Table of Contents

There are 18 chapters in this issue

About BlackCommentator.com

Cover Story: Hugo Chavez, Brazil and the History of Social Exclusion - Left Margin - By Carl Bloice - BC Editorial Board

Women’s History Month Quote to Ponder: "I am passionate about everything in my life - first and foremost, passionate about ideas….” - bell hooks

Adios, Comandante! - Political Cartoon By Carlos Latuff, Rio de Janeiro Brazil

Reflections On the Work of President Chavez - The African World - By Bill Fletcher, Jr. - BC Editorial Board

The Drone Factor: U.S. Citizens Can’t Be Silent About These Stealth Killers - A View from the Battlefield - By Jamala Rogers - BC Editorial Board

Hugo Chavez - Political Cartoon By Mark Hurwitt

Problem of Immigrant High Tech Workers Similar to Farmworkers - Solidarity America - By John Funiciello - BC Columnist

Making the Bad Good: Oz the Great and Powerful - Nafsi ya Jamii - By Wilson Riles - BC Columnist

Was Marco Mcmillian Killed in Mississippi Because He was Black or Gay? – Inclusion - By The Reverend Irene Monroe - BC Editorial Board

Jose Mujica - Political Cartoon By Eric Garcia, Chicago IL

Internalizing Our Own Oppression - Keeping it Real By Larry Pinkney, BC Editorial Board

ASCAC - A Major Intellectual Force - Worrill’s World - By Dr. Conrad W. Worrill, PhD - BC Columnist

Blinded By the Right - The Other Side of the Tracks - By Perry Redd - BC Columnist

Scalia - Political Cartoon By Chuck Siler

Iran Sanctions = Silent War - Havaar Launches Campaign to Help Iranians Access Life Saving Medicine

Creation of the World - Art By Larry Richardson, Valencia CA

Love and War By Greg King, BC Guest Commentator

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 14, 2013 - Issue 508

Last month, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff raised the monthly stipend of 2.5 million people in the country currently living below the poverty line and, according to Reuters, she did it “to make good on her promise to eradicate extreme poverty in Brazil, a nation with enormous income gaps between rich and poor.” Starting this week, she said, 2.5 million poor people would see their monthly income rise through the Bolsa Familia, or Family Grant program to the equivalent of $35. In making the announcement she said an interesting thing: "We are turning the pageon our long history of social exclusion that had perverse roots in slavery.”

That statement is important for two reasons.

First, it indicates that it is quite possible to “lift all boats” and at the same time acknowledge that in doing so that communities still experiencing the effects of centuries of discrimination will particularly benefit. That’s an idea that is considered heresy in some circles of our country, including in the Obama Administration. It is important to keep in mind when one reflects on the fact that last month unemployment edged slightly downward for every demographic group except African Americans.

Secondly, Rousseff’s action and her words boldly refute the misinformation that the major mass media – as if by script –has been spreading in the wake of the death of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. To wit, that while poverty has been dramatically reduced in Brazil and Venezuela, Rousseff and her predecessor haven’t attacked inequality the same way the Venezuelan leader did. The Christian Science Monitor even described the Brazilian presidents as “fiscally conservative.” “In Brazil, Lula and Rousseff brought about their changes without the same type of economic shocks,” the paper alleged. “They reduced poverty faster than ever before but also guaranteed big companies a safe environment in which to invest – and huge profits.”

These people don’t even seem to be able to report the statistics right. The Monitor reported that, “In Venezuela, Chavez funneled much of the country's oil wealth into social programs and subsidies. The percentage of people living in extreme poverty fell from 23 percent in 1999 to just 9 percent today, and both unemployment and infant mortality were almost halved.” But the Financial Times says, that Venezuela has “slashed poverty, to 32 per cent in 2010 from 52 per cent in 2000.”

The Financial Times titled its editorial on the death of the Venezuelan leader “After Chavez, a chance for progress. Clearly “progress” is in the eye of the beholder – or the beneficiary.

President Rousseff didn’t stop at direct aid to the poor. In another measure of direct government action to alleviate poverty and combatinequality she has announced plans to speed up the agrarian reform inthe country with the delivery of lands to agricultores (workers inagriculture) and continued support for social programs targeted at the rural poor. Addressing the 11th National Congress of Rural Workers, she said, “I never promise anything I cannot fulfill and I am committing myself to speed up the delivering of lands. We want to guarantee the access of all families to the benefits of social programs from the federal executive.”

Rousseff is very popular (70 percent approval rating) because in her two years in office, her government has helped lift 22 millionsBrazilians out of extreme poverty, which she has predicated will disappear by 2014.

According to Reuters, “Despite an economic slowdown that has dogged her administration, Rousseff extended Lula's poverty reduction program when she took office in 2011 to add stipends for children and adolescents living in extreme poverty, farmers who engage in conservation and people who start technical training.”

While the mainstream media in the U.S. has had little positive to say about Brazilian government in the recent past, coverage of Chavez’s death has emphasized the supposedly conflicting policies between Brazil and Venezuela. The media has incessantly hyped the candidacy of Henrique Capriles, the governor of Miranda state and leader of the center-right Justice First Party, who will face Socialist Party candidate Nicolas Maduro in a presidential election April 14. Reuters keeps describing Capriles is a “centrist” who “says he would copy Brazil's ‘modern left’ model of economic and social policies.” However, he says he favors policies that would “permit the poorest to find jobs and stop depending on state resources.” Actually, that sounds a lot more like Mitt Romney than Lula or Rousseff.

Meanwhile, here at home joblessness remains stubbornly high, poverty grows and inequality of incomes continues to widen.

Over 46 million people in the U.S. - over 15 percent - live below theofficial poverty line, including 16 million children; nearly a quarterof those adults are employed. Eight million children are growing uppoor. According to the group Bread for the World, 27.6 percent ofAfrican-Americans live in poverty. The poverty rate for black childrenstands at 38.8 percent for children under age 18 and 42.7 percent ofchildren under age.

Meanwhile, in February, the U.S. jobless rate was 7.7 percent, down from 7.9 percent but for African Americans it remained at 13.8. According to University of California Labor Center Black Employment Project, for black teens (16-19), unemployment was 43.1 percent (an increase from 37.8 percent In January). For black female teens, the jobless rate stood at 38.1 percent (an increase from 33.2 percent in January). For black male teens, unemployment was 48.7 percent (an increase from 43.3 percent in January).

While the major media has gone to great lengths to picture Hugo Chavez, the Socialist Party of Venezuela, and, by extension, most of the Latin American left, as out of steps with the times, the embarrassing truth is that with the notable exception of the U.S. and Canada, and a couple of other oligarchic regimes, current governments in the Western Hemisphere are making concerted popular efforts to combat poverty, reduce inequality and reverse historical neglect of indigenous communities and those of African descent.

