Start a Riot (Like Jamaicans Over Gas Prices)

Gas in L.A. is $5.09 per gallon this week, and that’s not including the immeasurable cost of the loss of human life in Iraq. I ride the MTA, where a day pass fare is now $5, soon to increase again; and as the middle-class get out of their cars and onto the buses, L.A.’s poor are being pushed to the back.

In 1979 in a suburb in Pennsylvania, gas stations were torched when gas rose to $1 per gallon.

Jamaica had three violent days of gas riots in 1999. In 2003, Tehrananians rebelled in response to fuel rationing.

I’m surprised at the ambivalence people are exhibiting at today’s fuel costs. L.A. seems more likely to riot if the Lakers lose the NBA Finals than over gas prices. But another $1 per gallon increase, or ‘fuel shortages’ during this long, hot summer could spark some rebellion.

After watching my city burn in 1992, I don’t necessarily want to repeat the experience, but setting shit on fire does make people sit up and take notice.

Now that ‘going green’ is America’s hottest trend, I hope to at least see rashes of people vote with their feet – walk, jog, ride bikes, ride mass transit, trade in their Hummers for Prius’, sell their Escalades and buy Smartcars. Supply and demand cuts both ways, if enough people stopped buying so much gas the price would start to drop.

So please, fight fire with fire, or demonstrate in a non-violent fashion…just don’t encourage a future where the wealthy drive cars and the rest of us can’t afford bus fare.

The Father’s Day Conundrum – Baby Daddy Blues

For me, it’s an old riff on an older rift. My ‘pops’ did the dodge-and-ditch move early. Remarried, to a child bride, who he’s always treated better than my mother or myself. He abused my mom verbally and physically. Thankfully I only caught the verbal personally. I had a school friend whose father raped and sexually abused her until she left home, so by comparison my father wasn’t so bad.

Properly traumatized and with little supervision, I was pregnant at 13 just in time for my first pelvic exam. Forced into abortion, I said goodbye to my first son, and coincedentally to the boy who would have been my first baby daddy. Hardheaded Aries that I am, I repeated this process twice in my early 20s.

Don’t get it twisted, I never had low self-esteem, I was never looking for a father figure in my male companions. Surprisingly, I eventually found Fathers. My first love came to live with me years after we broke up, and brought his son with him. I loved him and his boy like family.

As the years passed I watched my friends, homies, cousins and lovers grow and develop as they started their own families. Some of them kept it tight, some have gnarly babymamas, some are cool with being two-household parents…one even got married! Sadly most are single dads. But through love, friendship, babysitting, nannying and sometimes damn-near stepmothering; I learned what fatherhood is all about.

To the beautiful Fathers who have blessed me with the joy of their seeds, and to all whose children I’ve fed, I love you eternally if you never give me a biological child. I live and breathe to energize our universal family.

For the real fathers out there who love, respect and care for the youth – blood or by bond – I salute you. Every day is your day.

And to the janky, nasty, gnarly, no-count, mean-spirited, lying, broke-down, ruthless, trifleing babydaddies out there – you know who you are – don’t let the door hit you on the way out to the boulevard of broken promises. And oh yeah, happy father’s day, motherfuckers.

Script. Flipped.

Greetings.

In my 20s I began publishing How Did We Get From the Pyramids to the Projects – my perspectives on life, love, loss and Hip Hop as viewed through blackout shades, tinted windows, and the bullshit stacked eyeball-high.

After a hiatus spent detoxing from the music biz, I’ve done a lot of purification rites, mental gymnastics and deep-soul searching to return to you (the open-minded reader) with the other side of the game.

Some answers.

While not quite omniscient, I often channel beings who are. Even on my worst day, I hold the keys to many sciences. So do you, so please don’t hesitate to add on.

It is only together, as a unified front, that we can transcend the ‘projects’ and return home to the Pyramids.