Look at this nice dark-skinned food. Fair and Lovely can’t touch this!
In recent weeks I’ve been making a lot of nori rolls for dinner for my evening savory dish in the latter part of a week. The sauce base is like six tomatoes, an onion, a bell pepper, ginger, celery, and sometimes fresh basil or cilantro, all blended. The “meat” that goes into each roll is a handful of shredded or julienne-sliced zucchini (where rice would be in a cooked California roll), and then a stick or two of asparagus, a slice of bell pepper and a few slices of tomato (make sure the bell pepper and tomato filling is sliced slenderly lengthwise so it fits nicely in the roll). But it can be done however with whatever – there are plenty of other tasty veggies under the sun.
You take a sheet of raw untoasted nori paper (I order these online in bulk so it’s affordable), slap it on the bamboo nori roller, dap a big spoonful or two of the sauce and spread it around the bottom two thirds of the sheet, put the zucchini down on the bottom third and the other veggies on the middle third, and then cover the naked top third of the nori paper with more sauce (and throw some sauce atop the zucchini) and roll it up quickly before the paper wilts and deforms as it hydrates. Don’t over-fill each individual roll or it will be too fat and won’t close up nicely and securely. I make like fifteen or more of these at a time, because I’m a hungry man and I eats ’til satisfaction (that’s out of the shreddings of four to six good-sized zucchinis). I don’t bother slicing the rolls up into little sushi-like buns or sections. I prefer to eat them burrito-style, plus why go through all that extra time and trouble getting fancy when I already done spent all that time with all the other dang steps?
So that’s a zucchini-based raw nori roll done the Precision Afrikan way, handled and eaten burrito-style, long-wise. Some good savory nice filling nutritious food for the low fat raw vegans out there that be hungry.
Finally, all praises and respect due to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I leave it to the ancestor Charles Mingus and his jazz to contemplate the ongoing struggle.
Today’s broadcast of Al Jazeera’s The Stream was pretty insightful on a number of fronts. The Congolese journalist and analyst Mvemba Dizolele was brilliantly on point each time he spoke – his point being that a law against conflict minerals passed in Washington won’t do jack for the Congo and its ongoing conflict, rooted in vicious neocolonialism which impact the whole of the Congo (and all of Africa), and not just Eastern Congo and its militia-controlled mines and mass rapes. The broad and insidious roots must be addressed primarily, he asserted. He kept it so real and talked about actual Congolese, the actual experience around the Congo, and the kind of ironic attention and money a Western-led cause brings to certain of these conflicts of Africa. But I really love how he remarks repeatedly that you can’t pretend to solve the problems of all of Congo, or of even Eastern Congo, by having Western activists press for narrowly defined laws and responsibility among Western corporations as if that will save the Congo. But so much of this goes without considering the input, experiences, priorities and insights of the people of the Congo. This Western liberal style wants to deal with gory or salacious particulars and symptoms of the problem upon which to build glamorous and grossly simplified campaigns, such as around the widely known war on women and blood mining in the Kivus. This shows that many of these Western activists are not listening, are paternalistic, and are too timid to address systemic issues which are the cause of much ongoing conflict, exploitation and progresslessness in Africa.
Sasha Lezhnev of the Enough Project insists that to go into the broader reasons for the conflict won’t work. Won’t work for whom? For the mostly privileged white activists in Manhattan or on K Street who need to dumb down their agenda as much as possible so the mindless, wholly bought politicians in Congress or at the UN can understand them? Neither DC nor the UN can legislate any viable solutions for Africa. Africa and Africans are the only people who can push the African revolution forward and save and develop Africa. Africans have fates bound to what actually happens in Africa, in conflict areas or elsewhere. Africans are the ones to be heard for and to enact solutions. We Africans definitely know what’s going on and have thought about and struggled around these contradictions for a long-ass time.
