Table of Contents

There are 15 chapters in this issue

About BlackCommentator.com

Cover Story - Creating a Viable Black Left: Sixteen Lessons Learned In Building The Black Radical Congress By Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Jamala Rogers, BC Editorial Board

Quote to Ponder: "Nothing counts but pressure, pressure, more pressure…” - A. Philip Randolph

Building the Grassroots Foundation to Abolish the Death Penalty - Color of Law By David A. Love, JD

Another Tackle in the World of Homophobic Sports – Inclusion By The Reverend Irene Monroe - BC Editorial Board

Economics to the Naked Eye: David Stockman Bemoans the “Corruption of Capitalism” - Solidarity America By John Funiciello - BC Columnist

Achebe’s Things Fall Apart: Free the Ignorant from Tyranny - Represent Our Resistance By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD - BC Editorial Board

Embrace the Everyday People's Stories & Reject the Top-Down Narrative of History - Keeping it Real By Larry Pinkney, BC Editorial Board

Love Hurts - Animated Political Cartoon By Mark Fiore, San Francisco CA

Abhorrence for Immigrant Founder: Alexander Hamilton - Nafsi ya Jamii - By Wilson Riles - BC Columnist

This is What Black Power Looks Like - Sharp n’ Blunt - By Desi Cortez - BC Columnist

Pagones’ Attempt to Rape Tawana Again - Point Blank - By Chris Stevenson - BC Columnist

To the Survivors of Domestic Violence and Abuse - Dreams & Nightmares - By Margaret Rose Dominado - BC Guest Commentator

Dr. Bobby Wright: Great Black Hero - Worrill’s World - By Dr. Conrad W. Worrill, PhD - BC Columnist

Jazzed - Art By Ray Ferrer - Urban Wall Art & Murals, New York NY

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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

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

Members of the BC Editorial Board represent African Americans and the African world. They are dedicated activists, thinkers and writers. The BC Editorial Board includes the following in alphabetical order by last name:

Lola Adesioye, Carl Bloice,Julian Bond, Rose Brewer PhD, Horace Campbell PhD, Imani Countess,Lenore Jean Daniels PhD, Bill Fletcher Jr., James Jennings PhD, BadiliJones, Martin Kilson PhD, Sharon Kyle JD, David A. Love JD, JulianneMalveaux PhD, Manning Marable PhD, Syreeta McFadden, The Reverend IreneMonroe, Leith Mullings PhD, Jacqui Patterson, Larry Pinkney, StevenPitts PhD, Barbara Ransby PhD, Jamala Rogers, Ethel Long-Scott, Amy V.Simmons, William L. (Bill) Strickland, Chuck Turner, Nathaniel Turner,Ron Walters PhD, Emira Woods, Jeanne Woods JD.

Apr 04, 2013 - Issue 511

No one said it would be easy

Preface: “…Where is the BRC when we need it?” We have heard this question over the years from Black activists from one side of the USA to another, but it was during the April 26-29, 2012 conference to commemorate the life and work of the late Dr. Manning Marable that it really hit home. Manning had been one of the “original five”, that is, the five individuals who started working in late 1995/early 1996 to gather the forces that would eventually form the Black Radical Congress. Along with Marable were Dr. Leith Mullings, Dr. Barbara Ransby, Dr. Abdul Alkalimat, and Bill Fletcher, Jr.

What was striking during the April 2012 conference were the number of people who spoke favorably about the BRC and about the importance of drawing out the lessons—positive and negative—from the experience of building that organization. People also wanted to better understand the reasons for its decline and ultimate end.

In any historical experience those who have participated, not to mention those who subsequently observed, will draw various conclusions. This is just as true with the experience of the BRC. The purpose of this essay is to advance a discussion rather than to answer all of the questions that emerge from a study of the BRC. It is certainly our hope that someone will ultimately write a book about the BRC, but for now, and particularly in light of the many struggles in which so many younger Black activists (and other progressive activists) are engaged, it is important to identify lessons learned to help us all think through what steps need to be taken to build a cohesive, viable Black Left.

The following are sixteen lessons. They are not necessarily the most important and this list is not aimed at being all-inclusive. These are, however, lessons that have stuck with us and which we are interested in sharing, hopefully in order to encourage deeper examination and reflection. We wish to quickly add that these lessons are not all, necessarily, lessons that we alone drew. Many activists who were associated with the BRC reflected on the experience over the years and there were many informal exchanges about the lessons learned. There have also been a number of articles written on the experience of the BRC. We have identified several lessons, some from various discussions and others that were simply our own, that we believe are worth considering. We realize that those who were involved in the organization had varying roles and interpretations of this experience. We all have different pieces of the elephant even if was the same elephant.

We look forward to your feedback.

- Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Jamala Rogers

******

Background: There have been many efforts over the years to unite the Black Left, i.e., forces that are anti-imperialist, generally anti-capitalist, against various forms of oppression, including but not limited to white supremacist national oppression. Frequently such efforts have been led by a specific organization or a particular tendency, not necessarily being inclusive. In the 1980s, for instance, the National Black United Front and the National Black Independent Political Party both served as efforts to organize segments of the Left and progressive segments of Black America. To varying degrees they made important contributions such as in the fight against police brutality and electoral mobilizations. Over time, however, their bases narrowed. NBUF continues to exist, but NBIPP after several years of attempting to establish an identity drifted into oblivion (though many activists within it, such as Manning Marable, continued to do great work).

The origins of the BRC can be found in two sets of discussions that took place in 1995. In Manchester, Britain, at a commemoration of the anniversary of the 5th Pan African Congress, several people including Barbara Ransby, Manning Marable and Abdul Alkalimat began discussing the need for some level of organization of the Black Left. Separately, in the aftermath of the Million Man March Bill put in a call to Marable (who was at the time a good friend, and over time became like a brother to him) and expressed his dismay that the Nation of Islam had proven to be such a successful and dominant force. He suggested to Marable that we needed to hold a “summit” of the Black Left in order to move discussions regarding the actual situation and what needed to be done. [Note: “Summit” is emphasized here because the original objective wasnot the creation of a new organization; that would emerge through the process of building for the summit.] Marable agreed and we began discussing the building of a core for such a project. In the course of that discussion he mentioned the Manchester meeting and as a result the importance of including Ransby and Alkalimat. Mullings, an independent leftist and scholar, was a close collaborator of Marable’s and they had recently married. Thus, the original five came together and through myriad of conference calls, exchanges of faxes and later email this original five gelled into a core which ultimately convened a meeting at the end of February 1997 in Chicago of what came to be known as the “continuations committee,” i.e., a flexible body of individuals from around the country who were committed to building the summit. It was at that first meeting of the National Continuations Committee that it was suggested that while we should build for a major conference of the Black Left, we should ultimately aim to create an organization. At that moment the “Black Radical Congress” was christened, so to speak, as the name of this project. The rationale for the name was itself quite interesting:

- “Black”: As opposed to African American, we wanted to make sure that people of African origin were all welcomed and this not be seen as strictly a project of those who lineage was tied to North America. We also felt that “Black” was a political coloring and that who was “black” would be a matter of self-identification. As we would half-jokingly say, “…we are not going to do DNA tests to ascertain whether someone is actually African…” There is a long history of this approach in the Black Left which included Asians, Native Americans and Latinos being openly accepted into Black formations.

- “Radical”: Originally we had spoken of a “Black Left” formation but some objected that many younger activists would not necessarily be clear as to what “Left” meant and that we should have a name that would attract and speak to those who were anti-imperialists and anti-capitalists. It was also important that the BRC represent various tendencies within the Black Left and, as such, not be monopolized by one group or tendency. This became a balancing act which we shall discuss below.

- “Congress”: This term spoke to the nature of the founding gathering plus the sort of formation that we wanted to project. It was raised that what we wanted to do was to build something that resembled, in important respects, the Congress movement from South Africa (such as the African National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania). “Congress” spoke to this formation as being a united front of the Black Left rather than a formation driven by one ideological orientation. “Congress” also held a special place in African American history with several organizations containing that word in their name.

We also had a critical task: we needed a unity statement, i.e., a document that explained who was in the room in starting the BRC process and why them (as opposed to some others). Creating this document was not as difficult as many would have expected but it was controversial. The document included explicit language not only against racism and sexism, but also against homophobia. The BRC, in other words, from its beginning, welcomed all and we would not tolerate prejudices and aggression against segments of the movement. This declaration meant that there were a number of individuals within the Black Left—broadly defined—who while might otherwise seem logical to be associated with the BRC, would not fit in. Some of them later went on to resent their exclusion from the founding efforts.

With the generous assistance of one attendee at the first continuations committee meeting, we were able to have the funds to get moving. We had several objectives that included: (1)designing and preparing for a founding gathering to be held in Chicago, Juneteenth weekend 1998, (2)holding continuations committee meetings around the country to build momentum, (3)the creation of a Black Freedom Agenda as a permanent document that offered what this spectrum of organizations and individuals believed were some of the key demands flowing from our segment of the Black Freedom Movement.

Over the subsequent months a great deal of work went into the building of the BRC. “Diplomatic” visits were conducted with various leaders in the Black Left to win their support for this project. We were explicitly looking for signatories to a “Call” for the Juneteenth gathering. At a minimum we were looking for endorsements but we were especially looking to include a broad range of voices on the Black Left. Local meetings started to take place either with someone from the continuations committee or when the continuations committee came to town itself.

As each week passed the BRC gained momentum. Money came in, to a great extent through the work of Marable, to help to fund the founding congress. At the same time differences began to emerge as the BRC broadened. Combinations of political differences and personality differences frequently got in the way. These all had to be mediated. There were grudges and differences that sometimes went back decades. In other cases there were ideological differences between some forces, such as between some nationalists and some non-nationalist Marxists. There were struggles between feminists and those less sensitive to the issues of feminism. There were also regional differences.

One challenge, to be discussed below, that became important almost immediately involved the relationship of individuals to organizations in the building of the BRC. In other words, there were individuals from organizations that had committed to help to build the BRC who were represented in the leadership of the BRC, such as from the New Afrikan People’s Organization, the Communist Party, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the Committee of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and some looser networks. At the same time, you had individuals who, structurally, represented no one but themselves. This created a tension that had a major impact on the development of the BRC.

In the weeks leading up to the Juneteenth gathering attention grew on this project, including in the mainstream media. The leadership core of the BRC had no idea as to how many people to expect. Some expected about 500, whereas 1000 was about the highest number anticipated by most of the core. As it turned out we were all wrong: at any one time there were approximately 2000 people in attendance and close to 3000 people attended at least part of the founding congress. The extent of this turnout overwhelmed the organizers, including at certain moments, our ability to register the participants. The atmosphere was electric. Virtually every trend on the Black Left was represented at the gathering and, for the most part, interacted cordially. Additionally there were individuals from outside of the USA in attendance, which actually led to a brief, though quite interesting discussion regarding whether the BRC needed to be an international organization rather than just internationalist in its orientation.

The participants were asked whether they wanted to form a national organization and, on the final day, the BRC as a standing organization, representing a united front of the Black Left, was called into existence. It was at that point, after the participants voted to form the BRC, and after the closing ceremonies when members of the continuation committee were hugging each other with pride that it dawned on all of us: now the real work begins.

The BRC took off and probably reached its height in 2001. The 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks forced a reorientation on the BRC, however, which accompanied by specific organizational and political difficulties, put the organization into a slow decline. A major dispute in 2003 over the question of accepting funds from a foundation plus a decision by the national coordinating committee to sign onto a statement condemning the repression of dissent in Zimbabwe led to a fragmentation within the BRC. Though the organization continued on for several years it was never fully able to recover. In 2008 some people who had been associated with the BRC plus some other Black leftists formed a separate formation two months prior to the BRC’s planned St. Louis-based national conference. It was not long after that that it became clear that the BRC could no longer function despite the fact that individuals continued to join it until the very end.

The BRC represented the potential of bringing together a diverse set of activists to concentrate on united action. The fact that it was so welcoming is what made it especially attractive to many younger and unaffiliated activists. Yet the construction and sustaining of the BRC became a major project that many of its founders had not anticipated.

It is with this in mind that we move to examine lessons learned.

******

(1)You always need a core and a core needs a vision: Simply put, the BRC would never have gotten off the ground had it not been for its core. The original five spent more than a year in discussions working to frame the project. They took it upon themselves to reach out to other organizations and individuals who might have an interest in the project. And they did this on no budget, i.e., everyone had to find time and money themselves in order to work on this project.

The experience of building the BRC taught a critical lesson on the nature of any organization. Rather than conceptualizing an organization as a pyramid, with the leadership on top and increasing layers beneath it until you reach the rank & file, it is more useful to conceptualize an organization as a series of concentric circles. Think of it like this:

1. In the center there is the “core.” The core is not a ranking of control. It speaks to the relationship of an individual to the project. So, people in the core are generally the ones who are leading the project and have dedicated significant time to the project. The objective, in any healthy organization, is to alwaysexpand the core through growth (i.e., including new people with new ideas).

2. Around the core there is a second layer. These are committed activists and leaders in their own right. They have agreed to the project and to build it. They may not yet be leading the project but they have decided to devote significant time to the project.

3. There is then a third layer. This includes people who have signed onto the project and may attend certain meetings; they make financial contributions occasionally; and are supportive of the effort. In general these are the folks who often think of themselves as “…point me in the right direction…” sorts of people who want to do the right thing.

4. A fourth layer is those who may have signed on and are generally supportive but are virtually or actually inactive.

5. A fifth layer is those who are not involved but are interested and may be supportive.

6. Beyond this layer the rippling weakens as individuals know less and less about the project.

The key in organization building is to increase the size of the core and increase the size of each subsequent layer by involving more and more people in the life of the project, or in this case, the BRC.

