Table of Contents

There are 17 chapters in this issue

About BlackCommentator.com

Cover Story: A Question to Black Leadership - The African World - By Bill Fletcher, Jr. - BC Editorial Board

Women’s History Month Quote to Ponder: "Political organizations are formed to keep the powerful in power…” - Shirley Chisholm

Violence Against Women - Political Cartoon By Chuck Siler, Carrollton TX

The Boy Scouts of America - Another Closed Door for Black GBTQ Youth – Inclusion - By The Reverend Irene Monroe - BC Editorial Board

The Republican Party Devouring Itself – Good - Left Margin - By Carl Bloice - BC Editorial Board

A Divided People is What Makes The U.S. a Suffering Country - Solidarity America - By John Funiciello - BC Columnist

The Confederacy And Jury Selection By Ed Sebesta and Dr. Euan Hague, PhD, BC Guest Commentators

Attacking Voting Rights - The Audacity of History By Amy V. Simmons, BC Editorial Board

New God - Political Cartoon By Eric Garcia, Chicago IL

Will Revisionist 'Scholars' Erase The People's Victories From History? - Keeping it Real By Larry Pinkney, BC Editorial Board

Presente’ Hugo Chavez - Nafsi ya Jamii - By Wilson Riles - BC Columnist

Privileging the Voices of the Threatened, Marginalized, and Offended - Represent Our Resistance - By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD - BC Editorial Board

Thank God the Little Bronze Bigot Flew Over Denzel - Point Blank - By Chris Stevenson - BC Columnist

It’s Enough to Make a Negro Turn Black: Lu Palmer - Worrill’s World - By Dr. Conrad W. Worrill, PhD - BC Columnist

New York City Citizens Defend Libraries - Political Cartoon By Mark Hurwitt

Hangin’ in Harlem - Art By Ray Ferrer - Urban Wall Art & Murals, New York NY

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

Mar 07, 2013 - Issue 507

Cover Story
A Question to Black Leadership

The day after former Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. pled guilty to a series of corruption charges I found myself engaged in a discussion with two African American colleagues. The atmosphere was one of sadness and frustration. “What could he have been thinking?” we asked each other. We shook our heads.

I have met the former Congressman several times and had very in depth discussions with him. No, I do not consider myself a friend of his, but I had immense admiration and respect for the Congressman and saw in him the possibility for new, bold and creative leadership. Jackson was, for example, the architect of a creative initiative to advance a Constitutional amendment to guarantee free, quality public education to all children, a great idea that, unfortunately, has yet to have been transformed into a mass movement.

Thus, I was stunned, over the last several months, as the former Congressman seemed to unravel ultimately leading to the charges against him for corruption, for which he ultimately pled guilty.

If Jackson were the only example of what can properly be called stupid, corrupt behavior among some number of Black leaders we could spend our time psychoanalyzing him. Yet this is not the case. Don’t get me wrong. I am NOT suggesting in any way that corruption is prevalent among Black leaders, but when it unfolds it gets an inordinate amount of attention.

There are those African Americans who become infuriated by the investigation of alleged corruption among Black politicians and, in fact, frequently defend Black leaders who are charged (and convicted) of corruption. The defenses are pitiful, suggesting that theactions against such leaders are unfair since, of course, white people do ‘it’ all the time.

I don’t think that I am the only African American who was brought up with the “Black golden rule”. It goes something like this: before you think about going for the ‘gold’ remember that just because white people do something questionable never assume that you—as an African American—can get away with it. Black folks are always under a microscope. So, on the crass pragmatic level, what are these folks thinking about? Did they forget that they were Black? How did they think that they could rob, for instance, from their political fund to cover the cost of personal expenses and not get caught? How can they possibly believe that, as Black leaders, that someone isn’t watching?

The second issue, however, is more critical, and this is what my colleagues and I focused upon. What lies beneath this sort of corruption, or, by way of another example, that of imprisoned former Congressman William Jefferson, is a question: how can individuals who posture themselves to be reformers go off the deep end?

Some years ago a labor leader who had, himself, led a successful reform movement in what had been a corrupt labor union, told me in no uncertain terms that unless a leader of a movement for reform (or, for that matter, a leader of a movement for radical change) has a clear ideological view of what they are attempting to do and the right sort of organization, it is very likely that they will succumb to various forms of seduction. I have actually seen this up close and know this to be the case. It is not enough, in other words, to have a good platform and great rhetoric. It is not even good enough to have a personal history of activism. An individual who claims to be the leader of an effort aimed at change must establish and elaborate a clear world view that is rooted in building a popular movement rather than focusing on the ‘great leader’, himself or herself. To the extent to which a leader, irrespective of intent, invests in themselves immunity from scrutiny, and believes themselves to be all-knowing they are already well on their way to hell.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and 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.

Mar 07, 2013 - Issue 507

Click here for more about Shirley Chisholm

Purchase Unbought and Unbossed: Expanded 40th Anniversary Edition

Mar 07, 2013 -Issue 507

Violence Against Women

Political Cartoon

By Chuck Siler, Carrollton TX

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

Mar 07, 2013 -Issue 507

The Boy Scouts of America
Another Closed Door
For Black GBTQ Youth

The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and the Black Church are rightly lauded for molding young black men into adult Leaders. BSA troops have produced distinguished African American scouts like retired four-star general, Colin Powell, six-time NBA champion, Michael Jordan, and Heisman Trophy winner, Herschel Walker. African American participation in the Boy Scout movement dates back to 1911, and its impact has not only forced the integration of young black males into the organization, but also continues to address many of the challenges these young males confront today.

With young African American males (particularly those in urban enclaves) at much higher risks for incarceration, gang violence, unemployment, fatherlessness, and substance abuse, the BSA has been a source of constant and consistent strong positive male figures for these young black boys.

Like many BSA troops, African American troops are often strongly affiliated with community black churches. These churches not only hold homophobic views, but also hold a tight-fisted hand on their non-gender-conforming males.

The BSA’s position on GBTQ scouts is unquestionably discriminatory, and its hesitancy to swiftly remove its ban dishonors the organization’s goal and philosophy, “to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law.”

This means that GBTQ black youths cannot catch the lifeline that the BSA provides their straight brethren due to the homophobia of the church and the BSA. It’s no wonder these youths have higher incidents of homelessness.

The BSA’s national office is housed in Texas, the heart of the Bible Belt, and that reflects the religiously conservative influence on the organization’s policies.

Although the BSA is a civic organization that has local chapters in public schools, a large number of them are equally affiliated with religious institutions. Those religious groups have a disproportionate influence on the organization.

Most of these religious institutions interpret and impose both the Scout Oath and Scout Law from their conservative theological perspective and the Black Church is not alone in doing so. The Church of the Latter Day Saints, for example, has a huge influence on the BSA because the church mandates that all male youths join the Boy Scouts.

“With mutual exaltation of God and country and a shared aim of nurturing ‘morally straight’ men with leadership skills and a service ethic, the Mormons and the Boy Scouts seem made for each other, as entwined as a square knot. And in an unusual partnership dating to 1913, the Mormon Church has embraced scouting wholesale, giving it a central role in preparing male youths for their two-year missionary stints and adulthood as lay priests,” New York Times reporter, Erik Eckholm, wrote in his recent article “As Partner, Mormons and Scouts Turn Boys into Men.”

The basis for discrimination against gay scouts and gay scout leaders pivots around two beliefs: the Judeo-Christian tenets about homosexuality and the myth that there is an inherent correlation between male homosexuality and pedophilia. Although these beliefs have been successfully refuted, they are strategically upheld to maintain its ban.

The BSA’s 2004 position statement on homosexuality that has not changed states, “We believe that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the requirement of the Scout oath that a Scout be morally straight and in the Scout law that a Scout be clean in word and deed, and that homosexuals do not provide a desirable role model for Scouts.”

The words “morally straight” and “clean” are what have fueled the BSA’s homophobic stance and consequently have given rise to both its misinterpretation and misuse of the group’s own guidelines.

While “morally straight” and “clean” have everything to so with being a scout, they have nothing to do with a scout’s sexual orientation. The original interpretation of both words are about virtue, readiness, and open mindedness in the context of human service, and a scout’s commitment to teamwork, honesty, respect for others, and community service.

The truth that needs to be told is that the BSA is fighting itself, and needs to come out of the closet about its founder. Perhaps that would dispel the dispute about gay scouts.

Scout founder Robert Baden-Powell (1857- 1941) was gay. A number of biographies on Baden-Powell alluded to his homosexuality. Tim Jeal, the author of “The Boy-Man: The Life of Lord Baden-Powell,” wrote, “The available evidence points inexorably to the conclusion that Baden-Powell was a repressed homosexuality.”

Jeal further states that in Baden-Powell’s diaries and correspondences, Baden-Powell wrote frequently about his “enjoyment at watching young men swim naked; enjoy nude men; (and) expressed disdain for female nudity.” Also, Baden-Powell had an “extremely close, decades-long friendship” with Kenneth McLaren, “with whom he served in the British military and always made sure he bunked.”

The Black Church’s silent stance of BSA’s continued ban on gays help strengthen the church’s belief that strong black male leadership is exclusively heterosexual.