History will unfortunately record that on occasion of ceremonies laying Chavez to rest, attended by 22 heads of state and prominent personalities from across the planet, the President of the United States issued an undiplomatic, insensitive and stupid statement that didn’t even offer condolences. As Sara Kozameh of the Center for Economic and Policy Research has observed, “This will almost certainly not go unnoticed in Venezuela or Latin America, more widely.”

Right now it behooves the people in charge in Washington to recognize just who is out of step in the Americas. Instead of cooking up new measures of unnecessary austerity and threatening the welfare of seniors, children and the poor they should be heeding the examples of those in the region trying really hard - and for the most part successfully - to do some good. And they should recognize that there is nothing wrong with stressing measures that overcome “our long history of social exclusion that had perverse roots in slavery” and long standing patterns of discrimination.

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 14, 2013 - Issue 508

Click here for more about bell hooks

Mar 14, 2013 -Issue 508

Adios, Comandante!

Political Cartoon

By Carlos Latuff, Rio de Janeiro Brazil

Carlos Latuff, a cartoonist, artist and activist based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Latuff has spent the last 15 plus years crafting a style that can best be described as “populist cartooning.” He has touched on issues like Apartheid in South Africa, the plight of Native Americans in the US and the oppression of Tibetans in China.

But perhaps his most controversial series to date is “We are all Palestinians,” in which he compares the actions taken by the Israeli government towards Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip directly to the Nazi’s treatment of Jews.

Click here to contact brother Carlos

Mar 14, 2013 - Issue 508

Reflections On the Work of President Chavez

A friend of mine said that when he heard the news of the death of President Chavez that it felt as if someone had hit him in the stomach. I could not have put it more concisely nor more honestly. While I knew that the likelihood of his recovering was very slight, I suppose that I engaged in a bit of magical thinking, hoping—more than anything else—that the man who survived a coup attempt and the constant hostility of US imperialism, could pull off a miracle.

Over the coming weeks, months and years there will be important and in depth analyses of the work and life of Hugo Chavez. In this time of sadness and in the immediate aftermath of his passing it is difficult to do anything approaching a comprehensive analysis and I would be the last person to attempt such an endeavor. Feelings are too raw and the legacy will evolve over the coming years. There have been some excellent pieces written by various authors that will all contribute to a better understanding of President Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution. That said, I respectfully offer a few reflections.

In January 2004, as the president of TransAfrica Forum, I had the honor of leading the first African American delegation to meet with the leaders of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution. It was important for us to conduct this visit in order to better understand what was transpiring but also to get a better sense of race, the Afro-descendant movement, and the revolutionary process in Venezuela.

Our delegation had the opportunity to meet with President Chavez on more than one occasion but the first real dialogue was more than memorable. President Chavez gave us an overview of Venezuela’s history and what led to his winning power. I thanked him for the meeting and proceeded to describe my feelings at the time of the 2002 coup. I mentioned to him and his colleagues that I was very sad upon hearing of the coup, and, of course, delighted when he was restored to power. What really struck me at the time of the coup, however, was looking at the faces of the crowds on television. I looked at the crowds that supported Chavez and those who opposed him and at that moment so much of what was unfolding in Venezuela clicked for me. For, it was clear that Chavez had phenomenal support among the poorer and the darker parts of the Venezuelan population while the opposition looked like it could have walked in from Madrid.

One of the most important contributions of President Chavez and the Bolivarian process has been to help to put race on the table for discussions and action. Under President Chavez renewed attention has gone to the indigenous and the Afro-descendant populations. This attention, we should note, was not the result of President Chavez alone, but rather a combination of factors with the most important being the actual social movements of the indigenous and Afro-descendant populations of Venezuela. It is critically important to grasp that in Venezuela, including in many progressive and Left circles, there is adamant denial of race as a factor in Venezuela’s reality. The opposition to President Chavez, we should be clear, denies race altogether. In the Bolivarian movement the recognition of race and racism within Venezuelan society has beenuneven. But with the combination of the social movements plus President Chavez’s support, race came to be openly discussed in Venezuela and actual steps were taken to address a very different form of white supremacy than the version with which we are familiar here in North America.

Chavez, the former leader of a coup attempt in 1992, made a strategic calculation that building a mass movement and challenging for power electorally was the path that needed to be undertaken. Though Chavez ultimately proclaimed his goal of “21st century socialism,” it is far from clear that this was his initial goal. In many respects, the opening stage of the transformative effort in Venezuela seemed to be more characteristic of a left populism. In either case, the electoral victories of Chavez, and particularly after the 2002 coup followed by the oil industry lock-out (a more subtle coup attempt), opened up a space for the expansion of the Bolivarian process, and this process was more than a traditional electoral win. What Chavez introduced, along with several allies in other parts of Latin America, was conducting class struggle within the context of the State as well as outside of the State (which, we should add, included winning over important sections of the Venezuelan military). This process of class struggle has not been aimed along the lines of traditional reform efforts but actually toward advancing a transformative effort, the sort that would—and will—inevitably challenge the capitalist state in its fundamentals.

The Bolivarian effort represents a departure from two prior roads pursued by much of the Latin American Left. The first was the standard electoral reform efforts whereby officials were elected to office and accepted the parameters of the capitalist state. The second was armed struggle that became quite prevalent in the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution and was attempted by Chavez himself.

The Bolivarian process, which is far from over, has suggested multiple levels of struggle but in every case drawing upon mass action and mass involvement. This goes beyond huge demonstrations—as important asthey may be—but more in the direction of encouraging alternative institutions as well as revitalized (or in some cases new) social movements.

It is in foreign policy that President Chavez is most well-known herein the USA. His policies have been consistently directed at promoting national sovereignty and regional blocs in opposition to the hegemonism of the US-centered empire. For this Chavez earned the wrath of the US political elite and much of the mainstream US media. The Washington Post, for instance, could not seem to go a week without demonizing President Chavez and the Bolivarian process (includingPresident Chavez’s allies in other parts of Latin America). Chavez’s Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America (ALBA), which he jokingly suggested was the result of a note that he sent to Fidel Castro during a meeting, represented an effort to break the dependency links that exist for much of Latin America and the Caribbean on the USA.

Chavez’s approach to foreign policy was not without controversy even within the Left. His embrace of Libya’s Qaddafi and Iran’s Ahmadinejad unsettled, if not horrified, many on the Left in the Middle East and North Africa (and elsewhere), including many who had considered themselves supporters of Chavez. Chavez’s outreach to such leaders and their regimes, apparently based on the notion that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, will be a problematic component of his legacy in that it seemed to ignore the progressive struggles that were being undertaken against leaders and regimes who, although at odds with imperialism, were domestically repressive and not in the progressive column.

I cannot end this commentary, however, without making a note regardinga comment that President Chavez offered about his own illness, a comment that seems to have been largely forgotten. Upon the discovery of the cancer, he apologized for not having taken sufficient care of himself. I was struck by this comment for two reasons. The first was the admission that he had not been on top of his health and that he was prepared to take responsibility for that.