It seems throughout this debate that Mr. Lezhnev is barely listening to Mr. Dizolele and his impassioned articulations of how a conflict minerals embargo is both ultimately useless and reflective of somewhat misplaced energies. What makes this clear is that Mr. Lezhnev frequently refers to vague statements from UN reports about some sort of progress for the new legislation that have moved former miners to other economic sectors. A lot of this evidence seems weak and contrived given the realities Mr. Dizolele refers to about what’s going on at the ground level with people he is connected to as a Congolese.
It is the system that is not working! The system of global parasitic capitalism, neocolonialism, patriarchy, and vicious historical exploitation which have built mayhem and corruption into the DNA of post-colonial societies the world over! The system of deep regional disintegration and woeful underdevelopment toward the benefit of multinational access to cheap minerals, timber, and even arable land that should benefit the Congolese but does not! So-called legit minerals, with the current system left in tact, would hardly lead to much better outcomes for Congolese than whatever prevails today.
It’s not about a single issue! To focus on it as a single issue, I feel, and seems to be true for Mr. Lezhnev and a lot of people like him, is to both attempt at very simplistic, aloof feel-good do-gooding, and to also be engaging in an ignorance of the fundamental histories and challenges of peoples of the third world and people of color while trying to solve their problems as a white liberal. I think this is symptomatic of the tragic white liberal syndrome. Not listening, not having genuine relationships, assuming leadership when it wasn’t asked and isn’t effective, assuming strange powers to solve fundamental problems without even questioning the fundaments of a problem. Especially when you yourself are part of the fundaments of a problem.
It makes no sense to me to assert that it’s more effective to address one single symptom of a failed system (i.e. conflict minerals, blood diamonds, etc.), than to address the political root causes of the system and its failings. It seems to be that you are a much more effective critical thinker when you are able to interrogate and articulate the roots of a systemic problem that manifests in various bloody ways. The disintegration of Congolese society is rooted most deeply in Leopold’s brutal occupation of the country, followed by formal Belgian colonization, the defeat of African liberation represented by the assassination of Lumumba, and war after war in which the West by their African proxies in Rwanda and Uganda greatly benefitted from access to minerals and other commodities amidst the mayhem, not to mention countless oppressive and greedy Africans. Congolese know this. It’s not very different in Nigeria or Haiti. You have to be cognizant of the legacies of domination and their justifications to contemplate why and how they cause symptoms of chaos.
It can only be dishonest to do otherwise, to focus on a single issue. Of course we might struggle in particular against something, but we must acknowledge as dishonest and ignorant any attempt to assert that to struggle against the systemic historical and socio-political roots of the problem is too difficult or counterproductive. In fact, to dismiss the primacy of struggling against whole systems of oppression is downright counterrevolutionary. Hanging on to symptoms only is a sign of intellectual bankruptcy and even collusion with the corrupt system.
I detest conflict minerals and the war on women in the Congo. But the answer to those things is not a law in DC or white liberals campaigning about one single issue as if in a vacuum. That’s the problem – posing the entire challenge as “rape in the Congo” or “conflict minerals in the Congo.” It causes some to ignore the roots and broader manifestations of the crisis. People are dying in the Congo, across the whole of the territory, and while it is crucial to highlight some of these glaring symptoms, ignoring the neocolonial system and its super-exploitation and underdevelopment is ridiculous. A Western law against conflict minerals, as Mr. Dizolele notes, only leads to more smuggling, different but equally brutal manifestations of exploitation and war, and so on.
It’s better to study the ideas and examples of, and participate directly in the struggles of, the revolutionaries and activists in Congo and from Congo, who understand things systemically and whose fate depends directly on deeply understanding the problems rather than only attacking symptoms. Take the lead of Congolese and African strugglers. Listen to them and share their fate. This is more effective than peripheral laws somewhere far away that sidestep the issue and demonstrate paternalistic, ineffective and willful ignorance of failed social systems that some of these white liberals seem content only finding politically-palatable bandaids for.
Shout out to the awesome sista Latoya Peterson for helping host the show – excellent work!
