Table of Contents

There are 16 Chapters in this issue

About BlackCommentator.com

Cover Story: Who Didn't Have Sex with Neanderthals? - Black History Month - Nafsi ya Jamii - By Wilson Riles - BC Columnist

Rosa Parks Stamp - Art - Black History Month By Thomas Blackshear II

The Gun Debate: Remembering Cookie Thornton - A View from the Battlefield By Jamala Rogers, BC Editorial Board

A Bit of Optimism in the Alps, a Lot of Pain in the Everyday World - Left Margin - By Carl Bloice - BC Editorial Board

The Choice: David Fagen, the Philippine-US war, & Black Internationalism - Black History Month - The African World - By Bill Fletcher, Jr. - BC Editorial Board

Food Sovereignty or Industrial Agriculture? - Solidarity America - By John Funiciello - BC Columnist

Storming the Bastille Takes Many Forms - Keeping it Real By Larry Pinkney, BC Editorial Board

MLK Today - Black History Month - Political Cartoon - By Eric Garcia, Chicago IL

Haiti’s LGBTQ Accepting Vodou Societies – Black History Month - Inclusion - By The Reverend Irene Monroe - BC Editorial Board

Mission Implausible: If Blacks Stop Selling Drugs, Wealthy Whites Would Declare Civil War - Point Blank - By Chris Stevenson - BC Columnist

Dreams of A Reason to Commit Treason - The Other Side of the Tracks - By Perry Redd - BC Columnist

Brief Reflections on the Debate Surrounding Publication of” Malcolm X, a Life of Reinvention” by Manning Marable - By Jack Smith - BC Guest Commentator

The Permanent Campaign - Political Cartoon By Mark Fiore, San Francisco CA

Zoulou - Mardi Gras - Political Cartoon By Chuck Siler

Quote to Ponder: "I would like to be known as a person..." - Rosa Parks

About BlackCommentator.com

This is an eBook version of BlackCommentator.com - An independent weekly internet magazine dedicated to the movement for economic justice, social justice and peace.

BC Provides commentary, analysis and investigations on issues affecting African Americans and the African world.

BC was established April 5, 2002 and is published weekly on Thursday.

Executive Editor: David A. Love, JD

Managing Editor: Nancy Littlefield, MBA

Publisher: Peter Gamble

Feb 7, 2013 - Issue 503

Cover Story

Who Didn’t Have Sex with Neanderthals?

“Who didn’t have Sex with Neanderthals?” was part of the title of a recent article on the scientific journal website LiveScience. It turns out that the “only modern humans whose ancestors did not interbreed with Neanderthals are apparently sub-Saharan Africans.” New research indicates that those of European white, Asian, and North Africans ancestry “carry genetic traces from Neanderthals, modern humanity’s closest known extinct relatives.” Wow! That is something to think about.

My personal heritage derives from sub-Saharan Africa - at least in part. A few years ago I took one of those African Ancestry saliva DNA tests. It showed that my mitochondrial DNA (from my mother) closely matched that of the Ga tribe in Ghana and my male Y-chromosomal set (from my father) most closely matches the Bamileke people of Cameroon.

Most African Americans’ lineage derives from sub-Saharan West African ancestry but we have almost NO knowledge of specifics. Records are practically nonexistent and the first thing that slavers did was stamp out language and any other practices or indices of the enslaved Africans’ home cultures. Those things that human beings depend on for child rearing, social relationships, and passing on wisdom were stripped away immediately upon landing. The very few things that were hidden, kept, and passed along down generations are in our music, intertwined and camouflaged in Christian religious ceremony, encapsulated in seldom used children’s stories, and buried within our bodies in our DNA. Other than that, black people have cobbled together a defensive subculture out of the English language and elements of a Western culture that is structured to deny the equal humanity of non-Western, nonwhite peoples.

Young black folk are some of the most prolific, most creative, and most popular cultural artist on the planet. Their creativity is born of a need to recognize SELF at a deep level. Blacks have fashioned new “blues/Jazz” cultural forms in the midst of institutions designed to exploit and dispossess us. It takes hundreds of years to properly evolve a mature culture that will sustain and uplift a people in really powerful ways; sub-Saharan African culture, in its wholeness, was cut from African Americans (AA) and those years of positive cultural evolution have been forever lost.

However, any AA, who has walked the streets of West Africa, as I have, knows that you see very, very familiar black faces on those streets. Genetic influences come out in very concrete ways in the movements and facial composition of those of us with African ancestry. My sister got an opportunity two years ago to go to the place where the Ga people live in Ghana. They immediately recognized her as a tribal member before she opened her mouth even though she wore Western clothing. Physical evidence of relationships persists.

Even though AA have sub-Saharan African ancestry, few AA can claim to be free of Neanderthal gene fragments. My grandfather, on my mother’s side, was the unacknowledged son of the white man, Wilbur Paup, who controlled land that blacks sharecropped in Texarkana, Arkansas. My mother’s grandmother was known to be a full blooded Cherokee. Like most AA I am thoroughly mixed and, therefore, Neanderthal is probably mixed in there somewhere.

Broad DNA studies show that Neanderthals emerged out of Mother Africa about 100,000 years ago. Evidence indicates that an “African group ancestral to both Neanderthals and certain modern human populations genetically split from other Africans beginning about 230,000 years ago. This group then stayed genetically distinct until it eventually left Africa.” Later out-migrating groups representing the “modern” human species, Homo sapiens, emerged out of Africa to interbreed with the Neanderthals to a tiny degree (1% to 4%) but mostly to replace them in that northern niche that constituted the habitat of hominids. Neanderthals were better adapted biologically to cold weather than modern humans and at times displaced them in parts of the Middle East when the climate got cold enough. However, forty to fifty thousand years ago the climate in the European continent warmed up to favor Homo sapiens. Some scientists suggest that the rare interbreeding was enough to endow some of us today with the robust immune systems that we possess. Such biological advantage from interbreeding is known as hybrid vigor (heterosis). The robust immune system, in conjunction with animal husbandry (bringing humans close to species-jumping diseases such as Cow pox), and agriculture that was suited for east-to-west-extending, accessible temperate zones answers many questions about the spread of European culture. This fits geography professor Jared Diamond’s explanation of European white domination through the spread of genocidal pathogens in his book Guns, Germs and Steel.

“While modern humans share some nuclear DNA with the extinct Neanderthals, the two species do not share any mitochondrial DNA, which in primates is always maternally transmitted. This observation has prompted the hypothesis that whereas female humans interbreeding with male Neanderthals were able to generate fertile offspring, the progeny of female Neanderthals who mated with male humans were either rare, absent or sterile...” I would guess that we are talking about the rape of Homo sapiens females by Neanderthal males. This gives me pause.

A view of evolution that separately looks at the changes in the physical genes unrelated to the evolution of the environment - including the cultural environment for humans - cannot help but come to wrong conclusions. Since Neanderthals as a species separated earlier from the hominoid evolutionary tree than modern humans did, we can reasonably conclude that those of us with Neanderthal fragments in our genes are less well evolved in some ways. We can also conclude that Neanderthal culture was less evolved and therefore less civilized. When one takes the next step and tracks the evolution of culture alongside those less evolved gene fragments, huge questions and interesting associations arise.

In a population sense - not in an individual sense - how have these cultural elements (memes) interacted with those fractural, mostly male Neanderthal genes to produce less evolved, less civilized population behaviors! The source of the most uncivilized aspects of Western culture is rooted in masculine cultural memes of authority, power, physical control, territoriality, and individualized ego. Have these Western cultural memes evolved to stimulate and compliment those Neanderthal fragments predominantly present in the DNA passed down from the Neanderthal contaminated human male line? Maleness in the sub-Saharan African cultural tradition has been often hedged in by matrilineal cultures and cultural structures that balance male power with substantial female-based community-caring structures; North African and European imposed cultural memes disrupted these more traditional arrangements in sub-Saharan Africa in recent times due to colonialism. There are many questions that are worth contemplating and investigating for a clear view of the human animal.

Aswe attempt to recognize Black History Month, I would invite us to look athistory - all of history - not as separate bits but in totality. Black Historyis universal human history. To have any real meaning, black history isand must be human history seen through lenses that have been cleansed of thebiases embedded in white Western culture. Black History is U.S. historyand it is African history; it is not a separate history that can bemarginalized into a single month. We already have too much of that.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Wilson Riles, is a former Oakland, CA City CouncilMember. Click here to contact Mr.Riles.

Feb 7, 2013 - Issue 503

Rosa Parks Stamp
Art
By Thomas Blackshear II

Postal Service honors Rosa Parks with new stamp

Artist Thomas Blackshear II created an original painting for the stamp,

which was designed by art director Derry Noyes.

