The Black Commentator is on hiatus until August 31st.
We are proud of the work that we have done in the last year, to
advance the struggle of all the world’s people. We at BC
are internationalists, and have been blessed by the participation
in our project by BC Editor Bruce Dixon, a Chicago
native now living in Atlanta. Bruce wrote our most popular story
of the year, on July 20, 2006, titled “Israeli
Apartheid.” It tells the truth, that is seldom broached,
because of the overwhelming extremist Zionist influence in media
and our own movement. We suggest that you re-read Bruce’s
piece during the long, hot summer.
A great aggression was launched against the Black
community, successfully, in May of this year. The giant telecom
companies combined to suborn two-thirds of the Congressional Black
Caucus and a huge majority of the House of Representatives, to pull
the plug on the Internet democracy and local cable access. This
is a Black issue, because we don’t have the money to communicate
through hard copy, and we also have the right to control the infrastructure
that lies beneath our own communities – or has not been put
in place, in favor of other folks. Bruce Dixon’s piece, “The
Black Stake in the Internet: Net Neutrality is an African American
Issue,” May 11, 2006, informs us of what we need to do, to
protect our means of communication.
The root cause of the problem is the “Failure
of the Black Leadership Class,” as Mr. Dixon detailed
on February 9, 2006. If we do not chastise our people, who will?
Atlanta, a city as poor as Newark at it’s core, but a center
of Black wealth at its fringes, is celebrated as a wonderful success
story among popular media, Black and white. Yet Atlanta has one
of the highest Black infant mortality rates of any city in the nation.
Who is thriving? Who is dying? Bruce Dixon asks us to examine the
issue from the ground up: Who is actually benefiting? If the masses
are poor, and dying in extraordinary numbers, then how can we pronounce
Atlanta a success? Dixon’s piece, “Black
Mecca: The Death of an Illusion,” October 13, 2005.addresses
directly the situation of Black people as it actually exists –
not as it is hyped.
Only BC Tells the Truth
The Congressional Black Caucus has deteriorated beyond
imagination in the last half decade. Only The Black Commentator
has told the story of the disintegration of the premier organization
in our body politic – the wholesale sell-out of our congressional
politicians. We have witnessed one-third of the Caucus betraying
its constituency in 2005, and two-thirds bowing to the telecommunications
companies in 2006. Leutisha Stiills and her Congressional Black
Caucus Monitor colleagues – the only Black organization that
monitors Black lawmakers on a values-scale based on Black people’s
politics – is closely associated with The Black Commentator.
The CBC Monitor puts out a Report
Card twice a year. We urge you check out the scores, to see
who is doing our work, and who is not. You may be surprised.
Let’s Do Battle
The Black Commentator is relentless in its pursuit
of traitors in our midst. The traitor-in-chief is Harold Ford, Jr.,
congressman from Tennessee, who wants to be a senator. He is the
worst Black congressman in the House, based on his voting record.
If he becomes a senator, the corporate media will make him our leader,
and proclaim that his politics of betrayal are a model for future
Black politicians. The Democrats may need him, but we do not. In
our cover story of March 30, 2006, we exposed Harold Ford for what
he is: a degenerate who tried to make his Black
grandmother white.
But we do have our bright, shining lights in the U.S.
House of Representatives. Cynthia McKinney, representing the Atlanta
Black suburbs centered on Dekalb County, is a singular personality.
BC supports her without reservation – because
she stands fearlessly for our people. Her presence in the Congressional
Black Caucus causes other members to examine their backbones –
to see if they have any. Many do not. They allowed the spineless
chairman, Mel Watt (NC), to humiliate and isolate McKinney on orders
from his boss, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. BC
revealed the sordid details on April 13, 2006, in our Cover Story,
“The
McKinney Affair: Rampaging Racism and a Cowardly Caucus.”
The sole Black senator has also been a great disappointment.