However, ifboth the Black Church and BSA goals are to continue to nurture the talents andgifts of all its young males, then they must ask themselves to whatdegree does their stance on homophobia hinder their goal?

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.

Mar 07, 2013 - Issue 507

The Republican Party Devouring Itself - Good

Like revenge, schadenfreude is something to be enjoyed in private. One does want to be careful about gloating out loud over someone else’s misfortune, except when it comes to the crisis in the Republican Party.

What’s not to be happy about the travails of an organization that for decades has had a “southern strategy” of taking advantage of racial intolerance? Of seeking political advantage by demagogically targeting women and men who have crossed the southern border seeking work? Of stirring homophobia in an effort to divide and conquer? Yeah, I know, not all Republicans are like that, but it’s a fair description of the party’s recent history, of the attitudes of its “base,” and its current leadership’s strategies. Every time I hear a GOPer talk about being in the “party of Lincoln,” I want to gag.

Just how bad has it become for the party of Bush, Chaney, McCain and Palin where, according to Politico “There is breathless talk of civil war”? “A fight has broken out within the Republican Party,” says a recent edition of the Economist. “On the face of it, rival camps - broadly, the establishment versus the insurgent right - are arguing about why they lost the last election, and how to stop losing. The loudest name-calling involves a new political fund backed by Karl Rove, election guru to the Bush dynasty and a man with access to deep-pocketed donors. It is one of several establishment wheezes aimed at asserting more control over party primaries that pick candidates for big races.”

That doesn’t mean merely moving resources in the direction of those candidates the Rove crew supports. According to the Economist’s Lexington column, a spokesperson for the Roveites says they are poised to “blast unelectable primary contenders with TV attack ads, if need be.”

As if that bit of inner-party fratricide weren’t enough, the Club for Growth has gotten into the battle on the other side. PrimaryMyCongressman.com, the website of the group, announced last week that “moderate” Republican politicians who don’t meet the group’s muster are going to face well-financed primary challenges in upcoming elections. The group spent over $17 million during last year’s election cycle. Which, and how many, GOP politicians are going to feel the wrath of the big business club is unclear but six incumbent members of the House of Representatives have already been cited.

“Big government liberals inhabit the Democratic Party, but they are far too common within the Republican Party as well,” read a statement announcing the plan. “The Republicans helped pass billions of dollars in tax increases and they have repeatedly voted against efforts by fiscal conservatives to limit government.

PrimaryMyCongressman.com will serve as a tool to hold opponents of economic freedom and limited government accountable for their actions.”

It’s not easy to pin proper labels on the contending parties in the GOP inner war. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews says it’s the “center-right” versus the “hard right.” Sasha Chavkin in the Colombia Journalism Review describes the battle as a “confrontation between mainstream and far right groups.” Steve LaTourette, former Ohio congressman from Ohio, says the moderately inclined Republican Main Street Partnership that he heads represents “the governing wing of the Republican Party.”

But these tags often don’t mean much, or obscure what the war is all about. For instance, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl), the prospective Republican Presidential candidate posited by Time magazine as the possible “savior” of the party, is anything but a moderate. He is a climate change skeptic opposed to government action to deal with the problem, wants creationism to have equal standing with evolution in education, and says homosexuality is a sin because “that’s what the Bible teaches and that’s what faith teaches.” The rightwing Americans for Prosperity (AFP) recently released its scorecard for the 112th Congress, ranking members of the House and Senate according to their votes on issues over the past legislative session. Only one senator garnered an A+, a perfect 100 percent rating: Rubio. AFP has been called “one of the most powerful conservative organizations in electoral politics.”

All of the warring factions in the Republican camp (there are more than two) appear to have given up hope of making inroads into the African American community. Lest anyone think Rove is the “moderate” under this canopy writing recently in the Wall Street Journal, he referred to President Obama as “a once in a generation demagogue.”

The more astute observers among the contending Republican factions have come to recognize that while African American voters continue to overwhelmingly support the President, it’s not just because he’s black. It’s also the issues. Obviously, past efforts to split African Americans on the basis of various social issues have come to naught. But that hasn’t dissuaded some black conservatives and rightwingers from continuing to try; witness the unseeming recent efforts by some to convince black people that they should oppose sensible gun control measures. Last week, rightwing internet operative Star Parker, who claims to have a posse of black preachers behind her, held a press conference to proclaim that “Blacks, especially, have a stake in protecting ourselves from the government - a lesson we must share to protect every American.”

One of Parker’s chief ministerial supporters, Dr. Ben Carson, has been added to the featured speakers lineup for the Conservative Political Action convention March 14-16, news that the far right Human Events website called “exciting.”

Some of the Republicans are aware that immigration is not the only issue driving politics in the Latino community. “It’s not irrelevant that Obamacare is most popular with African Americans,” Stuart Stevens, lead strategist of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign wrote in the Washington Post February 25. “And what demographic group is the second-most favorable to Obamacare? Hispanics.”

David Brooks, the New York Times’ resident conservative egghead says, “Voters disdain the G.O.P. because they think Republicans are mindless anti-government fanatics who can’t distinguish good government programs from bad ones.”

Who says voters aren’t hip?

“In retrospect, last year’s Republican primary process was entirely disconnected from the actual needs of the party,” party loyalist Michael Gerson wrote recently, “One candidate pledged to build a 20-foot-high electrical fence at the border crowned with the sign, in English and Spanish, ‘It will kill you - Warning.’ Another promised, as president, to speak out against the damage done to American society by contraception. Another warned that vaccinations may cause ‘mental retardation.’ In the course of 20 debates and in tens of millions of dollars of ads, issues such as upward mobility, education, poverty, safer communities and the environment were rarely mentioned.”

In a recent article in conservative Commentary magazine, Gerson and co-author Peter Wehner identified the one that called for the electrified fence: Herman “999” Cain. Their essay, Gerson said, was an attempt to “raise ideas such as ending corporate welfare, breaking up the mega-banks, improving the treatment of families in the tax code, and encouraging economic mobility through education reform and improved job training. Whatever form Republican proposals eventually take, they must move beyond Reagan-era nostalgia.” There’s little chance of any of that happening.

One of the favorite theories of the so-called Republican reformers is that what their party needs is what they allege “saved’ the Democratic Party and the British Labor Party in the early 1990s.

The key to the Gerson-Wehner thesis is: “Republican primary voters, party activists and party leaders have a choice to make, ruthlessly clarified by recent events. They can take the path of Democrats in 1988, doubling down on a faltering ideology. Or they can follow the model of Democrats in 1992 and their own party in 2000, giving their nominee the leeway needed to oppose outworn or extreme ideas and to produce an agenda relevant to our time.”

Bill Clinton “broke a long Democratic presidential losing streak by emphasizing middle-class values, advocating the end of ‘welfare as we know it’ and standing up to extreme elements within his coalition (thereby creating the ‘Sister Souljah moment’). In Britain, says Gerson, former Prime Minister Tony Blair “went after the ‘moral chaos’ that led to youth crime, abandoned his party’s official commitment to public ownership of the means of production and launched New Labor.”

I recall the “Sister Souljah moment.” I was in the Washington ballroom when it happened. Far from courage in the face of extremism it was one of the most cynical moments of political demagoguery I ever witnessed. The dog whistle sounded there was the same as Blair’s anti-crime declarations – maneuvers for which neither of them should be proud.

Writer Michael Tomasky has a slightly different and interesting take on all of this. Calling the Republican reformers “deluded”, he wrote last week in the Daily Beast, “The party they purport to support and care about has been engaged in burning down the house of American politics for three or four years now, and they are saying nothing about it; and until they say something a about it, everything else they say is close to meaningless.”

Tomasky went on, “God knows, policy positions are a problem. But they are not the problem. The problem is that the party is fanatical - a machine of rage, hate, and resentment. People are free to scoff and pretend it isn’t so, but I don’t think honest people can deny that we’ve never seen anything like this in the modern history of our country.”

“Republican elites are rightfully concerned with figuring out how to reform the party’s message and appeal to new demographics - hence the growing support for immigration reform, and the rapid elevation of Florida Senator Marco Rubio,” wrote Tomasky. “Success for this strategy depends on buy-in from the Republican base. But the ongoing push for right-wing initiatives at the state-level - where ordinary voters have the most influence - is a sign that little has changed for the rank-and-file.”

“Every smart Republican in town is saying the same thing: If they don’t expand their party’s ranks, they don’t have a future,” wrote Hilary Rosen in the Washington Post last week. “Republican efforts at suppressing minority voters through a myriad of state laws last year, however, have made that mission tougher. The consequences of those desperate maneuvers, along with the accompanying vitriolic rhetoric, are weighing on the GOP now as its leaders make another run at rebranding a party that needs new ideas more than it needs a new message.”

Jamelle Bouie, a perceptive staff writer at The American Prospect magazine, has written, “In other words, for the Republican base, it seems, 2012 was just a temporary setback. At this point, base voters don’t seem to want the party to change its policies or do anything meaningful to reach out to minorities. But there are still the realities of demographic change, which favors the Democratic Party, and the unpopularity of GOP ideas with growing segments of the electorate. And so the only path left is to change the rules of the game.”

