Category: Guest Commentary

The sudden defeat of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) by the Ethiopian army and their U.S. backers proved easier then expected. A reported 15,000 Ethiopian troops and U.S. aerial bombardment succeeded in installing the Transitional Federal Government, two years after its formation in neighboring Kenya. Despite the ICU’s military defeat, the war is far from…

Part 1 Bush’s Escalation Speech I’d like to request that nobody shout during this event, and I’ll tell you why. I watched Bush’s speech with some people who thought it would be a good idea to take a sip of liquor every time he told a lie. Three days later my head is aching. But…

The acrimonious relationship between Latinos and African Americans in Los Angeles is growing hard to ignore. Although the New Year weekend’s Black-versus-Latino race riot at Chino state prison is unfortunately not an aberration, the Dec.15 murder in the Harbor Gateway neighborhood of Cheryl Green, a 14-year-old African American, allegedly by members of a Latino gang,…

The City of San Francisco, known for its social and political innovativeness, produced during the early 1970s, a radical grass roots Black American political organization that, at its height, boasted a membership of five hundred and focused on the areas of housing, employment, education, police brutality, voting rights, and labor issues that directly impacted San…

The Bush et al new plan for Iraq that has been announced was as open a secret as Christmas. 20,000 or so more troops (some yanked from Afghanistan–that’s good thinking) and a billion dollars for job creation in Iraq. I’m laughing–all of a sudden it is Spring 1975 again, with the same crew now as…

European Americans have a funny way of confronting this nation’s history of violence. Shock is followed by awe: “Oh, but that was a long, long time ago. You can’t believe we have not progressed since.” Or “you really believe there’s racism? NOW?” I become the subject. My beliefs are on trial now. I have witnessed…

Allow people to be themselves has become a manta of sorts. Just be yourself seems to have trumped the slogan, be like Mike. Or has it? Be yourself or be like someone else? Be like Obama, the son of a Kenyan father and a Euro-American mother, is not exactly a slogan in the U.S.—yet. But…

Inaugural Nominees: John Ridley, Daman Wayans Los Angeles, CA, – Nigger is more than just a word it is an image…a created image…that was meant to cripple and zombilize the minds of a race of people. This image portrays black men as lazy, ignorant, and obsessively self-indulgent; as angry, physically strong, animalistic, and prone to…

“The essence of trade unionism is social uplift. The labor movement has been the haven for the dispossessed, the despised, the neglected, the downtrodden, the poor.” – A. Philip Randolph When A. Phillip Randolph spoke the above words during the 20th century, he was the leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. The Brotherhood…

Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has introduced articles of impeachment against George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice. In doing so, she alone has spoken for the 51 percent of Americans who Newsweek says want Bush impeached. A considerably higher percentage of Americans would, if asked, almost certainly acknowledge that the abuses with which McKinney charges Bush…