Feb 7, 2013 - Issue 503

The Gun Debate:
Remembering Cookie Thornton

On February 7, 2008 the unthinkable happened. Breaking news brought one ofthe most deadly shootings the St. Louis metropolitan area into ourliving rooms. Yet only five years later, such a rampage is sadlybecoming commonplace.

This one was personal. I knew Charles Thornton, affectionatelyknown as Cookie, and his case still intrigues me. I have written aboutKirkwood, MO and its black stepchild, Meacham Park, over the lasttwenty years. In fact, there’s a chapter in my book titled “What’s the Price of Selling Out Meacham Park.” So far, the price for the St. Louis suburb has been great.

The 5th anniversary of the Kirkwood, MO tragedy comes inthe midst of a national heated debate about gun control. Cookie did nothave a semi-automatic weapon or the carnage would have been fargreater. He came to the scene with one revolver and took the revolverof the police officer he killed outside City Hall.

Before the bullets stopped flying, six people lay dead and two injured.Cookie Thornton had killed two police officers, the public worksdirector, two council members and wounded the mayor and a reporter.(The mayor died several months later of complications due to hisinjuries.) Cookie was stopped by the lethal bullets of police.And I have never seen the kind of vitriol aimed at white shooters as Idid with Cookie - some of the hateful remarks aimed at me because of mystance on the situation.

Most of the fingers behind the mass killings are those of troubledwhite men. If ever there should be a posterman for these kind ofshootings, it should be a black man. From early in his life, a blackmale child is targeted with harsher suspensions in school, then on toracial profiling in the community and all that’s in between. On a dailybasis his nose is rubbed into racial discrimination and degradation.

Cookie Thorton was once a high school star athlete, a college graduate,a man with dreams for himself and his family. He was a happy-go-luckyperson with an infectious smile. If Kirkwood and the rest of the nationwould take a look at how that Cookie Thorton became the Cookie Thorntonon February 7, 2008, we may get closer to the root of the problem andto see where the interventions could’ve taken place.

Congress is currently reviewing gun control laws. I believe there are afew laws that could make a difference in the frequency and lethalintensity of these kinds of mass killings. This country is #1 in gunownership in the whole wide world with over a quarter of a billion gunsin the hands of everyday citizens. This means there’s already a bunchof (legal) guns in the hands of crazed or angry people.

Recently Chris Kyle was shot and killed. The name is unfamiliar to mostbut Kyle was a former Navy Seal and once called America’s deadliestsniper. He could shoot a target with accuracy from 21 football fieldsaway. Since his time from the military, Kyle had been working withtroubled vets, sometimes taking them to the shooting range for therapy.(This seems counterintutive but I digress.) While at the range, EddieRay Routh turned his semiautomatic on Kyle and another man, killingthem instantly.

I offer the above incident to negate the ridiculous assertion of Wayne LaPierre of the National Rife Association. He claims the “only way tostop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.” Even theworld’s greatest markman didn’t see the end coming.

Legislation rarely deals with changing the hearts and minds of anation. Legislation cannot deal with anger, despair or alientation thatdrives people to pick up a gun, a knife or anything else they can gettheir hands on when they feel threatened or disrespected.

Each one of us is responsible for the kind of neighborhood, city andcountry we live in. It is not solely the obiligation of government,police and policymakers. It’s certainly can’t be left up to lobbyistswho have a stake in keeping the profits rolling in for the gunmanufacturers.

While we figure it out, more Cookie Thorntons, Adam Lanzas and JaredLoughners are being created, making our churches, shopping malls,schools, movie theaters and other public spaces less safe and ourresponse to tragedies less humane.

BlackCommentator.com EditorialBoard member and Columnist, Jamala Rogers, is the leader of the Organizationfor Black Struggle in St.Louis and the BlackRadicalCongress NationalOrganizer.Additionally, she is an Alston-BannermanFellow. She is the author of The Best of the Way I See It – A Chronicle of Struggle. Clickhere to contact Ms.Rogers.

Feb 7, 2013 - Issue 503

A Bit of Optimism in the Alps,
A Lot of Pain in the Everyday World

One thing can be said for certain: 99.9 percent of those who gathered recently week for an Alpine sleepover either have a job or don’t need one. The same cannot be said of the billions who were not there.

While some of the world’s economic and political elite gathered in Davos, Switzerland for the annual World Economic Forum, a United Nations agency reported that there has been an increase in unemployment planet-wide of 28 million since the onset of the current economic crisis five years ago. One million jobs were lost in western capitalist economies last year alone and three million in the rest of the world. And it’s getting worse. A total of 202 million people could be unemployed across the globe sometime this year, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said January 29.

Dominic Rushe of the British newspaper Guardian described the findings in the annual ILO Global Employment Trends thusly:

“… 6 percent of the world’s workforce were without a job in 2012. The number of jobless people around the world rose by 4 million in 2012 to 197million. Young people were the worst affected: nearly 13 percent of those under 24 were unemployed. Some 35 percent of all young unemployed people have been out of work for six months or longer in advanced economies, up from 28.5 percent in 2007.”

The situation in some major European countries is particularly dire.

Take Spain for instance. That country’s unemployment rate reached 26.02 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, leaving almost six million people out of work - 60 percent of young people between 18 and 25 years old. The government says nearly 700,000 more people lost their jobs last year and there are now 1.8 million households in which no one is working.

In the 27-member European Union as a whole, the jobless rate stands at 10.7 percent, with 26 million people unable to find a job.

Since Davos, there has been running commentary assessing whether attendees from 100 countries and up to 50 heads of state and corporate executives attending the Forum came away optimistic or pessimistic about the economic state of the world. “As more than 2,500 global movers and shakers headed home Sunday, there was broad agreement that things are beginning to look up on the economic front - at least in China, Africa, and emerging markets, but not in Japan, Europe, and the United States,” observed the Associated Press.

“The balance between optimism and pessimism is also always affected by personal circumstances, as much as rational analysis,” wrote Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times January 22. “So the mood f Davos man will be lifted by the fact that the last year has seen a bull run for stocks. This month the S&P 500 hit a five-year high, and the FTSE All-World index is at its highest level for 18 months. Even the bankers are liable to arrive in Davos with some of their old swagger restored. After all, there have been no major scandals, collapses or arrests for months.”

In other words, how you see the economic situation depends a lot on whether you are a CEO, banker or well-paid government official on one hand or a jobless worker or someone who could easily become unable to earn a living on the other.

And that’s as true in the U.S. as anywhere else in the world.

AP said there was “broad agreement” at Davos “that things are beginning to look up on the economic front - at least in China, Africa, and emerging markets, but not in Japan, Europe, and the United States.”

Although economy the U.S. economy added 157,000 new jobs last month, the unemployment rate rose from 7.8 in December to a staggering 7.9 percent in January. That number is less than the 196,000 jobs added in December. Over the month, the ranks of the unemployed rose from 12.2 million in December to 12.3 million in January. African American joblessness slipped from 14 percent to 13.8 percent over the month and the rate for Latinos rose from 9.6 percent to 9.7 percent. About to 20 million people are said to be unemployed or underemployed in the country at the moment.

While the Associated Press headlined, “Stocks rise on strong jobs numbers,” the New York Times observed that “hiring growth has been uninspiring in the last year, trudging along just barely fast enough to keep up with population growth but not nearly quickly enough to put a major dent in unemployment. A backlog of 12.3 million idle workers remains. The average worker who is unemployed has been pounding the pavement for 35 weeks” and “Millions have exhausted their unemployment benefits, and many more will roll off the government’s system in the coming months with no options in sight.”

While those in charge of this clearly can’t agree on what should be done about the situation on the jobs front, those gathered at Davos appear to have taken note of the fact that, at least in Europe and the U.S., government policies are pushing things in the wrong direction and if some powerful forces have their way, austerity measures will be rolled out that will make things a whole lot worse.

“Three years ago, a terrible thing happened to economic policy, both here and in Europe,” economist Paul Krugman wrote in the Times last week. “Although the worst of the financial crisis was over, economies on both sides of the Atlantic remained deeply depressed, with very high unemployment. Yet the Western world’s policy elite somehow decided en masse that unemployment was no longer a crucial concern, and that reducing budget deficits should be the overriding priority.” That view is shared by economist Robert Reich who observes that “The unfortunate reality is that on both sides of the ocean we have people making economic policy who are largely sputtering nonsense about how to remedy the economy. And for the foreseeable future they will have the political power to keep their jobs no matter how disastrous the outcomes of their policy might be.”

As strange as it may seem, the problem of so many people out of work for long periods of time has yet to find a credible place on the nation’s policy agenda. It hardly rates a mention in the policy priorities emanating these days from either Congress or the executive branch.