The second reason that I was struck was something implicit in his comment: that it is actually a revolutionary duty to pay attention to one’s health. To put it another way, our duty is actually to live for the struggle (as opposed to living tostruggle). Our lives are critical in advancing the struggle and that no one can take for granted or make an assumption about how long they will be on this planet. Neither can one, out of humility, so underrate one’s own role that we think that as individuals we do not matter. Every freedom fighter matters and preserving one’s heal this a political task…in order to fight another day.

I had hoped to return to Venezuela and once again meet President Chavez. That will, obviously, be impossible. Chavez will be deeply missed by so many fighters for justice. His audacity alone was enough for one to love him, not to mention his humor and brilliance. We cannot afford to lose fighters like Hugo Chavez which is why it remains so critical that genuine movements for social justice and transformation are producing new leaders of his quality each day.

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

Mar 14, 2013 - Issue 508

The Drone Factor:
U.S. Citizens Can’t Be Silent About These Stealth Killers

Two extraordinary events happened on March 5 in different parts of the world.

First, after a fierce battle including medical treatment in Cuba, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez succumbed to cancer. The epilogue to his profound legacy is yet to be written.

U.S. lawmakers and mainstream media scoffed at the accusations of Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro that Chavez’ death was at the hands of his enemies. Further, Maduro claimed that the CIA would use the tragedy to attempt to topple the Venezuelan government.

Whether these claims are true or not, they certainly aren’t far-fetched. As the saying goes, “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t after you.”

This brings me to the other March 5 event - the confirmation of John Brennan as CIA Director, succeeding General David Petraeus.

There was real and contrived controversy about Brennan’s nomination primarily based upon the use of drones. If someone had told U.S. citizens twenty years ago that one day a remote surveillance gadget that looked like a hummingbird would be hovering over urban areas checking out the scene, many would have been incredulous.

Yet here we are in 2013 and it is not science fiction or the figment of someone’s overactive imagination. AeroVironment is developing the “Hummingbird drone” for the Pentagon. The drone business is booming.

In the middle of dronology is Brennan, who is not a new kid on the CIA block. He spent 25 years there and is regarded as the chief architect of President Obama’s drone strategy.

Brennan served in various intelligence capacities in both the Clinton and Bush Administrations, the former in which waterboarding was used to torture terrorist suspects. In 2008, Obama circumvented the Senate scrutiny of Brennan and appointed him Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counter terrorism, a position that didn’t require Senate confirmation.

The Obama Administration ignored a chorus of voices calling for transparency of his drone program. These included, but were not limited to the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), as well as civil liberties groups like the ACLU. They got nothing.

The Administration finally responded to Senator Rand Paul after a 13-hour filibuster. Attorney General Eric Holder gave Rand assurance that he had nothing to fear. No U.S. citizen on U.S. soil would ever be on the hit list for targeted killing by drones.

The drone manufacturing business is a global and competitive one. It is now a multi-billion dollar industry with companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and General Atomics in the U.S., Denel Dynamics in South Africa and Prox Dynamics AS in Norway. Companies like these are catering to the insatiable appetite of markets in Europe, Asian and Africa (Middle East). The ranges of technologies include everything from mini hand-held helicopters to underwater drones.

What government entity is overseeing this madness? None other than the Unmanned Systems Caucus. Not surprisingly, the foxes that are guarding the hen house are well financed by the drone industry they’re supposed to be monitoring. According to the First Street Research Group, the 58 drone caucus members received a total of $2.3 million in contributions from political action committees affiliated with drone manufacturers over the last few years.

The proliferation and use of drones by our government makes for a scary scene that citizens need to be opposing at all levels. Their onerous capability lies inthe fact that they can kill quickly and silently - you won’t know what and who hit you. And it just won’t be Venezuelan officials watching the skies; it will be American citizens at a protest in New York City or workers at a plant in St. Louis.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, Jamala Rogers, is the leader of the Organizationfor Black Struggle in St. Louis and the BlackRadicalCongress National Organizer. Additionally, she is an Alston-Bannerman Fellow. She is the author of The Best of the Way I See It – A Chronicle of Struggle. Click here to contact Ms.Rogers.

Mar 14, 2013 -Issue 508

Hugo Chavez

Political Cartoon

By Mark Hurwitt, Brooklyn NY

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 14, 2013 - Issue 508

Problem of Immigrant High Tech Workers

Similar to Farmworkers

How many times have we heard that immigrant farm workers do work that “Americans just won’t do?”

The economics of the U.S. food system have been discussed for 75 years and, during that time, there has been an unending search for lower production costs and that means the lowest wages possible to maintain the generations-old cheap food policy of the U.S. government.

Generally, Americans will not take the farm jobs that immigrants take because the pay is so low that they could not live on it, especially since it is seasonal for most farm workers, who either go back to their home countries or are looking for other casual work the rest of the year. For the growers and the giants in agribusiness, continuing to pay such low wages is the way to increase profits, so they naturally seek to continue the immigrant farm worker policies of the government.

But, immigrant high tech workers? Don’t they make $80,000 to $100,000 a year? Well they may, but studies show that they are a drag on the income of American-educated workers in high tech, which means that those who come out of college with science, technical, engineering, or mathematics degrees (bachelor or advanced degrees) are more inclined to bypass the tech sector and go into business, finance, or law.

There does not seem to be a shortage of native-born American potential high tech workers, so there must be another reason that Corporate America is pestering the president and congress to keep up the flow of immigrant high tech workers. In fact, they want to increase the flow. Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, wants the U.S. to let in more immigrants with degrees in mathematics, science, engineering, and technology, so the nation can be more competitive in the global market. The bill, Senate Bill 169, would give six-year visas to as many as 300,000 such workers each year, and Hatch and his co-sponsors say that would ease the shortage of such workers and set at rest the minds of their CEO friends.

But, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), there is no shortage, since about nine million people have such degrees and only about three million have a job in one of those fields. EPI says that pay in those fields rose only about 4.5 percent in the decade between 2000 and 2011. That might give a clue about why they are not found working in their own field. And, the unemployment rate in those fields is about 3.7 percent, which is twice what it was before the current deep recession.

So, why the push for opening the immigration doors even further to high-tech workers? It could have something to do with what they pay immigrant high tech workers, compared with what they would pay American citizens for the same work. The foreign workers in high tech come here under the H-1B program, which means that a single employer speaks for them to come in and they work for that employer until their time is up, unless they can convince immigration authorities that they are valuable workers and need the green card to find work (presumably at a higher rate of pay) elsewhere. If these workers were allowed to shop around for better pay, the employer on the H-1B document would be constantly looking for replacements and all that it means for a company in the middle of a big project.

