are HIV positive, a rate of 1 in 45 youth (13-25) or one young person in every classroom. However, only about 300 to 500 are receiving treatment.

“Our big push, then, is to know your status. It’s free, it’s easy, it’s quick. ” she explains.

Free, easy, and quick. And life-altering. “Multitudes of Miseries” warns of the social isolation, judgment and loneliness that may accompany the HIV+ identity. Might that deter young people from being tested?

True, she acknowledges, but knowing puts the individual in a better position to treat the disease. “You won’t walk into a hospital and drop down dead because you have a T-cell count of 4.” T-cells are white blood cells, extremely important to the immune system. The lower the T-cell count, the greater likelihood of infection. The T-cell count also gauges the progression of HIV/AIDS.

The organization strives not only for youth to know their status but to know the facts.

MetroTeen AIDS The center welcomes youth to daily “Freestyle” drop-in hours, 4-8 p.m., and to Friday “Floetics,” open poetry sessions. Each visit is laden with information about HIV and AIDS prevention.

Teams also take the message to the classroom and to the streets. The HOPE (HIV Outreach and Prevention Education) team, a group of trained AmeriCorps volunteers teach the CDC-approved “Making Smart Choices” curriculum in DC public high schools.

The StreeTeam, twelve trained and paid youth educators, straight talk their peers in the language of youth and common experience.

For World AIDS day, MetroTeen AIDS continued to go to the youth. Peer educators held signs at Metro stations advertising the facts, conducted workshops in schools, and sponsored a fashion show where HIV/AIDS awareness was en vogue.

Their efforts aim at what Wiseman identifies as the greatest obstacle to curbing youth HIV infection: Invincibility. Or rather the youth’s belief that HIV/AIDS can not happen to them. “HIV/AIDS is not necessarily at the top of the list when you ask young people what they’re worried about.” Education and physical safety (a bullet can kill you faster than AIDS) are their first concerns, she says, then AIDS.

Though the activities cast a wide net to reach as many youth as possible, Wiseman measures progress “one youth at a time.” Each time a youth leaves a session better educated is considered a positive step.

The youth are the reason Wiseman feels so hopeful decline in AIDS infection among DC youth. Initially, says Wiseman, “we equipped them to talk the talk. Now, they’re starting to walk the walk.” Having deeply internalized the mind-set, peer educators couch casual girl-talk and friendly advice with facts. “Even when they’re off,” says Wiseman, “they’re on” message.

Their commitment gives Wiseman faith in the reality of staggering numbers. “They understand the struggle, and they understand the fight. I feel comfortable and confident in what they have the ability to do.”