I think 30-day vegan diets, 28-day raw cleanses, 90-day workout routines, and other time-compartmentalized agendas for radical lifestyle change are atrocious. If you want to stay lean and green, plan to be vegan for the rest of your life; if you aim for fitness, plan to work out, well, forever. Raw veganism, power-lifting, calisthenics and kung-fu are among the manifestations of my commitment to health and discipline – and each one of them requires proper eating and vigorous exercise every day until I’m dead. Flat out. That’s my take on the matter. I’ve been vegan for over 12 years, almost half my life. I was a young teenager when I started and I think there were times when my moms thought it would be a passing phase, and folks casually asked when I would resume eating garbage and trashing the planet (not in such colorful language though). So if I came into any of this with the mentality or within the conveniently escapable constraint of it being a 30 or 60 or 90-day “program” or “cleanse,” I doubt I would have been so motivated and committed to remain in the game all these years later. I question why there are folks out there even promoting these sorts of programs, but I have a strong inkling as to the reasons – money and marketing.
When some fitness “expert” or health “guru” out there thinks they’ve arrived upon some new holy grail of fitness or diet, and they want to sell it to others and monetize their system, it is highly convenient to package it as a special, esoteric but fast-gratifying XX-day program of some sort. If they were to be honest and straightforward about it, they fear, people might not be interested in paying for their idea or consultancy. But this is underestimating the people. Why not be real? Tell cats that health is a life-long commitment from which there is no vacation or retreat. I’m into just freely sharing what works, what is practical, and what is sensible to the instincts of most people. I trust that people will get it, even if it somehow makes the enormity of the task that much bigger. But that’s the beauty of it – it’s a lifelong mission, an endless adventure, and it only rewards you day by day, with unparalleled health, resilience, lightness, compassion, wisdom, and so on. If you want health, do healthy things, from right now this day until your very last. Fitness and health are for life – there’s no 30-day shortcut into it, nor any vacation out of it.
It’s very basic. And if this sort of honesty is too brutal, then so be it. But if you’re gonna do P90X, as beautiful as its workouts are, ditch the “90″ part and do it forever, until well past your 90th birthday. If you want some sort of “cleansing” by becoming a raw vegan, don’t fool yourself thinking like it’s a 30-day vacation from meat, junk and drugs. Raw veganism is for long-haul truckers only. Good health is only for long-haul flight captains. Massive vitality is only for life-long and storied generals. There are no shortcuts or breaks; you just do it and don’t stop, period.
I also don’t think you can get much out of doing something new, something you want to get really into, for just a few days. It takes years to master something, and then decades to master that mastery. So start now, today, this instant. And never, ever stop. Don’t even think about it.
Veganism is forever. Physical fitness is forever. There’s no way around it. Discipline is the only way. And any vacation from healthy eating and healthy living you think you want because you crave garbage and a lazy day, just ain’t worth it. I’m not talking about periodized exercise programs – of course, there are times to slow down, particularly during the off-season when you might take a short break from the rep-max power-lifting and stick to the basics, lighten the weights, do shorter runs instead of half-marathoning every time, etc., preventing physical burn-out. But the off-season is no excuse to revisit poisonous, cruel foods, drugs, or shameless sloth – veganism continues; ample sleep and stress-minimized living are not interrupted. The off-season, a month or a few weeks’ duration in a year-long periodization program for all athletes of the sport of life, corresponds with the life-cycle of hard work followed by moderate work and taking off a load; it does not correspond with partying hard and forgetting ones principles. Even in general, you don’t lift heavy every day – alternating days you lift moderate or light, or don’t lift at all; the light or off days are not to be days of backsliding, irresponsibility and excuses. So, even the “off-season” excuse doesn’t count. Matter of fact, forget I even mentioned the “off-season.” I’ll be in-season until I stop breathing. All of life is the in-season.
When you figure on going vegan, incorporating vigorous consistent exercise into your life, and all around assuming the healthiest lifestyles there are, look at it like you’re entering the point of no return, all doors behind you locked shut for good, and don’t look back. Then you can only move forward into success after success, mastery after mastery, in the endless, joyful, glorious pursuit of unrealized human potential.
