Rev. Jeremiah Wright (press release photo) “…Y ou are looking at the miracles and missing the meaning behind the miracles.” --Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Guerrilla decontextualization is a somewhat ungainly term that falls more out of line than in line with similar coined phrases such as: guerrilla marketing, guerrilla filmmaking, or guerrilla street artist. These comparable terms have in common ideas of creative expansion or independent expressiveness. Guerrilla decontextualization on the other hand belongs on the more sinister lexicon family branch of the term guerrilla warfare. It can be defined as the practice of extracting such elements of media technology as video clips, sound bites, and manipulated images for largely two purposes.  One would be to intentionally misrepresent an individual’s character or intentions in order to decrease any measure of influence or authority they might possess in either public or

                    Journalist, publisher, and blogger Eskinder Nega. (World News photo) “ I am Eskinder Nega. Like my hero Nelson Mandela, my soul is unconquered, my spirit unbroken, my head unbowed, and my heart unafraid.”—Eskinder Nega from I Am Eskinder Nega Change is one of the scariest things in the world and yet it is also one of those variables of human existence that no one can avoid. One may literally find the lessons of that simple observation all over the map at this halfway point in the year 2012–– and only a few months before Americans take their collective political fate into their own hands during one of the most intense presidential elections on historical record.  From such a perspective, it matters less whether you look at the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions to skillfully dissect Arizona’s (and by extension similar states’) Illegal Immigration Law, and then largely uphold President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as vi

Cover of the forthcoming Visions of a Skyalrk Dressed in Black eBook . The story behind the annual Juneteenth celebration is now fairly well known. The event commemorates June 19, 1865, the day slaves in Galveston, Texas, and other parts of the state learned for the first time they had actually been freed via the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier. There is not much with which to compare such an event to in the year 2012 . But try this: imagine how a group of prisoners might feel if they learned their innocence had been proven years ago and orders for their release signed but left forgotten in someone’s desk drawer. At this point in time, just three years before the 150th anniversary of Juneteenth, the holiday has come to represent a great deal more than recognition of delayed freedom. A statement from the Juneteenth Worldwide Celebration website founded by Clifford Robinson put it as follows: "Juneteenth is a day of reflection, a day of renewal, a p

President Barack Obama toasting Queen Elizabeth II with actor Tom Hanks at 2011 celebration for the Queen . (photo by White House photographer Pete Souza) The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during World War II reportedly quoted the great Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay’s poem “If We Must Die” when he addressed the joint houses of the U.S. Congress on the eve of America’s entry into the war. South African President Nelson Mandela recited “Invictus,” by William Ernest Henley, to fellow inmates while imprisoned on Robben Island and “The Child” by Ingrid Jonker when South Africa’s first democratic parliament opened in 1994. American presidents , governors, and mayors have often presented samples of some of the most luminous talents in modern literary history to provide moral and intellectual frameworks for their stated, even if not their actual, political intentions. Inauguration poets James Dickey, Maya Angelou, and Elizabeth Alexander are a few examples. H