My name is Yvonne and I AM HEALING! Healing from childhood pain, once buried And now pulled out of its crypt to force me Into being authentic. Healing from a Pandemic that ripped souls From my epicenter by the hundreds. Healing from the disgust of police brutality that Keeps our ancestral list growing by the dozens. Healing from lost Black boys who tend to corners Over studies and children born to young minds. Healing from lost Black girls who trend on Only Fans to gain acceptance from strangers Because they never got it from loved ones.
This has been my journey. What’s yours? Explore and discover how I’m healing and connect through shared experiences. The following is a short description of my journey to healing from my book, “Malaika’s Soul: I Am Healing”.
I write to heal and heal as I write. “Malaika’s Soul: I Am Healing” is the second title in the five-part collective of poetic works under The Soul-journer Series. I am Yvonne Malaika
Akosua Orr-El, the daughter of two revolutionaries– Chris-tina “Chuckles” May (Minister of Culture for the Illinois Black Panther Party and one of very few high-ranking women in core leadership and decision-making positions nation-ally) and Delbert Orr Africa (Minister of Confrontation & Security for the MOVE Organization and a member of the MOVE 9 who were political prisoners for 40+ years).
My father was one of the last to get out in January 2020. Malaika’s Soul is an arousing poetic journey that inspires, uplifts, and, truly, gives the reader something to reflect on with each piece. I started life on the run… literally. In, ‘69 my mother had fled the United States. At the time, she fled Chicago to avoid a raid on the BPP headquarters where Fred Hampton, Sr. was killed a few months after my birth.
Being born on the edge of Lake Ontario in Ontario, Toronto, Canada most likely explains my affinity to water although I’m an Earth sign. After my parents returned to the U.S., my father, Delbert Orr Africa, joined the MOVE Organization based in Philadelphia.
Following a raid on its headquarters in 1978, my dad and eight other men and women joined the list of hundreds of political prisoners in the U.S., becoming renown as the MOVE 9. Tragedy struck MOVE again in 1985 after the City of Philadelphia dropped a bomb on MOVE’s Headquarters, killing eleven men, women, and children including my sister, Delitia Africa.
The Soul-journer Series depicts the majesty of travail-ing against all odds to express, emote, evolve, and emerge through artful poems that can be described as nothing short of fascinating. The process of healing is a deeply arduous and dedicated task. This book explores restoration, fatigue from constantly hurdling obstacles, and learning how to purge “pivot” from my vocabulary from its overuse during the pandemic.
I Am Healing explores the shortness of time spent together following my father’s release from prison after 42 years of wrongful imprisonment, along with my place in the world after he dies six months later from cancer. How does this daddy’s girl stay ONA MOVE in the wake of disease, deaths, domestic violence, and disaster entering my life constantly?
I dive into my healing with a very introspective quality that is quite different from your standard poet. It is raw. It is inspiring and, also, painfully clear that while I am a So-journer in my own right, I have many more active steps to take to rid our society of the social injustices that traumatize my people daily.
For instance, we rarely hear or see the movement to include the tragedy experienced by domestic political prisoners. Their plight is just as heinous as those who are harassed by law enforcement. The camera must be put upon the Department of Correction’s practices as well.
Take the current circumstance of Mumia Abu Jamal, often recognized as a leader and usually rendered to a great 50/50 t-shirt bearing his image, without many even knowing who he is and what he stands for.
About my “uncle” Mumia: As a 15-year-old spokesman for the Black Panther Party in Philadelphia, Mumia Abu-Ja-mal was targeted by the FBI’s COINTELPRO program for “surveillance” and “neutralization,” or assassination.
A few years later Mumia was an award-winning radio journalist, the “voice of the voiceless” and outspoken defender of the MOVE organization.
On December 9, 1981, Mumia was driving a cab to sup-plement his income and had a licensed gun for self-defense. Dropping off a fare in the red-light district, Mumia heard gunshots and saw his brother staggering in the street. Mumia was shot by a uniformed police officer as he ran toward his brother. Mumia was beaten by a dozen police, rammed into a light pole, then thrown into a police wagon and beat again by Inspector Alphonso Giordano.
It took over 30 minutes to get Mumia to the hospital just two blocks away. Mumia was beaten again when he arrived at the hospital. Critically wounded, the bullet went into Mumia’s chest, through his lung and lodged near his liver. The police and prosecution manufactured the evidence of Mumia’s guilt. The first photographs taken by a free-lance photographer after the shootings show Officer Daniel Faulk-ner holding two guns in his bare hands, making fingerprint testing impossible.
The prosecution said Mumia stood over and shot directly down at Faulkner’s face, three bullets missed and struck the sidewalk.
This would have torn into the concrete, leaving divots on the sidewalk. But the photographs show the sidewalk was to-tally smooth.
Philadelphia is over 40% African American, yet only two of the jurors in Mumia’s trial were Black. Mumia was denied every right to due process that a criminal defendant is sup-posed to get. The trial judge, Albert Sabo, sentenced more people to death than any other judge in the U.S. In 2002. A court reporter disclosed that at the start of the 1982 trial, she overheard Judge Sabo say he was going “to help them fry the ‘n—r’.”
Mumia has experienced the continuous harassment and degradation at the hands of guards and poli-trick-cians for 4 decades. Presently, Mumia is not being treated for congestive heart failure and COVID-19, which he tested positive for on February 26, 2021. Mumia Abu-Jamal is currently suffer-ing from COVID-19, congestive heart disease, liver dam-age, and a worsening of a severe and debilitating chronic skin condition.
The cirrhosis of the liver and increased likelihood of liv-er cancer resulted from his untreated Hepatitis C in spring 2014. His Hep C went untreated for nearly two years until attorneys secured a preliminary injunction that forced the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections to meet basic national treatment guidelines and give him the fast-acting, antiviral Hep C cure.
In addition, Mumia was treated with topical steroids for his skin condition, which caused a diabetic reaction. Pris-on medical staff neglected to monitor and follow up on their own chart notations for three weeks! His unmonitored glucose levels resulted in a severely high glucose level resulting in ketoacidosis, requiring Mumia to be rushed to the ICU. Mumia Abu-Jamal now relies upon that very same prison healthcare system, the prison infirmary, for treatment during his current health crisis. Our collective call for Abu-Jamal’s release could not be more urgent. As Abu-Jamal’s physician Dr. Ricardo Alvarez says: “The Only Treatment is Freedom.”
Even without the current health emergency, Mumia Abu-Jamal’s 1982 conviction was already a travesty of justice, obtained through a combination of police, prosecutorial, and judicial misconduct, as documented by Amnesty Interna-tional. Abu-Jamal has suffered from extreme injustice at all levels of the criminal justice system. These numerous improprieties have tainted Abu-Jamal’s conviction beyond repair.
Step into “YORR” life and discover a new way of being! Connect with me @YORRlife and ACTIVATE yourself today by joining the cause to get Mumia Abu Jamal freed now! https://campaigns.organizefor.org/petitions/to-da-kras-ner-stop-defending-mumia-abu-jamal-s-conviction?-source=rawlink&utm_source=rawlink&share=4e8ddff6-0251-445c-829a-21ce87f05428
Resources:
– Get a copy of I Am Healing at https://form.jotform.com/210165614285149
– https://jamaljournal.blogspot.com/2021/03/mumia-abu-jamals-health-emergency.html
Yvonne Malaika Akosua Orr, CEO, YORR New Life, Inc.; Senior Principal Consultant, YORR Consulting Group; Board Treasurer/Secretary, Real Men Charities, Inc.