This rare video features a most uncommon creature, an African raw vegan fruitarian man, the Precision Afrikan himself, working the bars at Columbus Park in Chinatown, Manhattan, as spotted by our observant cameraman on December 28, 2011. Notice the multiple-joint muscular contractions this being is able to execute, without the assistance of meat, drugs or supplements. When asked where he acquired the protein and other nutrients necessary to crawl and walk, let alone do pull-ups, the African simply replied “fruits and greens.” Many were perplexed by that sparse declaration but he offered no other. It is ample exercise, ample sleep, ample carbs, ample discipline, ample determination, and ample willpower that permit and amplify fitness for all, including vegans, the black man suggested.
We will continue to observe this frugivorous mammal in his travels and exploits. His example may provide more ballast to the growing and increasingly irrefutable body of evidence suggesting that the plant-based, cruelty-free, abundant, vegan lifestyle is an ideal one for humans in all environments, including the urban jungle.
Being a busy grad student may have slowed down the blogging, but never interrupts the good eating, the good breathing, the good life. We’re still repping the fruitarian way, the low-fat raw vegan lifestyle, all day and forever. Gonna bring way more content down the pike going forward. Here’s to today’s breakfast – papaya, oranges, apples, grapefruit, and hella bananas not pictured – that might be more fruit-porn than most can handle. Staying fresh, clean, hydrated, active, fit, positive, in the sun (no matter the season), proper and nice. Ona move.
Discipline. NO excuses. Rhythm and movement. Motivation. Consistency. Execution only. Positivity only. Clean living. Self-affirmation. Affirmation of life.
These are among the themes of the beyond superb new album The Workout by Stic (aka stic.man) of Dead Prez. Living healthy is no easy task in this society, with both external and internal forces (the monkey mind) leading us toward negative addictions, attitudes, relationships, indulgences, negligence, and so on. But a revolution must lead with folks who comprehend how unhealthy society functions upon the mass of people, and who comprehend how the many contradictions and negative outcomes befall people governed by a system that wants to consume and exploit human beings, and get human beings to consume and destroy themselves in order to make a profit.
Thus I think The Workout, despite its primary concern with self-development, may be among the most revolutionary Dead Prez albums yet, because revolution, a radical break from a legacy of violence, death, ignorance, exploitation, anger, greed and fear, must begin with the self. And only oneself can liberate oneself – we ourselves are often our own worst enemies. It takes unyielding self-discipline, contemplation, study, exercise, and serious internal work to overcome the contradictions that we as individuals engage in that, in part, perpetuate the miserable status quo of human existence at large. Thus, to encourage diligent and profound internal work, including on our physical bodies as well as our minds, is to encourage revolutionary work, full stop.
And Stic and friends do a mighty fine job of encouragement, through superb musical hip-hop artistry and lyricism. This album surely works as great workout music, as I have listened to it during many a workout over the past few weeks. The refrain, “who am I? I am the champion!” from “Champion” buzzes through the mind while one sweats in exertion. Stic rhymes, “over my lifetime I’m tryna do a million crunches, a billion pushups and prolly throw a billion punches; it’s not the numbers, it’s all about the drive and hunger, to live strong like gorillas thrive in the jungle” in “Blood Pumpin’.” I feel really driven when hearing this line, driven to push myself hard for the rest of my life and never stop reaching mental and physical peaks and then exceeding them, going from strength to strength as I become stronger, wiser and sharper with time.