This is similar to the farm worker immigration program or programs that have been in place for decades. Those workers are not allowed to go to work on other farms, even though the pay and benefits might be better. They have to put up with the conditions or face the threat of being returned to their home country. Theoretically, it’s the same for those H-1B high tech workers. They are tied to their employer for the duration.

Corporations have made their case to both the congress and the White House that there is such a shortage that further opening the door for high tech immigrant workers seems to be the only option. On the current White House fact sheet on immigration for these workers is a headline: “Staple green cards to advanced STEM diplomas,” which means encouraging foreign graduate students to stay by “stapling” the green card to the diplomas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) Master’s degree and Ph.D. graduates from qualified U.S. universities who have found employment in the U.S.

Our own politicians have said they simply want to bring in the “best and the brightest” to keep the U.S. in the forefront of high tech research and development, so they want to keep them coming, or they want them to stay if they are already here. They say this without any definition of “best and brightest,” or any proof that those workers are any more efficient or creative than U.S. high tech workers who have left their fields for other, more lucrative occupations.

At least one intensive study, by Dr. Norman Matloff, has found that “on a variety of measures, the former foreign students have talent lesser than, or equal to, their American peers.” And, he has found that the assertion by Corporate America that the U.S. needs the foreign workers to remain at the forefront of research and development and globally competitive is not supported by the data.

Matloff, in the EPI-published study, wrote, “The lack of evidence that the foreign students and workers we are recruiting offer superior talent reinforces the need to assure that programs like H-1B visa are used only to attract the best and the brightest or to remedy genuine labor shortages - not to serve as a source of cheap, compliant labor. We must eliminate employer incentives for using foreign workers as cheap labor, and we must end the practice of using green card sponsorship to render foreign workers captive to the employers who bring them into the country.”

The H-1B program for high tech workers caused what Matloff called an “internal brain drain,” which, he said, was “anticipated, if not actually planned,” by the government, itself. Matloff, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis, noted in the study that the Policy Research and Analysis (PRA) division of the National Science Foundation (NSF), as far back as 1989, “complained that Ph.D. salaries were too high. In an unpublished report, PRA proposed a remedy in the form of importing a large number of foreign students…”

He said that another study noted that the former head of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, “has made a number of public statements advocating the importation of foreign tech workers as a means of holding down salaries…” and that Greenspan referred to tech workers as a “privileged elite.” In doing so, Matloff pointed out, the former Fed chairman was ignoring the considerably higher pay of those who chose lines of work, such as law, finance, banking, or other fields. Are they not also privileged “elite?”

Pity the poor high tech CEO, who must continually find ways of getting more out of workers, for less pay and benefits. Immigrant workers seem to be the answer, and the White House and Congress fall into line, going along with Corporate America’s contention that there just are not enough Americans to take the jobs. After all the studies are in (and there have been numerous studies), it comes down to one thing: The best way to increase profits is to pay less and those who are willing to take lower pay are the immigrant workers, and figure out a way to make that seem reasonable.

It sounds strangely like the barons of big agriculture, who have made the same assertions over generations: “Americans just won’t do the work immigrants are more than willing to do,” when it’s really about the same thing, making more money on the backs of the workers. Search no longer for a reason for this “problem.” High tech workers likely have never given the plight of farm workers a thought, but they should. High tech workers should pay attention to the lives of farm workers, because the farm worker “problem” is what gave Corporate America the experience to treat these workers in the same way they treated the workers in the farm fields of America.

It’s all about the moneyand the profit, no matter how many degrees come after a high tech worker’sname. It’s not an easy thing to realize that, after all the hard work and yearsof experience in high tech, you could have saved all that mental work andeducational expense, and you would have been able to experience the same kindof treatment if you had decided to pick tomatoes.

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 14, 2013 - Issue 508

Making the Bad Good: Oz the Great and Powerful

Allegory is a fictional story composition device that uses characters and other story phenomena to stand in for real concepts and historical people. Allegories broaden these associations and comparisons through the story lines and, thereby, make subtle and not so subtle comments and judgments about the real historical thing. For thousands of years, humans have used the social psychological power of this device to convey complicated, memorable concepts and to push emotional responses in particular directions. But, most importantly, allegorical stories are teaching devices for our children.

As children and some adults get swept up in the fantastical aspects of fictional stories, they are opened up to the underlying morality and political values embedded in the drama. Well done drama, itself, tugs at the instinctual emotions in us all: fear, love, safety, accomplishment, etc. Associating these emotions with fictional characters that stand in for real concepts and characters is the art that can be used for good or bad results depending on your point of view. Conscious awareness of what is being done to you and your children is really important in this multicultural, complicated political world. Wake up before they “chain” your children’s minds!

My 10-year-old granddaughter took me to the Disney 3-D prequel to the classic L. Frank Baum tale, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. This prequel, Oz the Great and Powerful, debuted in first place and earned $80.3 million at the weekend box office, according to studio estimates Sunday. Kyla, my granddaughter, did not like it but for different reasons than I disliked it. She did not like it because it was scary and too long. I did not like it because it was poorly done and, more importantly, because it turned Baum’s allegory – condemning centralized banking – completely on its head. The character that stood in for BAD bankers was made into an essentially good person in the prequel.

According to the Money Reform Party and many others, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’s author, L. Frank Baum, was a supporter of William Jennings Bryan who stood three times, unsuccessfully, as a U.S. Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party. “The particular concern of both Baum and Bryan was the nature of the money supply then prevalent in the United States, and in the Mid-Western States in particular.” Just prior to the publishing of the book, the US had suffered another of the “boom bust cycles” that are inherent to unregulated capitalism, and people were suffering greatly. “There had been a severe depression. Many businesses had gone bankrupt, farmers forced to sell up, factories closed and workers made unemployed. True, some farms in the Mid-West were suffering from drought, but most were still capable of growing food; the businesses and factories were still capable of providing the things that people needed; the workers still wanted to work to provide those things, and people would still want the goods and services produced if they had the money to buy them.”

“The money in the USA then, as now, was entirely created by the private banking system. The pretence existed then that money was based on gold. (Even now some people still think that it is!) The major banks, based on the East and West coasts, could vary the amount of money in circulation, lending more to encourage commercial activity, then foreclosing on loans to put people out of business, enabling the banks to acquire their businesses cheaply. Baum and Bryan wanted money to be based on silver, not gold, as silver was more readily available in the Mid-West, where it was mined. Such a money supply could not be manipulated by the banks. So the story of the Wizard of Oz starts with a cyclone in the form of imagined electoral success for Bryan...” “Dorothy, a sort of proverbial ‘Everywoman’, lands on the Wicked Witch of the East (the East-coast bankers), killing her, so freeing the Munchkins, the down-trodden poor, but the Wicked Witch of the West (the West-coast bankers) remains loose.”