The original five, in the case of the BRC, could very well have called a conference on their own, much in the way that certain academic conferences are organized. Had we done this the BRC would, at best, only have been a gathering, and probably one with limited impact. The theory of building the BRC was focused on the construction of the National Continuations Committee and its rotating meetings. In the lead up to the Juneteenth gathering, the National Continuations Committee (NCC) would hold meetings in various cities. There was always a core of the NCC who remained relatively intact. By rotating from city to city, however, we found a way to increase participation and thereby build ownership in this project. This was critical since the aim, as noted earlier, was not to simply hold a conference but to actually build an organization.

Thus, the core of the BRC was only initially the original five. In a fairly short amount of time the core expanded as the NCC was built. After the founding conference, in fact, several of the original five dropped back from active participation for a variety of reasons and a new core emerged.

The original five had a vision but what was interesting was that the vision was able to shift and evolve as the core itself grew. The original idea was for a summit. Our ambitions were quite limited, for better or for worse. In light of the discussions at the first NCC meeting the ambitions shifted. The vision grew into the notion of a united front of the Black Left. This vision necessitated the creation of a unity statement in order to guarantee that the core—in that case the NCC—did not degenerate into a clique. There had to be legitimate reasons for the NCC to be who was in it otherwise the effort would have been, correctly, criticized as factional and unprincipled.

One of the major difficulties, which we shall address below, is to establish what is the “mandate” for a core. This became a hot-button issue later in the life of the BRC.

(2)The BRC was broad and welcoming: From the beginning anti-sectarianism was the dominant paradigm. This did not mean that everyone got along. It meant, however, that there were not ideological tests in order to get into the BRC. If one agreed with the Freedom Agenda (a programmatic/vision document ratified in April 1999) and the Unity Statement, one could join the BRC; simple as that.

This may sound Pollyannaish, however, and with good reason. There were problems that did emerge within the organization. The critical question, however, in the face of problems was the attitude of the national leadership. Let us explain this.

The BRC was structured on the basis of local organizing committees. Someone joining the BRC and wanting to be an active member could join a local organizing committee. There were, additionally, organizations that affiliated with the BRC, e.g., Black Workers for Justice; the Organization for Black Struggle. [Note: When an organization affiliated, it meant that its members automatically became BRC members.] Local organizing committees, like any organization, developed their own cultures to a great extent depending on the local leadership and dynamics. One form of sectarianism that developed was based on age. Many ‘baby boomers’, wanting to continue to play a dominant role in the movement, were not necessarily prepared to share space with younger activists. They shaped the local organizing committees according to their interests. Along with this was a tendency by some BRCers to ‘cadre-fy’ their local organizing committees, i.e., to begin to treat the local organizing committees as if they were miniature cadre organizations with the requisite demands. This made it all the more difficult for newer activists to enter the BRC and feel that this was their organization.

These problems did not represent the dominant aspect of the ‘personality’ of the BRC. All things considered it was easy for activists to join, perhaps too easy. What became a challenge was ascertaining what level of commitment to expect and require of individual BRC members. As such, it was not uncommon for individuals to join the BRC; participate irregularly; and then vanish. Ironically, they might still think of themselves as BRC members but they were not necessarily acting to build the organization.

As frustrating as this situation was for all of us who were part of the larger core of the BRC it should not have come as a surprise. It was also not something that could be altered by attempting to turn the BRC into a cadre organization. There already were cadre and semi-cadre Left organizations that were helping to build the BRC as a mass united front organization. Trying to turn the BRC into something else was objectively sectarian and was destructive.

What could we have done? The first thing has to do with expectations. When you have an organization that has a low bar in terms of membership requirements you cannot get disappointed when you find that your membership is rotating in and out. What we, in the BRC, were not especially good at was finding different levels of participation for members. Activism was, to a great extent, determined by one’s attendance at meetings. If one did not have the sort of life where it was necessarily possible to attend regular meetings one could quickly find one’s self on the outside looking in, not due to a purge or expulsion but because activity was largely determined by what took place at meetings.

To sustain an organization like the BRC we needed to find varying levels of participation, and quite possibly varying levels of membership. We needed to ask recruits what they were interested in doing and see to it that it was possible for them to do the work. That might have meant that they did mailings; perhaps they wrote for a newsletter; or maybe they would help with fundraising. Or, maybe all they did was join and contribute financially.

The other piece of this, which we shall discuss a bit later in this essay, is that we had to be open to operating the organization in different, if not unorthodox ways. Younger activists who joined the BRC were not necessarily interested in working in an organization that used methods from the 1970s, or where discussions that took place made reference to debates from the 1960s or 1970s. They, especially, did not want to hear those infamous words: “…that’s not the way that we do things…”, words that are guaranteed to chase away any number of younger activists.

Thus, while the BRC was generally welcoming and not filled with sectarian exchanges, there were elements of the culture that were objectively sectarian and increasingly narrowed the base of the organization rather than expanding its reach.

(3)We had to have lines of demarcation and they had consequences: All organizations have parameters that they establish whereby there are fundamental agreements and levels of acceptable exchange. In radical circles these are often called “lines of demarcation,” i.e., views that differentiate one group from another. Such lines are not always principled and the Left has years of experience with drawing lines that are self-serving, anachronistic and/or completely idealist (and we do not mean idealistic either.).

The BRC established certain lines of demarcation that were essential and brought with them real world consequences. One was that we were a formation on the Left, therefore, we were self-described “radicals”. We shall discuss that more below but one implication was that the BRC was not equivalent to the 1980s Rainbow Coalition which, as progressive as it was, could not have been described as anti-imperialist and certainly not anti-capitalist.[1]

A second line which was of critical importance was on Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender and Queers. The Black Left had a complicated if not contradictory relationship with the LGBTQ movement and with issues relative to homosexuality. Many baby-boomer Black leftists and progressives, even when they had a strong stand against male supremacy, could find themselves ambivalent towards, if not on the wrong side of LGBTQ issues and rights. For this reason when the BRC National Continuations Committee established, as part of our unity statement, a strong stand against homophobia and heterosexism, there were some on the Black Left who yelled that we were being “sectarian.” The argument was that this should not have been a line of demarcation.

The BRC took its stand, unapologetically, against intolerance and oppression. It was a consistent stand. It was a recognition that entire segments of Black America have had to operate underground, not only in the face of white supremacist national oppression, but also in the face of male supremacy, patriarchy and heterosexism. The BRC was not going to be complicit in such sexual repression.

In most cases the attacks on the BRC for its stand on homophobia and heterosexism were ‘subterranean’ rather than open and above-board. While it meant that some forces were excluded from our ranks, it never inhibited the growth of the BRC. The 2000-3000 people who attended the Juneteenth founding conference knew, well in advance of that weekend, that the BRC took the stand that it did because it was contained right there in the BRC’s Unity Statement.

(4)Building a conference is very different than building an organization: Building a national conference is hard work, but building an organization is even harder. Many of the individuals who were key to the success of the Juneteenth 1998 conference were experienced at putting together conferences. Significant proportions of them were based within academia and understood the dynamics of conferences, including the keys to successful panels, fundraising and planning. There was an immense amount of stress and energy that went into the success of Juneteenth 1998, and certainly by the time that it was over, many people were burned out and needed some down-time.

Yet there was a larger question that the BRC confronted, quite literally immediately after the end of the Juneteenth conference: who would be there to build the organization? This was not a simple question and it was not answered at once or consistently. Beginning almost as soon as the conference was completed there was drop-off. That was not unexpected in the sense that people will attend conferences but not necessarily really want to join or build an organization. What was more unsettling, however, was the drop-off of some of the core. Different reasons were offered, often revolving around the same notion: individuals had put their lives on hold while they were building for the conference but now felt that they must ‘return’ to their respective worlds.

That was the stated reason and in many cases it was the truth. At the same time what became apparent, certainly over the first year of the BRC’s life, was that building an organization necessitated a different approach and temperament, not to mention skill set, than building towards a conference. This is to take nothing away from anyone who left. Rather it is an acknowledgement that we were overly optimistic in assuming that those who worked to build for the successful conference would necessarily stick with the organization once it was formed.

In building an organization there are various tasks and approaches that are very different from a conference, including:

- Continual fundraising.

- Managing staff (if you have any).

- Designing projects to keep the organization focused.

- Resolving internal differences that might have been put on hold.

- Ascertaining how to grow the organization.

- Training new leaders.

- Keeping the organization in the eye of the public and relevant.

- Relationship building.

And in doing this there is no certainty as to success.

There were two particular problems we encountered worth noting: (1)the after-glow of the Juneteenth conference, and (2)the reality is that an organization is bigger than a friendship circle. Let’s look at these separately.

The overwhelming success of the Juneteenth Conference meant that the expectations of what would immediately follow were way beyond the capacity of the organization to fulfill. As one former core member said to Bill some years later “…after the Juneteenth conference we should have embarked on one campaign rather than have spent so much time on infrastructure.” He asked this person, which of the many proposed campaigns we could have taken on around which we would have had sufficient unity to proceed? They looked at Bill and shook their head in acknowledgement of the problem.

Despite the energy that existed in Chicago on Juneteenth 1998, there was no unity on what the next steps were. In fact, the expanded core, including but not limited to the NCC, had to summarize the conference and figure out next steps. Among those was what should be the focus (or foci). When the BRC did not immediately jump into action—though some local organizing committees actually did immediately get to work—this was seen by some as a sign of weakness in the project. So, in that sense the BRC was in a race against its own success, i.e., trying to outmatch what it had accomplished in its birth. Think of the image of a new-born who can play the piano. What else can one expect as it ages? Perhaps inventing faster than light travel by the age of two?

The second challenge for many people who were involved with the formation of the BRC was the recognition that what had been brought into being was far bigger and more diverse than what they were normally familiar with, and perhaps comfortable with. Building the conference did not necessarily involve breaking out of one’s comfort zone, except for parts of the core. You had to build locally for the conference, raise some funds, and then get on the road to the conference. At the conference you could ‘hang’ with those you wanted and ignore those you wished to ignore.

The moment that you have to build an organization, the table shifts a bit. You cannot build the organization around your friendship circle unless you want to create a clique. You have to go broader. You have to make compromises with people you might have for years ignored. You have to interact with people with who you seriously disagree—and may have disagreed with for years! And there is no end to it. Contrary to a conference or election campaign where there is a clearly defined end point, in building an organization and/or a movement, there is usually not a specific endpoint except and insofar as the organization or movement achieves success with their major priorities.

The BRC, by its very nature, meant that nationalists, non-nationalist Marxists, feminists, faith-based activists, not to mention academics and non-academics and individuals from different regions had to interact, and specifically cooperate in order to succeed. The good news is that for most of the BRC’s existence it was able to carry out that balancing act. Unfortunately, in the early stages of the BRC’s existence, however, we lost some good people who seemed to have decided that this was more than they had signed for.

When people left they were rarely direct regarding their motivations. This does not mean that they were lying or that there was mal intent. In some cases we are not convinced that some of our colleagues were entirely sure as to the reasons that they left. Leaving might have taken place in stages or it might have taken place suddenly. In either case, over the course of the first year of the formal existence of the BRC there were many new people who stepped forward who may or may not have been in the first NCC but had, nevertheless, come to play a leading role in the organization.

There is, perhaps, one other issue that is appropriate to discuss in this section. The leadership of the BRC, by which we mean the National Continuations Committee (later the National Council) had a significant representation from academia. The implications of this were complicated and mixed. As noted above, for some, building a conference was all that they were ready to do. But the deeper problem was that academia brings with it timelines and demands specific to that career. There is teaching, writing, etc., that come with the job. This placed an immense amount of pressure on some key leaders and led some to drop away at moments that were not very helpful for the rest of the organization.

The other aspect to this, however, is that there are discussions that often take place in academia that are very different than those that take place at the grassroots or even among non-academic organizers or activists. This, in no way, is a put down of academics. What it is to say is that in having a significant number of academics in leadership it could tend to skew internal discussions in a way that did not necessarily make sense for segments of the rank and file membership.

(5)This could not run on magic; the challenge of resources: One of the most difficult challenges for any organization is that of resources. Resources include, but are not limited, to money. In the case of the BRC, we were constantly in search of new resources and we had a special concern when it came to money.

At the first continuations committee meeting in Chicago in 1997 one individual made a commitment of several thousand dollars in order to get the BRC off the ground. What was striking about this commitment was that it was from someone who had not been part of the original five and was someone who had had issues with several of the other invitees to the continuations committee founding. Nevertheless, at a key moment in the discussion he made a pledge [which he followed through on] which, in many ways, signified the real birth of this effort.

From the moment that the contribution was made at the continuations committee, the BRC project grew and with it, funds started coming in but not on their own. Several NCC members made very generous contributions to the project. This was accompanied by a very active fundraising effort that included approaching various foundations.

In part due to the stature and renown of many of the people associated with the continuations committee, the BRC quickly gained an important level of credibility. When the “Call” to the Congress was issued and it had so many endorsers representing much of the left-wing of the Black Freedom Movement, the BRC became, for many people including many funders, compelling.

As a result of excellent fundraising and the incredible numbers of people in attendance, we were able to come out of the Congress with money in the bank. But, as everyone knows, money will not sit there permanently. The BRC had to position itself to obtain funds. This resulted in an important challenge that many coalition-type organizations face: how do you raise funds without competing with your constituent organizations and/or allies? This was not a challenge that we had prior to the Juneteenth conference since the funds raised at that point were aimed at making the conference successful. After the BRC was formed, however, this became a challenge. We shall discuss some of this below when talking about the nature of the BRC, but with regard to fundraising, the approach to the funders had to become far more nuanced so that the mission of the BRC did not appear to be, nor in fact operate as, a competitor organization. The institutional funders were difficult to convince even when they appeared sympathetic to the mission of the BRC. Subsequent to one meeting with several funders we were told that while the funders were impressed, they were not entirely sure how the work of the BRC would not replicate that of some existing organizations (including some that were constituent members of the BRC).