In “Back On My Regimen (Swole like Tookie),” Divine RBG says “My everyday struggle got me slacking on my fitness, I hear my inner voice saying get back to bidness, get back in the gym, get back on the bars, I can get it in anywhere, the world is my yard!” I love these bars because brother Divine reminds us that for most of us there’s little excuse to slacking, as the world is our yard, the whole of whatever tools and facilities and environments we have at hand. We must strive not to permit our everyday struggles to overwhelm us, to smother us, burn us out and steal our lives from under us. So we can do calisthenics at home; we can get it in at the park, taking walks, jogs, stretches; whatever is safest, most available, but we have to get it in no matter what and keep it up. I don’t have a gym membership; just shoes, a bunch of kettlebells, my body, and my urban environment, and I make it work, getting it in 3-5 days a week and feeling absolutely great, killing the negativity and stagnation inside me every day with sweat and torque.
I greatly appreciate the pro-sobriety messages laced throughout this piece. General Steele (of Smif-N-Wessun) declares, “Strict code of conduct, respect for my enemies; exercise mentally, physically, spiritually; no guns needed – got a panther’s agility, and I don’t need drugs to enhance my ability” (Warrior Codes). No drugs, no steroids, no human growth hormone, no easy ways out. No intoxicants, no means to blunt reality. All things worth achieving are best and most sustainably achieved by all-natural, straightforward, head-first means. It’s painful that so much of prominent rap music is about the opposite – celebrating drugs, self-destruction, ill-health, domestic violence and promiscuity, etc. the opposite of a clear-headed, simple, positive, healthy life which brings lasting well-being, not instant and fleeting gratification followed by craving and calamity.
There are so many incredible songs on this album. “Yoga Mat” reminds us of the importance of meditation and engaging in practices that help us arrive at mental clarity. Mental clarity is a rarer commodity than rare-earth minerals, rarer even than known Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars. To even seek mental clarity and sincere inner peace, peace with oneself, in this society, is to engage in extremely subversive, anti-consumerist, anti-capitalist activities. The system doesn’t mind meditation, since it doesn’t harm it directly, and meditation won’t speed revolution. But if it were the case that masses of us took up meditation (to regain our minds, assert our willpower and master our destinies) instead of smoking a cigarette, drinking alcohol, or doing other things to get high and lose our minds, the Babylon system could get mighty nervous.
The sistas make an appearance in “Baby Fat,” “one of whom (I think Ife Jie?) spits “I know a beautiful body is what a man loves, but I do it for me, I got my own standards.” While this album doesn’t exactly explode with feminism, it doesn’t push machismo and anti-women crap either. I appreciate how this woman asserts her desire for health and fitness as based on her own standards and aspirations to wellness, as opposed to being predicated on impressing men. She is allowed to define her own destiny and it needn’t be just about pleasing men; it can be about pleasing and fulfilling herself.
I could go on about other goodies on this brilliant album, like “Bruce Lee” (awesome), “Sober Soldier,” “Let it Burn,” “Runner’s High,” and so on. But to wrap up I’ll just say this is a nearly perfect example of positive culture. We need more positive culture! I need it. This is the sort of stuff I respond to deeply. This is the sort of stuff brothas and sistas ought to contemplate and actualize in order to affirm and perpetuate life rather than destroy it. Negative culture generally seeks the opposite of what our righteous brother Stic and company want to tell us. Positive culture encourages us to push the boundaries of human potential and do what we previously thought impossible, toward positive transformation of self and community. The Workout is right on that tip.
For the hardcore straight-edge vegan fitness freaks, for the revolutionaries, for those who seek health and clarity, for all of the above, this album will talk to you. Please support Stic and wise men and women like him, and cop this album ASAP.
I’ve had trouble updating this blog for a while since I realize I no longer want to discuss just plant-based diets up in here. I’ve come to admit that Afrikan liberation at large – organizing for it, articulating it, propagandizing for it – is of more consequence to me than only advocating that we black folks eat plants.
See, the thing is, as oppressed people, in so many places where we are, we don’t have access to affordable and sound whole foods and produce in the first place. It’s not affordable or accessible to those of us who pull in little income despite busting our asses the hardest, and furthermore live in “food deserts.” Our pro-corporate food systems subsidize cheap empty calories (corn-based processed food-like substances) at the expense of whole fruits and veggies, which are overpriced. So it is not easy to advocate, as one’s sole agenda, a vast black vegan renaissance, when most Afrikans will have a hard time funding it or justifying it at the expense of other concerns in the life of someone of limited means and oversized responsibilities.
