Back in Brazil and It’s Murder

Two of my professors invited me to Rio de Janeiro to check out the class they teach down here in the summer. Seeing as how i had to go to Bahia this same time, i decided to stop through for a few. Now, i’d been to Rio once before, but just for a few days and we didn’t leave Copacabana, so the only folks i came into contact with were tourists, prostitutes, hustlers, and servants….in other words, an inaccurate representation of the majority of the city. Maybe this trip, i’d learn a little more about this city.

So yesterday we were walking on the street when we passed a newsstand. The headlines read “Rio Police Kill One Every 8 Hours.” The article went on to say that between January and April, over 400 people have been murdered at the hands of the Rio Police. Official statistics report that these pigs kill more people in one month than the NYPD does in a whole year, and that the numbers have surpassed the Iraqi death toll.

Freddy D. Making it Plain on the Fourth

Well folks, it’s July already. For the past few years that’s meant it’s time for my international respite seeking adventures. When i can, i plan it around the fourth of July weekend. Now, before you go off telling folks i’m a nation lover, let me get this straight: i don’t stick around to commemorate the murder and tyranny of the country. I do it simply because every fourth of July weekend the greatest festival the states has to offer goes down: the international African arts festival. So, before i dip, you can catch me in BK soaking up sun and love with a whole bunch of fly Afrikans. One day, when i’m looking for a wife, i will surely encounter her here. Until then, i just enjoy observing…and there is nuff to observe.

Black Star Call for Papers: August 15th

(It’s not too late! Get down while there’s still something to get down with.)

In honor of Black Star’s ten-year anniversary, Proud Flesh is calling for works that speak to the impact and legacy of their masterpiece album, Mos Def and Talib Kweli are…, for an upcoming journal (www.proudfleshjournal.com).

Released in the fall of 1998, Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star re-energized the b-boy and backpacker face of Hip Hop with a heightened analytic and deep consciousness of self and community. Taking their name from Marcus Garvey and the UNIA’s 1920s shipping company (established to move Black Americans to a Black state located in Liberia), Black Star, conceptually and sonically, presented a wide and colorful depiction of Black life and Black identity.

Guest Contribution: Another Short Story from Jeff Johnson

(Editor’s note: Back by popular demand, we’ve managed another Jeff Johnson contribution to Scattered People. In his latest short story, the narrator details a workplace assault that “bruised his ego and broke his pride.” But before you give him more humble-credit than he deserves, his humility was forced: how can you deny what happened when the scars you bear betray any attempted deception? Longer than the last and even more hilarious and insightful, Scattered People presents “Showdown with Sammy TwoShades.” — a-meezy)

Showdown with Sammy TwoShades
By Jeff Johnson

I try not to use the word hate because I feel that is a word that carries a physical manifestation into the real world. On the opposite end of the spectrum, so does the word love. But love is good; hate is evil. Hate burns, scorches, and destroys. Hate devours light and reason, while it swirls every other emotion into one catastrophic tornado of fury, blinding your vision and logic, feeding off of ignorance. I hate Sammy TwoShades.

I hate Sammy TwoShades because Sammy TwoShades beat me up at work.