Reich says the U.S. government is “following Europe’s sorry example of failed austerity economics.”

“At a point where the US could be experiencing catch-up growth to make up for the output lost since 2007, Washington is importing European austerity,” wrote Edward Luce, Washington bureau chief of the Financial Times, adding that “There is nothing about the anemic US recovery that merits austerity at this point.”

On January 31, President Obama killed off his high level President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness that he formed two years ago in what was said to be an effort to enlist outside expertise on dealing with joblessness. While the announcement was awaited over whether the 26-member panel’s mandate would be renewed, Erika Eichelberger wrote in Mother Jones magazine that it had “failed to accomplish much over its two-year life span, and a lot of what it did turn out was more friendly to business than to regular people.” A spokesperson for the Council’s chair General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt told her the panel, which included the chiefs of the heads of AOL, Intel, Xerox, Boeing, Comcast, and Intel, and other corporate giants had come up with 60 recommendations for executive action and that “significant progress” has been made on 54 of those. However, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, one of the two labor leaders on the Council, told Eichelberger: “By reducing overall revenues these reforms could easily have the opposite [of the intended] effect… starving the government of the revenue it needs to create good jobs and upgrade our infrastructure and education systems, thereby making the United States a less attractive place to invest.”

Last January, the Council issued a report which Trumka voted against saying, “It is clear from our work in all of these areas that without timely action by government on a large scale, solutions will continue to elude us as a nation. Unfortunately, I believe the report downplays the need for a proactive role for the U.S. government in many of these areas; fails to address the significant additional revenues needed to address the challenges identified on an appropriate scale; and in many cases erroneously identifies the root causes of the underlying structural problems.”

The President last met with the Council in February 2012.

On March 2011, in his last column for the New York Times, Bob Herbert took note of the corporate influence on the new jobs panel and commented, “Overwhelming imbalances in wealth and income inevitably result in enormous imbalances of political power. So the corporations and the very wealthy continue to do well. The employment crisis never gets addressed. The wars never end. And nation-building never gets a foothold here at home.”

Some observers had expected the job creation panel, which hadn’t met for a year, would nonetheless be reauthorized if only because not doing so would be a bad idea from a public relations standpoint. As it turned out, the Council’s demise went relatively unnoticed.

According to the Washington Post, “Officials said the president always intended for the council to fulfill its mission and then wind down, and said Obama would continue to actively engage and seek input from business leaders about ways to accelerate job-creation and economic growth. Among the steps Obama plans to pursue are expedited permits for infrastructure projects, plus programs to boost entrepreneurship and workforce development.”

Simply put: that’s not enough.

Behind the statistics and projections being circulated and discussed are real people, men and women who lives and welfare remain precarious. They are paying heavily for the economic policies being hashed in the capitals of the capitalist world and will continue to do so as long as economic health is measured in terms of products and profits. The aim of social policy should be to ensure that everyone who seeks employment should have access to a means to earn a living wage. That means creating jobs. That means now, not somewhere down the line after “the market” has done it dubious magic. It’s been done before and it can be dome again. But it takes political will.

Guy Ryder, directorgeneral of the ILO and a former general secretary of the International TradeUnion Confederation, recently called the unemployment crisis “a massive wasteof the lives of young people and their talents and extraordinarily damaging tothe people themselves and their societies” and a threat to social stability.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare union. Click here to contact Mr. Bloice.

Feb 7, 2013 - Issue 503

The Choice:
David Fagen,
The Philippine-US war,
& Black Internationalism

“We all wanted to kill ‘niggers’…beats rabbit hunting…”

-White US soldier commenting on the Philippine-US War[i]

One of the least known conflicts in US history was the Philippine-US War. The length of the war is, itself, a subject of some debate, having ended according to many historians in 1901, but actually lasting closer to 1913. An outgrowth of the Spanish-American War (1898), it represented, in effect, an extension of the expansionism of the USA that had included the destruction and absorption of Native American lands, the seizure of northern Mexico, and the capturing of Hawaii. Though the USA is considered a country that downplayed establishing its own colonies, this is historically inaccurate. Through the Spanish-American War, the USA gained several, including the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and a semi-colony: Cuba.

In the case of the Philippines, the US forces that arrived under Admiral Dewey were not necessary in deployed order to defeat the Spanish. Philippine rebels, well organized and led, had defeated the Spanish except in Manila. Rather than surrender to the Filipinos, the Spanish chose to cut a deal with the USA and surrender to them instead. The US forces took advantage of this and soon had sufficient troops on the ground to begin the process of occupying the archipelago.

The Philippine revolutionaries had accepted the US forces as genuine allies and were, therefore, completely unprepared for the treachery that ensued. The war launched by the USA was bloody, racist and actually genocidal. While more than 4000 US troops were killed and another 3000 wounded, somewhere between 250,000 – 1.4 million Filipinos were killed.[ii] The strikingly racist nature of the war is what has been written out of most histories. The Filipinos were identified by white Americans as, for all intents and purposes, being black. The usage of the term ‘nigger’ to describe the Filipinos, then, was not seen as analogical by the racists, but rather as an appropriate characterization. The combination of the deep-seated racism plus the frustration faced by the US in fighting a guerrilla war with a well-organized resistance made this one of the bloodiest engagements the USA ever undertook, and one for which the USA has never made amends.

African American troops were deployed to the Philippines to fight the resistance. This took place at a peculiar moment in African American history. Jim Crow segregation and political disenfranchisement were the growing trends in the South. The gains won during the period of Reconstruction had been lost. There were different responses towards this catastrophe within the leadership of Black America, with the most famous being the great debates between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois. The Washington/Dubois debates were largely over the domestic struggle, but there were also struggles regarding how African Americans should approach the question of US foreign policy, and more generally, US imperialism. One school of thought held that African Americans needed to prove themselves worthy and patriotic citizens and, therefore, support US adventures overseas. The other school of thought was consistent with a significant anti-imperialist movement of the time (with which the noted author, Mark Twain, was associated) that condemned US aggression, particularly with regard to the invasion of the Philippines.

Into this situation entered one David Fagen, an African American soldier originally from Florida, who enlisted in the Army and eventually found himself in the Philippines. Rather than entering into a war against Spanish colonialism, Fagen and other Black troops were now engaged in a very unpopular war of aggression against a brown-skinned and black-skinned people who wanted national independence. The war was unpopular enough among the troops that there were desertions and, in fact, defections to the Philippine Army.

Fagen was one of small group of deserters who defected to the Philippine Army and fought with valor, rising in the ranks of the guerrilla army. His reputation became such that the US military went all out to find, capture and kill Fagen. By 1901 the Philippine resistance weakened and key leaders were either captured or surrendered. The US military was unwilling to pardon Fagen and, despite efforts by the US military to convince them otherwise, Fagen’s Filipino comrades refused to turn him over. As a result Fagen disappeared. In a strange incident, however, an individual brought in the head of a man he alleged to have been Fagen, thereby seeking a reward from the US military. The circumstances were so odd that it was largely assumed that it was some sort of trick and that Fagen was, actually, still alive. In subsequent years there were reports of sightings of Fagen but nothing confirmed. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, Fagen lived out the rest of his life among the Filipino population.

Fagen’s existence, and specifically his actions in defecting to the Philippine Army raised at the time, and continue to raise, important questions about conscience and patriotism. From the standpoint of the US military, Fagen was a deserter and traitor, but from the standpoint of the Filipino resistance, and for much of the national democratic movement in the Philippines subsequently, Fagen was a hero who stood with them during their darkest hour.

Fagen took a stand against an illegal and genocidal war. It was not simply a verbal stand but a refusal to be complicit in such criminality. It was this actual stand that made him such a dangerous person, at least from the standpoint of US authorities. There was another side to Fagen’s stance which must be understood: the example that he set at a moment of intense racial/national oppression against African Americans. At a point when African Americans were losing virtually every right to which they were supposed to be eligible, Fagen’s actions were, in effect, challenging the very notion that there was any obligation on the part of African Americans to respect the authority of the United States. Such an example simply could not have been tolerated by the ruling elite. It was not just that Fagen chose not to return to the Jim Crow USA, but that Fagen was quite prepared to take up arms.

Fagen’s actions force a discussion about the stance that should be taken in the face of illegal and immoral actions by one’s government. This is a matter far deeper than the issue of taking up arms. In the conditions of war, Fagen made a choice, but he was not the only person who had to make the broader choice. A mass movement existed at the time in the USA, as earlier noted, that protested US aggression. Yet there were African Americans then, as there are now, who suggested that Black America must constantly prove itself to be worthy citizens by being complicit in actions of aggression. Whether, in our time, it was events such as Colin Powell misinforming the United Nations about the alleged weapons of mass destruction, or the current wave of drone assaults being carried out by the USA with large numbers of civilian casualties, or for that matter, the continued US involvement in the Philippines, African Americans are encouraged either to silence our criticisms or to actively support such actions. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., certainly did not take up arms against US imperial might, but his profound condemnation of US aggression in Indochina (and other parts of the world) made him as disreputable a character as was David Fagen, at least as far as the perpetrators of imperial arrogance were and are concerned.