I promote a more plant-based lifestyle for Afrikans as a means towards optimal health, the health-consequences of meat- and fast-food- and junk-food-heavy diets being more expensive to the individual health of Afrikan peoples and to the shared ecosystem than would occur if more humans ate more plants primarily and increasingly spared this world of animal husbandry.
But I don’t viscerally care so much what individual Afrikans are eating off the bat, don’t want to question one’s private choices, not outside of the context of recognizing that our inability to even access healthy plant-based lifestyles is due in large part to imperialism, capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, neocolonialism, etc. themselves, the first causes of overall black suffering in the contemporary world.
To my current thinking, encouraging healthier lifestyle choices in the Afrikan community must always occur with the naked fact of segregation, exploitation, geographic and economic limitations and imposed ignorance about such choices, and so on, laid bare on the table, so we don’t fall into the trap of just talking about “let’s go vegan and it will all be fine, brothas and sistas!”
I’m not so interested in talking about saving the animals in this context either. In stating this I suppose I’m toying with blatant speciesism, which I’m not supposed to do as an ardent vegan. Make no mistake about it, I’m an ethical vegan, personally. I’m not interested in oppressing non-humans. But I have a whole lot more visceral solidarity with Jamaicans, Haitians or Nigerians than with cows and turkeys and pigs. And I’m not a back to nature man, I’m not one to stand still and be non-violent in the midst of being bitten by mad mosquitos or while suffering super-massive ant-infestations in my apartment (as occurred when I lived in Accra, Ghana). I’m not even a pet owner and never will be. I’m primarily interested in talking about and resolving human suffering by any means, and in particular the suffering of Afrikans.
Comparing slave ships to the animal slaughtering industry may have it’s place, somewhere for some minds. But I’m currently more interested in discussing eating healthy for the self-interested agenda of building a healthier and stronger black race, period. Getting folks more liberated from all these chronic diseases, and using my own experience as validation and evidence, is what suits me more these days. I think discussion of the Afrikan Holocaust, the Ma’afa, is not even deep enough in the Afrikan community worldwide, not in everyday parlance. We need to think deeply about the legacy of that holocaust, and talk loudly about it because it continues in new ways today, before casually introducing notions of animal holocaust into discussion, at least in the sorts of circles I run in. We Afrikans are still being treated, and are treating each other, like animals. Thus I don’t think some non-veg Afrikans are ready to immediately express profound sympathy for non-humans.
I am critical of Afrikan cultures that hold a prestige on meat. But that won’t stop me from working with said Afrikans toward common liberatory goals in the broader areas we can and must collaborate on. I still hint at putting more fruits and veggies in the body than dead flesh, since that’s my practice, I’m always asked about it by Afrikans, and most people intuitively know it’s healthier to eat more fruits and vegetables. But it’s not a make or break issue for me interpersonally.
So I just had to share that and update the blog. My pro-human speciesism is exposed. The direction of this blog, while still hip to discussions around plant-based diets and radical ecological justice struggles, will only entertain such struggles in full acknowledgment of the fact that capitalism/imperialism/patriarchy/white supremacy are the problems, to be resolved not by one-issue campaigns built on concepts hard to relate to intimately for all but the most privileged and aloof, but by humanistic revolutionary struggle to more fully meet human needs and enable human freedom for oppressed, dispossessed peoples, led by indigenous peoples, peoples of the third world, Afrikans. As sound, well-informed minds vying for healthier communities introduce their efforts into the revolutionary mix and see results, then in the course of a blatantly human struggle – this black struggle, land justice, sustainability and the needless waste of life and resources in current regimes of consumption can be overturned as well.
But for me it has to be about black liberation in total. Humans. To be fully human.