Keep in mind that this is a party that is unceasing in its efforts to dissuade or prevent some people from going to the polls – particularly African Americans, Latinos and students, or, if they get there, reducing the power of their vote through various undemocratic vote counting schemes. Right now they are praying their allies on the Supreme Court will help them out by eviscerating Federal voting rights protection. This is more than a political maneuver; any action to undermine the principle of “one person, one vote” is seditious.

None of the above is meant as a brief for the opposition Democrats. From drone warfare abroad, to cruel mass deportations of undocumented workers, to unjustified handouts to greedy bankers, to threats to senior retirement security, many of their policies deserve nothing but resolute rejection and resistance. However, these days the major mass media is filled with commentaries about how bad the Republican Party’s divisions are for the country, how we somehow need a healthy GOP. Actually, the country doesn’t need the Republican Party at all. Its demise would be a blessing. What we need most is for the “centrist” Democrats to have an arena of their own where they can decide how much they want to deal with a rising formation of the progressive Left. That’s the reform we need right now.

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. Other Carl Bloice writing can be found at leftmargin.wordpress.com. Click here to contact Mr. Bloice.

Mar 07, 2013 - Issue 507

A Divided People is What Makes
The U.S. a Suffering Country

One doesn’t have to look far to see how difficult it is in a country as big and diverse as the U.S. for the people to join together to act in their own behalf, on behalf of the nation, and for the good of the planet.

Everywhere one looks, there is division. It’s almost a cliché at this time in our history, that this is a divided nation. The U.S. was divided long before Barack Obama became president, but his presidency has not mitigated that much at all. The principle reasons for the continuing division are that, first, we are not in a “post racial” period in history, and second, the Republican Party has sworn that it will do everything in its power to see that Obama accomplishes nothing in his tenure as president.

In fact, Senator Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, stood in Washington and stated in public at the outset of the first Obama Administration that his party’s primary function for the foreseeable future was to make him a one-term president. He was not interested in the creation of jobs or even advancing the GOP rallying cry of “smaller government!” He just wanted to get rid of Obama. Now, that’s division.

The overriding myth of America is that it is a nation “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” when it really is for the general benefit of the rich and powerful. Mostly, it has been that way since the beginning and it is not likely to change anytime soon. Most nations function that way, with the exception of a few enlightened ones and usually, these are nations that curb excess accumulation of wealth and power, both by law and by use of a decent moral compass.

With a set of founding documents as excellent as those of the U.S. and as rooted in the concept of equality and justice as they are (despite the flaws and warts of the founders), it should be easy for “the people” to assume their rightful place as the captains of the ship of state. The mechanisms are all there, showing the egalitarian underpinnings of the country, in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Those documents and the laws and traditions that have flowed from them for more than two centuries seem to clearly show that the people, through the political process, should be in charge and give direction to the nation in all things.

It just does not work that way, and it’s because the people are divided into innumerable groups and regions and blocks and it is on only rare occasions that they come together to address any of the problems that they face. One thing that should draw the people together is this: We are a working people. When we can, we have jobs.

Out of a population of 315 million, there are about 155 million wage earners, so one would think that this is the place where people would find some common ground, a place from which to unite to serve the needs of the greatest number.

While it is true that millions of workers have joined together to better their lives, in unions, they represent only about 11 percent of working people. (Just to make it clear, we are talking about people who work for a paycheck and depend on that paycheck, week to week, to support themselves and their families, whether they are paid $20,000 or $100,000 a year.) The rule of thumb here is that, if you cannot survive at your current standard of living for three months without a paycheck, you are basically in the working class, like it or not.

The U.S. government, itself, has pointed out that, since 1975, most of the income increase has gone to the top 20 percent of income and wealth recipients. It should be no wonder for anyone that there is an economic gap of enormous proportions in the country and that should give us all a clue about why there are seemingly insurmountable obstacles to creating an egalitarian society, economically, but also socially and politically.

Do we wonder why our sons and daughters face one of the great obstacles of their lives, when they graduate and can’t find jobs to pay off the 20-year (or more) debt they incurred to get that education? When students have protested, have they had the support of the previous generations? Not much, except perhaps for their parents. Others in the older generations look at it as their problem. That’s division on a generational scale. And, vice versa, when Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are threatened with cuts, privatization, or elimination, the old folks are on their own (although there are lots of them), because the younger generation has been convinced by right-wingers in politics and the economy that the programs are going broke and will not be there for them. Even though these threats have been debunked many times, many believe what they hear.

Working men and women, responding to the propaganda they hear and see every day, find it difficult to make common cause with each other about their own standard of living. Non-union workers often say that unionized workers make too much, and the message there is: “If unionized workers made less, we might make more.” This is living in a fantasy world, because workers’ families will only see an improvement in their standard of living by fighting for it, and that means getting involved in the political process. Simply voting is not involvement in the political process; it’s merely a start. Involvement in the political life of a nation means learning the issues, learning about the functioning of government, learning about how the combination of government and powerful corporations have come to rule most aspects of Americans’ lives.

Within the union movement, as in the society at large, there have been divisions and those divisions remain. Outside of uniting for better pay and wages, working people do not agree on all issues. Historically, there has been a tension between jobs and the environment. Many unions believed that any construction job or any program that provided jobs was good. Many unions were concerned about the degradation of the environment. The tension between those union factions remains. About 40 years ago, for a time, there was discussion among the unions about that great divide and how to reduce or eliminate it, but it never happened.

Today, the best example of that union struggle is the Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring highly toxic “tar sands” oil from Alberta, Canada, to Texas for refining. At a time when the world is rightly concerned about adding even more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, many scientists have warned that Keystone will add even more. The alarm has been sounded about the tipping point, above which it will be too late to stop climate change and global warming from doing irreparable damage to the planet. Simply, the construction unions generally want the pipeline built and others are strongly opposed, and many union opponents of the pipeline are in the scientific and technical fields that deal directly with climate change and global warming. Because of the division, the AFL-CIO has taken no position on the pipeline.

Reversing climate change and global warming is vital to the continued existence of the planet as we know it, but to hear bosses of the fossil fuel industry, their public relations people, and their politicians, their primary goal and the goal of the nation is and always will be making a profit (“keeping the economy growing”), which means continuing to exploit the resources without regard for the aftermath of destruction. All one has to do is look at the destruction of the boreal forests of Alberta, Canada, where the “tar sands” are being dug and processed to send through the Keystone pipeline. The immediate region of exploitation looks like nothing less than a moonscape and the effect on the land and water is evident. It is already known what happens to the wildlife that stops at one of their toxic ponds for a rest and a drink.

Yet, a significant proportion of Americans are either oblivious to the problems or they believe the climate-change deniers, who say that everything is alright and that we should just proceed with our way of life: suburban development, malls, Interstate highways, and the endless consumption of goods (most of which are disposable) from China and other low-wage countries, all based on fossil fuel burning.

The problems of the U.S. are not easily solved because most people do not know the issues and, even if they were inclined to cooperate with one another, they would have to be taught anew how a democracy works and what the individual citizen has to do to make it work for everybody. That would be okay, but we do not have much time to address some of the most troubling and dangerous issues.

The social problems are immense and will not be solved by 50 different states taking 50 different paths to solutions. We tried that in the fights for civil rights. Most called it freedom and some called it “states’ rights,” and we know how that worked out: The struggle continues for full freedom for all. Divisions exist in our quest for quality education, universal health care, a clean up of the water and air, housing for the poor and working class, and for solutions to problems associated with our food system. The latter problem involves: The increasing poverty rate in America, food insecurity, and the wholesomeness and nutritional value of the food we are handed to eat by those who manufacture and sell that food.

The divisions are with us by the thousands. One of those divisions is the seeming division between two political parties. Although, the stream of history shows that the two parties are pushing the U.S. inexorably in the same direction (no revolutionary change there), the one factor that continues to stop the country from solving its problems is the headlong plunge of the Republicans to destroy the effectiveness of government. They just want to make it small enough to “drown in a bathtub,” as the GOP guru, Grover Norquist, has demanded of them. They seem to be succeeding, since government that is effective in solving the problems of the people seems to have disappeared. In its place is an echo chamber of degenerate dialogue.

If there is one thing that the Occupy movement accomplished, it was that it brought into the public discourse what people have known instinctively for many generations, namely that the biggest division is between the 1 percent and the rest of us, the 99 percent. There is little division among the 1 percent, economically or politically, because they know that, in a democracy, the majority is supposed to rule. Since they are in the vast minority and this country still has a democratic form, they could see their power slip away and with it, their riches. They have been very creative in constructing divisions among the massive majority within that democratic political system.

Over generations, they have managed to use those divisions to maintain their power and, therefore, their wealth. They pick politicians and ensure that they will remain in office, usually through bribes called political campaign contributions, and the politicians always remember who put them where they are and what they must do to stay there. Those contributors write the laws that their politicians dutifully introduce, support and defend, and eventually pass into law. The people, the vast majority, do not have the same kind of power because they are divided, not into parts, but into fragments. No power emanates from those small fragments.

There is growing miseryfor more and more people in the U.S.,as the economy is harmed by the 1 percent, and society offers no help to thesufferers, although all are supposed to be in this together. Eventually, thepeople are bound to see that the 99 percent have more in common with eachother, than they have with the 1 percent, whose interests are diametricallyopposed to the vast majority. When that happens, most of the divisions willbecome unimportant, the true enemy of the common good willreveal itself, and positive change will flow from that.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello,is a long-time former newspaper reporter and labor organizer, who livesin the Mohawk Valleyof New YorkState. Inaddition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as theystruggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory foodproducers and land developers. Click here to contact Mr. Funiciello.