Two years into the life of the BRC the matter of fundraising hit a critical controversy. We were informed that we had a very good chance of getting $200,000 over two years from a foundation. Many of us were elated. With that money—which by the standards of most non-profits is not exactly rolling in dough but was nevertheless significant—we would have been in a position to really start to staff up. Instead the BRC, at a point of near breakthrough in the political world of Black America, embarked on a major internal struggle that ultimately shaped its future. Though the struggle was put on hold, it would reemerge three years later and contribute to the demise of the organization.

What was the nature of the struggle? It revolved around whether it was appropriate for a Black radical formation to accept funds from a mainstream foundation. The struggle broke down something like this:

- In favor: We needed the funds; the sort of money that we were talking about could help to position the BRC better than we were; there we no strings attached that interfered with our mission or principles; receiving such funds would help to convince other funders (both institutions and individuals) that we were worth the ‘investment.’

- Opposed: Mainstream foundations aim to co-opt the organizations that they fund; the organization could become dependent on foundations; this particular foundation played a negative role in the 1960s; it would not look right.

The debate was to a great extent mystifying. Here we were with few resources and there was a debate over what this particular foundation had done thirty years previously without the critics having any sense as to what was currently being funded by this same foundation. Additionally, the opponents paid little attention to what steps the BRC would need to take in the real world to raise funds. Some critics had never paid membership dues in the BRC, an act that reflected both on their fiscal and political commitments.

The nature of the debate, though presented by the critics as being about alleged principle, demonstrated the extent to which philosophical idealism[2] had become a major current in the BRC. Rather than examining real world options for how to build the BRC, the debate focused on abstractions or, to present the case of the critics in its most favorable terms, focused on historical references from 25-35 years past. It is critical to appreciate that the debate never even touched on the question of what the terms of the grant would be. For many of the critics that was irrelevant. What was relevant was whether a Black radical formation could take such funding at all.

The debate paralyzed the BRC at precisely the moment that the organization needed momentum. No agreement could be reached in 2000 so the decision was postponed. Three years later the opportunity arose again and the same debate reignited. This time a majority of the leadership voted in favor of the accepting funds. Some members of the minority chose this issue and another political issue as reasons to abandon the BRC.

Needless to say, the funds from the foundation did not co-opt the BRC, but then again, it was less than clear whether facts were really at stake in this debate.

It would be wrong to leave the matter of funding at the debate regarding foundation money. The deeper problem was that the BRC never internalized the centrality of fundraising and the need to integrate fundraising into the work of the organization. By and large fundraising was seen as a very specific task to be taken up by grant-writers or development personnel. It was the moment in the agenda where everyone groaned and looked at how polished their shoes were. It was a discussion on the agendas of the National Council (the successor structure to the NCC) that everyone was pleased to have ended.

An interesting contrast in an approach towards fundraising could be seen in the movement to support Eritrean independence from Ethiopia (a struggle that lasted from the early 1960s through the early 1990s). In the USA, first the Eritreans for Liberation in North America and later the Association of Eritrean Students of North America and the Association of Eritrean Women of North America did a remarkable job of integrating fundraising into every activity that they conducted. Whether there was an educational program or cultural activity, the Eritrean activists ensured that fundraising was part of the work. Reading materials were sold along with ornaments and clothing. Additionally, outreach was conducted to businesspeople who might be favorably disposed towards supporting the work of these organizations.

By contrast the BRC, but also many other formations on the Left in the USA, pay little attention to this work. The BRC made only limited outreach to businesspeople, and while certain written material would be sold at events and there was the periodic fundraiser, this work was rarely professional in character. This demonstrated the philosophical idealism referenced earlier. Regardless of whether the BRC would receive any foundation funds, the reality is that a formation like the BRC could and should never assume that it could indefinitely (or for any extended period) depend on foundation money. Alternative funding streams needed to be explored and with the exception of a suggestion or two thrown out at meetings, it was not approached with the same vigor and creativity that our organizing work was addressed. In fact, the lack of attention to fundraising was once illustrated by a comment offered by a National Council member who, in the course of a discussion on fundraising, suggested that the fact that National Council members paid their own way to National Council meetings represented their financial contribution to the BRC. As far as this NC member was, apparently, concerned, that settled the matter.

(6)Youth and the misreading of the history of SNCC: One of the saddest chapters in the history of the BRC was the immediate aftermath of the successful Juneteenth conference and the implosion of the BRC Youth Caucus.

Although the BRC process was initiated largely by baby-boomers, it quickly gained traction among younger activists, particularly “20-somethings”. The youth were largely college students and those just out of college. Some were in graduate school while others were relatively new community-based or labor union activists. They played a major role in building for the Juneteenth conference, including in the preparation of major documents and conference design.

Almost immediately there was a generational conflict. Though the BRC recognized the need for what came to be called “intergenerational dialogue” (including opening the Juneteenth conference with an intergenerational plenary panel), there was a significant tendency on the part of the baby-boomers to dominate the process. Sometimes that dominance was reflected in what was referenced earlier in this paper, i.e., a chasing out of younger people by insisting on following modes of operation inherited from the 1960s and 1970s. But it could be uncovered in far more subtle forms, whether in who spoke with whom; historical reference points; forms of organizing; or cultural activities. In either case, generational tension is inevitable; the question is how it should be handled.

Younger BRC members caucused. The result was that at the founding conference there were, in essence, two conferences. There was the main conference and there was a parallel youth conference. Within the BRC Youth Caucus there developed a view that BRC Youth needed to split off from the national BRC much like the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) developed independently of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The argument that was made by some on Juneteenth weekend, was that the youth needed their own organization.

In addition to intergeneration tensions, there also existed tensions among the youth. These included the same tensions that exist among “old heads” –ideological, political, class and personality differences. Some of us “old heads” were being consulted during the youth sessions by young people who were struggling to navigate the choppy organizational waters with limited skills and experience. It appeared that a minority of aggressive (sometimes intimidating ) and vocal forces dominated the discussion and thereby the direction the group would ultimately take. There were such bad feelings that accompanied the Youth Caucus that some people suggested that it had been disrupted by agent-provocateurs While this is certainly possible—given the historical experience of police infiltration and disruption of the Black Freedom Movement—the two of us are more inclined to believe that there was a dogmatism and binary approach to discussions (i.e., with us/against us) that often unfolds in debates among younger activists.

The proposal to set up a separate formation, which was one of the major flashpoints in the internal debate within the Youth Caucus, brought with it important problems. These problems included: SCLC had actually been in existence for a few short years prior to the emergence of SNCC. In other words, there was something of a track-record, both positively and negatively.

- SNCC defined a purpose. It was not formed simply in opposition to an organization of older activists. But it was also a more secular organization than SCLC, attracting people of different faiths as well as atheists.

- The developing BRC Youth Caucus had a poorly defined vision. Instead much of the time at the Juneteenth conference was focused on structure rather than purpose and program.

- The BRC was forming at a point not when the Black Freedom Movement was rising and energized, but rather at a point when it had been on the defensive for quite some time. This meant that the BRC was institutionally weak and was in little position to assist a separate organization.

- It was unclear why the youth activists did not position themselves to take over the BRC, and we mean that in the best sense of the term.

The result of the reported circular discussions at the Caucus and the overemphasis on structure resulted in an alienation of many younger members from the BRC. Thus, and quite ironically, while most of the participants who attended the BRC founding conference walked away very energized, many of the younger activists simply walked away, in some cases never to return. For reasons still unclear to date, the vibrant and engaging BRC Youth Listserve was dismantled.

The BRC continued to include the participation of activists in their 20s and 30s, but what was missing was the critical mass that we were on the verge of having Juneteenth 1998. As time went on the generational issues became more pronounced as younger activists tended to feel that they were more visitors to the BRC than equal and respected activists.

It is not entirely clear how much of this was preventable but there are important lessons to draw from this:

- There are behaviors that are generational that must be acknowledged and, when alienating, addressed directly. This does not simply refer to the activities of older activists; it can include behaviors of younger activists as well.

- It is not acceptable, as freedom fighters, to simply walk away when a situation becomes problematic. This was part of what made the youth implosion so tragic. Yes, there was a difficult situation at the Chicago conference and it was one that only the youth could address. Despite the problems within the Youth Caucus, these were matters that needed to be worked out.

- There is a tendency for older activists to want one more grasp at the ‘ring’. Put differently, older activists are often unwilling to share the limelight with younger activists but instead tend to want to treat the younger activists as kids. This is tremendously alienating. In the BRC this took the form of some of the older activists not creating sufficient space for younger activists to grow and lead. Activists in their 20s and 30s are not kids but many baby-boomers treated them as just that.

(7)The challenge of a central focus: Having formed an organization by acclamation on Juneteenth weekend 1998, the National Continuations Committee (soon to be the National Council) was confronted with two major problems: (1)what sort of structure made sense for the BRC, and (2)what could and should the BRC do?

The structure we shall discuss below. With regard to what the BRC should do, that became a major quandary. There were pressures in different directions, e.g., economic justice and labor; political prisoners; incarceration; education; international solidarity (and relating to the rest of the African World); and reparations. Each direction had its own ‘partisans’ who made very convincing arguments as to why the BRC should do what they were advocating. In effect this led to stalemate.

The challenge was not an academic one of choosing from column A or column B. There were different things at stake, including whether and how the BRC could become a major force in the Black Freedom Movement and develop a real-world base. There were also questions regarding our not repeating the work of existing organizations or, worse, eclipsing existing formations. And perhaps one of the greatest fears was that should we choose one specific focus, the partisans of the other foci would either drop away from the BRC or lessen their commitment to the formation.

The BRC did not succeed in creating a means to work through strategic priorities. Instead the partisans of the different proposals advanced their views. None of it was put into a broader context examining things like (a)what was the moment we were in, (b)what would a formation like the BRC actually be capable of doing, and particularly, where could we make a difference, (c)were some of the proposed areas of work being addressed elsewhere, thereby needing support but not focus by the BRC, (d)what would it mean for the BRC to support existing work compared with making it a priority.

In effect the National Continuations Committee/National Council punted. In our own minds we saw it as a matter of principled compromise and, essentially, it was, but it was a compromise that brought with it several consequences. We established four areas of work: education/not incarceration; reparations; economic justice; international as the work of the organization. To this was added the incorporation of the “Hands Off Assata Shakur”[3] campaign, which was an already existing effort, in effect creating five areas of work.

The theory behind the four/five areas of work is that each would have a workteam of volunteers from the NC and the membership who would work up a plan of operations for that specific area. Each workteam would have a coordinator or chair responsible to keep the workteam moving. The National Council would, in theory, coordinate the overall work and mobilize to support the direction of the specific workteams.

It did not quite work out that way. Despite the enthusiasm that was usually engendered at NC meetings, following the NC meetings the operations of the workteams were inconsistent. Part of this was reflective of an organization that depended on volunteers, i.e., individuals having diverse responsibilities and, in this case, the BRC was only one of them. It was, additionally, not just a matter of capacity but also what the level of organizing skills that members had to carry out their respective tasks. Therefore, the chairs of the workteams along with team members did not always follow through, irrespective of intentions. What we needed was some level of staff support, and by and large we did not have it. In the absence of that, we needed disciplined cadre who were truly making the BRC their major political work and could, therefore, be counted upon to keep the organization in motion.

A second problem could probably be described as strategic. The workteams operated as independent projects, sometimes doing exceptional work, but not quite the equivalent of a “commission” of an organization that develops policy, but implementation is left to the national leadership. In our case, the workteams were supposed to develop policy and implementation.

A third, related, problem was linkage. The four areas of work were just that, four areas. They were not linked together except and insofar as they were all aspects of the fight for Black Freedom.

There were efforts to address these problems. In 2000/2001 the BRC engaged in the “Charleston 5” Defense Campaign and played a significant role in building community support.[4] In the lead up to the United Nations World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa (September 2001), BRC leaders were very central in preparatory work for the Non-Governmental Conference (NGO) as well as in various activities at the conference itself. In the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, the BRC—in addition to vehemently condemning the attacks—shifted gears to attempt to respond to the drift towards war and domestic repression. So, it was not as if the organization was sitting on its hands. That said, it was still trapped in its lack of a directional consensus.

Recognizing this directional quandary, the BRC made efforts at uniting around a focus. The experience had complicated results. First, there was an effort to create a strategic plan, but we did it incorrectly. Second, we ultimately united around a central campaign “Education/Not Incarceration” which we hoped to utilize to unite the organization. Let’s look at these separately.

Within two years of the founding of the BRC it became clear that we needed a more coherent plan for our work. As the first unpaid national organizer for the BRC Bill took a certain sort of initiative but it was not helpful, regardless of intent. In the context of trying to develop proposals to take to funders on the work of the BRC it occurred to Bill that we could use much of what we were writing and put that together in the form of a planning document around which to unite the National Council. This planning document would—in draft form—be circulated to the National Council and then discussed at a NC meeting with the intent of moving toward adoption. What a bad idea!

The draft plan was discussed at a NC meeting and passed. It then died, for all intents and purposes. The reason was simple, at least in hindsight. It was not the plan of the NC; it was Bill’s plan. There was no ownership. There was no discussion within the NC that could lead to collective conclusions. Rather, people responded to what Bill came up with and, while generally agreeing with it, could not ‘see themselves’ in the plan. As a result it amounted to nothing.

The second effort was more successful but ran into its own set of challenges. Through good, protracted discussion the National Council united on the notion that “education/not incarceration” needed to be the thrust of our work. This would involve challenging the prison-industrial complex as well as moving the demand for the need for greater resources into building quality education.

“Education/Not Incarceration” was an excellent slogan but it was not precisely a campaign demand. It was more of an agitational slogan. Therefore, the good news was that BRC local organizing committees were able to take it up and implement it as they saw fit. The bad news is that it did not result in the sort of organizational cohesion we were hoping to gain. This may have reflected the contradiction between our efforts at building a focus, on the one hand, with the demands on the ground that already engaged BRC members and affiliates, on the other hand. Thus, the campaign may have seemed as if it was additional work rather than either (1)something responding to an immediate and perceived crisis and/or need, or (2)a project that flowed from an in depth analysis of the needs of the moment.