Some wise thoughts from sister bell hooks to close 2010 with on the blog. Listen and think critically. Click through to parts 2-6 as each segment ends.
Excellent talk by this brotha. The horrendous violence, subjugation and irrationality of patriarchy, machismo, and male supremacy are immense chains not just for women, but for men like me as well. These things become invisible to men who are thoroughly institutionalized and acculturated into their proprietary, objectifying and domineering attitudes towards women, all over the world. Women are also conditioned in numerous ways to in some cases expect and/or tolerate much of this nonsense. But any thoughtful person, anyone who analyzes the situation and struggles to humanize women and men, will instantly realize that the institutions and cultures of patriarchy also enslave men, preventing them from being fully human, almost as much as they rob women of their humanity, freedom and security. Thus I fully cosign on the sentiment shared by Mr. Porter: “my liberation as a man is tied to your liberation as a woman.” Indeed. Human freedom is not freedom for men to dominate women. Human freedom begins with full equality of opportunity, possibility, security, and agency of male and female alike, worldwide. As a civilization, we have so far to go yet to realize gender equality, and Mr. Tony Porter illustrates just a tiny piece of the dilemma and the challenge. Let’s all get to work on our attitudes, institutions, behaviors, customs, and so on right away.
I wish all of the inhabitable world and all its streets were safely and comfortably navigable on foot. Even in the close-in suburb of New York City where I live, this is far from the case. It is as car-centric as American cities come. Yet I defiantly take to the streets in nothing but my old worn sneakers most of the time. I ride a bike and take the train to work/ school as well, but the vast majority of my movement around the world occurs on foot for me, and it occurs often, year round and with pleasure.
Of course around here I am a highly visible oddball for it, the only chronic African pedestrian in this Asian-American city without enough sidewalks for one man, let alone the 100,000 that live in this town. I know that on many of the routes I take, on minor sidewalk-less arterials paved too narrowly for the comfort of most through the woods and under railroads, most people would not choose to walk. It takes straight boldness to do it, since I don’t think I’m more courageous than anyone. But boldness should not be the prerequisite for living as if one’s community were built to human scale. In fact, take away the unfriendly roads and my town would appear to function at human scale – train station with express service to Manhattan, numerous produce stores, grocers, a major shopping mall, schools and more are all within 1-3 miles of my crib. If the streets were “complete streets” (sidewalks, crosswalks, traffic calming engineering, bike infrastructure and so on), it wouldn’t be only the bold that walked them regularly.
Seasons don’t change this condition of the streets and the local civilization’s transit patterns. To the die-hard pedestrian who lives standing up on his or her feet no matter what, human beings are hard to find in the streets of my town come summer or winter alike, but cars are always everywhere. I sometimes forget that human beings are even in those cars, in part because they are so rudely and aggressively operated. My conviction is that even the streets of my car-centric town are meant to move humans, whether they be on foot, on bicycles, in cars or buses. This means I don’t blink when the drivers honk at me for walking on the side of the road. At choke points where cars, cyclists and pedestrians have to share a narrow lane under a bridge, I don’t run when the motorists honk or speed by dangerously. I make them slow down like they’re supposed to. I don’t run in crosswalks either. It’s the law in New Jersey to stop “and stay stopped” as a motorist seeing pedestrians crossing streets. In fact I usually slow down to make sure the motorist knows he or she can’t intimidate me. I am always engaged in this sort of spiritual combat, testing the wills of impatient motorists and quietly thanking the ones that still have a sense of decency and humanity.
I am obviously of the opinion that automobile reliance is rather dehumanizing, both to the motorist who fails to realize that he or she is at some point also a pedestrian, and to the pedestrian who is often forced to move with trepidation and paranoia. But I do challenge myself to acknowledge and remember the humanity of drivers. It is not easy. I only wish that more motorists remembered that pedestrians are dignified humans with their own right to the safety and their few feet of breathing room on the road. We’re all human beings here.