It is to this matter of the current US involvement in the Philippines that the story of David Fagen brings us. Since the 1946 nominal independence of the Philippines, the US has continued its interference in the internal affairs of the country, turning the Philippines into a neo-colony. Whether in their support of dictators, such as Ferdinand Marcos, or their support for other ‘democratically challenged’ governments that have conducted or turned a blind eye to human rights abuses, the USA has been on the wrong side of history. The Philippines has been engaged in a civil war since the early 1970s, pitting a radical alliance known as the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (led by the Communist Party of the Philippines) against various governments of the Philippines. The USA has done nothing to assist with a peaceful settlement between the NDFP and the government and, if anything, has encouraged a further militarization of that conflict. The USA has also been of little help in the conflict on the southern island of Mindanao (with the largely Muslim Moro people fighting for autonomy), which the USA treated as largely a matter of alleged Islamic terrorism.

US media has generally ignored developments in the Philippines unless there is some sort of alleged Al Qaeda connection, and it pays no attention to, nor expresses any concern regarding, US military machinations or the efforts to sabotage peace talks with the NDFP. In that context the apparition of David Fagen hangs over Black America asking us, once again, to choose, that is, to ask ourselves to what extent do we wish to either be complicit in the imperial adventures of our government or, in the alternative, to side with democracy and justice?

The choice is ours, and ours alone to make.

[NOTE: This essay is written in recognition of “Philippine Solidarity Week,” which commemorates the opening of the Philippine-US War in February 1899. There are a number of interesting pieces written on the matter of David Fagen. I refer the reader to a very interesting piece by my colleague E. San Juan, Jr. cited earlier in this essay. I also would suggest: Michael C. Robinson and Fran N. Schubert, “David Fagen: An Afro - American Rebel in the Philippines, 1899 - 1901,” Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 44, No. 1, (February 1975), pp.69 - 83.]

[i] E. San Juan, Jr., “An African American Solider in the Philippine Revolution: An Homage to David Fagen,” Cultural Logic, 2009, p.14.

[ii] Ibid. p.3.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board memberand Columnist, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is aSenior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfricaForum, and the author of “They’reBankrupting Us” - And Twenty Other Myths about Unions. He is also the co-author of SolidarityDivided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice, which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.

Feb 7, 2013 - Issue 503

Food Sovereignty or Industrial Agriculture?

As national economies around the world are each facing “fiscal cliffs” of their own, and as climate change and environmental degradation threaten all nations, the crisis in agriculture may be a greater threat and the solutions that are being proposed might make things even worse.

The power of transnational corporations, headquartered mostly in the economically powerful nations, is moving the world’s people toward industrial agriculture and away from small farm agriculture, the only system that will provide the people with what is now commonly called “food sovereignty.”

Food sovereignty is a term used by La Via Campesina since the mid-1990s to describe the rights of peoples to produce their own food by using a system of agriculture of their own choosing. Food sovereignty puts the people and their communities, as well as their nations, at the center of food systems, without regard to the demands or profits of a corporatized global food system.

La Via Campesina is an international movement, which brings together millions of peasants, small and medium-size farmers, landless people, women farmers, indigenous people, migrants and agricultural workers in about 150 local and national organizations in 70 countries from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

In describing itself, Via Campesina declares: “It defends small-scale sustainable agriculture as a way to promote social justice and dignity. It strongly opposes corporate driven agriculture and transnational companies that are destroying people and nature.” The movement began just 20 years ago in Mons, Belgium, started by men and women whose concerns were not given recognition by the private and governmental powers that had begun to change the way the peoples of the world provide food for themselves and their families.

Now, however, the movement’s spokespersons point out, “La Via Campesina is now recognized as a main actor in the food and agricultural debates. It is heard by institutions such as the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) and the U.N. Human Rights Council, and is broadly recognized among other social movements from local to global level.”

If it is difficult for small groups that try to offer alternatives to the way the dominant culture is doing things in the U.S., where we have instant communications, educational institutions and the remnants of a free press, to get a hearing, imagine what it is like for a movement like Via Campesina to be heard on a global level.

The sheer numbers of people in the movement should give them great credibility (of which they have earned a great measure), but they are functioning on a global scale and they have few rich and powerful friends to carry their message into the parliaments, congresses, and corporate headquarters around the world. The world has many issues that are more important to them than peasants and indigenous and fisher people and their cry for food sovereignty.

But food sovereignty should be of concern to those in the richer countries, as well, because they are, indeed, subject to the same corporate food that peoples of poorer nations are having slammed into their dinner pans and onto their plates. That is, if they are being given a share of the spoils of land grabbing, at all.

Everyone should be learning about land grabbing on all of the continents, but especially Africa, Asia, and the Americas. For a decade or two, governments, transnational corporations, and individuals have been buying up land in countries where people still live close to the land and, for the most part, still grow their own food, usually on small parcels of land that they might not own with a clear title. In countries where there is such a tradition, the land is held in a kind of communal ownership and the people who have farmed on the land for generations believe that the land still belongs to them, even though the governing structure has become a nation and the officials (even when there is a loose structure of democracy) can be corrupted or convinced that the “modern” methods of agriculture are better than traditional and modern crops are better than those of the old ways.

A most recent example of land grabbing is the project, ProSavana, an enterprise of the Brazilian government and the private sector, in collaboration with Japan, for a large-scale agribusiness project in Northern Mozambique, where the rainfall is good and, according to Via Campesina, “millions of small farmers work these lands to produce food for their families and for local and regional markets.” It is these lands that would be made available to Brazilian and Japanese companies to establish large, industrial farms, to produce what they would consider low-cost commodity crops for export.

It is not clear whether the export crops would be destined for Brazil or Japan, or whether they would simply be for the world market, with the profits ending in the coffers of Japanese or Brazilian companies. Mozambican authorities are not specific about how the people who now farm that land would benefit, or if they would benefit at all.

What is clear is that, if the land grab there runs true to form, as in other countries, the people who have been farming the land for a very long time might be able to work on the vast plantations at wages that are so low they might not be able to feed themselves, their families and their extended families. They would be refugees in their own land, without the means to send their children to school or to seek medical care when it is needed…the most basic amenities of life.

Ostensibly, the project is concentrating on “abandoned area,” where no farming is being practiced in the region and they will be able to obtain long-term leases (in some countries as long as 99 years), at fire sale prices: $1 per, hectare per year (a hectare is 2.47 acres).

Via Campesina stated, “But land surveys by Mozambique's national research institute clearly show that nearly all the agricultural land in the area is being used by local communities.” The millions who depend on small farms for their way of life do not want the large-scale monocropping of “commodities,” such as corn, soybeans, cotton, wheat, and other plantings that are not for food, but for the world market. The people in that part of the country do not want to be employees of Brazilian or Japanese companies or rural laborers who work at whatever they can at a (low) wage-paying job.

Commodity production in other countries has produced disasters of large proportions and it has resulted in the depletion of the soil and damage to the soil in ways that small farm agriculture would not be able to accomplish, even if they intended to do so. Peasant farmers around the world know this, because they have seen commodity cropping in other parts of the world. The result of raising commodities, year after year, is soil that is without much life after a while and crops can be grown only by industrial and chemical intervention: Chemical fertilizer is necessary, as are pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. And, new pests are encountered regularly, largely because crops that spring from chemical intervention are weaker than crops that are grown without such aids, and in conditions closer to their natural state.

Those who live in countries like the U.S. are fed diets that are produced on an industrial scale, and many of them are manufactured from corn or soybeans, which can be made to taste like many other products. Even livestock is produced on an industrial scale, in feedlots and confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

Small farmers in many countries (think France, Italy, and Mexico) do not want any part of this kind of agriculture, but they face the relentless assault of money and power from the transnational corporations, which seem to get their way, eventually. It is this power that Via Campesina and the Slow Food movement that started in Italy several years ago are fighting against. It is that power that is ravaging the environments of many poor countries, especially when the monoculture makes full use of genetically modified (GMOs) seeds and crops. These GMOs are patented and cost more than small farmers can afford, especially since they must buy the chemicals, without which the crops would not grow as would their own, more robust traditional crops. Besides, traditional farmers save their own seeds from year to year, so they do not have to pay for seeds at all.