In the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks we confronted an aspect of this contradiction. With the move towards the Right in the USA, there was pressure within the BRC to respond to this fundamental change in circumstances with a united campaign against war and repression. Nevertheless there was stiff resistance from some sections of the organization who felt that we should stick with “education/not incarceration” regardless of the change in national circumstances and that it was somehow frivolous to alter course. The National Council decided, correctly, that 9/11 had reshaped the landscape and that the BRC needed to step forward. Yet even here, though the BRC took initiatives to mobilize against war and repression it failed to follow through and, in some cases, was outflanked. A case in point was the formation, in Washington, DC, of “Black Voices for Peace,” under the leadership of the late environmental justice activist Damu Smith[5]. The irony of BVfP could not be any starker: many of the key individuals in helping to bring BVFP into existence were BRC members! For whatever reason it did not occur to them to utilize the BRC as the means of building a Black anti-war formation. Instead, something new was called into existence which, during its life, never affiliated with the BRC though it had many members in common.

What conclusions can be drawn about this matter of focus? Any coalitional organization faces the same dilemma, and it simply cannot be avoided. United fronts or coalitions come together with multiple agendas. While they may be brought together by a specific crisis or challenge, those agendas hover in the background like apparitions. They are never dropped but they can be addressed.

What the BRC needed in the immediate aftermath of the Juneteenth 1998 conference was an examination of the state of Black America; an assessment of the capability(-ies) of the components of the BRC; and the ascertaining of where the BRC, as the BRC, could make a difference. This is more than a formality. Instead, it needed to be a careful examination and discussion. Having such a discussion would have been complicated by the fact that there was, from the very beginning of the BRC, pressure on it to “act,” therefore discussions regarding doing anything that appeared to be less than “action” would have been attacked in some quarters. Nevertheless, the rush to “do something” undermined our ability to more carefully determine the best sort of contribution a group such as the BRC could make.

(8)Gender: The BRC had a remarkable female leadership. Compared with so many other organizations, certainly in the Black Freedom Movement, the BRC was very diverse, gender wise. Beginning with the original five and then with the creation of the National Continuations Committee and later the National Council, women made up much of the BRC’s leadership. The second (and last) National Organizer—the position that served as a combination of national chairperson and quasi-director of organization—was a woman. Women were not in the background in the growth and development of the BRC.

The composition of the BRC was not accidental. It was the result of two important factors: one, who was at the table at the beginning, and, two, active outreach.

`It is all too common that organizations are started without any real attention as to who is sitting at the table. Organizations can start, to put it another way, on the basis of ‘comfort,’ in this case, who is comfortable with whom. While there is always some legitimacy to such an impulse and one never wants to have an enemy at the table, ‘comfort’ is one of those odd terms that can often refer to cliquishness and bias.

From the beginning the BRC was not conceptualized as a male-only or male-mainly project. The women who were involved were not tokens or appendages to other men but in every case came with their own base(s) and legitimacy. This was critical in shaping the BRC. From the very beginning attention was paid to gender balance in terms of both composition as well as in meeting dynamics. That said, we had our fair share of struggles against patriarchal behaviors throughout the BRC’s existence.

The second factor was active outreach. Again, with the construction of the National Continuations Committee on into the Juneteenth conference and the composition of panels and speakers, the leadership paid attention to reaching out to individual women and networks of women to ensure participation. The results were impressive, not only in terms of turnout but as well who turned out and participated. In some cases women activists who had felt excluded by male-centered Black Freedom Movement activities found a safe space for both men and women.

While there was much to be proud of, there were at least two important challenges: (1)who defined feminism?, (2)was the BRC positioned to be an organization that represented the interests of women?

From the very beginning of the work towards the Juneteenth conference and following from that, a subtle tension revealed itself within the ranks of the BRC. It revolved around how one defined “feminism” and who was empowered (among women) to define who was feminist. This may sound convoluted but the roots to the tension go back to the 1970s and the revitalized women’s movement. With the rise of this movement and the mass articulation of the term “feminist” a debate ensued within the left-wing of the Black Freedom Movement (and spread beyond that) as to how Black women activists who were vigorously engaged in the struggle against both white supremacy and male supremacy would self-define. Some accepted the designation of “feminist” as at least part of their self-description. Others rejected that term and used other terms, such as “womanists”, usually to distinguish their own brand of gender justice from what was frequently perceived as a white women’s movement. And still others used no specific designation, while at the same time being very active in fighting for gender justice.[6]

The BRC had each of these tendencies from the very beginning. Some women in the camp of self-described feminists took the position that they were the ones who could best lead and analyze the struggle against male supremacy/patriarchy. This put them at odds with other women who held that irrespective of whether they were self-described feminists, that their own practice and analysis positioned them to be co-articulators with other feminists.

This dispute was rarely made public but it was, nevertheless, very real. It was also never resolved, at least in a productive manner. Each side had often unspoken views of those from the other side. While there was a feminist caucus within the BRC, this caucus did not serve to surface or resolve these contradictions. The result, or at least one result of this was that some women pulled back from active involvement with the BRC and, at the same time, discussions started about the need for the formation of a Black women’s organization that had the politics of the BRC but would be independent. It was never clear, in the course of said discussions, whether such an organization would represent a split from the BRC or a formation that was complementary. In either case, a multi-racial/multi-national network of women did come together in the early 2000s which included, but was not restricted to, Black women (and among them, several active and former BRC members).

This contradiction has surfaced in other Black organizations and it has surfaced enough that it is the sort of matter that needs to be addressed quite openly. As we saw in the case of the BRC, the failure to deal with it directly led to unease within the BRC that resulted in mutual alienation. Actual political differences among these different tendencies were fairly minimal or, at the least, had little to do with whether one was a self-described feminist or not. Nevertheless, resentments built up over time.

The second challenge had to do with whether the BRC was positioned to represent the interests of women. This may be poorly worded but one way to explain it is by analogy. Karen Nussbaum, a leading staff person in the AFL-CIO and the founder of the organization “9-to-5” (the organization of women office workers), has made the provocative yet pointed comment that the AFL-CIO, the largest union federation in the USA, is the largest organization of women workers in the USA. At the same time, the AFL-CIO never positions itself as such an organization or movement.

The BRC had an impressive leadership of women at all levels as well as may women activists. Yet, and this may lie at the roots of some of the concerns and criticisms raised by BRC feminists, it was not an organization that located itself at the heart of the struggle for gender justice. This does not mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that that BRC took a pass on opposing male supremacy and fighting patriarchy. It was more complicated than that. To some extent the problem revolved around the matter of base. To what extent, for instance, was the BRC committed to building a deep base among Black working women? The use of the word “committed” is problematic because it comes off as moralistic. The point is that none of the BRC’s major work was targeted explicitly at issues that had a disproportionate impact on Black women. Certainly an argument—and a good one—can be raised that the four areas (or five if one includes Hands Off Assata!) all had an implication vis a vis Black women, but that is almost beside the point. There are issues that are of particular concern to Black women and could, conceivably, have served as a means to not only attract more Black women but for more left-leaning Black women to see in the BRC a champion of their concerns. This goes way beyond whether the BRC discussed patriarchy but instead moves into the world of practical program, whether with regard to fights around gender discrimination, supporting domestic workers, reproductive rights, or a myriad of other issues. The suggestion here is not that of separating off “women’s issues” into a special category but more of the need we had to center the BRC within the actual and day to day fights against male supremacy and for gender justice.

The other aspect of the gender issue was LGBTQ. As mentioned earlier, the BRC—from its beginning—took a principled stand against homophobia and heterosexism. While it would be an exaggeration to say that the BRC was active in the LGBTQ movement, it can be said that the BRC spoke out on issues relative to homophobia and heterosexism. Additionally, it did not tolerate the existence of either within its ranks. The net result of this was to make the BRC a safe space for Black LGBTQ activists.

As mentioned earlier, the BRC faced criticism, mostly indirect, for its stand with the LGBTQ movements from those who held that opposition to homophobia and heterosexism was too high a threshold for the left-wing of the Black Freedom Movement. We did not budge from our position. Certainly there were BRC members who were personally uncomfortable with either LGBTQ individuals or the entire matter, but such a bias was not considered a legitimate one for discussion or expression within our ranks.

(9)The importance of being internationalists: Frequently African American activist formations are placed in a box that is called “domestic issues.” The way that that “box” works is that Black activists are, at least according to mainstream white America, restricted from discussing or engaging in anything other than domestic issues (and within domestic issues, usually only about race). For this reason people like W.E.B. Dubois, Paul Robeson, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were chastised, if not demonized, for daring to speak out on matters such as imperialism, colonialism and war.

The conception of the BRC from its inception was “black internationalist” in several senses. It saw the African American struggle in the USA as integrally connected to struggles of people of the African World and other oppressed groups domestically and globally. Second, the BRC defined itself as “black,” as noted earlier, making it an organization that while focused largely on struggles within the USA among African Americans, was nevertheless an organization that could and would include individuals from other parts of the African World and/or those who self-described as “black”. Third, the BRC saw itself as engaging in international work, including but not limited to matters of solidarity.

At the Juneteenth founding an important controversy arose that helped to define the identity and focus of the BRC. There were participants from outside of the USA who were in unity with the objectives of the BRC. Some of them not only wanted to join but wanted to establish BRC chapters in other countries. Through discussion it was agreed that this would not be the direction of the BRC. The decision reflected many concerns not the least of which was the lack of actual capacity to center a global organization. But there were other concerns. There has been a history in the USA, including within the Black Freedom Movement, of attempting to center international organizations from within the USA. This has sometimes led to problems of chauvinism in not paying attention to the actual conditions in other countries. Instead it was agreed that should the participants wish to return to their homelands and start their own BRC we would welcome the opportunity to build a relationship based on mutual respect and independence rather than those organizations being chapters of a US-based organization.

The BRC’s internationalist work—at least outside of work to support other people of color within the USA—broke down into two main arenas: (1)statements and positions taken on international events (and/or US foreign policy), (2)the specific work in connection with the UN World Conference Against Racism (UNWCAR).

The BRC National Council established a coordinating committee which met, via conference call on a regular basis. It was to the coordinating committee that the task of responding to various events was sent. In some cases the International Workteam would prepare statements, either to be issued by the coordinating committee or in its own name. In general, the coordinating committee was asked, to issue statements regarding world events. It was through one such statement that a major crisis unfolded, a crisis that contributed to the decline of the BRC. More about that later.

Activity centered in the International workgroup included the UNWCAR. So as to clear up misunderstandings, this was focused on the Non-Governmental Organization conference that paralleled (and was supposed to inform) the official United Nations conference.[7] Members of the International workgroup attended preparatory meetings for the UNWCAR and were active participants. They additionally helped to build for the conference in the USA, writing about its potential significance and why the involvement of Black America could be of such importance.

Had it not been for the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks it is quite possible that the UNWCAR would have had a more lasting significance.[8] The BRC International workgroup, and through it much of the rest of the BRC, appreciated this potential significance.

In general the international statements by the BRC coordinating committee were not internally (to the BRC) controversial. A test of this was found in the immediate aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks.

The BRC, like every other anti-imperialist organization in the USA, was confronted with what for some people was a major challenge. Should and how the BRC speak out on the terrorist attacks and, if so, what should it say? In a statement that has withstood the test of time, the BRC, without any qualification, condemned the terrorist attacks. It made no excuses for the attackers. At the same time the BRC coordinating committee addressed the question of US foreign policy and the reasons that people around the world often stood in fear and anger vis a vis the USA.

The BRC statement on the 11 September 2001 attacks was important on many different levels. Among other things the BRC statement distinguished the BRC from knee-jerk anti-imperialists who believe that any enemy of US imperialism is automatically a friend of progressive forces. It was also an important statement because it was risky. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks anyone raising questions regarding US foreign policy was either treated with suspicion and/or condemned as being unpatriotic and otherwise dangerous. Despite this, the BRC refused to be silenced.

In 2003, however, the BRC encountered what many people, including the two of us, failed to expect in response to one such statement. Approached by the US-based non-profit advocacy group Africa Action, the BRC, along with TransAfrica Forum and some other groups and individuals signed onto a statement critical of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe for the repression of dissent that was underway, and particularly the brutality of said repression. The statement called upon President Mugabe to step away from this repression.

In section #11 below we shall explore this problem a bit more, but here it should be noted that despite the fact that the coordinating committee unanimously agreed to sign onto the statement there was major pushback from within the ranks of the BRC. As a result of this controversy, and following the 2003 conference of the BRC, there was the departure of some BRC members who were disenchanted by the position taken. That people would walk away was a shock to many of the remaining BRC members.

(10)The implications of being an organization of both organizations and individuals: The BRC, from the beginning, was confronted with a challenge that we never directly addressed, though proved integral to the entire manner in which the BRC grew, functioned and ultimately declined. Specifically, what sort of united front of the Black Left were we?

As noted earlier, the BRC was actually conceptualized by five individuals. Several of those individuals, but not all, had affiliations, including the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism; Communist Labor Party (which evolved into the League of Revolutionaries for a New America); and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. More importantly, the BRC was not a project of those organizations (though it later became a project that involved those organizations). In time, as the project got under way, individuals from other organizations, and many individuals either affiliated with loose networks or unaffiliated entirely, were incorporated as partners. Organizations such as the New Afrikan People’s Organization and the Communist Party came to be present in the life and work of the BRC, playing significant and positive roles.

The conception of the BRC focused largely on the participation of individuals. At the same time we developed a theory of “multiple points of entry,” meaning that individuals and organizations could participate in the life of the BRC through multiple means. Let’s explain this a bit.

The BRC had local organizing committees through which individuals could participate. There were also organizational affiliations, as mentioned earlier. There were campaigns that were carried out by working groups, through which individuals and organizations could participate (particularly if there was no local organizing committee in their area). Despite all of this, there was not a discussion concerning whether organizations should have a special role. The BRC was not, for instance, run by a council of organizations and there was no special weight to any organization that was somehow involved in the BRC, except those that explicitly affiliated as organizations, e.g., the Black Workers for Justice (with automatic membership in the BRC for its members).[9]

Although we did not realize it at the time, we had walked into a labyrinth. While individuals worked to build the BRC, it was the case that a set of organizations had devoted an immense amount of time building for the Juneteenth conference, and in some cases, building the BRC afterwards. Yet, these organizations did not have a special role in leading the BRC, though in virtually every case, individuals from those organizations found themselves on either local or national leading bodies.