Mar 07, 2013 - Issue 507

The Confederacy And Jury Selection
By Ed Sebesta and Dr. Euan Hague, PhD

When reading about court cases in Texas where, with the use of DNA evidence, people were being exonerated following convictions for rape we noticed something striking; all these men who had been falsely charged and convicted of rape were African Americans. We are sure readers could supply other examples or studies of erroneous convictions of ethnic minority members and African Americans in particular. One potential action to reduce such convictions, we suggest, must be to exclude potential jurors who would have racial bias when acting as jurors. From my experience in jury pools in Dallas County, Texas, attempts to uncover a juror’s racial bias comprise merely of a single question, given to the potential jurors assembled in a group, asking whether they are members of a white supremacist organization or have a racial bias against African Americans.

This question is entirely inadequate. Jurors have to believe that a person is innocent until proven guilty, and not be people who, when the defendant is African American, tend to think the defendant is guilty until proven innocent. People who are predisposed to think an African American defendant is guilty may be neither aware, nor willing, to admit that they are biased or racist. To many Americans, a racist is someone who wears a white hooded sheet, is belligerent, and says explicitly racist statements and racial slurs. A potential juror may be racially biased, but does not see him or herself as being like the members of these sensationalistic racist groups and sincerely imagines they are not racist and are free of racial bias.

Members of a jury must perceive the freedom of an African American, and the humanity of an African American, as being as important as anyone else’s, not least their own. A juror always needs to have serious concern to avoid falsely convicting someone of a crime and, if the defendant is seen as someone whose freedom is not so important and whose humanity is less, then the juror’s concerns about false conviction surely has to be also reduced.

During voir dire jury selection, potential jurors are questioned by attorneys for both sides in attempt to exclude potential jurors who are biased against their side. Attorneys can ask that a juror to be excluded by a ‘challenge for cause,’ that is, where the attorney can show that there is a reasonable cause for the juror not to be impartial. There is no limit on the number of jurors that can be excluded ‘for cause.’ Additionally, each attorney can, for a certain number of jurors, make a peremptory challenge and exclude them without giving a cause where the attorney suspects there is a bias.

An April 2011 CNN Opinion Research Poll1which included questions regarding the Civil War asked individualswhether they sympathized more with the Union or the Confederacy. In theSouth 38% said that they were more sympathetic to the Confederacy(Sampling error +/- 6%). The data isn’t further broken down further byrace. We think it would be reasonable to assume that African Americansin the South are much less likely than whites to identify with theConfederacy, hence the percentages of whites who do is significantlyhigher than 38%. In April 2011 The Pew Research Center For the Peoplereleased polling results of the attitudes towards the Civil War. 2 The result of the poll was that 64% of whites in the formerConfederate states considered themselves Southerners. Additionally ofthose whites identified as Southerners, 52% thought it was appropriatefor politicians to praise Confederate leaders. This means that 33.3% ofwhites in the former Confederate states feel that it is appropriate forpoliticians to praise Confederate leaders (0.64 X 0.52 = 33.28). ThePew Center results corroborate the CNN poll and suggest that there is alarge fraction of white Southerners who have very positive feelingstowards the Confederacy.

The historical record irrefutably shows that the Confederacy was formed for the purpose of preserving white supremacy and slavery. Such sentiments are expressed is the declaration and resolutions of the seceding states, in the speeches of the leaders of the Confederacy, and in innumerable other sources, typically being expressed in a straight forward manner.

Itwould be reasonable, therefore, to ‘challenge for cause’ potentialjurors identifying with the Confederacy because of their identificationwith a white supremacist regime that sought to keep in AfricanAmericans enslaved. These potential jurors identifying with theConfederacy might object that they would not be biased as jurors, butelements of the pro-Confederate Lost Cause3mythology inherently lead to bias. One element is that African Americanslaves were well treated and content as slaves, and that slavery waslike being a part of a large family, rather than that it was a graveand often horrific condition. At some psychological level, Lost Causerationalizations are embraced and accepted because for that individual,an African American’s freedom and humanity are valued less than theirown. Contrast Lost Cause beliefs about slavery with Patrick Henry’sfamous quote, “Give me liberty or give me death,” regarding the freedomof white people during the American Revolution. This demonstrates howthe Lost Cause discounts the value of African American freedom. Apotential juror sugar-coating African American slavery in the pastthrough a Lost Cause worldview, will likely not be overly concernedabout an African American losing his or her freedom in the present. Itis difficult to understand how a person who expresses pro-Confederateviews and does not reject Lost Cause myths of slavery, can reasonablyand objectively serve on a jury of peers for anAfrican American defendant. Such a potential juror may not perceiveAfrican Americans as fully part of the American community, fellowcitizens, sharing a common humanity and belonging to a group peoplethat they think of as “us.”4

The ‘challenge for cause’ could simply be done on the historical record of how the Confederacy and its leaders defined their efforts rather than discussing Lost Cause rationalizations. Put simply, these potential jurors have chosen to identify with the white supremacist and proslavery Confederacy. That seems like a more than adequate cause for a challenge. The rejection of jurors on this basis could have a tremendous effect on the composition of juries in the South.

The use of identification with the Confederacy in voir dire jury selection need not be restricted to the South. The CNN poll found that 14% of Northeasterners, 23% of Midwesterners, and 11% of Westerners sympathized with the Confederacy over the Union. Other questions might also be employed. In the Pew poll, among whites who identified themselves as Southerners in the former eleven Confederate states, 22% had a positive reaction when they see the Confederate flag.

Questions regarding the Confederacy should not be restricted to potential jurors. Judges should be questioned and those that identify with the Confederacy be asked to excuse themselves. Public defenders should also be questioned, and those that identify with the Confederacy be understood to be potentially not fully committed to defending their client.

We propose the following series of questions regarding how potential jurors, judges and public defenders view the 19th-Century Confederacy should be used to identify potential racial bias. These provide multiple reasons for challenge for cause and if, for some reason, one or more of these questions were not accepted as a challenge for cause, they could provide information for peremptory exclusions of jurors.

1. Areyou a member of the League of the South, Council of ConservativeCitizens, Sons of Confederate Veterans, United Daughters of theConfederacy or any other pro-Confederate organization?

2. Do you identify with the Confederacy or the Union?

3. Do you think it is appropriate for public officials to praise Confederate leaders?

4. Doyou think it is appropriate when states, counties, cities and othermunicipalities adopt Confederate symbols in their logos, flags, seals,or other symbols they might adopt?

5. Do you think it would have been better if the Confederacy had succeeded in seceding?

6. Doyou display Confederate symbols such as flags, flag decals, bumperstickers, tattoos or other visual representations of the Confederacy.

Regarding the first question, there may be 40,000 to 60,000 members in neo-Confederate organizations in total. The membership of these groups overlap, and accurate membership numbers are typically not publically available. The Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) has over 30,000 members, the United Daughters of the Confederacy publishes a magazine with 6000-8000 copies each issue. Members of these organizations are serving on juries and deliberating the fate of African American defendants. They should not be. Some members of these organizations are judges.

It is outrageous that the descendants of those who fought for slavery and who still choose to glorify the Confederacy should be allowed to judge the descendants of the slaves. It is part of a continuing chain of oppression which goes back to the Confederacy and the plantation and still, to this day, inflicts harm on African Americans. It needs to stop, and asking potential jurors, judges and public defenders about their Confederate sympathies needs to start immediately.

1 CNN Opinion Research Poll, for release April 12, 2011

2 The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, “Civil War at 150: Still Relevant, Still Divisive”..

3 The Lost Cause refers to a group of historical beliefs held by defenders of the Confederacy such that slaves were contented in the Antebellum South or at least well treated, that secession was over states rights. It also includes a view of Reconstruction as a time of African American misrule.

4 For a discussion how people use language to conceptualize who is included in groups of which they imagine to be a member and who isn’t a member of that group and are the others, see Billig (1995) Banal Nationalism.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Ed Sebesta is an independent researcher. Co-editor of Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction and The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The ‘Great Truth’ About the ‘Lost Cause’. Author of chapter about the Civil War and Reconstruction in the notorious Texas teaching standards in Politics and the History Curriculum: The Struggle over Standards in Texas and the Nation. Click here to contact Mr. Sebesta.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Dr. Euan Hague, PhD is Chair of the Department ofGeography at DePaul University in Chicago. He is a professor ofcultural and urban geography. Click here to contact Dr. Hague.

Mar 07, 2013 - Issue 507

Attacking Voting Rights
The Audacity of History

About two weeks ago, Mississippi ratified the 13th Amendment to theConstitution of the United States, 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and nearly 50 years since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 made its replacement, segregation, otherwise known as "Jim Crow", illegal. This is about 18 years after the state assembly voted unanimously to rectify this "oversight", which in itself is extraordinary.