Corporations like St. Louis-based Monsanto, a worldwide chemical and seed company want to force the replacement of saved seeds wherever they are able. Land grabbing companies and governments are the likeliest places for Monsanto to do their work. It has happened in the U.S. About 85 percent of corn grown here is GMO and estimates are that more than 90 percent of soybeans are GMO.

This is all pure profit for Monsanto and other seed and chemical companies of the world. They don’t have so much as a shovel invested in farming around the world and yet, they reap the profits, while peasant farmers and indigenous peoples go hungry. That’s why land grabbing is so important to worldwide corporations. They have seen that it works in places like the U.S. and they know it should be much easier to do the same in developing countries. They send their agents (often, from their government) to cut the deal, and then they move in. That’s what is happening in Mozambique and what has happened in many other countries.

A year ago, the news outlets in the U.S. were full of stories of the “Occupy” movement and the most important result of its creation: The nationwide discussion of the reality of the working of the economy, in that 1 percent owns or controls the vast majority of the wealth and income of the country, while the 99 percent of the rest of us are left with little.

People who work the land in other countries, like Mozambique, know that something is wrong and they do not want any part of the industrial agriculture that has wiped out small farm agriculture in countries like the U.S. Rather, they want food sovereignty and they want self-determination in other spheres of their lives.

Land grabbing andindustrial agriculture threaten the very existence of their lives, theirculture, their unique economies, their land, and their environment, in general.Often, the deals are made in secret by their government leaders and the peoplefind out too late that they are being displaced and usurped. They are beingmade aware in a more timely way by people’s organizations across the globe, andthey’re fighting back.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello,is a long-time former newspaper reporter and labor organizer, who lives in the Mohawk Valley of New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Click here to contact Mr. Funiciello.

Feb 7, 2013 - Issue 503

Storming the Bastille Takes Many Forms

"It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die."

- Steve Biko

Nothing worth attaining comes into being without conscious struggle.

Everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation have been systemically and systematically indoctrinated to believe the fallacious notion that 'change' automatically represents 'progress' and that progress is somehow inevitable. The fact is that change does not automatically mean progress and real progress does not come about by osmosis nor is it inevitable. Mental consciousness coupled with sustained struggle are essential in bringing about real change and real progress.

An unconscious people are an easily manipulated people. This is why, for example, so many were systemically duped into believing that a superficial 'change' of color in the occupant of the 'White House' would somehow mean real change and real progress. Of course, now, an increasing number of people are beginning to see that they were cynically duped by the power-elite of this irretrievably corrupt, corporate-controlled, U.S. political system. Real change and real progress cannot be brought about by an unconscious and ahistorical people.

The historically famous July 14th, 1789 storming of the Bastille in Paris, France, signaled the beginning of the French revolution against the blatantly tyrannical power-elite of that period. The Bastille itself was known for the brutality and torture carried out within its well guarded and high fortress walls. The people were conscious and they had had enough!

Notwithstanding the reprehensible fact that Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder, he was nonetheless quite correct when he noted that, “Every generation needs a new revolution.”

The power-elite of this 21st century United States is well aware of the egregious role that the notion of 'race' and (more accurately) color has, and continues to play, in this society. Thus, it became opportune, in order to keep the everyday people of all colors in this nation in an unconscious, confused, and easily manipulated mental state, to flip the script (as it were) by simply changing the color of the 'White House' occupant (who is also the head of the U.S. Empire), while continuing (and indeed expanding) the de facto murderous economic, political, and military policies of this nation's corporate-owned government at home and abroad. This of course represented no real change and no real progress at all. In fact it was just the opposite. And it was carried out with such alacrity by the U.S. power-elite due to political unconsciousness of an inordinate number of people in this nation.

The actual war of terror (by the U.S. power-elite of this nation) against everyday ordinary people at home and abroad, is intensifying on a regular basis. The U.S. corporate-stream media, acting in its role as the propaganda arm for the corporate-owned U.S. government (be it Democrat or Republican) is constantly engaged in propagating disinformation, misinformation, obfuscation, and crucial omissions - with the objective of keeping everyday people unconscious, confused, and easily manipulated.

The United States government, at home and abroad, continues to be, in the paraphrased words of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” The economic, political, physical & psychological 'violence' by this government is surpassed only by its hypocrisy. Joblessness, homelessness, mass incarceration, police brutality, corporate domination, the languishing of political prisoners, and judicial injustice, etc. in this nation go hand-in-hand with the perpetual U.S. wars and other military acts of aggression and/or subversion against nations including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia (East Africa), Libya (North Africa), Yemen, Palestine, and so very many more.

It is time for the everyday ordinary people of this nation to take a lesson from from a page in history. It is time to euphemistically storm the U.S. corporate government Bastille!

Storming the Bastille in this nation today can and should take many and varying forms, and it means, among other things; utterly rejecting corporate media propaganda and creating our own everyday people's media that informs and links the issues which affect ordinary people both at home and abroad. It means saying a profound NO to economic austerity at home and U.S. wars abroad. It means understanding that the Democrat and Republican parties are corporate owned and do not genuinely (and will never) serve the economic, political, and social needs and human rights of everyday people. Therefore, it means coming to our senses and rejecting both corporate-owned parties in favor of creating a real everyday people's national consciousness movement. It means struggling and organizing for ideas and ideals that “will live,” rather than existing or “living for [the] idea” of hypocrisy that ultimately “will die.” It means being creative in both how we think and what we do. It means striving to raise our individual and collective consciousness – which once raised, can spread quickly throughout this land like a cleansing prairie fire. It means many things that have yet to be realized.

Storming the Bastille really can indeed take many forms and it really is time to storm the Bastille! We must do this for ourselves, each other, and in conjunction with the peoples throughout our very precious Mother Earth!

Remember: Each one, reach one. Each one, teach one. Onward, then, my sisters and brothers. Onward!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil / political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.) Click here to view Larry’s interview of October 26, 2012. Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.

Feb 7, 2013 -Issue 503

MLK Today
Political Cartoon
By Eric Garcia, Chicago IL

BlackCommentator.com cartoonist/artist Eric Garcia produces historically based, politicallycharged criticism, with the goal of creating dialogue about thecontemporary issues”. That’s how Garcia describes his artwork. Aversatile artist working in an assortment of media, from paintings, tohand-printed posters, to sculpture installations, Garcia’s art has acommon goal of educating and challenging. Click here to contact brother Eric. His website is southvalleyart.com. Follow Eric on twitter garciaink@twitter.com or friend Eric J.Garcia on facebook.

Feb 7, 2013 -Issue 503

Haiti’s LGBTQ Accepting Vodou Societies

As I celebrate Black History Month, I’d like to recognize one of my indigenous West African ancestral religions that’s not homophobic - even if some of the practitioners are.

To the disbelief of many - it’s Vodun.

Haitian Vodou is an ancestral folk religion whose tenets have always been queer-friendly, accepting people of all sexual orientations and gender expressions.

It’s just one of the religions brought to the New World by the African Diaspora, but there is no religion that frightens and fascinates the world over as much as Vodou.

Misconstrued by racist images of zombies rising from graves, jungle drums, cannibalism, orgiastic ceremonies ritualizing malevolent powers of black magic, and by today’s popular culture, images courtesy of Hollywood’s and New Orleans’ tourism industry, Vodou is a persecuted and misunderstood religion. The Catholic Church demonized Vodou during slavery, and so did Haiti’s political ruling elite who feared its revolutionary potential.

As a monotheistic religion, Vodou believes in one God, and that individual behavior is guided by spirits called “loas” or “lwas.” The spirits derive from the belief traditions of the African people of the former kingdom of Dahomey, now Togo and Benin. These spirits are lesbian, gay , bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) as well as gender-fluid, from being androgynous to dual-gendered.

Gay males in Haitian Vodou embrace the divine protection of Erzulie Freda, the feminine spirit of love and sexuality. Gay males are allowed to imitate and worship her. Lesbians are under the patronage of Erzulie Dantor, a fierce protector of women and children experiencing domestic violence. Erzulie Dantor is bisexual and prefers the company women. Labalèn is a gynandrous or intersexual spirit. And LaSirèn, who is the Vodou analogue of Yemayá, a maternal spirit, is a revered transgender.

But let’s not be fooled. Openly gay Haitian men in Haiti are ostracized. For example, the 2002 documentary “Des Hommes et Dieux (Of Men and Gods)” by anthropologist, Anne Lescot, exposed the daily struggles of Haitian transwomen. Blondine in the film said, “When people insult me because I wear a dress I am not ashamed of how I am. Masisis (gay males) can’t walk down the street in a wig and dress.” Gay men are also ostracized anywhere the Haitian Diaspora resides, included the queer-friendly state of Massachusetts. In 2008, a 22-year-old Haitian gay male committed suicide because of his sexual orientation.

