{"id":627,"date":"2007-03-15T17:07:04","date_gmt":"2007-03-15T07:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=627"},"modified":"2007-03-15T17:07:04","modified_gmt":"2007-03-15T07:07:04","slug":"ck-fdb-lkj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=627","title":{"rendered":"CK, FDB! &#038; LKJ"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>&#8220;As I suspected. Student Trots who are either too young or or too dumb to know <a href=\"http:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=117\">where the road to the gulag starts<\/a> giving free publicity to <a href=\"http:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?page_id=206\">scumbags<\/a>. You <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apa.org\/monitor\/oct04\/prejudice.html\">poor, thick kids<\/a>.&#8221; ~ <a href=\"http:\/\/paulwatson.blogspot.com\/2004\/07\/hillary-bray-outed-finally-age-journo.html\">Christian Kerr<\/a> on <strong>FDB!<\/strong>, March 15, 2007<\/ul>\n<p>As Beavis might say: <em>Christian you dumbass<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Linton Kwesi Johnson<\/strong><br \/>\nElizabeth DiNovella<br \/>\n<em>The Progressive<\/em><br \/>\nFebruary 2007<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Lyricist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lkjrecords.com\/lkj.html\">Linton Kwesi Johnson<\/a> was born in Jamaica but has [along with <em><a href=\"http:\/\/books.guardian.co.uk\/poetry\/features\/0,12887,1094009,00.html\">Benjamin Zephaniah<\/a><\/em>, perhaps] become Britain\u2019s most celebrated <a href=\"http:\/\/www.londonlibraries.org\/servlets\/llr\/bpi\">black poet<\/a>. He immigrated to England as a child, part of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.movinghere.org.uk\/galleries\/histories\/caribbean\/settling\/settling.htm\">the succeeding waves of West Indians who arrived in the UK<\/a> in the last several decades. \u201cMy generation is the second generation,\u201d he says. \u201cI call us the Rebel Generation.\u201d This generation would not put up with the racial abuse its parents did. \u201cThrough our rebellion, we helped change Britain,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>As a teenager in 1970, he joined the British Black Panthers and by the 1980s was a journalist and editor of the journal <em>Race Today<\/em>. He\u2019s also reported for BBC and Channel 4.<\/p>\n<p>As a young man growing up in south London, Johnson saw many people his age criminalized under what was known in the neighborhood as \u201csus law.\u201d The police had resurrected a Victorian era law against vagrancy that had languished on the books. \u201cSus being short for suspicion,\u201d Johnson explains, noting that the common charge was \u201cattempt to steal from persons unknown.\u201d His poem \u201cSonny\u2019s Lettah (anti-sus poem)\u201d is about a young man writing to his mother from Brixton prison, telling her his little brother got arrested, as did he&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.channel4.com\/history\/microsites\/U\/untold\/programs\/riot\/timeline.html\">1981<\/a> is perhaps most significant of black experience in Britain,\u201d says LKJ, alluding to <a href=\"http:\/\/transpont.blogspot.com\/2007\/01\/new-cross-fire.html\">the New Cross Fire<\/a> where thirteen blacks died. No one was ever convicted, but racial tensions in the neighborhood led many blacks to believe it was a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nizkor.org\/ftp.cgi\/places\/germany\/ftp.py?places\/germany\/\/ap.121093\">firebombing<\/a>. LKJ wrote \u201cNew Crass Massakah\u201d as a protest.<\/p>\n<p><em>wi did know seh it coulda happn<br \/>\nyu know\u2014anytime, anywhe<br \/>\n. . .<br \/>\nit coulda be mi<br \/>\nit couda be yu<br \/>\n. . .<br \/>\nwho fell victim to di terrah by nite<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In April that same year, police began \u201cOperation Swamp 81,\u201d and harassed the black community. \u201cIt was the last straw,\u201d says LKJ. \u201cThere was a riot, and it spread.\u201d He wrote \u201cDi Great Insohreckshan\u201d about it.<\/p>\n<p>LKJ has released a dozen albums. He married verse and reggae music into a new form known as dub. He recorded several albums on the Island label, including <em>Forces of Victory<\/em>, <em>Bass Culture<\/em>, <em>LKJ in Dub<\/em>, and <em>Making History<\/em>. In the mid-1980s, he established his own music label [<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lkjrecords.com\/\">LKJ Records<\/a><\/strong>].<\/p>\n<p>In 2002, Johnson became the first black poet to have his work published in England by Penguin Classics. He has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lkjrecords.com\/bib.html\">authored<\/a> four collections of poetry. <em>Mi Revalueshanary Fren<\/em>, Penguin\u2019s compilation of selected poems from the 1970s-1990s, was just published in the United States&#8230; [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.progressive.org\/mag_intv0207\">More<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>di innocent an di fool could paas fi twin<br \/>\nbut haas a haas<br \/>\nan mule a mule<br \/>\nmawgah mean mawgah<br \/>\nit noh mean slim<br \/>\nyet di two a dem in common share someting<br \/>\ndem is awftin confused an get used<br \/>\ndem is awftin criticised an campramised<br \/>\ndem is awftin villified an reviled<br \/>\ndem is awftin foun guilty widout being tried<br \/>\nwan ting set di two a dem far apawt dow<br \/>\ndi innocent wi habah dout<br \/>\ncheck tings out<br \/>\nan maybe fine out<br \/>\nbut di <a href=\"http:\/\/www.crikey.com.au\/About\/The-Crikey-Crew.html\">fool<\/a>&#8230;&#8230; cho!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&#8212; &#8216;Sense Outa Nansense&#8217;, <em>Tings An&#8217; Times<\/em>, Shanachie Records, 1991<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;As I suspected. Student Trots who are either too young or or too dumb to know where the road to the gulag starts giving free publicity to scumbags. You poor, thick kids.&#8221; ~ Christian Kerr on FDB!, March 15, 2007 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=627\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,6,11,7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-fascism","category-history","category-music","category-poetry","category-state"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6AyE-a7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}