Michael Jackson has been missing in our lives for two years now and this November a documentary entitled Michael Jackson: The Life of an Icon will be out featuring footage of him and his successful career.
The trailer for the sad documentary was released today and the beginning of the footage features the 911 call placed on the day of Jackson's death -- June 25, 2009 which is heartbreaking to watch.
Fans can also see footage of MJ with the Jackson 5, his sexual abuse trial where he was acquitted, and fans placing flowers outside Jackson's home after his death. The full documentary will have interviews from the late pop star's mother, Katherine, brother Tito; sister Rebbie; fellow recording artists Smokey Jackson and Whitney Houston.
The most heartbreaking moment of the trailer is when Michael's mother, Katherine, speaks out about her child's death and makes this powerful statement, "Children are supposed to bury their parents, not parents burying children."
Music fans wanting to pay tribute to Michael Jackson can purchase the DVD when it's released November 1st.
The American South could hardly have been more on edge about its "peculiar institution" in the fall of 1831. In August, Nat Turner, a slave who had learned to read and was fired with a sense of divine mission, led several dozen slaves and free blacks from house to house in Virginia's Southampton County, liberating slaves and killing whites along the way. William Styron, who told the story in his novel "The Confessions of Nat Turner," called this "the only effective, sustained revolt in the annals of American Negro slavery." Reprisals across the South were severe. Militias and lynching parties set out to quash phantom slave rebellions, and state legislatures enacted laws forbidding blacks—free or enslaved—from being taught to read or write.
Amid these unpromising circumstances, members of the American Colonization Society—a group that encouraged owners to free their slaves and organized former slaves to colonize what is today Liberia—asked North Carolina slave Omar Ibn Said to write his autobiography. A literate man of West African extraction who had converted from Islam to Christianity, Ibn Said (ca. 1770–1863) created what today is the only extant example of an American slave narrative written in Arabic. His brief work, under the title "A Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said," is now published in a new translation by Yale professor Ala Alryyes, who supplements it with scholarly commentary.
Ibn Said's "Life" is not a customary slave narrative and does not follow the prototypical themes—the search for literacy and freedom—made famous by the autobiographies of escaped slaves, including Frederick Douglass. Then again, the manuscript, unlike most slave narratives, was not published to inspire the Northern abolitionist movement. The intended audience was Southern slave owners. Members of the colonization movement hoped to influence planters to free their slaves by showcasing the intellectual talents of men like Ibn Said. (Even if a work in Arabic would find only a tiny audience in America in the 1830s, news of its existence traveled far.) Accordingly, Ibn Said's tone is deferential: He pays tribute repeatedly to the benevolence of his owner and his owner's family and thanks them for introducing him to the Bible.
A Muslim American Slave
Edited by Ala Alryyes Wisconsin, 222 pages, $19.95
Not that he pretends that all was well from the moment of his enslavement. During tribal warfare in his homeland, Ibn Said says, he was captured and marched to the African coast, where he was sold "into the hand of a Christian man who bought me and walked me to the big Ship in the big Sea." A voyage of a month and a half, Ibn Said writes, brought the ship to "a place called Charleston. And in a Christian language, they sold me. A weak, small, evil man called Johnson, an infidel who did not fear Allah at all, bought me." In his compact narrative, Ibn Said sketches how he escaped from Johnson, was jailed for 16 days and eventually came into the possession of Gen. James Owen, the brother of North Carolina's governor, John Owen. "They are good men," Ibn Said writes, "for whatever they eat, I eat; and whatever they wear they give me to wear."
Ibn Said's tale, with its sunny portrait of ownership by a kind master, might be viewed skeptically by a modern reader. Yet the very fact that Ibn Said was writing in Arabic, Mr. Alryyes suggests in his commentary, permitted the author to insert subtly subversive elements beneath the nose of his benefactors. Ibn Said made extensive reference to his Muslim heritage, even as he reached for points of commonality between Christianity and Islam to express his faith.
Certain meanings and implications would have only been clear to Muslims. For instance, Ibn Said begins his text with a full recitation of the Quran's 67th sura, or chapter, titled al-Mulk ("Dominion"), which discusses God's absolute ownership of the universe. For a Muslim slave, Sura al-Mulk would probably have had an incendiary meaning: It tacitly rebukes slave owners by stressing mankind's common subservience to God and promising damnation for those who "persist in arrogance." With the inclusion of the sura, Mr. Alryyes notes, "Omar seems to refute the right of his owners over him."