Then, on February 27th, Shelby County, located in the state of Alabama brought to the Supreme Court a challenge to the Section 5 of the VRA, which embodies the process known as "preclearance', in which the parties must petition the Department of Justice about any proposed changes in voting procedure or redistricting activity. There are currently 9 states, and certain jurisdictions of seven others who are subject this provision in some form or another.

It cited its purported progress regarding voter registration and turnout of its African American residents as proof. This is in the aftermath of an election season that saw more concerted voter intimidation and suppression activity in the almost 50 years that have passed since, much under the direction of ultra conservative governors and state legislators who came to power during the 2010 midterm elections, where the combination of apathy and racial resentment created the perfect storm for the reintroduction of a states rights agenda.

Author and musician John M. Wesley, who grew up in Ruleville, MS, mentored by his godmother, the renown civil rights icon Fanny Lou Hamer, had this reaction when asked how he felt about the most recent challenge.

"In an age in which the issue of "sovereignty" is raising its head again, exactly 50 years after George Wallace made it a national campaign platform in 1963, this is no time to mess with "Section 5" of the Voting Rights Act." he stated firmly. "The federal safeguards must remain in place if we are going to continue to move toward a level playing field in politics."

He also reflected upon the ratification, and also upon what his late godmother might say about the most recent challenge to the VRA.

"The fact that it has taken Mississippi this long to ratify the 13th amendment speaks for itself" Wesley stated. He continued: "As for what I believe Mrs. Hamer's response would be, I would say she would caution minorities that without federal oversight, there remains sufficient fertile ground for disenfranchisement to reconstitute itself via:campaign contributions, gerrymandering, rigged voting, faulty electronic machines, lack of vote tracking, and manipulation of the fractured Hispanic vote in such a way (since the majority, once here illegally or otherwise, move to established Black and low in comecommunities) that could eventually erode gains won during the Civil Rights Movement. Vigilance!"

History presents immutable facts about what has happened in the past, although many will interpret them differently, based on their perspective and personal experiences, particularly if they were a part of those seminal events in times of great societal transition. It also reinvents itself, particularly when a generation passes on and institutional memory becomes cloudier. Through this reinvention process, especially in the 21st century, parts of it regarding how custom and attitude affect public policy become vague reference points. This is especially where billions of pieces of information are accessible with the click of a computer button, which can have the effect of obfuscation rather than education. The responses of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia last week made this perfectly clear, where rapid fire absurdities and unabashed subjective opinions were inserted in their arguments, in an activist attempt to insert themselves into the legislative process.

Vigilance, indeed, is needed to filter through the white noise of our time, and to safeguard remedies put in place as a response to history, to continue to protect the gains made by those measures which made history themselves, affecting the history of the future, which is now.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Amy V. Simmons is a freelance writer and a member of the National Association of Black Journalists, the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists and the Native American Journalists Association. Click here to contact Ms. Simmons.

Mar 07, 2013 -Issue 507

New God
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 hereto contact brother Eric. His website is southvalleyart.com.Follow Eric on twitter garciaink@twitter.comor friend Eric J.Garcia on facebook.

Mar 07, 2013 - Issue 507

Will Revisionist 'Scholars' Erase
The People's Victories From History?

“Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward all research.”

- Malcolm X [el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz]

“History is important. If youdon't know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you wereborn yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell youanything, and you have no way of checking up on it.”

- Howard Zinn

Everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people haveachieved many important and enormous social, economic, and politicalpeople's victories in the U.S. and throughout Mother Earth. Some ofthese victories are brilliantly described by the late, great, people'shistorian Howard Zinn in his book, A People's History of the United States.

The elite power brokers who control the U.S. government and thecorporate-stream media utilize their minions throughout the social,economic, and political strata - including in so-called 'educational'primary and higher institutions of 'learning' - to hide, distort,and/or erase hard won victories by ordinary everyday people. In thewords of Steve Biko: “The most potent weapon in the hands of theoppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” And the elite power brokerswho control this economic/political system are indeed “oppressor[s]”whose continued avaricious existence is based upon their ability toperpetually control and otherwise manipulate the flow of historical andcontemporary information. When Harriet Tubman said that she “could havefreed a thousand more [slaves] – if only they knew they were slaves” -she was referring to the fact that many people's minds were, and remaintoday, so utterly controlled. Many everyday people of all colors do notknow, learn from, understand, or apply their own magnificent collectivehistory of struggle and past victories. This lack of knowledge did nothappen by osmosis. It is a systemically manufactured ignorance – whichignorance serves the interests of the systemic power elite – not thoseof ordinary people. Moreover, any people who are successfullykept ignorant of their historical victories are, by default, alsoignorant of their present mental chains and of their current potentialfor enormous collective power in order to bring about serious and realsystemic change. This can and must be corrected by we – ordinaryeveryday people.

Many, if not most, contemporary so-called 'scholars' and historians areactually systemic gatekeepers for the power elite. Their role is tostealthily frame, present, and perpetuate the historical andcontemporary social, political, and economic narrative of the systemicpower elite – not of the ordinary people. Thus, ordinary people(nationally and globally) are kept woefully ignorant of the true natureof their past and current victories so that these unknown people'svictories will not be applied and creatively expanded upon today. Inother words, the ordinary people are being perpetually dis-empowered bythese systemic gatekeepers who masquerade as scholars, historians, andeducators, etc. History is useless if it is not known.

The people's historian Howard Zinn put it this way: “My viewpoint, intelling the history of the United States, is different: that we mustnot accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communitiesand never have been. The history of any country, presented as thehistory of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimesexploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominatorsand dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a worldof victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, asAlbert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.There is, to be sure, a global human family – but this family is notbound or determined by national boundaries (as the power elite wouldhave us believe) – but rather by our collective humanity. And thenational and global corporate/military power elite have repeatedlydemonstrated that they lost their humanity long ago. Thus, their needto control the historical and contemporary narrative - and repress,distort, and/or erase the victories and history of everyday ordinarypeople – who in fact remain in “conflict” with them.

When it is told or implied to us that we ordinary people cannotpossibly accomplish a task in pursuit of social, economic and politicaljustice – it is then that we must be even more certain that we can dothis. We must never accept the narrative of the power elite or theirsystemic gatekeepers. I learned this valuable lesson first-hand: Whenthe U.S. and Canadian governments colluded to brutally and unjustlyimprison me - even as they simultaneously denied me the ability tolegally defend myself against their outrageous assertions - thehistorical words of Malcolm X constantly stayed in my mind, when hesaid, in relevant part, “But the United Nations has what's known as thecharter of human rights; it has a committee that deals in humanrights. You may wonder why all of the atrocities that have beencommitted in Africa and in Hungary and in Asia, and in Latin Americaare brought before the UN, and the Negro problem is never broughtbefore the UN. This is part of the conspiracy...They keep you wrappedup in civil rights. And you spend so much time barking up thecivil-rights tree, you don't even know there's a human rights tree onthe same floor...” Thus, I made up my mind in prison that somehow, someway, I would take this matter to the UN. Upon learning that I intendedto self-author my case to the United Nations, I was unceasingly mockedand ridiculed by prison officials, by lawyers, and even sometimes bysome (brainwashed) fellow prisoners who all echoed the same paraphrasedsentiment of: “Surely you don't think that the United Nations willaccept your case. You're not anybody important and you're not even alawyer. The UN won't accept your case, much less, make an officialruling in your favor! You're just making a fool of yourself Pinkney!”Nevertheless, I remembered the words of brother Malcolm X, and I had studied the people's history, and I knew that ordinary everydaypeople had the ability and the obligation to attempt to do what wassaid to be impossible - so that one day the impossible would become notonly possible but irrefutably achieved. So through those years of oftenvery brutal imprisonment I pressed on. The United Nations did accept myself-authored case, and ultimately did in fact make a landmark rulingunder international law that I had been violated, via application ofArticle 14 (3) (c) and Article 14 (5) of the International Covenant OnCivil And Political Rights. This was and remains an important PEOPLE'SVICTORY! Moreover, various aspects of this successfully self-authoredto the United Nations, are being utilized to this very day in countriesthroughout the world. Nevertheless, the above-described UN victory,like so many other everyday people's victories, is generally unknown tomany ordinary everyday people, because it has been hidden,distorted, and/or repressed by systemic gatekeepers masquerading asscholars, historians, and educators etc. If we don't know what weordinary people have already achieved – it becomes virtually impossibleto expand upon these victories and collectively & creatively moveforward – in order to achieve even greater social, economic, andpolitical people's victories.

It is imperative that we ordinary everyday people discover and reclaimour many victories in this nation and around the world. The nationaland global power elite must not be allowed to continue to hide,distort, and/or erase our many hard won people's victories. Too much isat stake! Let us remember the words of Malcolm X: “Of all our studies,history is best qualified to reward all research.”

Everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people must onceagain collectively seize the time, understand and reclaim ourhistorical victories, and in so doing, change the course of history.The contemporary and historical narrative belongs to we, the ordinarypeople – not to the systemic corporate/military power-elitebloodsuckers – who hide and distort the truth of our past and currentstruggles.

There is much work to be done and many minds to awaken as the struggle continues.

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.