The implications of this problem began to set in not long after the founding conference. Some organizations had focused much of their work on building for the Juneteenth conference. Following that conference they were then faced with the question as to whether they would continue doing such work and, if so, what would be the implications for their other work. A second question to emerge was about decision-making. Would a local organizing committee of unaffiliated individuals have the same voice and role as an organization in the work and life of the BRC?

The result of our failure to address this problem directly was illustrated in the departure of or minimized role of some of the organizations that had been key in getting the BRC off the ground. Though no one gave voice to this concern, it was obvious that these organizations had to balance the question of the work of their respective organization vs. building the BRC. And, further, if they did not have a special role in the direction of the BRC—despite their activity in building it—did it make sense to continue?

The BRC erred in not addressing the scale and scope of this dilemma. It is not as if there was a tried and true answer, but there were options, each of which carried with it various consequences. Let’s use an example. The organizations that helped to get the BRC off the ground, e.g., NAPO, FRSO, CP, CCDS, LRNA, could have been given a special leadership role in the BRC. The model from El Salvador of the Faribundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), or the networks mentioned in the footnote, would not have worked, however, where you had organizations that came together to constitute the front and individuals had to join one of those organizations. Such a model, at least vis a vis the BRC, would not have succeeded largely because the BRC, from its inception, represented a mass call to activists on the left-wing of the Black Freedom Movement. But it might have been possible that those organizations would have had weighted votes on the National Council given what they were putting into the BRC. There was the additional question of organizational affiliates such as the previously mentioned Black Workers for Justice and the Organization for Black Struggle that would have also needed to have consideration given to a specific leadership role.

By ignoring the role of special, cadre and semi-cadre organizations, in the life and leadership of the BRC, we found ourselves building an organization of individuals in a setting, as we earlier noted, where there was a wide spectrum of involvement and dedication. What organizations like NAPO, the CP, CCDS, FRSO and LRNA brought to the table were dedicated members who devoted an immense amount of time to building of the BRC. They did this because their respective organizations believed that this political project was of importance and encouraged this level of activism. While there were certainly many unaffiliated individuals who were involved in building the BRC and who were dedicated, the work of the cadre from these various organizations was disproportionate to the size of their organizations.[10]

For the various organizations that were involved, at one point or another, in the building of the BRC there was the fundamental question of the relationship of building the BRC to the building of their own organizations. In each case there were those who argued that building the BRC hurt the ability of these individual organizations to grow. In some cases it was argued that work in the BRC should only take place if it could help these individual organizations to grow. What was fascinating is that most of the organizations that participated in the building of the BRC did so in a very principled manner despite the fact that it did not necessarily lead to the growth of their own organizations. At a certain juncture, however, that relationship needed to become a bit more symbiotic in order to make it sustainable. If organizations are working entirely through a united front then they can often lose their reason to exist.

(11)The challenge of building a united front organization: Many people outside of the Left think of the Left as near monolithic. They will offer expressions such as “…the Left does this…” or “…you know the Left…” as if they are talking about a consolidated tendency, if not an organization. Yet the Left is very diverse, and this is no less true of the Black Left. There are various shades of nationalists; Marxists; feminists; anarchists; green leftists; Pan Africanists; and so on. And, to make it even more interesting, there are mixtures and overlaps of each of these categories.

It is important to keep in mind that the original conception of the BRC was not as an organization but as an event or process leading to an event: a summit of the Black Left. It was understood from the beginning that there would be different tendencies represented at a summit and, once we decided that we needed to go beyond a summit, it was understood—at least theoretically—that an organization that emerged from the Juneteenth conference would be extremely diverse and, objectively, a united front formation.

There were many implications to being a united front formation. One of the most important concerned the level of unity. As opposed to a cadre organization, or for that matter any sort of ideologically consolidated organization, a united front organization would need to have a level of agreement that was lower than that of a consolidated organization. This does not mean that a united front organization would be loose or amorphous, but it would mean that it would be both easy to join and have a spectrum of views on questions that would not be the case if it was a consolidated organization with a specific world view and/or clearly defined purpose.

A second challenge in building a united front organization concerns how groups working within a united front organization should operate in a principled manner. There are many negative examples of groups attempting to use a united front organization in order to grow, analogous to leaches. Yet in the BRC, as noted above, that, by-and-large, did not happen.[11] The problem is that when a group is publicly represented in a united front organization how does it present its politics in a way that does not come off as sectarian or factional?

The best answer we have been able to come up with, regarding this last question, revolves around a combination of work-style and the public existence of a group operating within a united front organization. In the case of the BRC, the major groups that worked to build it did just that: worked to build it. They deployed individuals to carry out various tasks and did not make their particular point of view the end-all and be-all. As a result, they gained a great deal of respect, in general, sometimes even from individuals and groups that had previously shared disagreements with them. Given the legacy of anti-communism, there was often skepticism about the intentions of explicitly Marxist organizations even though such organizations were not actually shunned within the BRC. In either case, the Marxist organizations—be they nationalist or non-nationalist—worked very hard overall to build the BRC.

The other piece to this puzzle, as mentioned, concerns visibility. It helped to have accessible public representatives of the groups that were working to build the BRC. This is to say that it was important for individuals in the BRC who were unaffiliated with any organization, to have a chance to meet with and discuss various issues with these groups and to understand that these organizations were not somehow alien.

The fundamental challenge in building a united front organization, however, concerns the question of the “mandate” created by the components or participants in the united front organization. To put it another way, there are parameters in all organizations but particularly in united front organizations the parameters can be restrictive and uncomfortable. Those parameters define the unity of the group and, while they can be challenged up to a point, they must nevertheless be recognized and respected.

In general the leadership of the BRC understood its mandate(s) and the parameters within which it could operate. This meant that there certainly was debate on a host of issues, but it was debate that could only go but so far. The leadership could, therefore, lead within those parameters. In the case of the statement in response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, the coordinating committee pushed the limits of the mandate a bit but not enough to cause any problems. The majority of the BRC believed that the statement represented the unity of our project.

In early 2003, however, a very different situation evolved and one from which important lessons must be drawn. Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe was carrying out intense repression against domestic opponents. The forms of repression varied but included jailing, torture and rape. The US-based non-profit advocacy group, Africa Action, initiated a sign-on letter to be sent to President Mugabe protesting this repression and calling upon him to ensure a cessation of such activities. The then executive director of Africa Action approached several organizations and individuals to gain their support and signatures on this letter of protest. Among those approached were TransAfrica Forum (another non-profit advocacy group most frequently associated with leading the anti-apartheid support struggle in the USA) and the BRC.[12]

The BRC Coordinating Committee unanimously agreed that it should endorse this letter. There was not one voice raised in opposition, though one member raised the possibility that there might be pushback. In either case, there was a thorough discussion of the situation in Zimbabwe and the letter. The Coordinating Committee concluded that the BRC needed to go on record in opposition to the repression underway.[13]

The response was like a maelstrom. There was immediate pushback and the tenor of the ensuing debate became more and more toxic. There were two main arguments against the statement: (1)that there should have been a debate within the BRC as a whole prior to the issuing of the statement, and (2)that the statement was wrong.

The response of the Coordinating Committee was largely defensive. Outside of our national conferences there actually had not been a generalized debate on any issue prior to the Coordinating Committee issuing a statement. In fact, as noted earlier, the Coordinating Committee was regularly asked to issue statements. As a result it was the position of the Coordinating Committee that it was their responsibility to speak out as the main leadership body of the formation. On the substance of the issue, the Coordinating Committee reaffirmed its position.

On the basic facts the Coordinating Committee was correct. At the same time it failed to recognize that it had actually erred. The error was not in the realm of formality but rather at the level of not having a better sense of the tensions and contradictions within the BRC. The Coordinating Committee did not take sufficiently seriously the extent of the pro-Mugabe sentiment within the formation and that the Coordinating Committee, in signing onto a critical letter, was overreaching. While we contend that the letter, in substance, was correct and has been vindicated by later actions by President Mugabe, that is, actually, irrelevant. When one is in a united front body one has to always get a sense as to the parameters. This means that a united front organization may not necessarily take the same position that an individual member or organizational member would take on any given issue because the level of unity within a united front organization is, by definition, different and lower.

The “Mugabe letter incident” tore at the BRC and resulted in the defection of important members. That people left over this letter rather than registering their strong disagreements was, itself, significant, which is to say that the drawing of a line in the sand over this letter of protest to President Mugabe in light of the vast areas of agreement within the BRC was indicative of an internal sectarianism, not to mention a narrowness of purpose.

Yet the responsibility lay primarily with the Coordinating Committee. The CC needed to have tested the ground before issuing the statement. It needed to have, at least, floated the statement to someone whose views on the matter differed from the CC. Backed into a corner the CC lined up supporters for its position and the situation went from bad to worse. By the summer 2003 conference of the BRC, an organization already in decline, suffered from a level of demoralization and tension. The defections started and the center could not hold. While the BRC would continue through 2010, it ceased to be the rallying point for the various tendencies as it once had been.

The critical issue here is that the leadership of the BRC had to navigate in very stormy seas. It had to, at all times, pay attention to the actual mandate that it had to lead. To the extent to which the leadership was perceived as fair, willing to listen, open-minded and non-sectarian, it was able to gain an important level of credibility. When the actions of the leadership or a portion of the leadership could be portrayed as trying to push their own agenda—even if this was factually not the case—the credibility was weakened, thereby contributing to defections and factionalism.[14]

Yet here is the other part of this overall equation. The mandate or parameters are never fixed in stone. They can shift over time, and usually do. But they can unravel even under the best of circumstances when external factors change. In other words, when the circumstances that led to the coming together of the various forces in a united front changes, the front can weaken or strengthen, depending on the nature of the changes. Using an example outside of the BRC, in the build-up to the US invasion of Iraq, coalitions assembled, such as United For Peace & Justice (UFPJ). UFPJ was a massive coalition of various groups that opposed the pending invasion. Yet, when the invasion took place and was successful, this created a major challenge for UFPJ. Could UFPJ stay together? What should happen in light of the successful US invasion? It was at that juncture that UFPJ faced a crisis of direction that included some groups drifting away to get back to their regular work while many of the constituents wanting UFPJ to take on various issues in addition to Iraq. The immediacy of the invasion had kept UFPJ focused; the aftermath led to a very different situation.

To a great extent that situation faced the BRC as well, and not just due to Mugabe letter incident. As unifying as was the Juneteenth conference, it did not lead to an obvious central focus; neither did it result in a sense of an obvious common project, as mentioned earlier.

(12)Was there a role for faith?: One of the great failings of the BRC as a project was its inability to unite, on scale, with faith-based initiatives, projects, etc. While there were religiously-inspired activists who participated in the BRC, including at the founding Juneteenth conference, the reality is that they were not central. Despite that, the enthusiasm of the Juneteenth conference led one faith-based leader who participated to committing to building a religious component to the BRC. The National Continuations Committee was thrilled in hearing that news. Unfortunately, it never happened.

Many secular Leftists think of faith-based leftists only as an afterthought. That was essentially the case in the BRC. In the construction of the National Continuations Committee insufficient time went into developing ties with that sector. Despite the fact that we had Cornel West as an early signatory to the call to the Juneteenth conference, it was more the Cornel as the left-wing public intellectual rather than approaching Cornel with his religious cap on, so to speak.

Though there was a religious presence at the Juneteenth conference, which contributed to the commitment to the building of a religious component to the BRC, nothing took off. There are different explanations. These include: (1)the lack of a core, (2)absent from our strategy, (3)a different world.

There was an insufficient core of faith-based black radicals involved with or in orbit around the BRC in order for this work to gain traction. This does not mean that there was no involvement. But it means that faith-based activists may have chosen to participate in the BRC in different ways but not as a self-identified grouping. In contrast, and by way of example, there were organized feminist and labor caucuses that saw as their role both outreach as well as influencing the politics and dynamics of the BRC.

There was an absence from the BRC strategy of outreach to faith-based groups and religious institutions. This does not mean that there were not tactical overtures. Whether through demonstrations or for other events, there was outreach to participate in what the BRC was already planning on doing. What was not done, however, was to ensure the inclusion of religious activists in the creation of overall strategy as well as specific plans. Given this, the outreach would appear to be either last-minute or an afterthought rather than representative of an effort to build a very broad front.

This takes us into the question of a ‘different world.’ The failure of the BRC to be inclusive of religious activists was not about “intent” in the sense of any suggestion that the majority of the BRC wanted to exclude or ignore religious activists. Rather, it was more representative of this not being on the radar screen. It was not even a matter of a group of atheists ignoring religious activists, since the BRC was made up of activists from different religious and spiritual traditions as well as those who are atheists or hold to no defined spiritual belief system. It was more reflective of our political and strategic failure to appreciate the importance of the religious community, including among leftists, and the need to see within the religious community comrades who are also in struggle not only for Black freedom, but against regressive tendencies in their respective religious communities.

Our failure to make the consistent connection with the religious community in the left-wing of the Black Freedom Movement cost us deeply in terms of limitations on expansion and base-building. There were other approaches that we could have taken had we been more sensitive to this question. An interesting example, which emerged at roughly the same time as the BRC, was a network called “Ministers Against Global Injustice” (MAGI). Initiated by Global Trade Watch in the midst of the debate around the backward “Africa Growth and Opportunity Act”, MAGI was a national network of progressive Black ministers who spoke out against AGOA and, in effect, regressive trade agreements. This formation, which in time drifted out of existence, was precisely the sort of formation that the BRC needed as an affiliate. MAGI involved ministers who were prepared to speak out on a global issue while at the same time connecting that with domestic issues. MAGI was a potentially strategic initiative and contrasted with the on-again/off-again relationship that frequently transpires between many secular activists (and organizations) and the progressive faith-based movements.