Ibn Said's sly hand with Scripture is suggested in other places as well. Mr. Alryyes argues that Ibn Said had little trouble thinking of himself as both Christian and Muslim. In a compelling example of this harmonizing of faiths, Ibn Said writes out, side by side, two classics from each religion's liturgy: the first brief chapter of the Quran (Sura al-Fatiha, commonly used as a prayer) and the Lord's Prayer. Placed next to each other, they show striking similarities.
One reason that this new translation and commentary are needed, Mr. Alryyes suggests, is that earlier commentators on the work, even in the 20th century, failed to adequately understand Ibn Said's use of holy texts. In 1925 J. Franklin Jameson, founder of the American Historical Association, wrote the introduction to a translation but seemed oblivious to the significance of Ibn Said's inclusion of Quranic verse. "The earlier pages of the manuscript," Jameson wrote, "are occupied with quotations from the Quran which Omar remembered, and these might be omitted as not autobiographical."
In "A Muslim American Slave," Mr. Alryyes's excellent commentary is accompanied by other scholarly essays that examine Ibn Said's story. Among the best are Sylviane Diouf's study of Islam's rise in Ibn Said's West African homeland and Michael Gomez's history of the antebellum influx of Muslim slaves to the United States. The reader gleans a sense not only of Omar Ibn Said but also of the historical forces that shaped him.
Ibn Said's unusual cultural voyage would continue after he wrote his autobiography. The Arabic-writing slave became something of a celebrity in North Carolina, known widely as "Uncle Moro." Notwithstanding the American Colonization Society's interest in him, Ibn Said never returned to Africa. He was still enslaved when he died in 1863, just a year shy of the liberation that would have come with Gen. Sherman's march.
Mr. Dameron is a Robert L. Bartley Fellow at the Journal.
THE RAPE OF THE SAMBURU WOMENFor more than fifty years, England has maintained military training facilities in the Samburu region of its former colony, Kenya. During this period, women in the area have faced an epidemic of rape. Women from the Samburu, Massai, Rendile and Turkana indigenous communities have filed more than 600 official rape claims against British soldiers. Yet, despite documentation of their claims, a three-year internal investigation by the Royal Military Police (RMP) cleared all soldiers of wrongdoing. Meanwhile, the victims have been shamed and outcast in their communities, many to the point of exile. In the mid-1990s, Beatrice Chili responded to this situation by establishing the village of Senchen, a self-sufficient community run entirely by women. There, women build homes, weave textiles, gather and grow food, and raise children. This short film visits the brave women of Senchen, who speak candidly about their suffering and talk passionately about their demands for justice. Watch the film to hear their stories and to find out how you can offer your support.
Law Student Robert Stephens, in an act of civil disobedience in front of the bank that took his parents' home, tells the story of their eviction and his refusal to be silent. In the process, journalist Marisa Holmes was arrested for peacefully filming.
My boyfriend Frank and I are heading toward Liberty Square to check out what’s going on at the Occupy Wall Street protest, when we stumble upon the afternoon march toward Union Square. So we join up and walk along behind. The crowd looks like maybe 300 people, mostly punk-styled kids and folks carrying their computers (for live streaming, we found out later) and some aging-hippie types. People are beating drums, blowing whistles, carrying signs, and chanting: “Banks got bailed out, you got sold out!” and “We are the 99 percent!” and “All day, all week, occupy Wall Street!” and of course the classic “This is what democracy looks like!”
All in all, it starts out as a pretty good time. There are police, but for the most part they are walking behind the group casually, just beat cops bantering and laughing, keeping an eye on things. There are around 30 of them. We reach Union Square, circle it a couple times, and join the human microphone. The human microphone consists of one person speaking or shouting, and then everyone within earshot repeating, thus, a human amplifier, albeit with some delay. After about fifteen minutes, we are on the move again, the crowd spurred toward the United Nations by the messages transmitted from the human microphone.
As we circle Union Square, about twenty NYPD officers haul out orange plastic nets (the kind used to fence off construction sites) and close off the road, diverting the crowd. But the detour, too, is closed, leaving us only one option: straight down Broadway. The lighthearted carnival air begins to get very heavy as it becomes clear that we are being corralled. The main group, about 150 protesters, keeps on down the street, but the police are running behind with the orange nets, siphoning off groups of fifteen to twenty people at a time, classic crowd control.
A new group of police officers arrives in white shirts, as opposed to dark blue. These guys are completely undiscerning in their aggression. If someone gets in their way, they shove them headfirst into the nearest parked car, at which point the officers are immediately surrounded by camera phones and shouts of “Shame! Shame!”
Up until this point, Frank and I have managed to stay ahead of the nets, but as we hit what I think is 12th Street, they’ve caught up. The blue-shirts aren’t being too forceful, so we manage to run free, but stay behind to see what happens. Then things go nuts.