Ironically, homosexuality has been legal in Haiti since 1986. But few protections and provisions come with it. For example, same-sex marriage, and civil unions are not recognized. It’s unclear whether LGBTQ couples can adopt children or have custody of their own children. LGBTQ Haitians don’t openly serve in the military. They don’t have an anti-hate crime bill that specifically addresses discrimination and harassment LGBTQ Haitians face on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Minimally, LGBTQ Haitians are protected under its Constitution as stated in Article 35-2 that prohibits discrimination in the workplace based on, “sex, beliefs, opinions and marital status.” And the United Nation’s International Bill of Human Rights mainly protects LGBTQ Haitians. With no queer enclaves in Port-au-Prince and other big cities throughout Haiti, many LGBTQ Haitians are left puzzled by what it means that homosexuality is legal in their country.

How are Haiti’s LGBTQ communities being helped since the world community descended on Haiti with relief aid, in response to the January 2010 earthquake? As one of Haiti’s most marginal groups, the question arises in response to how some American LGBTQ New Orleans residents were treated during the Hurricane Katrina relief effort in 2005. Will many of these same conservative faith-based relief agencies that remain in Haiti transfer their homophobic attitudes onto Haiti’s LGBTQ citizens?

However, as in all repressively homophobic cultures, LGBTQ people have always found ways to express and to live out their true authentic lives. In Haiti, how openly queer you are depends not only on your class, profession and skin complexion, but also your religious affiliation. In a country that is predominately Roman Catholic, homosexuality is condemned. But among Haiti’s LGBTQ middle and profession classes, they find ways to socialize out of the public “gaydar” and with impunity.

For example, Pétionville, an upscale suburb of Port-au-Prince of mostly American and European whites and multiracial Haitians, is where many LGBTQ people will informally gather for dinner parties, at restaurants and beaches. The well-known 4-star tourist hotel, the Hotel Montana in the hills of Pétionville, that was recently destroyed by the quake, is one of the hot spots. And these queers hold positions as government officials, business people, NGO and UN aid workers.

For the poorer classes of LGBTQ Haitians who live, work and socialize in the densely populated and improvised capitol city of Port-au-Prince, discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender expressions is commonplace. The 2002 documentary, “ Des Hommes et Dieux (Of Men and Gods)” by anthropologist, Anne Lescot, exposed the daily struggles of Haitian transwomen. Blondine in the film said, “When people insult me because I wear a dress I am not ashamed of how I am. Masisis (gay males) can’t walk down the street in a wig and dress.” But when Blondine is at a Vodou service he feels free.

Poorer classes of LGBTQ Haitians, like Blondine, do have at least two ways to openly express and celebrate who they are - in Vodou and in Rara festivals.

Rara Festivals, a yearly festival that begins following Carnival belong to the peasant and urban poor of Haiti. The Rara bands come out of Vodou societies that have LGBTQ congregations where gay men are permitted to cross-dress with impunity.

In both Rara Festivals and Vodousocieties, our LGBTQ Haitians are free to be authentically who they are.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, the Rev. Irene Monroe, is a religion columnist, theologian, and public speaker. She is the Coordinator of the African-American Roundtable of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry (CLGS) at the Pacific School of Religion. A native of Brooklyn, Rev. Monroe is a graduate from Wellesley College and Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University, and served as a pastor at an African-American church before coming to Harvard Divinity School for her doctorate as a Ford Fellow. She was recently named to MSNBC’s list of 10 Black Women You Should Know. Reverend Monroe is the author of Let Your Light Shine Like a Rainbow Always: Meditations on Bible Prayers for Not’So’Everyday Moments. As an African-American feminist theologian, she speaks for a sector of society that is frequently invisible. Her website is irenemonroe.com. Click here to contact the Rev. Monroe.

Feb 7, 2013 - Issue 503

Mission Implausible:
If Blacks Stop Selling Drugs,
Wealthy Whites Would Declare Civil War

When you hear talk of “gun control” and laws being created around the country in response to recent random shootings by angry or crazed whites, don’t for one second think law enforcement is going to adopt measures to racially profile white males. White police officers, male and female have no desire to arrest white men with guns even while caught in the act of shooting at others, much less profile them. People don’t like confronting like-minded people anymore than you would like arresting your cousin. Blacks in general have yet to understand the lengths whites will go through to not arrest another white. I may not like it, but I respect it. There is only one way for blacks to fight this and win.

My challenge to young gang-members and drug-dealers is to just flat-out quit the criminal activity. No more selling, no more shooting. No more violence And especially, no more killing. Do this no matter what the costs to you, death, scorn, imprisonment, civil war. Do it out of a sense of rebellion.

Get out at all costs. Yes, I said civil war. The main reason the counterintelligence program (Cointelpro) manipulated and pushed “gangster rap” was to distract black youth through the encouragement of vile and violent behavior that would make them reject black unity and knowledge of themselves, their true history and especially their potential.

I figure, while God is busy making sure the Baltimore Ravens go to the Superbowl (at least according to Ray Lewis), it’s totally left up to blacks to change their condition in this hostile and violent world. Currently the net US street earnings from illegal drug sales is $188 billion a year. It’s well-known by now that Mexico has become the big pipeline into America for illegal narcotics, replacing Bolivia, and Colombia. In fact all South American drugs go through Mexico. Most of these drugs are targeted to black and Hispanic single-mothers’ boys for distribution. Most of these boys operate within street gangs who easily recruited them due to their lack of traditional family structure.

A graphic from the National Post outlines the routes of four known major cartels and one unknown, all from Mexico. My city of Buffalo for instance, is listed as the major seller for the Gulf Cartel based out of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, right across the border from Brownsville, TX. The CDG - as the Gulf Cartel is also known - is one of the oldest cartels in Mexico, existing since the time of prohibition when they smuggled alcohol into the US.

Of course, New York City, as well as most major cities bordering the east and west coast, have been hit by the CDG, Federation, Juarez, Tiujuana, Los Zetas, and Sinaloa Cartels, bringing in cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana. The trick to figuring out the huge success of these gangs is not learning how vigorously law enforcement is fighting them, but what law enforcement is getting out of the supplies. Blacks lose all the way around in this game; Bolivians, Peruvians, Colombians and Mexicans only grow, process and export the coca and poppy plant. For the most part, they do not target distribution to their own citizens. They have made it known since the days of Ricky Ross that African Americans are the primary targets. Once the drugs reach the states, African American youths are the primary ones arrested and sentenced away for possession, even though white youths are the defacto primary consumers.

A (6/16/2012) report by John Burnett for NPR.org says that Mexico earns $12 billion a year in drug profits from US sales. The law enforcement’s attraction to these drugs has little to do with keeping the public healthy and drug-free, and much to do with justifying government funding, as well as the huge profits created by padding their own budget through various seizures of drug money interception.

The Burnett report also states that 4 years prior to ‘08, the amount of cash seized by them tripled from $567 million to $1.6 billion. Texas alone seized $125 million. One can only imagine what the 2012 total is, since much of this was due to traffic stops. During the ‘80s and ‘90s, intelligence agencies were created through CIA importation of crack cocaine, today various police and Sheriff departments can and have created, exclusively with confiscated drug money, their own task forces.

African Americans have great power. We fail to understand our true power as very little of these bucks stop here in the ‘hood. Though only 14% of the US population, the 2012 total of black buying power is projected to be $1,037.7 billion. We outspend European-Americans, Hispanics and Asians. Recession, what recession? We’re the ones keeping this country afloat. Just because CNN and Fox doesn’t tell us this doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Any time you have the power to raise the economy, you have the power to destroy the economy. Blacks can bring down any economy here we chose except hunting, hockey, and health foods.

Since the mid-to-late ’80s, black boys have succumbed to the rush to move drugs; now it’s time to leave the South American growers as well as the middleman (US intelligence, law enforcement, the criminal justice system, and prison industrial complex) high and dry.

Such a major move among young black boys would require the same obstinacy and peer pressure among themselves that they used to get involved with these gangs and activities in the first place. Now, of course, we can’t discuss taking something away from today’s youth without replacing it, especially when it comes to doing something right just because it’s right. A large part of the fascination and attraction of illegal drugs and street gangs is that they are wrong. Black youths today have been and are still being programmed to be contrary in their thought-patterns. As direct result of their being involved in these underworld activities, they have become contrary to everything except the powerful white man, without really knowing it. Even though, in reality, they owe it to their own community to just stop, there is a program that has proven results through intervention, incentive and replacing these illegal activities with positive activity that has significantly lowered the crime rate in several cities. We will deal with these ideas in an upcoming column.