The BRC could have, additionally, taken a bold step into another aspect of the religious community. In the aftermath of 9/11 anti-Muslim discrimination, demonization and violence spread across the USA like wild-fire. Though the BRC spoke out against Islamophobia, this could have been a key moment to link with progressive Muslim activists and provide a base of support against the assaults that were being experienced. Unfortunately, while the BRC did speak out and was a voice against the generally repressive climate that existed after 9/11, there was no coherent outreach to the Muslim community to build appropriate alliances and, where feasible, encourage affiliation with the BRC.

(13)What about class? It is fair to say that the bulk of the BRC was committed to the idea that the BRC needed to be grounded among Black working class people. At the same time, for most of the BRC that notion was something of an abstraction. What did it mean, concretely, to ground the BRC within the Black working class? Would the BRC be an organization that was a voice of the Black working class?

Part of the problem with the framing of the issue of “class” in the BRC was that it was done as if “class” was a constituency group along the lines of any other. In addition, “class” was often interpreted as being the same thing as labor. Thus, the idea that the BRC needed to pay special attention to the working class (the majority of Black America) was not necessarily greeted enthusiastically within the entire organization. Influenced by degrees of post-modernism, some argued that a focus on the Black working class was “pre-figurative” or presumed an importance for the Black working class that was not justified.

The problem of identifying class and labor resulted in the notion that there needed to be a special “labor” section of the BRC just as there had been one in the National Black United Front twenty years earlier. Yet having a caucus or committee focused on labor was not the same thing as rooting the BRC in the Black working class. The labor movement is a particular social movement, possessing its own set of dynamics. The notion of class is about power relations in society and the cultures that flow from them.

Differences on the matter of class arose in various ways. The first was a matter of base. While there certainly was a consensus, as noted earlier, in terms of grounding the BRC in the Black working class, the implications of such an understanding were not grasped. There was little attention to what that meant in terms of recruitment; the manner in which meetings were held; or the struggles in which the BRC was engaged. Thus, while the BRC certainly attracted Black working class activists, it cannot be said that the BRC was an expression of the Black working class. It was a “friend” to the Black working class, possessing a radicalism that supported the Black working class, but the organization itself was not one that Black workers would recognize as being one of their own.

The experience of the BRC when it came to class contrasted with that of the National Negro Congress, the Black united front organization from the 1930s and early 1940s, that was deeply rooted in the major working class struggles of their time. What was interesting about the NNC was that, formed as a result of discussions that started in 1935, the movement was aimed at addressing the disproportionate impact of the Great Depression on Black America and the unevenness on the part of the federal government in responding. But what emerged was an organization that also recognized the strategic implication of the rise of a new labor union movement led by the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) and what that meant for the Black working class in particular, and Black America in general. The NNC’s leadership saw in the rise of the CIO a tremendous opportunity for Black workers and, therefore, decided to play a role in influencing the growth of the CIO.

In the case of the BRC there was no similarity. There was no agreement that working class struggles held a particular importance. To some extent such struggles were collapsed into the generic notion of “community struggles.” Economic justice struggles, including those on the job but also in the communities, did not rise in importance. Just the same, the Labor Caucus was renamed the Working Class Caucus to reflect the desire to broaden its scope beyond just union organizing.

There was an interesting moment that was illustrative of the problem that we faced. In 2000 the BRC was approached about a struggle that was unfolding in Charleston, South Carolina. Five dockworkers, members of Local 1422 of the International Longshoremen’s Association had been arrested on the pretext of conspiracy to incite to riot and inciting to riot. This action was the result of a police provocation at a demonstration by the dockworkers against a non-union stevedore company. Of the five dockworkers, four were Black and the campaign of vilification against them represented an attack on both the Black community and labor.

The national AFL-CIO began a campaign to defend and gain an acquittal for these workers. The BRC got involved. As the BRC became more involved an argument ensued over whether, what came to be known as the “Charleston 5 Defense Campaign”, should become a major focus of the work of the BRC. Specifically this meant should the BRC concentrate resources on this defense effort.

The response within the BRC was initially anemic. Within the leadership there were those who held that a focus on the Charleston 5 was not relevant to the rest of the BRC. The Charleston 5 case, in other words, was treated as a constituency campaign rather than a campaign that held any strategic importance. Yet the C-5 campaign offered tremendous opportunities, including (1)a manner in which to speak with the community about systemic repression, (2)the possibilities of building a very broad campaign connecting the BRC with a wider spectrum of views and groups within Black America, (3)a way of basing the BRC within a segment of the Black working class, (4)a means of potentially influencing the labor union movement.

Ultimately, and for a very brief moment, there was a coordinated effort by the BRC around the C-5 campaign but that unraveled in the immediate aftermath of 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks.

Yet the deeper problem, going way beyond the C-5 campaign reflected the adoption of campaigns and initiatives that did not necessarily flow out of the experiences and demands of the Black working class. That does not mean that these projects were either bad or good. What it means is that to base the BRC within the Black working class we would have had to have had a clearer sense of those demands and struggles. We may have found that those demands were not necessarily what the BRC members or leaders perceived to have been priorities.

(14)What’s in a name? The implications of our choice:

The name never became a major point of debate, though what did transpire was a series of discussions as to whether the name was appropriate, attractive, etc. One concern raised repeatedly, largely outside of the BRC, was whether the name should have been something like the “Black Progressive Congress”, i.e., that the term “radical” might scare away many potential members and supporters. This point of view was not treated seriously until the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. More about this below.

Part of what was implicitly at stake was the BRC carving out space to be known and understood to be a pole of the political Left of the Black Freedom Movement. In other words, the BRC was not an outpost of some existing party or formation that was outside of Black America, but was a formation indigenous to Black America and welcoming those committed to Black freedom

In general, the choice seems to have been a correct one. The situation, however, became somewhat complicated in the aftermath of 9/11. After the terrorist attacks the political Right and the mainstream media used terms such as “radical”, “fanatic”, and “terrorist” often interchangeably. This resulted in a situation where those on the political Left using the term “radical” often became a bit uneasy and having the name “Black Radical Congress” emblazoned on websites, flyers, etc., raised questions as to whether we would receive unwanted attention, so to speak.

There never was a suggestion to change the name. Despite concerns about scrutiny, the BRC stood on the basis of the credibility of its members and its platform. While there were those on the political Right who attempted to demonize the BRC (and continue to this day, despite the demise of the BRC) it did not seem to succeed in scaring away potential friends and allies

(15)Cyber-organizing: The circumstances surrounding the Arab democratic uprisings/revolutions that began in December 2010 in Tunisia has led to a growing fascination with electronic organizing. Interestingly, the BRC was, in many respects, at the cutting edge of this work in its founding and early years.

When efforts got underway to form the BRC and organize towards the Juneteenth conference, the world of electronic communications was undergoing dramatic changes. In 1995/1996 e-mail, for instance, was only just becoming popular. Fax machines were being used much more frequently than they currently are. Pagers were the rage and cell phones were beginning to spread in usage. The Web was becoming increasingly popular as a method for advertising and education.

One of the early steps, once the National Continuations Committee was formed, was the creation of a Website. In fact, the Website became a major instrument for organizing the Juneteenth conference. Along with email communications, the Web took the BRC to all parts of the USA and, indeed, the world.

Within three months of the formation of the BRC, however, there was a major problem that nearly derailed the communications work of the BRC. The principal individual responsible for the Website abandoned the BRC (due to a very strange political disagreement) and froze the site. It took months to regain control of the site, but eventually that took place.

In this document we have generally stayed away from naming names of people who were involved—outside of the original five—but in the case of what came to be known as “cyber-organizing” it is important to make note of two individuals: Charles “Cappy” Pinderhughes and Art McGee. Working together they helped, in different ways, to place the BRC at the head of the line when it came to electronic organizing. Art, particularly, as the operations person with regard to our electronic organizing set up various mechanisms for components of the BRC to communicate and debate. A series of listserves were put together that allowed caucuses and committees to engage in planning and conduct exchanges. Ultimately the BRC won an award for its website and electronic organizing.

What the BRC appreciated, and admittedly many people had to be dragged kicking and screaming, was that organizing was a multi-pronged effort. Most of us were used to face-to-face organizing. Electronics offered us a whole new world. It also brought with it certain dangers.

As many of us have seen over the years, electronics does not substitute for face-to-face organizing; it supplements it. Yet electronic organizing can be seductive. In reaching hundreds, if not thousands of people, one can tend towards downplaying the interpersonal organizing and relationship building that is essential to be successful.

The cyber-organizing—as we referenced it—was initiated and sustained by volunteers. The dedication of the individuals, from the beginning, was exemplary. Yet there were problems. One, when you depend on volunteers it is often difficult to enforce accountability. In other words, you are dependent on someone(s) who you are not paying, therefore, that individual (or individuals) has to figure out when they can do the work of the organization on their own time. Two, as a result the organization can become uneasy about raising criticisms of anything that it does not like or appreciate from that volunteer for fear of losing them. This can lead to misunderstandings and unspoken disagreements. Third, the personality of whoever is in charge of cyber-organizing is critical. It is always important to keep in mind that there are varying levels of understandings of electronic media and some people are just not comfortable with it. Those in charge of cyber-organizing have to be immensely sensitive to that reality.

The BRC was unable to sustain its amazing cyber-organizing presence. When we were able to obtain some minimal funding we had the very difficult choice of funding a national organizer or the cyber-organizer. There was insufficient money for both. The National Council decided that it was essential that we have a national organizer to oversee the entire organization and work to build it. The volunteers who had been working on the project were not able to continue to devote the time to the project particularly in light of their own needs for paid employment, school and other affairs.

Did the BRC make the right choice? The choice that it made to hire a national organizer was probably the only choice that it could have made. As important as was the cyber-organizing, if there was no one to work with the affiliates or local organizing committees or to stay on top of the National Council, the organization would have quickly disintegrated. Yet the absence of a cyber-organizer demonstrated that in the 21st century, electronic organizing is not a luxury but a necessity. There is a popular expectation that an organization can be reached electronically, and for that matter, with little difficulty. It is also the popular expectation that new content will appear on Websites on a regular basis. It is not clear that the BRC recognized, as a whole, how central the cyber-organizing was and needed to be. With the loss of our key cyber-organizers and a reliance on web contractors for specific aspects of our work, the electronic presence of the BRC became increasingly mediocre.

A final point about cyber-organizing. What we learned from our experience is that cyber-organizing is far more than maintaining a website. It is thinking about building an organization or movement using electronic tools. Therefore, the introduction of the listserves for the various caucuses and workteams was not a technocratic matter but a recognition that building the BRC necessitated regular and quick interaction between and among those engaged in specific work. This was a very valuable contribution to this project.

(16)Organizations are easy to form and easy to dissolve, but they are hard to sustain: It all started off as a call to a meeting. The idea was that there were many Black leftists, whether in organizations or operating as individuals, but they were passing each other like ships in the night. So, the basic notion of a summit was to convene in order to ascertain what everyone was doing and whether there was a basis for cooperation.

This impulse for a meeting quickly evolved into a demand for an organization and on Juneteenth weekend 1998 there was a mass demand to form the Black Radical Congress. That was easy. More than ten years later, a badly weakened BRC was unofficially dissolved when it was clear that there was an insufficient core in order to sustain it. That was sad, but relatively easy (with the exception of paying off certain debts that had been accumulated).

It was the in-between that was so difficult. Building and sustaining an organization takes an immense amount of work and, as we earlier mentioned, it was not clear how many of those who embarked on the original journey were really prepared to undertake that process. The following represent some summary points on this matter that begin to draw together the overall lessons learned from this experience. Let’s look at this in a bit more detail.

First, it is far from clear that the implications of forming an organization were entirely apparent, not just to the 2000+ people in attendance in Chicago, but as well to the core. In addition to the problem of building a formation that was both an organization of organizations and an organization of individuals, there was the very real question of who was going to put in the work. In this era of non-profit activism (some call it NGO-ism) the notion of volunteer activism has weakened. Particularly among activists under the age of 50, there is a large-scale expectation that if you are active in an organization that you will get paid. Or, an extension of this is that one can be a member of an organization without doing much except, perhaps, engaging in email activism.

The BRC started off with limited funds and there was no way that it could field a staff. That meant that, with the exception of certain administrative work, the running of the organization was done on the basis of volunteers. One implication, and something that the two of us take very personally, is that this means that those in leadership cannot afford to have multiple “distractions”, i.e., they need to be able to focus their time and attention on the work of leading and sustaining the organization and not have a zillion other responsibilities.[15]

There were other implications in the formation of the BRC. The immediate question in Chicago was whether everyone in attendance at the conference would automatically become members? The National Continuations Committee decided against that approach and later did a membership drive. Part of our thinking was that we were unclear what the implications would be of assuming that everyone at the conference was to be a member. Would that mean that everyone automatically had a vote on who the leadership was? Did it mean that everyone in attendance agreed with the unity statement? We were uncertain and as a result we held back.

A second feature of sustaining an organization: resolving internal tensions. Any organization will have internal disputes. It is the nature of organizations. For that reason there need to be mechanisms for resolving internal disputes. The BRC had, in effect, two mechanisms: (a)go to the National Council, (b)go to the National Organizer. Some of the disputes were often quite serious. In one city the local organizing committee simply could not function. Attempts at addressing the tensions failed. We ultimately set up two local organizing committees in the same city. That step was probably the correct one but it was the result of a mediation session that ultimately failed to resolve the internal disagreements. Was there another way to handle this? We were not sure.

Years after the demise of the BRC, a former National Council member suggested that we needed the equivalent of a trial board in order to address disputes. S/he noted that too many people went to the National Organizer (first, Bill and later Jamala) and that this was not a good way to handle such disputes. It placed far too much pressure on one individual when we had to expect that there would regularly be disputes that needed to be resolved.