The white-shirted cops are shouting at us to get off the street as they corral us onto the sidewalk. One African American man gets on the curb but refuses to be pushed up against the wall of the building; they throw him into the street, and five cops tackle him. As he’s being cuffed, a white kid with a video camera asks him “What’s your name?! What’s your name?!” One of the blue-shirted cops thinks he’s too close and gives him a little shove. A white-shirt sees this, grabs the kid and without hesitation billy-clubs him in the stomach.
One of the blue-shirts, tall and bald, stares in disbelief and says, ‘I can’t believe he just fuckin’ maced her.’
At this point, the crowd of twenty or so caught in the orange fence is shouting “Shame! Shame! Who are you protecting?! YOU are the 99 percent! You’re fighting your own people!” A white-shirt, now known to be NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, comes from the left, walks straight up to the three young girls at the front of the crowd, and pepper-sprays them in the face for a few seconds, continuing as they scream “No! Why are you doing that?!” The rest of us in the crowd turn away from the spray, but it’s unavoidable. My left eye burns and goes blind and tears start streaming down my face. Frank grabs my arm and shoves us through the small gap between the orange fence and the brick wall while everyone stares in shock and horror at the two girls on the ground and two more doubled over screaming as their eyes ooze. In the street I shout for water to rinse my eyes or give to the girls on the ground, but no one responds. One of the blue-shirts, tall and bald, stares in disbelief and says, “I can’t believe he just fuckin’ maced her.” And it becomes clear that the white-shirts are a different species. We need to get out of there.
The other end of the street is also closed off, and we are trapped on this one block along with about twenty frustrated pedestrians. My eye is killing me and I’m crying, partially from the pain and partially from the shock of the violence displayed by these police. A shirtless young “medic” with ripped cargo shorts, matted brown hair, and two plastic bottles slung around his neck runs up to me and says, “Did you get pepper sprayed? Okay here, tilt your head to the side, this isn’t going to feel great,” at which point he squirts one of the plastic bottles of white liquid into my left eye, then tilts my head the other way and does the other eye, then repeats with water. Then he unties the white bandanna from his wrist and wipes my eyes with it saying, “You’ll be okay, this is my grandfather’s bandanna, he got through Korea with it, and if he got through that, then you’re going to get through this. Just keep blinking.” Thanks to the treatment—liquid antacid, pepper-spray antidote—the burning behind my eyes subsides.
A woman with two little girls in tow walks up to a cop at the end of the block and explains that they just need to get to ballet, but he won’t let them through. The woman seems to accept this, turns to the girls, thinks for a second, then marches straight to the edge of the fence at the corner of the building. A different officer sees them coming and, understanding their situation, lets them through. So Frank and I bolt for the same opening and escape.
The farther away we get, the more normal everyone starts to look. People have no clue about what’s happening just five or six blocks down. Frank and I say maybe two words to each other the whole five-hour bus ride home.
Just for the record, I love cops. I do, my mother worked in the justice system for 30 years, and I’ve known a lot of really good cops, really good honorable people just doing their jobs. I’ve never agreed with the sentiment, “Fuck the Po-lice,” and I still don’t. But these guys arefucked up. There was an anger in those white-shirt’s eyes that said, “You don’t matter.” And whether they were just scared or irrational or looking for a target for their rage, there was no excuse for their abuse of authority. I had always thought that people who complained about police brutality must have done something to provoke it, that surely cops wouldn’t hurt people without a really good reason. But they do. We were on the curb, we were contained, we were unarmed. Pepper spray hurts like hell, and the experience only makes me wish I’d done something more to deserve it.
In tonight's Rewrite, Lawrence told you we would give you access to the full clips of this weekend's clash between police officers and Wall Street protesters. The full versions of the clips we showed you tonight are below — but a warning... there is some graphic language used in these videos that you did not hear on our broadcast.
The state of Georgia shocked the world when it took Troy Davis’ life last Wednesday. But in the wake of that outrage, the movement to end the death penalty has only grown in numbers and energy.
We have heard innumerable stories of consciousness raising and transformation. People did not go home from the various protests despondent. Like us, they have committed to not forgetting what happened and are emboldened, redoubling efforts to end the callous system that has demonstrated it has no business taking human life.
On Saturday, October 1, join us for a Day of Remembrance.