In the meantime, a black, youth-led prohibition of illegal narcotics and street gang ceasefires can make them out to be rebels of the highest order, upset the American, and to some extent world economy, and infuriate white American decision-makers to such an extreme, they will, at the very least, contemplate a 2nd civil war. Try it and see what happens. If law enforcement can use their confiscated drug money to bring in technology and resources, the black gangs’ remaining drug dollars can be pooled together to establish legal businesses based on manufacturing the things black youths enjoy buying the most: clothes, watches and other jewelry and even handmade high-performance automobiles, as Europeans have done for decades. Only this can make them real gangsters.

A lot of our single-mamas’ boys aren’t being taught about people like Frederick Douglass Patterson, who made his own brand of cars during the beginning of auto-manufacturing in the early 20th Century. They are brainwashed to think nothing is possible unless it’s against the law, or morally wrong by the same people who are looking to lock them up. Imagine Pookie and Ray Ray refraining from pulling the trigger on other blacks like the young sister who performed at President Obama’s Inauguration, Hadiya Pendleton. You don’t suspend such vile activity towards your own without having love of yourself and those that look like you in the first place. Love intense enough for a potential shooter to disobey a direct order from a shot-caller, for instance, to shoot a rival gang-member, at the cost of his own life. Saying “no” in this situation is a man decision, and these guys are well known to be boys and many drag their immaturity into their 30s.

Atany rate, what they are doing now is intolerable and unacceptable. It’s nocoincidence the drug culture and hard-core rap culture escalated during theearly ‘90s. These are programs made to look like black culture, but theyaren’t. So-called “gansta-rap” was a perverted version of music that the group NWAwas already putting out. Marion“Suge” Knight was propped up to bring about deadly divisions between rap groups,and ultimately street gangs, through his use of the most influential rapartists of the period. He was nothing more than cover for forces much morepowerful and clever than himself. Shifting 200 Chicagocops from desk duty to street duty in response to Hadiyah’s murder is a start,but if the US governmentwanted to actually stop Mexican drug importation they would allow Obama totransfer the Naval and Detention Base at GuantanamoBay to several key locations in Mexico. That’swhy it’s on black youths to stop the madness. An across-the-board nationalstreet gang ceasefire won’t bring back the tens of thousands of lives alreadyneedlessly lost, but it can save countless lives today and in the future. Itmust be done at ALL costs.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Chris Stevenson, is a syndicated columnist, his articles also appear in Political Affairs Magazine. Follow him on Twitter (@pointblank009) and Facebook (pointblank009). Follow his on-air broadcasts' Policy & Prejudice for clbTV, and his Blogtalkradio show 3600seconds. Click here to contact Mr. Stevenson.

Feb 7, 2013 - Issue 503

Dreams of A Reason to Commit Treason

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It’s time for a party again…even if it’s a tea party. The patriots are back, but this time, they’re anything but patriotic. The gun lobby has sicced its dogs on America. Richard Mack, a gun rights advocate and former Arizona sheriff who now lives in Texas, is urging defiance of the Obama Administration’s efforts to curb gun violence and says he has compiled a list of more than 200 sheriffs who have come out against further gun restrictions.

A band of duly-elected sheriffs are questioning the constitutionality of the President’s gun-control initiatives and are even suggesting that they would not allow federal officials to enforce laws they deem a violation of the Second Amendment. How are they suggesting that they stop them? One is even quoted as saying that he’ll “sacrifice his life” if Obama attempts to enforce the law. That sounds pretty treasonous to me!

In a letter written to the President from this group of defiant sheriffs, they say: “We respect the office of the President of the United States,” the letter says. “But make no mistake, as the duly-elected sheriffs of our respective counties, we will enforce the rights guaranteed to our citizens by the Constitution. No federal officials will be permitted to descend upon our constituents and take from them what the Bill of Rights - in particular Amendment II - has given them.” Sounds like a declaration of war to me.

You may recall the racist alarmists when Obama was on the brink of winning his first term as president: “[If Obama wins,] there’ll be blood in the streets!” There are 3,079 sheriffs in the country, according to the National Sheriffs’ Association. I guess they’ve stockpiled more than enough ammunition to take on Obama’s army - the National Guard. The last time a gang of folks attempted to usurp the authority of the union, they got their asses kicked. We labeled that event The Civil War.

Now, every time I hear these zealots embracing this contorted interpretation of the Second Amendment, I quite accurately draw a mental picture. Then, I google the voices and there you have it…white males with fear a-blazin’. Even more, they want you to revel in their fear too. What I know is this language and inference is eerily similar to an oft-forgotten event in America’s sordid history: The 1898 Wilmington Insurrection.

These gun zealots have dreams of the coup d’etat, when white Democratic (the original racist party) insurrectionists overthrew the legitimately elected local government - the only time that ever happened in United States history! Social conservatives today have dreams of re-enacting the show of their power of old. These Democratic white supremacists illegally seized power from the elected government. More than 1,500 white men participated in an attack on the Black newspaper, burning down the building. They ran officials and community leaders out of the city, and killed as many blacks as humanly possible in vicious attacks, but especially destroyed the neighborhood called “Brooklyn”. They took photographs of each other during the events to preserve their power for generations to come.

Of course, you are now calling me a racist; perhaps, thinking that I am stoking the coals of fear. I’m not scared, that’s why I am for gun control. The real concern is that gun zealots like this band of sheriffs get to get away with such disrespect of American processes and law. We won’t let them do this again…but that’s exactly why they cling so dearly to The Second Amendment. They won’t say it, but guns are the single greatest weapon ever invented to empower a coward.

The former Navy Seal, Chris Kyle, who was unexpectedly gunned down at a Texas firing range, was gunned down by a coward. The Midland City Alabama man, Jimmy Lee Dykes, who kidnapped and held a 5-year-old boy for five days, was a coward. The Newtown, Connecticut school massacre where a gunman opened fire killing 20 children and six adults in December, was committed by a coward. They all had that one thing in common. The NRA will tell you the men’s commonality is mental illness. I beg to differ. No one worried about their mental illnesses (if indeed it existed) prior to them empowering themselves with a gun.

Guns cause men to commit acts they normally wouldn’t. Guns have promoted masculinity and bravado in little boys who grew up with grand misconceptions of manhood. Guns have been used by men to respond to issues of lack of control over women. Guns have been used by men as the final solution to problems they haven’t the patience to negotiate. Guns have proven time and again to provide more tragic ends than joyous ones.

Gun manufacturers have played the game the way corporations do in a capitalist society: protect their bottom line at all costs. Glock, Smith & Wesson, Magnum, Barrett, Kel-Tec, High Point are among the several firearm manufacturers that perpetuate the Second Amendment myth - not because they believe it - but because they profit from it. These manufacturers use the NRA to lobby their interests. That’s the American Way. Lives be damned; pass the benjamins!

I implore you to not be fooledin the cloak of The Constitution. What these gun zealots are espousing isanything but constitutional…it’s treasonous. I am of the mind that they shouldbe bought up on federal charges of citing insurrection. There is nothingpatriotic about what they’re selling and their dreams are counterfeit. Stayalert, there’s more to come.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Perry Redd, is the former ExecutiveDirector ofthe workers rights advocacy, Sincere Seven, and author of the on-linecommentary, “The Other Side of the Tracks.” He is the host of theinternet-basedtalk radio show, Socially Speaking in Washington, DC. Click here to contact Mr. Redd.

Feb 7, 2013 - Issue 503

Brief Reflections on the Debate Surrounding
Publication of “Malcolm X, a Life of Reinvention”
by Manning Marable
By Jack Smith

[Acknowledgment: Author wishes to express heartfelt appreciation to Bill Fletcher Jr., Professor Robyn C. Spencer, Professor Jeanne Theoharis, Professor Johanna Fernandez, Professor Farah Griffin, Professor Zak Kondo, Professor Komozi Woodard, Professor Clayborne Carson, Professor Ronda Levine, Professor Michael Vinson Williams, Garret Felber, Professor Waldo E Martin, Joshua Bloom, Zaheer Ali, Professor Barbara Ransby etc.,. and all who struggle for social justice. This brief article is dedicated to the memory of Dr Manning Marable. All errors herein are the sole responsibility of the author.]

“History is not everything, but it a starting point. History is a clock that people use to tell their time of day. It is a compass they use to find themselves on the map of human geography. It tells them where they are, but more importantly, what they must be.”

-Dr. John Henrik Clarke.

“It is vital to critique the mistakes of those who came before us.. to correct the mistakes and to emulate the success”

-Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael)

Casting Manning out of the community?