Third, sustaining an organization necessitates a core or cadre of activists. To return to an earlier point, we often assume that such a core will be paid activists for the organization. But what happens when you do not have paid activists? This is where the challenge of the role of organizations that had helped to build the BRC comes in. In order to sustain the BRC over the long-haul there needed to be a commitment of resources (including personnel) from the organizations that had made a commitment to build it. That commitment might have been one or two people who would work to build the BRC. The discipline that is normally associated with mature, grounded left organizations is invaluable, as history shows time and again. Relying on individual volunteers was insufficient, no matter how devoted to the BRC they happened to be.

Fourth, there was a challenge that we encountered in the BRC that shook many of the veteran members; a challenge referenced earlier in this paper: the walk-away phenomenon.

We first encountered this walk-away phenomenon on a significant scale after the Juneteenth conference in the wake of the Youth Caucus debacle. What was strange for many activists is that by “movement” standards, the disputes that took place within the Youth Caucus were not monumental. Certainly there was anger and there was bad feeling, but the contradictions that unfolded were over the course of a weekend rather than over the course of a longer period. Even if one assumes that the dispute had been building for a while, it was not something that played itself out destructively—at least visibly—in the lead up to the Juneteenth conference.

There were other manifestations of the walk-away phenomenon. Without any struggle or search for alternatives, individuals would simply decide that they were going to leave. While one comes to expect that in any organization at the rank and file level, it is very unsettling when it takes place within the leadership. And that is precisely what unfolded. In rare occasions an individual would indicate that they were going to step down from a leadership role after the next organizational congress/conference. More frequently, individuals would simply announce that they were leaving and that was that. Although this more often took place among younger activists, it was a phenomenon that played out at all levels.

It is difficult to ascertain what was underway with the walk-way phenomenon. There was, apparently, something in the work and culture of the BRC that individuals felt that they could do conduct themselves in such a way and there would be no consequences. This phenomenon had an impact on the work itself, but also on the morale. When key leaders disappeared, many of the members were only left to speculate on what was unfolding. When entire components of the organization walked away, however, as in the case of the Youth Caucus, it was devastating and called into question the ability of the organization to go the long-haul.

Finally, at what point should individuals leave an organization? To return to the disputes surrounding accepting foundation funds or the Mugabe letter, the question that hovers around all of this is the “breaking point.” In other words, at what point are the differences so great that unity is no longer viable. In the case of the BRC, members answered this as individuals at different times, but what was confounding was the nature of the disputes compared with the actual agreement that existed in the organization as a whole. In other words, how does one balance out a particular difference(s) vs. the level of agreement one has with the purpose and work of an organization? Unless framed like this it is very easy for any dispute to become a “splitting” issue rather than an issue around which there are serious differences.

Moving Forward: Individuals continued to join the BRC until the moment that it ceased to exist, in some ways reaffirming a point that many of us felt viscerally: if the BRC had not been called into existence, it would have been formed in either case. There was a perceived need for the BRC, and, literally, hundreds, if not thousands of people felt it. As we traveled the country, we ran across many activists who proudly considered themselves BRC members regardless of their involvement.

Yet this begs a question: is there a need for a BRC-type formation as we go forward in the second decade of the 21st century? The answer is not obvious. The BRC came together at a particular moment as a result of a growing frustration within the Black Left as to its inability to exist as a visible pole representing an alternative direction for Black America. Certainly such a pole is necessary, but does that mean an organization like the BRC?

A visible, active left-wing formation is very much needed in Black America. A formation that has a grassroots membership rather than just a non-profit staff; a formation that is militant, if not audacious, challenging racial capitalism and imperialism; an organization that is internationalist in its framework and actions; and a formation that is broad and welcoming.

That said, a mass left-wing Black formation must be prepared to engage with mainstream Black organizations, struggle in environments that are not necessarily radical or left but where masses of people exist and operate. This means that such a left-wing formation cannot be purist by any stretch of the imagination. It must be pragmatic while not being pragmatist, accessing whatever resources that it needs in order to sustain itself as long as the strings that are attached are not unprincipled or undermining.

The BRC reached a certain precipice around 1999/2000. We could all feel it. Segments of the political world of Black America could not ignore us, not to mention other segments of the broader Left and progressive world. The formation of the BRC ignited interest among other oppressed nationalities/people of color, resulting in similar formations being established among Asians and Latinos such as the Asian Left Forum and the New Raza Left. It even inspired an effort within a section of the left-wing of the labor movement to congeal. While these formations did not last, the example of the BRC had proven to resonate far beyond Black America.

Within the BRC we were not entirely sure what to do with this influence or with our impact. In that sense the initial debate over whether to accept foundation funding was actually not so much about foundation money, but more about whether the BRC would operate beyond remaining on the margins of politics. To borrow from Rosa Luxemburg, would the BRC engage in revolutionary realpolitik?

In our context “revolutionary realpolitik” is a political practice that moves a Left agenda but does so with an aim of both fighting for power; building alliances; and taking account of the actual conditions rather than engaging in philosophical idealism. It is the direct opposite of practicing pure-ism. It is not an approach taken by so many leftists whereby they engage in the ‘flying of a flag’, asserting their views rather than engaging in a battle for the hearts and minds of millions and the battle for progress.

Thus, a united front organization of Black leftists is needed now more than ever but only if it can be successful in learning the lessons from prior efforts, including but not limited to the BRC. The BRC was a magnificent contribution to a history of organized Black resistance to white supremacist national oppression and imperialism. It was another stone in the road of Black radicalism. And it was an experience upon which freedom fighters in the USA should build as we go forward to challenge global capitalism, racism, sexism, heterosexism, other forms of oppression and environmental devastation.

We believe that the two of us speak for many other former BRC leaders and activists in saying that it was an honor to have participated in that effort.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior 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.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, Jamala Rogers, is the leader of the Organizationfor Black Struggle in St.Louis and the BlackRadicalCongress NationalOrganizer. Additionally, she is an Alston-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.

1This did not make the BRC better or worse than other organizations. It just made it different. The Rainbow Coalition, for instance,existed for different reasons and had an entirely different history. There is plenty of room for various sorts of organizational forms.

2Meaning that ideas were not rooted in any sort of material reality but were free-floating. Sort of along the lines of “…I wish, therefore it will be…” or, to borrow from the words of the comedian George Wallace, “…that’s the way I see it, and that’s the way it ought to be…”

3Assata Shakur, former Black Panther Party member, who went into exile in Cuba after escaping police custody. She has been hounded and hunted by reactionary forces ever since.

4The campaign was aimed at freeing five members of Local 1422 of the International Longshoremen’s Union (ILA) who had been set up by the state and accused of conspiracy to incite to riot and inciting to riot. The national AFL-CIO, along with the South Carolina AFL-CIO and Local 1422, ILA took the lead in initiating a national defense campaign (actually international). The BRC joined into this effort. Local 1422 was/is overwhelmingly black and the attack on the local represented a combined racial/class attack plus stepped up repression. The defense campaign proved to be a success and the state’s case largely collapsed, resulting in the defendants getting off with the equivalent of a reprimand.

5Formed after 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan.

6There is no intent here to characterize the intentions of those in any of these tendencies. In some cases those who openly used the term “feminist” were identified with academia, adding a class dimension or complication to this situation. Some who used the term “womanist” or may not have used any specific identification, perceived “feminist” as referencing the largely white dominated women’s movement. That said, all of these tendencies were represented in the BRC and they were equally committed to advancing the BRC project. The differences among them, however, were of significance.

7This clarification is offered due to a strange criticism offered of Manning Marable’s book on Malcolm X, Malcolm X: A life of Reinvention. The criticism was offered by Abdul Alkalimat, one of the original five in the BRC, who claimed that Marable was entirely off base in suggesting that Malcolm X would have been excited by the UNWCAR. Alkalimat went on to say that Malcolm would never have been interested in any forum that was a dialogue with imperialists. It is unclear whether Alkalimat read Marable’s book too quickly or was overly anxious to criticize Marable, but in either case he blundered in this criticism. Marable was speaking about the NGO Conference that took place in Durban at the same time as the official conference. Thousands of people attended the NGO conference, representing a myriad of nations and social movements. The BRC was well represented, including but not limited to Marable, Mullings, and International workgroup coordinator Humberto Brown, International Workgroup members Jean Bond and Horace Campbell, as well as BRC coordinating committee member Ashaki Binta.

8The horrendous attacks took place as many of the delegates were returning home. In fact, some delegates had to prolong their stay in South Africa as a result of the impact of the terrorist attacks on air travel.

9A contrasting example would be networks like the Grassroots Global Justice or the Right to the City Alliance which are alliances of organizations. Individuals cannot join these alliances as individuals but must, in effect, join a participating organization.

10We are talking about relatively small organizations. There was nothing comparable to, for example, the role of the Communist Party in the 1930s in the building of the National Negro Congress.

11There is a funny anecdote here. An internal document from an organization known for sectarianism was revealed around the time of the formation of the BRC. It indicated that it did not appear as if there were great prospects for them to pick off BRC members for their own growth. The representatives of this organization disappeared in embarrassment from the ranks of the BRC. In case you are curious, it was not one of the organizations mentioned in this document.

12At the time Bill Fletcher was the president of TransAfrica Forum and a member of the BRC’s Coordinating Committee. Though TransAfrica Forum signed onto the letter to Mugabe, his role in this situation was to convey to the BRC the request on behalf of the Executive Director of Africa Action.

13Because of mis-information that was spread at the time it is critically important to be clear about the nature of the letter. The letter was criticizing the repression that President Mugabe and his supporters were conducting against his opponents in the political realm and within the social movements. The letter was NOT criticizing the land seizures, though among the signatories there were different analyses as to the ACTUAL nature of the land seizures and, specifically, who was benefiting and who was not. In the struggle that unfolded in the USA in the aftermath of the publication of the letter, many Mugabe supporters in the USA claimed that Africa Action, TransAfrica Forum and the BRC Coordinating Committee were allegedly defending the white farmers who had been expropriated. There is no factual foundation for this argument, and the sole purpose of that line of argument was to attempt to discredit any discussion as to what was actually going on in Zimbabwe at that time.

14Therefore, it would have been one thing for a leader of the BRC, offering their own opinion or the opinion of an organization in which they operated, to have voiced a view on Mugabe. But in speaking FOR the BRC, the problem that emerged quickly was that the unity was simply not there.

15For Bill this is an especially important point in that he served as the volunteer national organizer for several years yet had, during that time, a myriad of other responsibilities and political commitments, along with a day job.

Apr 04, 2013 - Issue 511

Click here for more about A. Philip Randolph

Apr 04, 2013 - Issue 511

The following are excerpts of a presentation I made at the Amnesty International USA Human Rights Conference on March 23, 2013. I spoke on a panel called “Abolishing the Death Penalty in Our Lifetime.”

It is a pleasure to be here. It is a pleasure to be here, and I want to thank Amnesty International for inviting me to join this panel.

I’m the Executive Director of Witness to Innocence. WTI was founded 10 years ago, originally as a project of Sister Helen Prejean of the book and the film Dead Man Walking. The mission of WTI is to empower exonerated death row survivors and their loved ones to become effective leaders in the movement to abolish the death penalty. WTI is the only nonprofit of exonerated death row survivors and their families. Our members spent an average of 10 years on death row for crimes other people committed. Since 1973, 142 death row prisoners in the US have been released due to innocence.

Witness to Innocence has two purposes: First, we serve as a support network for former death row prisoners, and seek justice for the wrongfully convicted, including state and federal compensation. Second, our members work with state abolition groups across the country, testify before legislatures, and speak to audiences across the nation about their experiences and the compelling issue of innocence and the death penalty. WTI and its members were involved in repeal efforts in New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Illinois, Connecticut and most recently Maryland. And we’re involved in Delaware, Colorado, Montana, Kansas, Arkansas, Alabama and other death belt states.

I’d like to provide some thoughts on how groups such as Witness to Innocence can help build the grassroots foundation necessary to win and sustain abolition.

Innocence. There are many important reasons to favor death penalty abolition. WTI categorically opposes the death penalty, and we emphasize the innocence message as a compelling reason. Innocent people were almost executed in the U.S., and innocent people such as Troy Davis, Carlos DeLuna and Cameron Todd Willingham certainly were executed. It is hard to debate a man such as WTI’s advocacy director Kirk Bloodsworth, an innocent man and a death row survivor from Maryland, about the death penalty. Just ask Stephen Colbert.

Of the audiences who have listened to a Witness to Innocence speaker, 74 percent either maintained their position against the death penalty or shifted their opinion from favoring capital punishment (or being undecided) to being against the death penalty. More importantly, 46 percent shifted their positions from being in favor of capital punishment or undecided to being against the death penalty.

Coalition building. There is strength in numbers. To ensure that we are not merely preaching to the choir, and to broaden support for our cause, we must reach out to other people and organizations with common interests.

WTI is a U.S.-based death penalty abolition organization that belongs to three coalition groups including the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, the Innocence Network (the umbrella group for all the innocence projects in the nation), and the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, which is based in Paris.

We also reach out to communities of faith, such as United Methodists, evangelicals, Catholic and Jewish groups, as well as communities of color, civil rights groups and legal organizations. In Philadelphia, where we are based, we are assembling a coalition of organizations to pressure the D.A. to issue a moratorium on seeking death penalty prosecutions.

Media. Typically WTI members speak at universities and churches, to audiences of a hundred or more at a time. But what if they are able to speak to audiences of thousands or millions at a time, such as when Kirk was in the New York Times or on the Colbert Report?

The way to permeate the public conscience and change the climate of public opinion is through media, such as press releases, op-eds, cable TV news, radio, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Put together a media strategy, publicize your campaigns and events, and increase your visibility and name recognition. View media as a part of your advocacy and activism.

Finally, make the death penalty relevant to people by framing the issue within the broader context of criminal justice and human rights. Some people don’t care about the death penalty, or not as much as the people in this room. Some are too busy with their daily lives. Change that.