The Money Reform Party is quite convincing in their explication of the allegory by pointing to the character stand-ins. The famous 1939 movie with Judy Garland did the first damage to the allegory by changing the silver slippers from the book into ruby slippers in the film. In the prequel, Oz the Great and Powerful, most of the characters in Baum’s story are missing. The behind-the-curtain trickery (science) of the new main character, the Wizard-to-be, becomes a virtue. The Witches (women) switch sides from good to bad and fight one another. There is a character from China Town that is fragile porcelain and that is healed by the glue of the Wizard-to-be. And nobody goes home to Kansas. This is very far from a prequel because it does not sync up with the original story. This prequel must represent a purposeful attempt to destroy Baum’s allegory.

There is a valuable history of the people’s struggles against the money changers embed in Baum’s allegory. RareOzBooks.com speaks of it. We may start with Jesus Christ who became violent only one time: when he chased the money changers out of the temple. British King Henry I invented tally sticks, polished sticks of wood, to avoid the strangulation of the goldsmiths and later signed the Charter of Liberty which led to the Magna Carter and the Constitution. Colonial Scrip was used to avoid the restrictions of the Bank of England and to pay for the Revolutionary War; as an act of war England counterfeited the Colonial Scrip and destroyed its usefulness. Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln opposed these villainous bankers and showed us what to do – if we have the courage to take action. In the US we have broken free of central banking and allowed it to weasel its way back through lies and bribes six times. There is little doubt that the Federal Reserve caused the 1930’s depression by reducing the money supply (Milton Friedman). And we have previously talked about Alan Greenspan’s contribution to the current recession.

Bankers are presently on the top of almost everybody’s S*IT list – for good reason. Humans all over the planet are grasping after ways to put bankers down. There is also great ignorance about the nature of monetary systems, the history of monetary systems, and the alternatives that exist that communities have the power to put into place. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz book could be a great tool to open up our thinking and end the fear that we have about making these changes. Let’s not let that tool be so easily destroyed. This is the most popular children’s story in history. It is a desperate flare fired into the night of history. Let it not be extinguished by the Walt Disney Corporation.

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

Mar 14, 2013 -Issue 508

Was Marco Mcmillian Killed in Mississippi
Because He was Black or Gay?

Marco McMillian was a trailblazer and the pride of the Mississippi Delta. In 2004, when he was in his 20s, Ebony hailed him as one of the nation’s top “30 up-and-coming African-American leaders” under 30. And when he was in his 30s, theMississippi Business Journal recognized him as one of the top 40 leaders under 40. But McMillian’s life was mysteriously cut short at age 34.

As an openly gay African-American candidate running for the mayoral seat in Clarkdale, Miss., McMillian was quietly signaling that neither his race nor his sexual orientation would abort his aspirations. On McMillian’s personal Facebook page, there is a photo of him posing with President Obama. His campaign motto, “Moving Clarksdale forward,” was a challenge to the town as well as the state. If there is any place to challenge the intolerant conventions of Mississippi, Clarksdale, the Delta’s gem, known as “a place where openness and hospitality transcend all barriers and visitors are embraced as family” and the birthplace of blues music, is that place.

Police discovered McMillian’s body near a levee just a 15-minute drive outside Clarksdale. When his family reported that his body had been “beaten, dragged and burned,” I immediately thought of Mississippi’s unforgettably sordid history of lynching. In particular, the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till came to mind, and I was reminded of the words of Mississippi’s native son, William Faulkner, who wrote “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Till was a 14-year-old African-American child from Chicago who was visiting relatives down in the Delta. He was brutally murdered and tortured for allegedly flirting with a white woman. When his body was discovered, it was reported that Till had been severely beaten, stripped nude and shot in the right ear, with one of his eyes gouged out from its socket, before his body was dumped into the Tallahatchie River with a cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire.

Though many suspected racial hatred might have been the motive for McMillian’s alleged murder, that possibility was quickly erased when it was reported that Lawrence Reed, a 22-year-old African-American male, had been apprehended and charged with murder, after having wrecked McMillian’s SUV the day before his body was found. Did Reed murder McMillian? Why did he have his car? Could this have been a “down-low” tryst gone awry? There still aren’t enough details to know.

Being openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ) is no easy feat for African Americans, even in 2013, and even with an LGBTQ-friendly president like Obama having our backs. Being from the South just complicates the matter. But in McMillian’s case, his family might also be one of the complications in our ability to ascertain the truth behind his death.

Case in point: It is unfathomable to McMillian’s mother, Patricia McMillian, that the motive for his alleged murder might have been his sexual orientation. She told CNN that only his family and friends knew of his sexual orientation. “He did not announce in public that he was gay,” she explained. “I don’t think he was attacked because he was gay.” However, McMillian’s sexual orientation was no secret.

According to state investigators, little is known about Reed or how, if at all, he knew McMillian. To the McMillian family, Reed is an enigma. McMillian’s mother stated that she never knew him, and McMillian’s stepfather, Amos Unger, speaking for the family, told CNN, “We never heard of him.”

And although the family stated that McMillian had been “beaten, dragged and burned,” the Coahoma County Medical Examiner, Scotty Meredith, refuted that claim, telling CNN, “Beating is not the cause of death. ... He was beaten, but not badly.” He also added that he didn’t know how the family had come to the conclusion that McMillian had been dragged and burned.

Another complication in ascertaining the truth behind McMillian’s death might be the state of Mississippi itself. In Mississippi, LGBTQ couples cannot marry, and they cannot jointly adopt. The state’s hate crimes laws do not address sexual orientation or gender identity, nor does the state address discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Therefore, an assault on an LGBTQ Mississippian might very well be ignored as a “personal matter.” Indeed, Coahoma County Medical Examiner Scotty Meredith told CNN, “this was not a targeted attack” but “more of a personal dispute.”

After news of McMillian’s death broke, the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund and Institute, which supports gay and lesbian candidates for political office, tweeted, “Our hearts go out to the family and friends of Marco McMillian, one of the 1st viable openly LGBT candidates in Mississippi.” Denis Dison, Vice President of Communications at the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund and Institute, told HuffPost Live, “there are approximately 600 openly LGBTQ elected officials at every level of U.S. government, with about 80 openly elected officials in the entire South.” Had McMillian won his mayoral challenge, he would have been Mississippi’s first openly gay elected official and the pride of not only the Mississippi Delta but the entire state.

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 14, 2013 -Issue 508

Jose Mujica
Political Cartoon
By Eric Garcia, Chicago IL

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

Mar 14, 2013 - Issue 508

Internalizing Our Own Oppression

“What matters is not to know the world but to change it.”

- Frantz Fanon

“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”

- Rosa Luxemburg

Oppression, more often than not, is both physical as well as psychological.

Moreover, oppression has many forms and manifestations. Unfortunately however, while many manifestations of oppression are readily recognized, its causal factors often are not.

The physical and psychological oppression of everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people is based in systemic economic, social, and political exploitation. In other words, the causal factors of this oppression are by systemic design.

