How Bad Do You Want It?

DATELINE: Tulsa, Oklahoma - July 1, 2007: Well, all those Mardi Gras parade floats filled with drunk black men dressed up as Indians, decrying their, "Indian Blood," wasn't a case of insanity after all. In my search to find a place to buy a small farm and create a livelihood in rural America has brought me here to Oklahoma, a place rich in Native American … and black history.

Oklahoma was part of the Indian Territories and has a rich history that is intertwined with African American history and African-Native American history.

There are physical monuments (towns, buildings and structures) built by blacks that remain today. The Buffalo soldiers also had a very significant role in settling this area. The area near Ft. Sill near Lawton, Oklahoma, was where the first black Civil War Union Soldiers distinguished themselves in what has been known as, The Gettysburg of The West.

More significant is the history if black Seminal Indians who came up from Florida with the aboriginal Florida Seminoles. There were actually three branches of Native Americans relevant to African American History:

1.) White acculturated Indians (the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and others. For example, the Creek changed their names to Scottish surnames, took blacks as slaves, and changed their names too..)
http://www.african-nativeamerican.com/resour.htm

2.) Aboriginals like the Seminoles who were never concurred and who never adapted to "the white mans ways"

3.) African-Indians and Seminole Freemen. Many Africans who ran away from white slavery and escaped into Spanish controlled Florida, were adopted by Seminoles. Blacks who were their off-spring were never slaves and proved unsuitable for Andrew Jackson’s campaign to force them to become slaves. http://www.african-nativeamerican.com/
So it is here that I find myself now, seeking to start my next leg in re-creating my life, and discovering that Oklahoma is a far more fertile ground than California for anyone who has developed transferable skills. There are plenty of opportunities here for people who want to start their own small business. There are a lot of good people here. The land is green for those who want to farm and prepare themselves for the "Global Recession" that is certainly heading our way. (And we KNOW who is historically hurt worst by "recessions." I wish I'd left California earlier.)

African and Seminole towns in the Indian Territories
http://www.african-nativeamerican.com/6-towns.htm

Farm or Go to College FREE?

• Okay, so not everyone wants to move to the country.
  
  
• And not all black folks seem to be eager to move "down south.
  
  
• And younger people may have so many other dreams than ... to become a farmer.

One of the most exciting new opportunities I've heard of ... in my life! ... is a current program that is sending young black males to college F-R-E-E !!

Black male college grads are in such short supply that they are now sending us to college free. (That's too sad to laugh at.) But it's true... there are about 13 black universities and other colleges who'll pay for your college. Here's the info:

For information about the Call Me MISTER program, please contact us through one of these methods:

Email:

MISTER@clemson.edu

Telephone:

Call toll-free : 1-800-640-2657

Mail:
Call Me MISTER

203 Holtzendorff

Clemson University

Clemson, SC 29634

Just Gotta Have a Tractor!

It's amazing how cheap these Kuboa Tractors are. Yes, Kubota is Japanese, but they're made in Georgia and Kubota also makes most American tractors. Only the paint jobs and names are different ... they say.

I priced one in Fairfield, California and discovered that you can get a four wheel drive and a front loader and a back hoe for around $17,000!! This isn't even the smallest model.

I plan to own no more than 20 acres and farm around three. The tractor above is just rignt. Plus, all the impliments I'll ever need will add up to around no more than $25,000. When you think about how much farm tractors used to cost ... I find this amazing!

For more information, pull up the Kubota website.

So Much Land To Be Free In

During the Great Depression, many people fled the drought-stricken region that stretched from Nebraska to the Texas panhandle. The struggles of those who stayed are the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Timothy Egan who follows a half-dozen families and their communities through the dust storms that terrorized America's High Plains during the Depression, going from sod huts to new framed houses to basements with the windows sealed by damp sheets in a futile effort to keep the dust out.

One of the most powerful and thought provoking aspects of "The Worst Hard Time" is the fact that the Midwest has never recovered from the Dust Bowl exodus. Even to this day, farmers in the Midwest going bust. "All across the Grain Belt stand abandoned homesteads, symbols of untold stories of failure, flight from the land, and even suicide." They leave behing land, farm homes, barns, etc...

Perhaps to entice urban-weary Brits, even the BBC did a story on Mid West Farmers Going Bust. But the Reverse Black Migration Movement is not about trying to become prosperous farmers as much as it is getting out of the way of the insanity and ever increasing cultural doom that life in Urban America is for us. Therefore, land with a farm house and out buildings, electricty, and water already on it is a huge gift just waiting for us. I dream of small Intential Communities of like minded black people with vision seeing this opportunity and sizing it.

A common Buddhist quote is: "Everything Changes." Sadly, what is true for the "American Farmer," may be a good thing for black people seeking to join the "Back To The Land" movement. (Click here for Wikipedia’s write up.)

Wanna See What You're Missing?

Some black people will look glance at this blog and agree with its premise immediately. Others will need more convincing. So take a quick look at your room, studio apartment, or home in the hood, and then look at what you can have for shockingly cheap when you move out of the chaos and into nature.

United Country.com Just type in a state you're curious about or perhaps the home state of "your peoples"... and be prepared for shock and awe....

Ranch & Country.com Don't stop there. The web is full of possibilities. On the day I pulled up this page, they were featuring a "rustic cabin" in Colorado for $148,900.

The links above are simply the tip of the iceberg. Here's a scenic little country home ... national forest on 3 sides, a spring-fed pond, sheds and a barn on 36 acres for only $149,000!

Creating Successful Black Culture

"Like iron shapens iron, men
shapen men."

When I think about what it will take to once and for all, set down in stone, who we are as a people, one of the main things that comes to mind is the fact that we'll have to revise our image of what a man is.

You can say what you will about white America, but two things we do know that has helped their culture rise and create strength greater than most others, and they are:

• THEY STICK TOGETHER ... right or wrong ... regardless of what is SAID, in the final analysis, the Republicans and the Democrats are on the same page when it comes to White Supremacy and controlling wealth and the means to power. They can argue fuss and fight about all the rest, and will even love and marry you ... but when it comes down to "you" and "them" .... "them" sticks together!
  
  
• Men who know how to be MEN, teach other men. They can make all the John Wayne "rugged individualistic" movies they want ... but when they view that movie and when you view that movie, you can bet there's a different message being sent. For them, the message is what it takes to rule. For non-whites, the warped message someone gets translated into: "I don't need no-body telling me nothing! "I'M AN INDIVIDUAL!!"
  

We will need to do many of the same things that successful cultures do. That means, we will
need to use all parts of our society. At no time will we expect a large portion of black America to join one group of thinking that is striving in one general direction, but I do believe that if successful, those who do, will have a huge, major impact on all the rest.

In short, we will need to use men willing to work and learn integrity ... regardless if they are totally heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual ..... urban-sexual ... et al. The main thing is that they learn what to do with that most sacred part of their body, and to mature their emotions to the extent they can create love, safety and long term continuity in homes and in the New Black Village.

We will talk more about the extremely complex issue of sexuality later. Right now I'd like to end by telling you about a little motif of words that ran along the walls of an up-scale ice cream parlor in Portland, Oregon. The words were:

"If Michelangelo had been straight, he'd have painted the Sistine Chapel flat white."