At a Colgate University October 24 2011 memorial program on Manning Marable, in a panel discussion of scholars including Professor Robin C. Spencer (Lehman College), Professor Russell Rickford (Dartmouth College) and Professor Komozi Woodard (Sarah Lawrence College), Professor Spencer shared insightful remarks in her first public comments concerning the vitorlic debate which accompanied publication of Dr Manning Marable’s work. Professor Spencer suggested perhaps scholars may distinguish the Reinvention trope selected by Dr Marable for his discussion of Malcolm, with the series of “life evolution”, changes etc.,. which may describe the growth of leaders such as Vicky Garvin, W.E.B Dubois, Dr. King, Maya Angelou, Yuri Kuchiyama, etc.

Pointedly, Professor Spencer described the powerful nature of Dr Marable’s scholarship.

“Manning’s work was seen as a deeply threatening to people who have built up lives, careers, social cache etc., from representing certain aspects of the oppression of Black Folks but not all aspects of it… I see the critique of Manning’s work ‘Reinvention’ coming from that sort of vantage point … almost a vitriolic attempt to cast Manning out the community,” (emphasis added).

Tension between Family legacy rights, scholarly research and public access

Presciently, the recent publication in 2013 of the Portable Malcolm X Reader, edited by Dr Manning Marable and Garret Felber, includes an interesting introduction by Dr Manning Marable describing major problems in this political biographic work. His attempt to resolve these challenges may have fueled the controversy which accompanied the 2011 publication of “Reinvention of Malcolm X”.

In the Portable Malcolm X Reader, Dr Marable states, “Almost immediately I encountered four major problems in telling Malcolm’s life story; The first was the embargo on information imposed by the attitude and decisions taken by Malcolm X’s widow, Dr. Betty Shabazz. Following her husband’s assassination, Dr. Shabazz decided not to collect and archive his papers and original documents in preparation for either giving or transferring them to a library or archive. Instead, for more than three decades, thousands of pages of correspondence and documents written or issued by Malcolm X, even his Holy Qur’an, were left rotting on the basement floor of her Mount Vernon, New York, home. Dr. Shabazz aggressively sued writers and scholars who utilized or reprinted sections of Malcolm’s speeches or writings in their published works.”

A similar conflict between financial and legal interest of family vs the needs of scholars is described in a newly published work The Rebellious Life of Rosa Parks by Professor Jeanne Theoharis.

“Unfortunately many of Park’s personal effects-dresses, awards, sewing basket, eye glasses and papers - have been caught up in an extended legal dispute between the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute, which she confounded ...and her family. This led a Michigan probate judge to give Gurnsey’s, a celebrated auction house jn New York City, the responsibility of selling all of it with the profits to be distributed between her Institute and her family. Guernsey’s has been attempting to sell the Rosa Parks Archive for five years, steadfastly unwilling to let any scholar make even a cursory examination...The legacy of Rosa Parks has been besieged by controversies around profit, control, and use of her image. … a vast trove of her papers, letters, and other ephemera sits in a storage facility in Manhattan, of use to no one, priced at $6 million to $10 million. Institutions such as Wayne State University, Alabama State University, and the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture would be the logical home for Park’s papers, but they cannot compete in such an auction. And so Park’s ideas and life’s work sit idly in a New York warehouse, waiting to be purchased.” (Emphasis added).

In order to address these family legacy concerns, scholars such as Dr Clayborne Carson and Dr Marable leveraged the considerable resources of well-endowed private universities such as Stanford University and Columbia University to enable scholarly access to the works of Dr King and Malcolm X. For example, Dr Marable facilitated a Columbia University $5 million payment to the Estate for temporary lease of the Malcolm X papers for 75 years.

This enabled deposit of these documents in the proper care and keeping of the New York Public Library Schomburg Center of Black Research with public access, scholarship research etc. Another component of the settlement may have been facilitation of family members to be appointed as Directors of a public/private funded Memorial Center located at the Audubon Ballroom. The Center is a modest community memorial reminiscent of the Dr King Center in Atlanta.

Professor Zak Kondo, the well respected author of Conspiracies Unraveling the Assassination of Malcolm X, stated on April 29 2011, in a presentation titled, “The 2nd Crucifixion of Malcolm X,” in remarks strongly critical of Dr Marable’s Reinvention work, insightfully noted that Dr Betty Shabazz’s heartfelt desire was to replicate for the family of Malcolm, the same wealth of royalty and financial benefits provided to Coretta Scott King and family from Dr King’s legacy. If this is an accurate assessment, the steps taken by scholars such as Dr Marable were reasonable efforts to enable publication of Malcolm X, a Life of Reinvention.

Lost in Translation - a political biography or a personal memoir?

At the heart of the vitriolic debate that followed publication of Reinvention, may have been an unfortunate misunderstanding. Dr Marable, the Estate of Malcolm, Loyalists, family members etc., all used similar language to describe their vision of biographic scholarship. Dr Marable consistently described his work as “telling Malcolm’s life story”. However, Dr Marable’s nontraditional vision of political biography was similar to Professor Ransby in her definitive work Ella Baker & the Black Freedom Movement.

On the other hand, the Estate, family members, family friends, Malcolm loyalists etc., may have reasonably desired a traditional personal biography similar to the inspiring and financially successful Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley, the autobiography Growing Up X by Ilyasah Shabazz, the definitive work Betty Shabazz - Surviving Malcolm X by Russell Rickford, etc.

The difference between these competing biographic approaches is dramatic

For example, Professor Michael Vinson Williams acknowledges the invaluable personal biographic memoir of Medgar Eves, For Us the Living, authored by Medgar Evers’ wife and widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams and Williams Peters. Professor Williams notes in his Bibliographic Essay, “the authors of For Us, the Living present a primary account of Evers as husband, father, and social/political activist”.

An interesting contrast can be seen with the following bold disclaimer included by Professor Theoharis in her newly published political biography of Rosa Parks, which states:

“This is fundamentally a political biography; it does not fully capture her community of friends and family ties, her faith, and church life, her marriage, her daily activities. That is a task for others.” (emphasis added).

Conclusion – “Our Black manhood”, Challenging iconoclastic racial/gender etc., myths

“Malcolm was our manhood, our living, black manhood! ....Our own shining black prince.”

-Ossie Davis’s famous Eulogy at Malcolm’s funeral in February 1965.

The paternalistic description of civil rights leaders such as Rosa Parks as a demure, self effacing, passive, unlikely heroine was a popular myth extensively promoted at her funeral by political leaders, barely two months after their failed Hurricane Katrina victim’s disaster relief.

Unfortunately iconoclastic accolades by core members of Malcolm’s circle of trust, such as Ozzie Davis with his famous eulogy of Malcolm as “our shining Black manhood,” were well meaning but deeply limiting legend. In realty, warriors such as Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Dr King, Rosa Parks, etc. faced all of the racial, gender, class, etc. complications challenging all human beings, yet they were extraordinary in their dedication to social justice.

As Nelson Mandela consistently stated to his biographers, “I am no Angel”. Instead, Nelson Mandela fondly quotes W.E. Henley work, Invictus.

“I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”

Ashe. Palante.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Jack Smith, is an alumnus of Harvard University,New York University Schoolof Law, and is a member of the United States Supreme Court Bar. Click here to contact Mr. Smith.Critical feedback is appreciated.

Feb 7, 2013 -Issue 503

The Permanent Campaign

Political Cartoon

By Mark Fiore, San Francisco CA

Click here to view the animation

PulitzerPrize-winner, Mark Fiore, who the Wall Street Journal has called “theundisputed guru of the form,” creates animated political cartoons inSan Francisco, where his work has been featured on the San FranciscoChronicle’s web site, SFGate.com, for over ten years. His work alsoappears on Newsweek.com, Slate.com, CBSNews.com, MotherJones.com andNPR’s web site. Fiore’s political animation has appeared on CNN,Frontline, Bill Moyers Journal, Salon.com and cable and broadcastoutlets across the globe.

Click here to contact Mark

Feb 7, 2013 -Issue 503

Zoulou - Mardi Gras

Political Cartoon

By Chuck Siler, Carrollton TX

Mardi Gras 2013

BlackCommentator.com artist/cartoonist Charles E. "Chuck" Siler's works feature a variety of themes ranging from New Orleans' lively and unique jazz scene to its lively and equally unique political scene. He uses his art and political cartoons to comment on life's complexities, warts and beauty marks.

His creations include fine watercolors and acrylics and pen and ink cartoons. His cartoons are featured on a regular basis in The Louisiana Weekly.

A Katrina evacuee, Siler has spoken on New Orleans history across the USA at universities and culural events.

Click here to contact Mr. Siler

Feb 7, 2013 - Issue 503

Quote to Ponder

Click here for moreabout Rosa Parks