“I’m not the kind of person who come here to say what you like. I’m going to tell you the truth whether you like it or not.” – Malcolm X

In my first post, I’m honoring Malcolm X, on his birthday (May 19). He is, of course, the inspiration for the blog’s name and tagline. I’m forever striving for his combination of courage, clarity, insight, honesty, and provocation when I speak and write.

Malcolm was clear on his solidarity with the Palestinians, who will be free in our lifetime:

In short the Zionist argument to justify Israel’s present occupation of Arab Palestine has no intelligent or legal basis in history

I particularly like this essay by LEFT on Malcolm. I agree with LEFT’s quote from Kwame Ture:

Kwame Ture (formerly known as Stokely Carmichael went as far as to emphasize that, “we who have an ideology today use Malcolm X as our framework. Our basic framework. Our point of reference.

Later on LEFT says:

Malcolm X is alive in the hearts and minds of every one, whose evolution in life involved the reading of his autobiography. He is alive in every lashing out for liberation by Black folks uncompromisingly fighting tooth and nail against the interlocking systems of white supremacism and anti-Blackness.

There are too many Malcolm quotes to choose from, but I highly recommend (re)reading his autobiography and listening to his “The Ballot or the Bullet” and “Message to the Grassroots” speeches.

Keith LeBlanc’s No Sell Out track is pretty dope too.

Happy Birthday, Malcolm X! by Dave Ghamandi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.