Mar 07, 2013 - Issue 507

Presente’ Hugo Chavez

Comándate’ Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías was a black man. Born July 28, 1954, his family was Amerindian, Afro-Venezuelan, and European Spanish. The proportions do not matter because they mirror the proportions of most black people on the North and South American continents; he was a black man. He never disavowed his black heritage even when he was attacked by his opponents for being too black. Some of the political and personal animus that President Chavez faced in Venezuela derived from racial prejudice. Much of the love that he received from the majority of the residents of that country was because he never loss connection with his heritage or the poverty of his childhood. I visited Caracas in 2004 where I observed how real this love was.

Hugo Chavez was the first elected Amerindian leader and the only elected Afro-American leader in South America! One would not know this from the vilification that he received from the US media and from the US government. He dared to face down Big Oil, the elites in his country and abroad, and to use the tremendous oil resources of Venezuela (now estimated as greater than Saudi Arabia) to benefit his people and the poor people of the world.

In 2006, while he was in New York to follow President George Bush to the United Nations podium, he was very warmly greeted in Harlemwhere he let folks know about Venezuela’s discounted heating oil program that allowed the underprivileged in New York and Chicago to stay warm that winter. While the US media was flabbergasted that Chavez had just referred to Bush as a sulfurous stinking devil, he was at Mont Olivet Baptist Church announcing the expansion of the heating oil program to serve more than 450,000 households with 100 million gallons of heating oil at a 40 percent discount. The prior year, 40 million gallons were offered to states mostly in the Northeast. Chavez made sure that Native Americans throughout the country were offered the benefit.

Like many of the readers of these pages, Chávez described himself to be an anti-imperialist. He was a critic of neoliberalism and laissez-faire capitalism. As Wikipedia states, “He supported Latin American and Caribbean cooperation and was instrumental in setting up the pan-regional Union of South American Nations, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, the Bank of the South, and the regional television network TeleSur.” President Chavez took the heroic legacy of Simon Bolivar seriously.

[Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) more than rivals George Washington in American continental history! His victories over the Spanish colonialists brought independence to Bolivia, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. In an ancient version of a coalition of the oppressed, the revolutionary slaves of Haiti significantly assisted Bolivar in his quest to throw off colonialism.]

Some detractors on the left criticize Comándate’ Chavez for not doing more to transition Venezuela away from such heavy dependence on oil revenue. They discount his efforts to establish independent sustainable enterprises in the rural areas of Venezuela. Yet they have been rather inarticulate in defining “the what” and “the how” of achieving greater success. They also seem to be unable to appreciate the power and the dynamics of Chavez’s elitist opposition forces that have an almost monopolistic control over the media outlets in Venezuela and who make no pretense at impartiality. In 2002, with the knowledge of the Bush administration, a coup d'état was attempted by the elitists to oust Chavez who had been properly elected to office. The people of the country rose up and the military got on the right side; Chavez was triumphantly brought back to power. Just goes to show what can happen when the military remains loyal to the people.

The February 24, 2013, edition of the English version of Pravda recounts Venezuela’s and Chavez’s influences on an historical south-south collaboration that is of huge import to the world. This Russian paper describes a letter from Chavez that was read to the third Summit Africa - South America (ASA). This summit was held in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, and 63 countries participated; the second Summit had been held in Venezuela. In the letter Hugo Chavez highlighted the ties between both continents, “in our continents, enough historic, political and natural resources are found to save the whole planet.” “President Chávez wrote that the malicious [European] exploiters want to enrich themselves at the cost of Africans by taking away their natural resources and waging wars on those that are not willing to comply. He urged African leaders to speed up the process of unification and to reject all interventionist activities by NATO.”

“At the end of his letter, Hugo Chávez expressed his ‘fraternal love for all African brothers, who share the same anti-colonial, anti-imperialist ideals.’ He asked them to ‘march together until all of our aims will be accomplished.’ The letter was signed with the sentence, ‘Viviremos y venceremos.’ We will live and we will win.”

“Reinaldo José Bolívar, a Venezuelan professor and Vice-President of Foreign Affairs for Africa, presents some interesting thoughts about the common roots and projects of African countries and Venezuela. He was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the Institute of Strategic Investigations on Africa and its Diaspora, the ‘Centre of African Knowledge’ in Venezuela. Venezuela has been continuously increasing its presence in Africa and will continue with this process. Venezuelans have African blood in their bodies. Africa is present in their genes. ‘African-ness is part of our identity. I am an integral Africanist,’ says Reinaldo Bolívar. Africa, to him, means ‘the future of humanity.’” The next ASA Summit will be held in Ecuador, in 2016.

My friends of the African Diaspora, it is highly unlikely that we will have a unifying force in the world again soon like President Hugo Chavez. He passed away of cancer on March 5, 2013. The rest of us have a job to do. We must do everything that we can to take up the slack the loss of this great man will present us. It is time to redouble our anti-imperialist efforts and to vigorously reach out our hands South-to-South or wherever we are to cement solidarity with the many other victims and descendents of the victims of colonialism.

Presente’ Hugo Chavez!

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

Mar 07, 2013 - Issue 507

Privileging the Voices of the Threatened,

Marginalized, and Offended

It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.

-Joseph Goebbels

It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American.

-W.E.B. DuBois

I was learning how to tape record the music of Motown when an uncle introduced me to Ravel: Bolero, Pavane for A Dead Princess. “Sit down and listen!” A Korean War vet, his voice took on the tone of a drill sergeant. Over the years, I have been drawn to other composers, including Gustav Mahler. Only recently did I discover that the beautiful Adagietto in the 5th Symphony was a love song Mahler composed for his wife, Alma, and the dramatic final movement of the 9th Symphony was for Mahler a final farewell. In recent months, I finally decided to sit down and listen to Mahler.

Consequently, I came across a listing of books on Mahler (1860-1911) and his music, particularly one written by Norman Lebrecht titled, Why Mahler. Luckily, I did not purchase the book, but ordered it from the library. Lebrecht he has listened to and studied more of Mahler’s work than I have, and I appreciate his informed opinions and interpretation. I took what I felt was useful from Lebrecht’s study and certainly did not feel offended nor feel marginalized because I am not, as Mahler was, of German-Jewish origins. In fact, if anything, Mahler’s Jewishness added to my understanding of his work.

It was at this time that I also took note of the criticism from fellow conductors and critics surrounding the late conductor Leonard Bernstein’s performance of Mahler. Bernstein’s performances of Mahler were criticized for being highly emotional and, worse, Bernstein (also a Jew) put too much emphasis on Mahler’s ethnicity. Anyone can conduct Mahler! - even though most of Bernstein’s contemporaries did not include Mahler’s work in their repertoire before Bernstein.

Deja vu! I have been here and have heard the muttering, the rumbling from below the words.

During the 1970s, while Bernstein works to promote Mahler, Black, Chicano, and Indigenous writers and poets are also busy producing work that reflecting the reality of life in the United States despite the Civil and Voting Rights legislation.

You need not be offended or feel marginalized if reading the story of the little girl, Pecola, in Toni Morrison’s Bluest Eyes, you saw through her eyes how the desire for blue eyes reflected more than the personal, mental scaring of one Black child, but also reflected a dysfunctional society in the U.S., one in which Black children are forced and highly encouraged and rewarded if they assimilate, by whatever means necessary, or suffer the consequences of racial difference.

You did not need to be Black - but Pecola is Black - in the United States!

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the political and economic backlash from white America, collectively frowning on the overt racism of Bull Connors and the like but turning its back to Black America when it came to the question of equality. America took note of the new language of revolution in the U.S.

i used to dream militant

dreams of taking over america to show

these white folks how it should be

done

i used to dream radical dreams

of blowing everyone away with my perspective powers

of correct analysis

i even used to think i’d be the one

to stop the riot and negotiate the peace

then i awoke and dug

that it i dreamed natural

woman doing what a woman

does when she’s natural

i would have a revolution

-Nikki Giovanni, “Revolutionary Dreams”

In many ways, the systemic and far-reaching neutralization of Black cultural productions was as covert as COINTELPRO was overt.

Talk this talk today!

The venues for talking back, for talking truth, for the historical exploration and cultural expression of the Black lived experience is dwindling while what is produced and sold as “Black” is mediated by corporate dollars and the appetite of white America for the good, as in well-behaved and silent, nigger.

In Arizona, the recent banning of the Chicano experience in the classroom openly acknowledging the operation of neutralization that is already in effect throughout higher education. Students are not demanding to read poetry, history or philosophy. But under corporate guidance, new college students are not encouraged to do so either!

And as for Black, Chicano, and Indigenous studies - the budget, the budget, the budget! Diversity courses do the job! By the middle of the 90’s, white professors argue that you do not need to be Black, Chicano, or Indigenous to teach or to critique, for example, the Bluest Eyes - Pecola is any little girl, anywhere! Her experience is universal - that is, opens the market up to newly minted white teachers and professors of Black, Chicano, and Indigenous studies, producing critiques of Black, Chicano, and Indigenous history and culture. “Identity politics” came under attack when the centered “identity” was Black, Chicano or Indigenous. “Corporate Identity,” however, is growing in academia as well as in mainstream parlors. Assimilate!

Ethnic cleansing as good as brutal as COINTELPRO and as massive as the prison industrial complex!