Barack Obama telegraphed his political intentions early on, when
he erased from his web site a stirring campaign speech against the
impending Iraq invasion. Once elected, Obama changed his tune, in
a process of Hillary Clintonization that he apparently expects will
make him the first Black Vice President. Obama now raises funds
for the right wing of the Democratic Party, most notably for his
mentor, Senator Joseph Lieberman, the closest thing to a Republican
in the party. What a shame, and a waste of our collective investment.
On December 1, 2005, BC deconstructed Obama’s
dishonest stance on Iraq, in an article titled, “Obama
Mouths Mush on War.”
Freedom Rides
Margaret Kimberley is peerless. She has graced our
pages for three years with the smoothest and politically penetrating
prose ever written. She cuts no slack for former icons like Andrew
Young, whom she skewered in her September 29, 2005 column, “Andrew
Young and Vote Theft.” Young, the former aide to Dr. Martin
Luther King, has gone totally over to the other side, endorsing
Georgia’s Voter Identification Act, designed to keep poor
and Black citizens away from the polls, and fronting for the racist
Wal-Mart corporation, which pays him hundreds of thousands of dollars
to betray us as a lobbyist for millionaires.
Margaret unmasks Andrew Young, the pretender. She
also has no mercy on Shelby Steele, who has made a career out of
doing white folk’s dirty work. Ms. Kimberley snatches the
mask off the traitor, Shelby Steel, in her May 11, 2006 article,
“Shelby
Steele Loves White Supremacy.”
No one is spared from Margaret’s tongue. She
is fearless. The very fiber of America’s vaunted civilization
is challenged by our columnist. On April 6, she wrote of “Immigration
and America's Bad Karma,” in which she said “racism
was at the heart of the anti-immigrant backlash.”
Margaret speaks truth to power, as should we all.
Her courage was manifest with her article, “Israel’s
Terror,” of July 20, 2006, in which she articulated the
human rights problem that Israel presents to the world.
Cartoons with a Punch
It is difficult to determine which of our cartoons
should be included in this Best of BC issue because
we love them all. Here, however, are a few we find exceptionally
relevant.
American
Bully
What
We Demand
Thou
Shalt Not Question My War
Star
Spangled Hypocrite
The
Feeding of the Halliburton Pig
Prison
Nation
Art with a Soul
Art may be more difficult to judge than cartoons,
but that didn’t stop us from selecting one piece of work from
each of the artists currently represented by BC.
Venture
& Freedom by Larry Richardson
Queen
Mother by Margaret Warfield
ECCLESIASTES
11:9 by Mwandishi Henry
Afrika's
children die for Fascist fools greed
on a world wide scale and no one cares by Fulani
BC is the only news/issue oriented
related Website on the Internet that features Art as an integral
part of its publication. The African American artists represented
by BC support themselves with their work. The
art is for sale. BC receives a small commission
on any piece sold as a result of its exposure here. Please
consider adding art into your life by making a purchase. Art helps
the bright light of your soul shine onto the path ahead and into
the minds and hearts of others.
We at Black Commentator have always sought to focus
our people’s attention on the issues that are most important,
so that we will not continue the ridiculous process of disinformation
that has soaked our folks with false data.
While we are on our summer hiatus we have opened up
all the BC archives. This means all readers
will have full access to the Past
Issues, Guest Commentators,
Think Pieces, Search,
Cartoons and Radio BC
Master pages. If you have
not yet become a BC Paid Subscriber or Contributor
we hope having full access to everything BC has
ever published will convince you to do so. Our fund raising
effort is still short of what it will take to keep the BC
voice alive. Now is the time to click on any of the buttons
below and join the growing list of those who have made a financial
commitment to the future of BlackCommentator.com.
We hope that we have done our job. Have a good summer,
hot as it is. You’ve got a lot to read.
Glen Ford, BC Co-Publisher and Executive
Editor
Peter Gamble, BC Co-Publisher and
Chief Technical Officer |