Joblessness, homelessness, corporate greed and hegemony, police brutality, judicial injustice, massive incarceration of the poor, and perpetual wars abroad - are all forms of systemic exploitation. This systemic exploitation is part and parcel of the daily oppression endured by the vast majority of everyday people. Another strategic component of this oppression by the power elite who own, operate, and manipulate this political system - is the propagation and perpetuation of the fallacious narrative - that says poor and oppressed people are themselves responsible for being exploited by the avaricious national and global power elite. This is the systemic narrative that infers that people are poor, oppressed, and massively exploited due to their own innate character flaws. This is the systemic narrative of convenience which ingrains people to internalize their own oppression. This what Frantz Fanon meant when he said, “The oppressed will always believe the worst about themselves.” The fact is that everyday ordinary people are systemically ingrained to “believe the worst about themselves.”

By internalizing our own oppression we help to perpetuate it by failing to recognize its systemic causal factors. In so doing we fail to grasp the meaning of Frantz Fanon's words: “What matters is not to know the world but to change it.” And in order to “change it” we must first recognize the external and internal national and global systemic causal factors of our oppression.

In succumbing to the interminable propaganda of the national and global corporate-stream media and the Democrat & Republican parties and their systemic gatekeepers, we are by default, internalizing our own oppression. It does not have to be this way – but reversing this internalization of our own oppression begins with each of us individually and collectively. Once this process of recognizing and reversing our own internalized oppression begins – it can spread like a cleansing prairie fire.

When we everyday ordinary people fail to critically think, we also fail to recognize the primary systemic causal factors of our political, economic, and social oppression; and in so doing, we neglect to “move” to take the much-needed substantive actions in order to bring about an end to our systemic oppression. Rosa Luxemburg correctly noted that, “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” And it should be remembered that these “chains” are by systemic design, not by osmosis.

Systemic oppression must be seen for precisely what it is: A deliberate and callous dis-empowering of everyday people. Nevertheless, we ordinary people, are the ones who hold the keys to our own systemic liberation – both mental and physical. We must make a conscious and constant effort to, be aware of and reject, the internalization of our own oppression. We must collectively be, both determined and creative, as we struggle to bring about real systemic change and a more just and humane society and world based on human need, not corporate greed and exploitation!

As always: Each one, reach one. Each one, teach one. And in the immortal words of Joe Hill, “Don't Mourn. ORGANIZE!”

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 14, 2013 - Issue 508

ASCAC: A Major Intellectual Force

The Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations / ASCAC, an organization co-founded by our late ancestor Dr. Jacob H. Carruthers, will convene its 30th Annual Ancient Kemetic Studies Conference at Howard University in Washington, D.C. from March 14-17, 2013. This conference, under the leadership International President Dr. Mario Beatty, is shaping up to be a truly historic event.

ASCAC is one of the leading African-centered research and scholarly organizations in the African World and has become the foundation for the collective work of our African-centered students, activists, artists, and scholars. In preparation for the conference we suggest reading or re-reading the following book that provides the African-centered theoretical and philosophical orientation as we journey through the twenty-first-century. In December 1997, one of the most profound, insightful, and challenging books of the twentieth-century was published by the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC). The book is titled, African World History Project: "The Preliminary Challenge" . According to Dr. Jacob Carruthers, who was the founding President of ASCAC and the person who conceptualized this project, it started “more than two centuries ago when Africans began to read and discuss the doctrines of the European philosophers of the eighteenth-century. European thinkers such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, Hume, and Kant began to fabricate the doctrine of white supremacy and Negro inferiority, which led to the most brutal campaigns of cultural genocide known to humanity.”

Dr. Carruthers explained, “Their philosophical discourses added fuel to the vulgar attitudes and reactions resulting from the encounters of Africans with Europeans in the context of the European slave industry.” This process led to the writing of history that had its foundation in white supremacy and that was aimed at wiping out the contributions of African people to the world and humanity. Even though many of our scholars, researchers and activists have resisted the imposition of this kind of white supremacy interpretation of history, African people still suffer from over 300 years of falsifying the truth about Africa and African people.

Dr. Carruthers first wrote, “A Memorandum on an African World History Project” and presented it at the Association of African Historians Conference, February 18-21, 1982 at the Center for Inner City Studies in Chicago. This memorandum began the process of clearly laying out the rationale for the African World History Project. In this regard, Dr. Carruthers challenged, “The time has now come when Black scholars must come together and design a massive project which will culminate in a multivolume history of the world… It should be noted that the Europeans have already developed such projects; witness the Cambridge and Oxford histories of practically every area of the world. Unfortunately we have to rely on these sources all too often.”

Some people may ask the question “why are you so hung up on history when we have all these problems of crime, poverty, joblessness, broken families and general chaos in our communities.” I would answer by saying that the reasons why we have so many of these problems is because collectively, as a people, we don’t know our history. There is an old African proverb that says: “To know where you are going, you must know where you have come from. If you don’t know where you are going any road will take you there.”

The African World History Project is rooted in African-centeredness which places Africa (not Europe) at the center of our analysis of the world. It focuses on the centering of ourselves as the core for examining our traditions, culture, and values as a people.

On February 26, 1984 over five hundred Africans in America from all over the United States attended “The First Annual Ancient Egyptian Studies Conference in Los Angeles, California.” It was at this conference that Yosef ben-Jochannan, John Henrik Clarke, Asa G. Hilliard III, Leonard Jeffries, Maulana Karenga and Jacob H. Carruthers met and developed the proposal for the development of ASCAC. It was at that conference that ASCAC was founded. ASCAC, under the leadership of Dr. Carruthers, served and still serves as the vehicle for our scholars and researchers to collectively test their ideas through research papers, books, study groups, and presentations related to the African World History Project.

Since 1984, ASCAC has held regional, national, and international conferences. These conferences led to the “Inaugural Meeting of the African World History Project” in Detroit, Michigan, February 1-11, 1996, convened by our ancestor, Nzinga Ratibisha Heru, (who was at that time ASCAC’s International President). The outgrowth of this meeting led to the division of labor that produced the book, African World History Project: The Preliminary Challenge. The book is 399 pages and divided into four parts:

- Part 1, “The Challenge: Restoring the African Way” with a lead essay by Dr. Anderson Thompson;

- Part 2, “The African Historical Imagination: Developing a Conceptual Framework” with a lead essay by Dr. Jacob Carruthers;

- Part 3, “Patterns of African-Centered History: Applying the Vision” with a lead article by Dr. Asa G. Hilliard; and

- Part 4, the final section, “African-Centered Perspectives: Continuing the Tradition - The Next Generation” with a lead article by Adisa A. Ajamu.

It is inspiring to read the African World History Project: The Preliminary Challenge, the first premier book of the volumes to be produced. It is further inspiring to reaffirm that when African people set goals and work together for African interests, much can be accomplished.