The discourse re-emerging and claiming to represent Black, Chicano, and Indigenous creative work and scholarship is exemplary of the systemic re-tuning of young minds to adopt corporate think: pleasure first and profits above all else. These soldiers are quite willing to limit the Black experience to “street” life, sexual abuse, drugs, violence or to denounce the need to emphasize or proclaim yourself universal - half-African, or half-Asian, half-white American, born in Hawaii, or any place but Haiti or Mexico, in other words, be a little bit of everything to neutralize the Blackness.

Was it yesterday

love we shifted the air and

made it blossom Black?

-Sonia Sanchez, “Haiku”

Unabashedly Black or Chicano, well - that is “old school.” We are all Americans!

Where did they go

the Writers?

Beautiful

Black

chests pulsing under kente cloth The

Word clenched in sweaty fists

They have gone to whiteland, sister

Am I correct?

O tell me, brother

Am I correct?

-Mari Evans, “The Writers”

Leonard Bernstein did not argue that the relevance of Mahler’s Jewishness prohibits non-Jews from understanding his work. Bernstein was a teacher; he wanted a wider audience for Mahler but one informed. Mahler was a Jew in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire! Mahler converts to Catholicism in order to take over the directorship of the Vienna Philharmonica. During the Nazi regime, Wagner was in but Vienna was a Mahler-free city.

In a 1994 New York Times article, Alex Ross notes that,

Bernstein weighs the presence and absence of Jewishness in Mahler’s music, the difficult issue of his conversion to Roman Catholicism. He pinpoints the comparatively few moments at which Mahler’s music has an identifiable ethnic sound, with the ‘Jewish wedding music’ of the First Symphony’s third movement as an obvious point of departure. (“Critic’s Notebook: A Tangle of Conflicted Jewishness”)

Bernstein’s point: Consider the personal conflicts as they are directly linked to the public, social contradictions! Consider the historical references that encircle a Mahler in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire or a literary character such as Pecola in the United States. Bernstein further claims, Ross writes,

that all things in Mahler, all the funeral marches and funereal airs, are instances of Jewish agony and shame. This is a nearly intolerable conclusion implying that the consequent major-key triumphs in most of the symphonies are a Christian overcoming of Judaism.

This is, nonetheless, Ross continues, “an honest assessment of the unhappy Mahler who was ashamed of what he perceives as his ‘Jewish traits’ and also troubled by the necessity of assimilation.”

The angst of the narrator in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.

Today, the angst expressed through Ellison’s narrator and maybe even that expressed by Mahler would not find a publisher or concert hall.

Bernstein offers a theory about why Mahler’s work received little attention.[i] Mahler was, Bernstein suggests, “telling something too dreadful to hear” (Harvard Lectures)[ii] Mahler had a “premonition” that included a vision of his own death, the death of tonality, and “the death of our society, our Faustian culture.” But, of course, the critics dismissed Bernstein’s claim, and, since his death in 1990, critics are still at work denouncing what they consider an over-the-top, Mahler, as Bernstein suggests, with a vision of the catastrophes to come in the 20th Century.

Mahler had “a vision of his world,” writes Bernstein,

crumbling in corruption beneath its smug surface, fulsome, hypocritical, prosperous, sure of its terrestrial immortality, yet bereft of its faith in spiritual immortality. The music is almost cruel in its revelations: it is like a camera that has caught Western society in the moment of its incipient decay.

-Leonard Bernstein, “Mahler: His Time Has Come”

I suspect this argument irritated some more than anything else. But was it not commonplace for most artists to look beyond themselves? Did not artists philosophize? Were they not Prophets before they could only envision the lines, plot, scenes, painting that would guarantee a major mainstream magazine spread? The world “crumbling in corruption” be damned!

“Some vague metaphysical catastrophes” does not cut it, for critic David Schiff. Bernstein’s efforts to “compile a catalog of horrors and atrocities as proof of Mahler’s prescience” (New York Times, November 4, 2001) fails to consider the effects of the “Fab Four” and popular music, the rise of other composers who came after Mahler. Bernstein! Bernstein! Bernstein! Anything but Bernstein’s assessment!

Layers and layers of the dead - so much “vague metaphysical catastrophes.”

The ultimate logic of racism, Dr. King once said, is genocide!

Norman Lebrecht’s Why Mahler, writes another critic, Brenton Sanderson, takes up where Bernstein left off. For Lebrecht, as Sanderson summarizes, “Mahler is more than just a great artist. Music, in Mahler’s view, did not exist for pleasure. It had the potential for a ‘world-shaking effect’ in politics and public ethics.’ Moreover, the man and his music are said to be ‘central to our understanding of the course of civilisation and the nature of human relationships.’ His symphonies are prophesies of war, modern technology, and environmental degradation.”

We have never heard such an interpretation applied to the sacred artists of Western tradition. Music created to change politics and public ethics. An artist who can warn of the catastrophes to come as a result of “war, modern technology, and environmental degradation”! Sanderson continues: Lebrecht presents the “saintly victim of gentile injustice.” For Lebrecht, the reader is to understand Mahler’s achievements as “specifically and inseparably Jewish,” a reflection of Jewish intellectual brilliance.”

What “raging hypocrisy” because it denies “the reality of a collective White racial achievement, while stridently affirming the reality of a collective intergenerational guilt that must urgently be instilled in all White people.”

And furthermore, “the propagation of Mahler has been predominantly a Jewish affair.”

(I seem to have read a different book!).

Now this: Sanderson’s article, “Why Mahler? Norman Lebrecht and the Construction of Jewish Genius,” appears at the Occidental Observer: White Identity, Interests, and Culture, April 13, 2011, (the centenary year of Mahler’s death). Free country, as they say! The Internet is for all! You could argue that the views offered in this long article represent the extreme views of the anti-Semitic, the white supremacist ideology - as opposed, say, to the New York Times articles that mocked Leonard Bernstein’s interpretation of Mahler’s work. But the Occidental Observer’s editor is a professor of Psychology at California State University-Long Beach, Kevin Mac Donald.

Over the top? No! Extremists? Not so much! There are no hooded white sheets here or swastikas! The “battles” are not always so visible nor are the victims themselves necessarily situated in the cross hairs. In our post-modern world, the liberal’s conceal lingering hostilities behind banners proclaiming “fairness” and “freedom” while conservatives cry out for a “balanced” representation of their position.

The New York Times and the Occidental Observer are examples of how the liberal and conservative voices converge, casually on the Internet or formally at educational institutions, to proliferate the justification and legitimization of what ideas are to be included and what ideas to be excluded - in short, what is to be thought within a system that needs to protect its political, economic, cultural interests. Zionism and the repression of Palestinians and the “Black” president at the head of the American Empire notwithstanding - the interests of the economic system that is capitalism, benefits the few at the top, presenting themselves as friendly banking institutions, or as humanitarian aid to so-called “underdeveloped” nations, or as an example of the “victimization” of “free speech” and a “balanced” perspective, the modus operandi is as brutal as any repressive regime that surfaced in the previous century.

“Where did they go, the Writers?” Why, they are foot soldiers marching among a confetti of bricks, mortar, drones, and blood, marching on, expecting the big victory they have been promised.

Fundamental change is as much in the interest of the sheep as it is in the interest of the targeted.

[i]“Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer and, especially, Willem Mengelberg promoted Mahler's legacy, and Mahler's style had a profound, if quite divergent, influence on the two leading composers of theatrical music, Alban Berg and Kurt Weill” (David Schiff, “MUSIC; The Man Who Mainstreamed Mahler,” New York Times, November 4, 2001). But Bernstein's lectures on Mahler and recordings of the composer's work exposed Mahler to a wider audience in the late 1960s and early 1970's.

[ii]See You Tube: “The Unanswered Question 1973: The XXth Century Crisis Bernstein Norton”

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has aDoctorate in Modern American Literature/Cultural Theory. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.

Mar 07, 2013 - Issue 507

Thank God the Little Bronze Bigot Flew Over Denzel

Some of you out there are a trip. I listened for weeks to ya’ll complaining about “Django Unchained.” In fact, I heard so much bitchin’ and complaining about Django that you almost made me forget about “Flight.”

You were upset over the N-Word being used, you and y’Boy Spike. You weren’t really upset with the word “nigger” being used multiple times, you just had a problem with it being Quentin Tarantino’s idea. There’s another movie over two hours long with a black commercial airline pilot acting niggerish, about which that you said nothing.

I am done. Two of ya’ll and two wooden nickles don’t add up to a dollar, because you let this go over your heads literally and figuratively. Still haven’t caught on yet have you? What flick am I talking about? The one where the black Captain, William “Whip” Whitaker is sleeping after openly doing drugs while in the cockpit and when his co-pilot wakes him up because the auto-pilot button fails, Denzel’s character hits the nigger-pilot button and the plane lands upside-down. You missed the whole tricknology behind it didn’t you? All it was, was “Training Day” at 30,000 feet, co-starring another black actor (Don Cheadle) known for playing a character who regularly scolds a flying drunk man.