Join us in Savannah for Troy Davis’ funeral. The service is open to the public, but media cameras will not be permitted:
October 1, 11am “Celebration of Life Service” Jonesville Baptist Church 5201 Montgomery St., Savannah, Georgia
For those of you who cannot make it to Savannah, please wear an “I am Troy Davis” t-shirt or black armband with “Not in my name” written on it and change your Facebook profile picture to this image:
Those wishing to send cards or donations to the Davis family: “I am Troy Davis,” P.O. Box 2105, Savannah, GA 31407
Contributions to the Davis children’s college savings accounts can be made payable to Martina Correia, put “college fund” in the memo.
Flowers and plants can be sent to: Sidney A. Jones and Campbell Funeral Services 124 West Park Avenue, Savannah, GA 31401-6439 (912) 234-7226
Browsing our archive, I found very little kwaito tunes. Our bad. Some of them are irresistible, like this one by Spikiri and friends. About the videos we can be short: we’re still waiting for the first one that doesn’t feature a DJ, sizzling meat, bling, cars or house parties. It often also works, less so this time. But that beat…
The Pulitzer Center seeks applications from African journalists to participate in a collaborative reporting project on reproductive health in Africa.
Based on a model developed to cover water and sanitation in West Africa, this collaboration will partner four African journalists and one journalist with strong ties to leading international news organizations (currently under recruitment) who will serve as project leader. Together they will produce a body of reporting focused on reproductive health that will be distributed in African and international outlets.
Background: Reproductive health is at the core of social, economic and human development—now more than ever as the global population reaches 7 billion. High population growth is one of the most important factors contributing to economic, environmental, social, and political strain. According to the World Health Organization, more than 200 million women lack access to effective contraceptives, and fertility rates for most of Africa are double the rate of the world as a whole. Each year in sub-Saharan Africa there are 14 million unintended pregnancies, posing major health risks to women and their children, including death from complications during childbirth. Men have crucial roles and responsibilities due to their decision-making powers in reproductive health matters.
This collaboration will improve the quality of the reporting on reproductive health and bring the voices of African journalists working to communicate the systemic crises affecting their countries to an international audience.
Grant Description: The selected journalists and Pulitzer Center staff will travel to Dakar, Senegal to attend the International Conference on Family Planning (Nov. 28-Dec. 3, 2011). There they will attend conference sessions and press briefings, refine the reporting plan for their individual projects and participate in a multimedia training workshop led by the lead journalist and Pulitzer Center staff.
In January/February 2012 the lead journalist and Pulitzer Center staff will travel to report alongside the African journalists in their respective countries. Individual projects will contribute to a collection of reports from the region to be published in the journalists' outlets and in US-based and international news media. Additionally, the work will be featured on a special Pulitzer Center web platform.
All expenses at the conference and during reporting in Africa will be covered by the Pulitzer Center.
Eligibility: These grants are open to English-speaking African journalists, writers, photographers, radio producers or television news producers; staff journalists as well as freelancers who live and work in the region and seek to report from their home country on reproductive health. Applicants should be able to demonstrate experience reporting on reproductive health issues. Women are especially encouraged to apply, as are journalists with expertise in a variety of media.
Deadline: 11:59 pm GMT -4, October 14, 2011. Selected journalists will be announced within two weeks of the application period closing.
How to Apply: Applications should be submitted to health [at] pulitzercenter.org with “First and Last Name – Country – Africa Population” in the subject line. Questions should be directed to Jake Naughton at the above address. Applications must be received in English.
Applications should include the following:
A 250-word statement of interest with plans for reporting on water and sanitation in your country (in the text of the email)
A brief description of your knowledge of or experience reporting on issues of reproductive health (in the text of the email)
A brief description of experience with video, photography, radio and web media (in the text of the email); experience in these media is not a requirement for the grant
Two references with contact information with 1-2 sentences describing how each knows you (in the text of the email)
A letter from your editor or supervisor that gives permission to participate in the Family Planning Conference (November 28 – December 3, 2011) in Dakar, Senegal and to travel with the lead journalist for one week in January/February 2012, and that signals a strong commitment to publish or broadcast your work on the topic (as attachment)
Three examples of recent reporting (as links or attachments)
1. UK residents can enter the competition either by post or online.
2. Non-UK residents can enter the competition online.
3. Non-UK residents are also welcome to enter the competition by post provided that the entry fee can be paid with a pounds sterling (UK) cheque.
4. Entry fee: (a) Non-subscribers: The entry fee is £3 if you do not require a critique, £6 if you require a tick-sheet critique, £15 if you require a tick-sheet critique and a proof edit. (b) Subscribers: There is no entry fee for your first story, after which each entry is £3 per story. For all entries, each story is an additional £3 if you require a tick-sheet critique, or an additional £12 if you require a tick-sheet critique and a proof edit. Your name and address details must match your subscription details otherwise your free entry will be disqualified.