Perhaps, until “complete streets” are unveiled everywhere, driver’s ed lessons should stress slowness. Slowness must become a virtue for prospective motorists, and motorists must be drilled and drilled with the notion that the road is for all human beings. It is not only for those operating the heavy, speeding, polluting and overly-deployed, overly-relied upon heavy machinery embodied in automobiles.
People would do well to rely more on their own bodies for transportation, simply because it’s natural. Am I living more like an ancient paleo-human just because I do this in this car-centric North-American wasteland? To admit as much would be amazingly silly – I’m just an ordinary man and far from a primitivist. But it seems like radicalism to be the hardcore pedestrian that I am. I embrace the radicalism – people always tell me they saw me walking here or there around town. But it shouldn’t be just the special eccentric character that some people take me for who walks a lot. And it shouldn’t require an exercise in boldness or radicalism to be hyper-mobile on foot.
My train station is a mere mile away from my home – 15 minutes on foot at a healthy pace. I would never think of doing anything but walking or biking there, and I’ve had that mindset as long as I’ve lived around here. But to many folks around here, including folks I live with, that’s an unwalkable distance. That’s partly a result of the unpleasantness of sidewalk-less roads and highways one might take to get there from here (unless one knows the shortcuts through the woods and neighborhoods), but I think the conceptualization of acceptable walkable distances is pretty warped out here. In high school I ditched the school-bus so I could walk the two+ miles to get there – loved every minute of it. My concepts were already broad enough to embrace walking around several miles every day even back then. If I could have that mindset as a young teenager, it can’t be impossible for others. I think that the culture at large would do well to begin to condition itself that it’s okay to walk a mile or two and it is a healthy and pleasurable discipline to give oneself the extra time to do it.
Walking is among the most natural expressions of our humanity. Bipedal creatures like us were literally born to walk upright. When humans spread across the continents from Africa, much of it was done walking. Why should walking be seen as an abnormal, radical or undesirable behavior? I live to walk. For those of us born with two good working legs, walking is our birthright, our native activity. It’s unfortunate that I am writing today to call upon the culture to re-remember this essential truth and normalize walking.
I hope Manhattanites and Newarkers feel me too. You have side-walks and hella foot traffic compared to where I dwell, but you also have hella shit-heads and car-centric road design and behavior. It sucks almost as bad sometimes when I’m over there, but at least there’s a critical mass of people moving at human scale over there too.
I’m not saying all of society should completely slow down, that all of the uses of automobiles are illegitimate, or that pedestrians should have free rein on the New Jersey Turnpike. But I do adamantly advocate for the complete streets and human-scale infrastructure necessary for more people to come out and feel safe to walk. I also demand a serious moderation and mellowing of the culture surrounding the automobile, along with a rethinking of how motorist attitudes are conditioned for speed, selfishness and callousness.
Too many motorists are engaging in straight-up asshole behavior out there. Your antics will never stop me from walking these streets. I will not apologize if my bipedal presence on the streets, my actualization of our common native activity, offends you and forces you to slow down. Homie, do slow the fuck down! The streets are for human beings! Remember, you are one of them and so am I!
Fellow humans, resume walking as your natural-born tendency. The lead foot is best used to pound pavement, not burn rubber and gasoline.
Long live Lolita Lebrón! Rest in Uhuru! Viva Lolita Lebrón! Descansa en paz!
African Renaissance
HELP HAITI!
Send your monetary and material assistance to your trusted and preferably Haitian-run organizations and aid agencies as soon as possible! Ayiti Cherie!
PAN-AFRICANISM or PERISH!
From Nigeria to Haiti, from Brazil to Brick City, from Harlem to Kinshasa, black people must unite, preferably while going vegan!
Free Lynn Stewart!
The People's Lawyer
Afrikans Eating like Silverback Gorillas
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"Let's make the world a garden, not a graveyard."
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Nigerian Vegan!!
Discipline. NO excuses. Rhythm and movement. Motivation. Consistency. Execution only. Positivity only. Clean living. Self-affirmation. Affirmation of life.
