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In the near term, African American labor’s most effective contribution to transforming Black politics in America – and thus, recasting progressive politics overall – would be to advance the necessity of labor’s immersion in city and regional planning.

“The Clippership development in East Boston, for example, was called a ‘jewel’ of public housing by the local housing authority administrator only two years before the housing authority sought HOPE VI funding to demolish it, characterizing it as severely distressed…. According to the residents, Clippership did not suddenly become 'severely distressed.' Rather, East Boston's real estate boom prompted the BHA [Boston Housing Authority] to realize that the real 'jewel' of Clippership was not its tight-knit and safe community, but rather the land under the townhouses, with its spectacular harbor views." (“From HopeVI to Hope Sick?” Summer Issue, Dollars and Sense.)

Your excellent writing on the crisis facing urban Black America has brought me out of the closet. I especially appreciate your mention of HUD's long-standing urban nightmare, the HOPE VI program. I participated in two HOPE VI "redevelopment" efforts in Texas in the mid 1990's, the first in Austin while I was an employee of the Austin Housing Authority, and the second in Houston, where the Houston Housing Authority eventually destroyed most of Allen Parkway Village, a historically significant public housing complex in Houston's Freedmenstown section of Fourth Ward, and have since had the opportunity to study the program in some greater depth. I've been forced to conclude that a significant portion of Black America's "leaders" ought to be ashamed of themselves for what they have actively and passively done and are doing to the Black poor and working classes.

In Houston, one can place a significant part of the blame on the city's preacher class, and also on the footstep of Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee, who in some ways has spent the last few years trying to make up for the fact that she grabbed her ankles when Tom DeLay came calling. I vividly recall one of a series of meetings at a historic Black church in downtown Houston, where the congresswoman spent a few hours "listening" to pleas from community members, as well as Native Americans from Oklahoma, about why the city and the housing authority's "renaissance" of Fourth Ward should not unfold by enriching Houston's development sharks and their Black hangers-on. It was an emotional spectacle, like so many of these meetings. I have now taken heart from the prospect that Black Texas "leaders" such as Garnet Coleman and Rodney Ellis have now found their souls and have been willing to break quorums in the Texas legislature. The sad part is that it may now be too late.

Vouchers are the Right’s wedge issue, carefully chosen to create divisions between the Democratic Party’s two strongest pillars: Blacks and public employees unions, most notably, teachers. Keenly aware of African American reverence for education, the very people who wage relentless war against the public schools wave vouchers under the noses of the poor, knowing full well that private schools cannot possibly meet the needs of the vast bulk of Black children. Private capital has no interest in taking on the responsibility of educating the masses of Black kids. Rather, their strategy is to sow dissension in Black and progressive ranks while setting up contra outposts in scattered, publicly funded private schools, places of employment and propagandizing for new waves of African American mercenaries. These hirelings will then form the core of “alternative,” “conservative” Black leadership in all those places [Black Chicago Congressman Danny] Davis cited: “… Chicago tomorrow, St. Louis, New Orleans, Los Angeles next week, then it's all of America.

Thanks for clearing up the confusion I experienced when I saw Fox TV co-sponsoring the Democratic presidential candidates debate. See, I thought Fox was just making nice, pretending to be fairly balanced while awaiting their next important assignment. But lo, what utter skunks they are, manipulating a vote on vouchers while pretending to do a civic duty. But that's something I've learned about these R-wingers: they always get a twofer. When they do something wretched, don't await accountability, wait for the other shoe to drop.

I am a newly minted fan of your site.

George Bush doesn’t want you to talk about empowering the people of Africa – and neither do some African Americans. Issuing thinly veiled threats, these individuals and organizations appropriate to themselves the colors Red, Black and Green, and label as treasonous all Black criticism of their current Strong Man of choice, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.

’s position is that Mugabe’s repression of civil society has helped to create a chemistry that “leads to civil war and imperialist intervention,” and that elements of the opposition are, indeed, inviting such intervention.

Frances M. Beal is a prolific writer-of-substance (“Peace and Justice Forces Rally to McKinney,” July 25, 2002) and a member of the Bay Area Steering Committee of the Black Radical Congress:

I write to thank you for your courage in taking on the Zimbabwe debate. Black fascists in Africa and within Black America must learn that open and honest debate will not be silenced, even when we have to take on some Blacks passing themselves off as revolutionaries or Africanists.

After reading “Condoleezza Rice and the Birmingham Bombing Victims,” by Margaret Kimberly, I was distressed at the National Security Advisor’s ill-timed invocation of the 1963 bombings. I realize that Dr. Rice suffered the loss of a schoolmate. She has my sympathy. But the context of her remarks reflect the same pandering style employed by the rest of the Bush team.

I'd like to share a story along those lines. I was in Alabama at the time of those bombings. I attended a small – and all white - college near Birmingham. As a reporter for the college newspaper, I had interviewed Julian Bond not long after that tragic event. I was impressed at his humble yet no-nonsense style. I am proud to have met a man who has risen so far.

There was another white student who had also been impressed by Mr. Bond. She’d posed for a photo with him, smiling at his side. She’d had no way of knowing the stir this would cause.

Her mother, a teacher at our school, had phoned me a few nights later. Her call had awakened me. It was hard to understand much of what she’d said, but there was great fear in her voice. She’d pleaded with me to bring the newspaper staff out to her house. She’d said to bring a camera.

What awaited us there still brings me shivers.

While most of the flames had gone out, dark smoke still rose from three tall crosses staked into her lawn. Scattered over the yard were re-prints of the photo of her daughter with Julian Bond. The woman stood in her doorway shaking, a small revolver in hand as we photographed the burnt crosses. I had been frightened and outraged. A few moments later a pick-up truck passed slowly, a team of men riding in its bed. They held shotguns in their hands. They grinned and shouted at us. They left after a few passes, and no shots were fired.

The horror of that night remains etched in my mind. I would be angered if that image were abused by an administration only to further its own agenda.

Paris: Really what it is now is that everything has become so corporatized that black culture is being dictated to black people by white corporations ‘cause they’re the ones who select who gets exposure, and consequently they are the ones who reward a particular type of behavior - and that's what we see. Every time you turn on the television, every time you look at BET (which is a white owned corporation), anytime you look at MTV or any of these video channels that have videos that are manufactured by white-owned corporations, you see this imagery that 9 times out of 10 is negative for us, and 9 times out of ten reflects us in a way that we don’t necessarily behave.

It’s a catch-22 type of situation because, in so-called minority communities, life imitates art, so we act the way that we see on TV. Most kids in school - high school and middle school - know the lyrics to songs more then they know their schoolwork. Everybody that’s reading this interview knows how influential music is when it comes to us, and so when there is almost a type of a blanket negativity that exists in the music then you see it havin’ negative ramifications on us in real life, and that's the most disturbing thing. I mean everybody that came from my era who was puttin’ it down when it was me and PE and X-Clan and Krs and a whole lot of folks, we saw the positive impact the music that we did had. I get emails to this day from people who say that "The Devil Made Me Do It" and "Sleeping with the Enemy" were life-altering experiences for them because it made them look at things differently and made them approach situations differently. It made them become more aware of themselves and how they fit in America's racist structure. I can only imagine what kind of influence that a lot of what is going on now is havin’ on folks that's comin’ up. It's a frightening thing. It's genocidal actually.

Our thanks, again, to reader Craig Arie.

Keep writing.

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Buzzflash

Black Voices

Counterpunch

Black Planet

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