5. Each entry must be no longer than 5000 words.
6. Each entry must be the original, unpublished work of the stated author. Full copyright is retained by the author.
7. For postal entries, stories must be typed or printed legibly, and the author's name and the title of the story must be printed at the top of each page.
8. Postal entries must be sent, with adequate postage attached, to: Dark Tales Short Story Competition, 7 Offley Street, Worcester WR3 8BH, UK.
Cheques or postal orders payable to Dark Tales.
9. The current deadline for receipt of stories is 30th September 2011.
10. Stories cannot be returned so please do not send original manuscripts.
11. Entries will be judged by Sean Jeffery and one other judge, whose decision is final, and no correspondence will be entered into.
12. The winner will receive £500, the runner-up £250 and third-placed £100, plus publication in Dark Tales. All other shortlisted and published entrants will receive £5. Each published entrant will be notified within approximately 60 days of the closing date. Critiques will be sent out as soon as possible afterwards.
13. All published entrants will receive one free copy of the issue of Dark Tales their story is published in.
14. Postal entries: Entries must be accompanied by the correct payment. An entry form can be used but is not compulsory.
15. Online entries: After making your payment via PayPal upload your story using the online form that should appear or email your story to stories@darktales.co.uk - preferably as a Word document - ensuring that the Subject for the email is Dark Tales Contest Entry. If you have subscribed and do not need a critique please email your free entry quoting your subscriber name and address. All other stories can be uploaded or emailed. Go here for a printable entry form if you would like to enter by post, or click below:
If you would like to enter securely online, pay for your entry using the button below and then email it to stories@darktales.co.uk or use the online form to upload it.
Select whether you require a tick-sheet critique and press the button. If you like, subscribe at the same time and enter for free:
This October, O, The Oprah Magazine (Twitter: @OMagazineSA) will contribute to the revival of the short-story genre by offering one aspirant writer the chance to see their work published in the February 2012 issue of O magazine and, in the selection process, have their writing read by esteemed local and international authors.
In what can only be described as a coup for the magazine, literary greats Dr. Maya Angelou (Pulitzer Prize nominee and author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings) and Alexander McCall Smith (author of the prolific The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series) have come on board to choose the winner of O’s inaugural short-story competition. Dr. Angelou, whom Oprah calls her mentor-mother-sister-friend, is one of the greatest voices in contemporary literature. She has been awarded more than 30 honorary degrees. McCall Smith, a Scotland-based former professor of medical law, has written more than 50 books, including children’s books, short-story collections and five series. The most recent novel in his popular No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party, was published earlier this year.
South African author and scriptwriter Lauren Beukes, 2011 winner of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke award for best science-fiction novel for Zoo City (Twitter: @laurenbeukes), and writer and columnist Ndumiso Ngcobo (Twitter: @NdumisoNgcobo) will represent the South African perspective. The multi-talented Ngcobo is a Sunday Times columnist, screenwriter, satirist and presenter on KZN’s East Coast Radio. The former high-school maths and science teacher is also the author of two essay collections, Some of My Best Friends Are White and Is It Coz I’m Black?
“Short stories are a great way for writers to hone their storytelling. It's wonderful to be involved with a competition that recognises new writers and how damnably tricky it is to write a compelling tale with a limited word count,” says Lauren Beukes. The Cape Town-based columnist is also the author of Moxyland.
The short-story genre is currently enjoying a resurrection, with events such as Short Story Day South, held in June this year, set to become an annual fixture on the local literary calendar.
“I believe each one of us has a story to tell, and I cannot wait to see what talent we are going to unearth. I sincerely hope we will draw out all ‘closet writers’ who feel they have a story within them. And the opportunity to have your work read by such an esteemed judging panel doesn’t come along every day, so this is one of those seize-the-day moments,” says Samantha Page, the editor of O.
Competition details are available in the October issue of O, which goes on sale on Monday, 19 September 2011. For more details, also visit www.oprahmag.co.za
More About the Competition
O’s first-ever short-story contest is designed to provide a platform for budding writers. Even though there will only be one ultimate winner, we’re encouraging aspirant authors to believe in themselves and try their hand at writing an inspired short story. If you think you can write, go on and enter. The prize? A published piece that will forever have your byline.
O will accept contributions from Wednesday, 14 September 2011, until 5 P.M. on Friday, 14 October 2011. The O magazine team will send a short list of stories to our esteemed judges, who will select the final winner. The winning short story will feature in the February 2012 issue, on sale from 16 January 2012.