As Dr. Carruthers instructed us in his first memorandum, “Such a project must be carefully planned and developed in stages so that effective utilization of resources and division of labor may be determined. The project would depend in the first place on the establishment of a broad range of consensus among leading African scholars.” In this first phase of the project, all of these criteria have been accomplished and more.

If you are interested in learning more about ASCAC, I encourage you to attend the conference. For more information about ASCAC and the conference please visit the websites: www.ascacfoundation.org or the ASCAC Midwest Region website at www.ascacmidwest.org.

[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 14, 2013 - Issue 508

Blinded By the Right

Some of you may know by now, but for those who don’t, I am a candidate for DC’s City Council. I’m running to represent the entire city, rather than a single ward. I am considered a long shot in this Special Election. I’m considered a long shot for a variety of reasons - even among the people who need me most but that’s another story, as the cliché goes.

There were 21 candidates in the race at one time…seven remain. Of the seven remaining candidates, there’s one who touts the virtues of ethics that our City Council lacks, and she espouses her “integrity.” That wouldn’t be so bad, except for the fact that she’s practicing highly unethical tactics to win this race. I never want it said that I’m a snitch, but you know what our federal government has been pushing lately: “see something, say something.” Well, I see something, so I’m going to say something…

The one candidate that posits “ethics” sought to - and successfully - disenfranchised voters, in particular, Black voters…more about that in a minute. We are familiar with the history of voting rights in America. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 struck down Jim Crow segregation laws and other measures designed to impede or otherwise disenfranchise Black voters. It has been renewed four times, most recently in 2006 when it passed Congress with a nearly unanimous vote. That debate is upon us again because right-wing Conservatives won’t fade into the sunset.

Speaking of sunset, the Act established extensive federal oversight of elections administration, providing that states with a history of discriminatory voting practices (so-called “covered jurisdictions”) could not implement any change affecting voting without first obtaining the approval of the Department of Justice, a process known as preclearance. That was - and is - needed because racists in America keep working to impede the vote of minorities rather than espouse equality in the legislative initiatives that benefit the whole of communities.

The Voting Rights Act was meant to police states in the south that, as a part of their legacy, disenfranchised Black voters, but we need it right here in cosmopolitan Washington, DC. You see, as a part of competing in our Special Election, the candidates had to obtain 3,000 signatures from DC registered voters, some of who happened to “temporarily” live in homeless shelters.

Rather than trust true democracy, this is where the racists step in. That candidate I mentioned before attempted to decrease her competition by allowing her proxy lawyer-supporters to challenge the validity of some of the addresses of registered voters who signed petitions for two of our competitors, John Settles and Paul Zuckerberg. Settles is Black; Zuckerberg is white.

Challenging a Black candidate and a white candidate appears race-neutral and consequently deflects accusations of racism (see Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow). Responses to the challenge took two weeks out of both candidates’ campaign. Zuckerberg survived the challenge; Settles did not…and then there were seven [candidates].

You could attribute this action to “good ol’ hardball politics,” except for the fact that it involved voting rights. You see, every adult American has the right to vote and participate in the political process - even if they’re homeless.

According to the United States Conference of Mayors, in 2008 the three most commonly cited causes of homelessness for persons in families were lack of affordable housing (cited by 72 percent of cities), poverty (52 percent), and unemployment (44 percent).

The language of the 15th Amendment says that the Voting Rights Act prohibits states from imposing any “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure...to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” States are also not supposed to condone any of those practices. When I used to preach, I would advise my congregation that, “Sin by omission is just as bad a sin by commission.” DC - my city - and the candidate are just as guilty as the person who succeeded in eliminating Settles from the campaign.

Candidate Paul Zuckerberg asked the question, “Should the homeless be allowed to vote?” Well, I discovered a source in which candidate Elissa Silverman is quoted as saying no. That opinion would substantiate her challenge to Paul Zukerburg’s and John Settles’ petitions during the early phase of this DC Special Election process. I am angered that anyone would disenfranchise a DC resident - in particular, a Black voter. Just because people are displaced doesn’t eviscerate their citizenship. That’s a tactic of racist Republicans on the political right in the same vein as the 2010-2012 election cycles fueled by ALEC-led legislation…take note. This is what Elissa Silverman is doing, if her actions are allowed to go unchallenged.

To further make my point, I refer to a study from July 2012, which found that support for voter ID laws, especially among those who lean Democratic, is linked to one’s feelings toward African Americans. In the study, conducted by the University of Delaware’s Center for Political Communication, respondents were asked several questions, and their answers were used to create a spectrum of “racial resentment.” The more resentment a person conveyed, the more likely they were to support voter ID laws.

One could argue that I am making this a “race issue” as opposed to an issue of the political process. I would contend that race is the political issue. DC is currently undergoing aggressive gentrification. Race is all in the mix. If you walk by our city’s main homeless shelter at 2nd & D Streets, NW, as I have countless times, you see over 95% Black faces. When I walk into the city’s offices for TANF and food stamp certification, that place is packed with black and brown faces. You may see a white face sprinkled among the droves, but that’s a rarity. Do you see where I’m going with this?

To strike signatures from a candidate’s petition simply because signers’ addresses on the voter rolls don’t “match” the address of the homeless shelter is akin to “imposing any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure… to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the U.S. to vote on account of race or color.” When one is homeless, and likely doesn’t plan on making the homeless shelter a permanent address, how do you get an address “match,” needed to participate in the electoral process? A “permanent” address is an impossibility - for the moment.

Thousands in our city are homeless, in transitional housing or reduced to “couch-surfing.” They are, nonetheless, still citizens. The key for Conservatives is to quash that vote; a “win-at-any-cost” proposition. If you don’t see this, it’s only because you’ve chosen to darken the lenses on your already rose-colored glasses.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Perry Redd, is the former Executive Director of the workers rights advocacy, Sincere Seven, and author of the on-line commentary, “The Other Side of the Tracks.” He is the host of the internet-based talk radio show, Socially Speaking in Washington, DC. Click here to contact Mr. Redd.

Mar 14, 2013 -Issue 508

Scalia

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 14, 2013 - Issue 508

Havaar - Iranian Initiative Against War, Sanctions and State Repression

Below is the text of an Havaar petition,

directed to the CEO's of a number of banks:

In recent months there have been increasing reports of medicine shortages and price inflation in Iran, resulting in a serious health crisis. Because Iranian banks are finding it difficult or impossible to conduct international financial transactions under the current U.S.-ledsanctions regime, the medical industry in Iran has been unable to import sufficient, and affordable, quantities of vital medicines.

Under existing Office of Foreign Assets Control regulations,medically-related bank transactions are generally exempt from the sanctions policy. We strongly urge your bank to enable these types of transactionswhich are literally life-savingwith Iranian companies, and to clarify via public statement your corporate policy with respect to this issue.