You almost made me forget about being pissed over a movie starring America’s Premier black thespian, the man who became Hollywood’s no.1 actor back in the 90s, nominated multiple times by the little bronze bigot, having won it once for playing a Union Soldier, and another time for Best Actor playing one of the worst cops ever portrayed. Many of you didn’t let that get by you, and I couldn’t hate on you. That was black year for Oscar, and the little bronze bigot tossed us three bones: Denzel for “Training Day,” Halle Berry for her virtual-porn in “Monsters’ Ball,” (“Make Me Feel Good!”) and Will Smith competing directly against Washington and others for Best Actor that year for “Ali.” Spike Lee-always mis-directing us to the wrong target raised some noise about not counting Smith’s nomination because he accused him of being Gay (Can’t have that in Hollywood, of all places).

A lot of you said the movie with the black pilot who snorts coke, does meth, smokes crack, drinks “Henny” like Kool Aid, shoots heroin and flies a damn plane upside-down was really brilliant acting. Really, niggers? Really? Really? Ok, whateva’, I’m on your time. I may be slightly exaggerating on his amount of substance abuse, but Captain Whitaker is portrayed as out-drinking his white alcoholic girlfriend (Nicole), goes to an NTSB hearing loaded on alcohol and coke and you say this is alright with you. Listen closely to me. This is NOT a “nobody’s perfect” moment that too many of you tag almost everything as. What Captain “Whip” really needed was Django to ride by, see that upside-down plane lying in that field with him just waking up, just in time for him to drag “Whip” out from under the broken plane, take out his whip, and put some slave-lashes on his buttocks. He needs that more than Spike Lee’s lips need Crazy Glue.

The reason “Flight” was made, was because Hollywood was still pissed over “Red Tails.” Just the idea that George Lucas went and did a movie about some real live Black Superheroes, WWII heroes at that, and rammed it down their throats after they told him “Hell The F No” twenty-years-ago, still resonates with them. It gave the lie to all the hundreds of all-white WWII movies we were made to see and accept as reality. “Flight” was a get-back movie on so many levels. And it is for that reason why I was so glad that “Flight” didn’t win best movie or best actor at the 2013 Academy Awards.

Like “Monster’s Ball,” “Flight” was a story far more indicative of the disturbing mindset of the writers and production company than anything else relating to the film. It has an approval rating of 77% from the 186 tough critics of Rotten Tomatoes (vs. the 39% they gave for “Red Tails”). The only criticisms worth listening to were the ones coming from actual pilots, who wondered why Whitaker was continuously allowed to fly with such a glaring substance abuse problem? I’m sure what they really were asking was “what black airline pilot gets away with such a glaring alcohol AND drug problem and is able to get away with this abuse for so long?” The answer lies on a completely different landing-strip - the Tuskegee Airman strip.

What I’m about to give you is White Hollywood Psychology 101. Many of you think a movie like “Flight” was a victory for blacks in major film simply because of who starred in it. It’s not. When you see most movies and TV shows and news shows depicting black criminal(s), what you are really seeing is a white image. When you see a movie or TV show starring a black addict or actor playing an addict, you are in actuality seeing a white image. This has been going on for decades now and some of you brothers and sisters still haven’t figured it out. Although it doesn’t really matter what the race of the filmmaker is, most of them are white. “Red Tails” was a splendid project made by a white producer who consulted with the remaining black fighter pilots (people that black directors like Lee and many others ignored) to give you a movie consisting of black images. By contrast, Jesse Terrero, a black Dominican director gave you a white image movie about black pilots; “Soul Plane.” When Spike Lee gave you “Malcolm X” he gave you a black image; when Lee gave you “Four Little Girls” he gave you a black image. When he gave you “School Daze,” and “Jungle Fever,” he gave you a white image. John Singleton’s “Boyz in the Hood,” and “Rosewood,” black images. “Higher Learning,” white image.

Peoplecriticize Tom Hanks and Clint Eastwood for essentially always glorifying thewhite male image. Why shouldn’t they? They’re white. Stop hating white peoplefor doing what their DNA tells them to do. Credit white filmmakers like Lucasfor breaking Hollywood-policy and thinking for himself. Credit and supportblack filmmakers who truly love black people, and show it.

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.

Mar 07, 2013 - Issue 507

It’s Enough to Make a Negro Turn Black: Lu Palmer

We should always remember some of our great ancestors. One such ancestor is Lu Palmer.

On Sunday, September 12, 2004, Lu Palmer made his transition to eternity. Lu Palmer was an unquestioned leader and dedicated soldier in the struggle for Black Liberation and independence. His spirit will remain among us forever.

As I began to think about the tremendous contributions Brother Lu made, over the years, I found myself traveling down memory lane. I knew Lu for thirty-two years and worked closely with him on innumerable projects. During this period we became very good friends and I considered him as one of my fathers in the movement.

Lutrelle Fleming Palmer, Jr. was born on March 28, 1922 in Newport News, Virginia. To understand something about Lu Palmer, you have understanding the tremendous influence his family had on him, particularly his father. Brother Lu was named after his father who was an outstanding Black educator and institution builder.

Lu Palmer, Sr. graduated from Wilberforce University in 1911 and received a second degree from the University of Michigan in 1912. In reading an April 1923 edition of the Alpha Phi Alpha journal, The Sphinx, I ran across a biographical sketch of Lu’s father. In discussing his role as an educator and Principal of the Huntington High School in Newport News, The Sphinx commented that “A big element in the success that has attended Brother Palmer’s efforts is his rare faculty of securing the united support of his community.”

Over the years, Brother Lu Palmer, Jr. secured that same kind of support in Chicago and other places around the country for his dedicated work in the Black Liberation Movement. In this regard, the old adage, “Like father, like son” applies.

After his graduation from high school Lu attended and graduated from Virginia Union University. Upon completing of his B.A. degree, Lu entered Syracuse University and finished his M.A. degree in journalism. Lu didn’t stop there. He attended the University of Iowa in pursuit of a Ph.D. in communications. Lu finished all of the necessary requirements for this degree except for the writing of his dissertation. Lu told me years ago that he had done extensive research in preparation to write his dissertation, but unfortunately his notes were lost on a train. After that mishap, Lu just kind of gave up on the idea.

From the early 1950s, Lu worked in a variety positions as a journalist, communicator, writer, and educator. The name Lu Palmer is synonymous with the quest of Black people’s efforts in Chicago and around the country in our fight for self determination and independence.

For over fifty-three years Lu worked in the field of communications as a journalist, as the Director of the News Bureau, as an editor at Fisk University, as a reporter at the Tri-State Defender, as senior writer at the Chicago Defender, a reporter in the Peace Corps, a reporter at The Chicago American, and as a columnist at the Chicago Daily News.

It was the racism and white supremacy of the Chicago Daily News that caused Lu to resign his lucrative position in 1972 and start his own newspaper called the Black X-Press. Although the life of this newspaper was short-lived, the idea and example that Lu set by taking this bold step was indicative of his character as a true freedom fighter.

Like his father, Lu fought for the dignity, freedom, self determination, and independence of Black people most of his life. Through “Lu’s Notebook,” a radio program that aired on most Black radio stations for some ten years, he articulated many of the key issues that impacted on the heartbeat of the Black Community in Chicago and the United States. You might remember it was Lu who said, “It’s enough to make a Negro turn Black.” Also, for many years, Lu served as the host of the popular WVON night time radio show, “On Target.”

Through Lu’s Notebook and forums, he was instrumental in mobilizing and organizing Black people to take action around our own self interests. Perhaps his greatest organizing venture was the establishment of his organization, Chicago Black United Communities (CBUC), which more than any other organization laid the foundation for the election of Chicago’s first Black Mayor, Harold Washington.

If you recall, it was Lu Palmer and CBUC that convened the Citywide Political Conference at Malcolm X College on August 15, 1981, “To examine, to explain, to explore old and new strategies that will enable us to chart new paths toward full political representation and full political empowerment - in Black precincts, in Black wards, in Black congressional districts, in Black state legislative districts, in City Hall and throughout this country.” It was Lu Palmer that declared at this conference, and subsequently popularized the slogan that became a reality, “We Shall See In `83.”

We miss Lu, but his spirit remains with us.

[Please support the upcoming CCICS Open House Wednesday, April 10th 4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. and Thursday, April 11th 10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.]

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Conrad W. Worrill, PhD, is theNational Chairman Emeritus of the National Black United Front (NBUF). Click here to contact Dr. Worrill.

Mar 07, 2013 -Issue 507

New York City Citizens Defend Libraries

Political Cartoon

By Mark Hurwitt, Brooklyn NY

For more information visit
Citizens Defending Libraries Resource And Events Page

Mark Hurwitt is an Illustrator, Cartoonist, Designer, Writer and Teacher

residing in Brooklyn New York

His website is HurwittGraphics.com

Click here to contact Mark

Mar 07, 2013 - Issue 507

Hangin’ in Harlem

Art

By Ray Ferrer

Urban Wall Art & Murals

New York NY

Ray Ferrer ~ Urban Wall Art & Murals

Click here to contact Mr. Ferer or to arrange a purchase

ArtistStatement: I'm from NY born and raised. I was in the Army for 6 years.I have my MBA from Auburn University and was a management consultantand business strategist for many years. I've traded it all in for apaint can and love what I do. I make very unique and customartwork for people and businesses all around the world by hand cuttingstencils and painting them onto canvas and onto large walls. Itravel to client sites for larger murals and mail out smaller pieces. Iwill go anywhere to do a mural! My artwork is inspired by wanting tosee things I absolutely love in a different light.

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