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Selected essays, commentaries and interviews written and recorded by S. Pearl may be heard from this menu. 

SELECTED ESSAYS Choose One Bird Man: NPR News and Notes 5-25-07 Visisiting Harriet Tubman's Grave: NPR News and Notes 3-17-06 In Search of Suet: NPR News and Notes 11-23-06 Becoming A.W.A.R.E. - The Art of Conflict Resolution - NPR: News and Notes 6-9-06

SELECTED COMMENTARIES
Choose One Immigration Schizophrenia - NPR: Tell Me More 7-25-07 Putting the History into Black History - NPR: News and Notes 2-28-07 The Pearl Props - NPR: News and Notes 11-7-06 Osama Wins - NPR: Tavis Smiley Show 3-29-04 Under God - NPR: Tavis Smiley Show 1-14-04 A Personal Peace - NPR: Tavis Smiley Show 12-08-03 A Visit With Rosa Parks - NPR: News and Notes 11-3-05 Seedless Watermelon - NPR: Tavis Smiley Show 10-15-03

OTHER RADIO PROGRAMS
Choose One Ruby Dee Speaks On Love Healears Who Healed Themselves First

Iraq (A Cleaner Bathroom) by S. Pearl Sharp

This commentary was broadcast on NPR on News Notes with Ed Gordon on July 19, 2006.
(www.npr.org) During the first week of January, 2007, the American death toll reached 3,000.

It's not on the dozens of shelves in the bookstore. It's way in the back, on a poster tacked to the wall in the bathroom. That's where I found this gentle admonition: I always leave the bathroom a little cleaner than when I entered it. The statement is attributed to one of the most esteemed Black leaders of the 20th Century, W.E.B. DuBois. The first time I saw this, I thought just of the use of the bathroom, keeping it clean, and all that. A couple of years later it began to register as meaning the community in which this Black bookstore is housed in Los Angeles. It spoke of neighborhood clean-up campaigns, and movie companies showing up here to film their ghetto stories, looking for that urban jungle flava. Lately, however, DuBois' words keep floating through my head with each newscast about our occupation of Iraq: I always leave the bathroom a little cleaner than when I entered it. The war against Iraq was launched two years and four months ago. Over 2,500 American service members have died. But there is an Iraqi body count, too. In a country the size of the state of Arizona, somewhere between 38 thousand and 42 thousand Iraqi civilians have been killed. These figures come from Iraq Body Count.net, a collection of academics, journalists and peace activists who monitor civilian deaths from journalists' and eyewitness reports. 38 thousand to 42 thousand civilians? That's an average of 50 civilians killed every day of this Occupation. These numbers make me stop and wonder: are we doing any better than the dictator regime we removed? The U.S. has a unique way of delivering democracy, which seems to be: bomb it, and then rebuild it. We treat death the same way. First we create collateral damage, then, through the Iraqi War Victims Fund, we pay some of the families for their loss of their loved ones, their homes, their body parts. There are many communities in Iraq still waiting for our promise of essential services, like drinking water. There was the sexual and religious degradation at the Abu-Ghraib prison, near Baghdad. And now the world is gasping over the U.S. Marine's alleged murder, and cover-up, of 23 civilians in Haditha. It is patriotically painful to recognize that this massacre is not the first from our side. The new Iraqi premiere, Min. Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, described the violence by American troops against civilians as [quote] a daily phenomenon -- they crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion. We're not just talking numbers here. We're talking about the death of math teachers, a secretary on her way to work, the former national boxing champion. Are we better? To a 9-year-old girl in Haditha whose family may have experienced the brutality of ruler Saddam Hussein, the American presence was better. But this same little girl heard the Marines coming this past March, watched her grandfather take the Koran into the bedroom to pray for the family's safety, then hid as her grandfather, her uncle, her mother and her father were dragged into one room and shot. In the coming weeks she will hear a lot about Marine values --- honor and courage. She will come to understand terms like orphan and collateral damage and most recently, classes to teach soldiers core warrior values. So, yes, I do wonder. Are we morally capable of creating that cleaner bathroom?

c. 2006 S. Pearl Sharp/Poets Pay Rent, Too

New CD

Higher Ground CD

Click to sample selections:
Take Me To The Bridge
If You See Willie (excerpt)
Where Notes Go (excerpt)
How To Build A Prayer (excerpt)
Help Is On The Way (excerpt)

Poetry w/jazz.  S. Pearl's first poetry CD in thirteen years includes the musical artistry of Derf Reklaw, Amos Delone Jr., Val Ewell, Lanny Hartley, Edwin Livinston, Mekala Session, Rene Fisher Mims, Johan Beckles,S.H.I.N.E. Mawusi Women’s Drum Alliance, the voice of Mark Maxwell, and featuring artist-philosopher John Outterbridge.

Produced by S. Pearl Sharp and Mark Maxwell.

Release date: February, 2008

Cover art: Ebony Venus by Angela Briggs, Khatiti Fine Art

Cover & package design by Paula N. White Designs

Photos by Paul F. Welch