If you would like to further support the campaign, we encourage the following:

- Sign and share the petition with friends and community members via social networks (Facebook,Twitter, email, etc.). Here is a link to the petition that you can distribute to your networks: http://havaar.org/medicine.

- Educate members of your organization about the negative effects of sanctions and threats of war on ordinary Iranians (you may findinformative articles and reports here and here)

- Host an event to raise awareness about the effects of sanctions

- Talk to friends, relatives, members of local communities, etc. about how sanctions affect the general health and livelihood of ordinary Iranians. (you may find personal narratives here)

- Ask your elected representatives to lift sanctions against Iranian people

Beyond the petition, Havaar has made the following background statement:

Sanctions against Iran are often presented as a humane alternative towar, but in fact they have caused massive economic hardship and asocial crisis in Iranian society that has reached life-threatening proportions. The U.S.-led sanctions regime is strangling the Iranian people, cutting off trade relations, financial transactions, and accessto vital goods. The results have been stark and devastating: currency devaluation, skyrocketing inflation, factory closures, layoffs, unpaid wages, and now a major healthcare crisis.

Without access to the international banking system, Iranians are finding it increasingly difficult to import life-saving medicines or the raw materials for many domestically-made drugsa situation which a January 8, 2013 Associated Press report deemed “a sign of the domino effect of sanctions on everyday life.”

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the U.S. agency that regulates sanctions, has officially exempted medicine-related transactions as a humanitarian gesture. However, at this point few banks are willing to do business with Iranian pharmaceutical importers. Shortages and steep price increases of drugs used to treat cancer, hemophilia, multiple sclerosis and other ailments have put hundreds of thousands at risk and resulted in an unknown but increasing number of deaths. This amounts to collective punishment of an entire population.

Sanctions and the constant threat of military intervention by the U.S.and Israel target the very people who have already been struggling to live under a corrupt government that has mismanaged the economy and thwarted basic democratic rights. The resulting state of emergency in Iran has only strengthened the hand of government officials who seek to crush popular movements inside the country under the pretext ofdefending national security.

Havaar continues to speak out against this silent war, and today we are announcing an effort to pressure international banking institutions toprocess financial transactions related to the importation of medicine so that Iranians can acquire life-saving drugs. We are asking individuals and organizations to join us by signing our petition addressed to CEOs of major banks.

This petition is just the first step in a broader campaign against the entire sanctions regime: rather than being an alternative to war, sanctions wreak havoc on the life chances of entire populations and are often used to pave the way for military intervention, as our brothers and sisters in Iraq have experienced firsthand.

Havaar’s guiding principle is to stand in solidarity with the Iranian people. Therefore, we will continue to actively oppose threats of military attack from the U.S. and Israelas well as other forms of external intervention in Iranand the repression that the Iranian government continues to direct against its own people.

Peace and solidarity,

Havaar

Click here to contact Havaar

Mar 14, 2013 - Issue 508

Creation of the World

Art

By Larry Richardson, Valencia CA

Larry Richardson ~ Artist

www.aminaarts.com

Click here to contact Larry Richardson to comment or arrange a purchase

Creation of the World

$4,500 USD

50" x 39" Acrylic on canvas with gold frame

Represented by BlackCommentator.com

Artist Statement

Since I returned to painting in 1995 I have wanted to express the beauty in our African heritage. To show the diversity that the Diaspora gave us in various other cultures in the world. I have tried to present our culture as seen not only in the context of the pain and suffering inflicted on us in the days of slavery but to bring forward those cultural contributions, and legacies we left in Spain, France, Italy and other places of the world. Truly, that is what the Diaspora was about... the dispersion of culture.

When looking at the many histories on art and researching many of the famous old masters, our image is present even in medieval times. Anti-Black racism in the modern sense was unknown in the Middle Ages; Blacks were simply part of the human race.

In the latter Middle Ages there were even black saints and one of the Magi was accurately shown as black. Most literature on Black American artists is approached as though it was a form of expression separate from the so-called majority culture. This critical isolation in terms of art comes from the tradition of classifying people and their culture by race. I feel the crucial issue is the quality of work and it’s relevance to the society in which it was created.

As an artist it is not my color that gives me the inspiration or the capacity to produce a desired result, but the ability to be sensitive to the various conditions of life that face all mankind.

My first showing of some of these paintings was called “Lost Images Found Paintings from the Soul” reinforcing the importance of our culture in various parts of the world.

Three shows followed after that. One expanded on cultural isolation and the other specifically was to present a new approach to Afro-American figurative art merging the contemporary and the classical forms.

The objective of my vision is to heighten the awareness of those who view figurative images in my art and to stimulate one’s thought and imagination. The end result is a series of paintings and drawings that form cultural links between our past and our future.

Mar 14, 2013 - Issue 508

Love and War

By Greg King

I've got a friend, Nick Burlak, who's an American veteran of the Soviet Red Army during World War II. Nick took part in the biggest tank battle in world history, the Battle of Kursk. He became a tank commander and a lieutenant in the Red Army. As the Soviet forces rolled westward, Nick helped liberate several death camps. He also was among the first of the Soviet troops to enter Berlin in very early May 1945. When, a couple of days later, thousands of Red Army troops scrawled their names all over the ruins of the Reichstag in the Cyrillic alphabet, Nick scrawled his in English. He was wounded four times during the war and went back to the front all four times. He fell in love with a beauitful Ukrainian nurse who was also a higher-ranking lieutenant than he was.

Nick Burlak wrote about all this in his books, Love and War: An American Volunteer in the Soviet Red Army, Book I and now Love and War Book 2. He plans a Book III, but that's about post-war years. I'm sure that will be worthwhile, too. Nick uses a pseudonym, a "nome deplume" -- M.J. Nicholas, to memorialize his brothers, Michael and John,and himself.

The whole family, except for his older sister, Anne, who was also a friend of mine, a great woman known in her youth as the "Red Flame,"moved to the Soviet Union when his father, who was a veteran of the1905 Revolution in Russia, answered Stalin's call for 6,000 skilledworkers to come and help build socialism. His Dad had been a steelworker at Bethlehem Steel, but moved his family to New York City in search of work during the Great Depression. Mr. Burlak worked as a steelworker in Makayevka in the Ukraine. He had been born and raised in the Ukraine.

If all this sounds improbable and like creative fiction, believe me, it's not. Nick and his story are quite real. He's a decent, honorable man with a big heart.

I read Book I and will soon read Book II. Nick's incredible, unique story is very much worth reading.

Nick provides us with a look through the the very real, horrible window on war. He never wants to see fascism prevail again. He never wants a war like World War II again, with the twenty million Soviet citizens lost and the fifty or even sixty million worldwide.

Please do consider not only buying and reading the books yourselves, but once you're done, urge others to read them. We must put an end to the scourge of war, and Nick's books can help do that.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Greg King is a veteran labor activist in Boston. Click here to contact Mr. King.