Death penalty abolition groups are focused on a single issue. But that issue invokes so many others.

The death penalty is the tip of the iceberg of an unjust criminal justice system, in which America, the world’s largest jailer, throws away its perceived problems as a matter of social policy, rather than invest in people and communities, jobs and education.

The subject of innocence and wrongful convictions is tied to prosecutorial misconduct. Then there is the issue of racial justice, as people on death row are disproportionately of color, while the legal profession - including prosecutors, judges and defense lawyers - are 90 percent white. Further, the race of the victim determines a death sentence, as 80 percent of executions involved a white victim, although whites are only half of all murder victims nationwide. Meanwhile, the all-white jury is a reality, as some prosecutors illegally exclude black people from jury service. In the South the practice is widespread. White jurors are 20 percent more likely to vote for the death penalty than their black counterparts.

Capital punishment also implicates questions of economic justice, class and inequality, since many on death row are poor and could not afford justice. And the solitary confinement that death row prisoners face - locked in a prison cell for 23 hours a day, awaiting execution without human contact - is a form of torture as recognized under international human rights standards.

Our challenge is to help the public understand how the death penalty relates to all of the other pieces in the puzzle. We must demystify the death penalty and challenge the public’s assumptions, give them the facts and educate them.

BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor and Columnist, David A. Love, JD, is the Executive Director of Witness to Innocence, a national nonprofit organization that empowers exonerated death row prisoners and their family members to become effective leaders in the movement to abolish the death penalty. He is, is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. and a contributor to The Huffington Post, the Grio, The Progressive Media Project, McClatchy-Tribune News Service, In These Times and Philadelphia Independent Media Center. He also blogs at davidalove.com, NewsOne, Daily Kos, and Open Salon. Click here to contact Mr. Love.

Apr 04, 2013 -Issue 511

Another former professional athlete came out last month - 6’, 7” Jamaican-born NFL offensive tackle, Kwame Harris. With news of LGBT equality in the news daily, one may wonder why this is news at all. But it is. The world of sports is quickly becoming the last closet, where gays and lesbians hide their sexual orientation. In a homophobic, testosterone-driven sport such as American football, Harris’s concealment is understandable.

The African American community desperately needs openly LGBT public role models. We need them to come out and denounce anti-homophobic bullying, vitriol, and discrimination. Very few role models have come from the Black Church. That leaves many of us lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) brothers and sisters of African descent looking to black role models, especially males, in the areas of entertainment and sports.

But sadly, that list too is short, which is why I applaud Harris. It’s important to note that, to date, no NFL player has come out while still in the game.

NFL Players Association president, Domonique Foxworth, thinks Harris’s coming out will encourage those players in the game to follow suit, but Seahawks defensive end, Chris Clemons, queries any future gay player’s motive for doing so.

“I’m not against anyone but I think it’s [coming out] a selfish act. They just trying to make themselves bigger than the team,” Clemons told Danny O’Neil of the Seattle Times. Clemons cloaks his homophobic tirade as a gay player’s ploy to draw attention away from the team and toward himself.

“That’s one of the primary reasons no player has done it. Football players want to play football, and they generally don’t want to create a distraction for themselves or others on the team Even if teammates have no issue with a player being honest about who he is, some teammates won’t understand why the player felt compelled to grab a megaphone and let the world know private, personal information that results in a microphone eventually being stuck in all their faces,” Mike Floro posted on NBC Sports blog “Pro Football Talk.”

The only way to allow LGBTQ athletes to openly engage in their sport of choice is to purge homophobic stereotypes from its milieu. But not all sports are open to it.

Harris said one of the reasons for staying in the closet about his sexual orientation was because both his college and professional environments made it impossible to come out without derailing his career.

Harris told AP his “mind went to ‘dark places at times’ as he struggled with (his) secret identity” because “ being gay and being a professional football player in the NFL were incompatible.”

Harris knows that homophobia espoused by African American sports professionals such as Clemons is shaped by a particular type of black masculinity that no longer has to break through this country’s color barrier to represent the race and prove athletic prowess or manhood in sports.

It is now a black hyper-masculinity and urban aesthetic shaped by hip-hop culture and “video-mercials” that not only exploit women, but also unabashedly denigrate and go after lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. And they care little about its deleterious effects on all children - straight and gay.

The aggressive posturing and repudiation of LGBTQ people allows these athletes to feel safe in the locker room by maintaining the myth that all the guys gathered on their team are heterosexual, and sexual attraction among them just does not exist.

This myth allows homophobic teammates to enjoy the homo-social setting of the male locker room that creates male-bonding - and the physical and emotional intimacy that goes on among them. The homo-erotic slaps on the buttocks, hugging, and kissing on the cheek that happen on the field and locker room would be labeled gay anywhere else. LGBTQ professional athletes must constantly monitor how they are being perceived by teammates, coaches, and endorsers to avoid suspicion. They are expected to maintain a public silence so that their identity does not tarnish the rest of the team.

Whenever discrimination is the culprit for barring great athletes from competing openly, it is not only the athletes who miss out, but so, too, the world.

For example, male synchronized swimmers, unfortunately, are still barred from competing in the Olympics. A month before the London 2012 Olympic Games began, Out To Swim, Britain’s gay male synchro team, wrote a letter to the International Olympic Committee and FINA, the international federation governing body of swimming, contesting that males deserve to compete in synchronized swimming, and their discriminatory rules need to be changed in time for the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro.

I could have never imaged an openly gay professional boxer. Then I found Orlando Cruz.

Cruz is not only fierce in the ring but he is also fierce for having the courage to come out. As an old bastion of heterosexual masculinity, Cruz as well as today’s female boxers, are breaking down walls and dispelling stereotypes. While Orlando Cruz is not the only gay professional boxer in the history of the sport, he is, however, the first to make it public.

In Oct. 2012, this 31-year-old Puerto Rican featherweight was revving up to challenge Mexican boxer Jorge Pazos for the World Boxing Organization’s (WBO) Latino title. Cruz had more than a good chance at it. He won. And was the first to knock out a stereotype.

Harris is doing the same.

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.

Apr 04, 2013 - Issue 511

When Ronald Regan ran for president of the United States, he explained in some detail what his advisors had planned for the economy and his budget director from 1981-85, David Stockman didn’t have to wait 33 years to find out that the economy was going to be in deep trouble by 2013.

But Stockman, in a long opinion piece in the New York Times last week, warned that we are, in fact, in deep trouble. And, he said, it looks as if we are going to have a wicked time getting out of the hole we’re in. Even though he was Reagan’s budget man for the Great Communicator’s first term, Stockman resigned when he saw that the direction in which the country was going was going to lead nowhere, but it took him a whole term.

Although it is apparent that he still believes in capitalism, he believes that the two parties that are in control have played havoc with it and turned it into something else. (His recent book is The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America.) Whatever that something else is, the politicians in both parties have held hands while they were presiding over the demise of the economy, according to Stockman. Bailouts for banks, the auto industry, and a “stimulus” package that did not reach the people who need it are just a few of the things that he rails against. And the debt!

The government in Washington is piling on debt, Stockman wrote, referring to “a soaring debt burden on our descendants, (and that the politicians are) unable to rein in either the warfare state or the welfare state or raise the taxes needed to pay the nation’s bills.” Lest you think that he is stumping for taxing the rich, he is for sharing the burden, so he is advocating that major social programs like Social Security and Medicare be means-tested, so that only those in need receive any benefits.

His take on politics makes him sound like any other good government group out there, but even they would not make the suggestions for change that he advocates: “All this would require drastic deflation of the realm of politics and the abolition of incumbency itself, because the machinery of the state and the machinery of re-election have become conterminous. Prying them apart would entail sweeping constitutional surgery: amendments to give the president and members of Congress a single six-year term, with no re-election; providing 100 percent public financing for candidates; strictly limiting the duration of campaigns (say, to eight weeks); and prohibiting, for life, lobbying by anyone who has been on a legislative or executive payroll.”

Like so many before him, he seems to believe that there is some kind of pure capitalism that would work, if only it had not been twisted and corrupted by the marriage between business interests and government, even at a time when experts and economic philosophers are questioning whether capitalism even works any more.

Capitalism is defined by the Merriam Webster dictionary as “an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.” Maybe that’s the problem. Too often, there has been collusion in the marketplace so that the idea of competition is just that, an idea, and there is little trace of a free market for anything.

For those on the political right, capitalism may be the best way for them to pile up their wealth, so the idea of capitalism is just fine. But the definition says that capitalism is an economic system in which most things are determined by “private decision,” which becomes very dangerous when the private sector and the government, in all its manifestations, tend to combine into one entity. Some define that as fascism. We know about the revolving door between government and Corporate America, in which the bosses of corporations go through that door to occupy high positions in government, and then they leave to go back to their corporations, exerting great influence on the friends in government they have just left. We have that condition in the U.S. and the current administration is as good an example of that as any.

While it is good to hear from someone like Stockman that what the Republicans under Reagan’s presidency set out to do was poison for the country, the question is: Why did he not start speaking out at the end of Reagan’s first term? It reminds us of the mea culpa of Robert McNamara, John F. Kennedy’s and Lyndon B. Johnson’s secretary of defense, when, many years later and not long before his death, he decried what a shame it was that so much blood and capital was squandered on the Vietnam War. And that’s not to mention the destruction and death it left in Vietnam and the neighboring countries.

Here’s the problem about the condition of the American people. There is no consideration of the people in any of this. In fact, the only way (between general elections) the people can express their wishes is through opinion polls and politicians, virtually to a man or woman, reject those polls, usually by saying “we don’t govern by polls.” There was no better example of the flagrant contempt for the opinion of the people than Dick Cheney’s sneering “sooo?” when he was asked about his administration’s actions, which seemed to be directly opposed to the people, as indicated by polls at the time.

Cheney also was making certain that the company he worked for, Halliburton, which was the recipient of billions of dollars for its operations in Iraq during that misbegotten war (which continues today in one form or another), would keep its position at the top of the pile of defense and military contractors who clamor for more billions. Now, that’s a revolving door example, at the highest level. And, it becomes clearer every day that this is one reason that the U.S. is involved in never-ending war. No wonder the people are suffering and will continue to do so for a long time.

Surely, someone like Stockman, in the early months of Reagan’s first term in the White House, could and did see what direction the president’s handlers were taking the country. It’s hard to believe that he didn’t see right at the beginning today’s economic, political, social, health, and environmental morass coming.

Again, they didn’t ask the people at any time along the way. When they were asked about anything, it was usually in a political context, in which fears of the “other” were whipped up, as they usually are by demagogues, so that the people’s view of reality was skewed and they end up voting for the very candidates who support policies that are causing their families and communities to suffer.

In 1980, there were workers who were discussing the long-term effects of the policies that Ronald Reagan was espousing in his campaign for president. Those workers, just rank-and-file workers, based on what they knew of the policies, were predicting what would happen a few years, or a few decades, hence. All of their predictions have come to pass and the U.S. is facing crisis after crisis, in exactly the way they thought it would occur. If these workers could see the result of the reckless policies of both parties, why couldn’t the so-called leaders of the nation see those things? The answer is that they had their own agendas. Or, as Cheney said, when questioned why he was so quick to send American youth to die in the Middle East when he had received deferment after deferment, and never served in Vietnam or anywhere, “I had other priorities.”

Back then, about 33 years ago, untold numbers of the U.S. working class were losing their jobs, as Corporate America continued emptying the nation of its manufacturing and industrial base. It was done just because the goods could be re-imported at a much lower cost and, therefore, at a much higher profit. At the same time, over the past three decades, the assault continued on trade unions, the only institution in the country that expressed its obligation to raising up workers to a decent living standard. Because of that, unions had to be stopped, but short of that, their effectiveness had to be sabotaged. Corporate America has done its job well.

Unions are in as deep trouble as the nation, but polls show that a majority of workers would join a union if their jobs were not threatened. It’s a sorry state of affairs, when Americans are fearful of their First Amendment right of free association, because they might lose their jobs if they join a union. Or, if they even indicate an interest in joining a union. Thoroughly dangerous, those unions, because they provide a platform for opposing the powers that be and, in the economy, that is really dangerous.

Workers of 1980 could have told Stockman, Reagan, Cheney, and a host of others in both parties who have brought us to this condition that what we are suffering in 2013 was predictable, because they predicted it. In fact, unions, in every one of their publications were telling their members what Reagan’s expressed intentions would bring about, if they became policy. They laid it out, chapter and verse, but it didn’t matter.

The Great Communicator’s vision of America won out: apple pie, the flag, guts, guns, and money, and it was all done in gauzy commercials for wide television consumption. The people did buy it and we got more than a generation of “Reagan Democrats,” who pushed and supported Republican policies that, to this day, impoverish the working class and make the U.S. a pariah nation around the world. The Cheney’s of the world relish the fear that the power of the U.S. instills in most other nations.

If Stockman and others in 1980 had just asked the people who were the victims of national policies that left them bereft of the means of a livelihood, they would have known what we would be facing in 2013. But the people are never asked, not in any way that is meaningful or accurate. This did not happen to just a small portion of society, it happened to the vast majority and, if one had eyes to see, one could have seen it coming. Stockman should have been able to see it and, had he been honest, he would not have lasted the first year of the Reagan Administration, let alone the entire first term.

The vast disparity in wealth in this country, a disparity that is bringing down the great world power, is the whirlwind that we reap, having sown economic, social, and political inequality and the idea that profit for the few was a greater good. The one or two percent at the top got their wish…they are filthy rich…and the people are just now beginning to wake up to the reality of the past three decades. The vast majority needs to wake up from its slumber, organize and turn things around before we find that it’s too late.

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

Apr 04, 2013 - Issue 511

How do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned against us? The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.

- Okonkwo, protagonist, Things Fall Apart

He was writing a book, the newest District Commissioner of the village, Umoufia, Reverend Mr. James Smith, who succeeded the now deceased Mr. Brown in the great project to establish civilization in Africa.

Brown’s death could not have been more timely, considering civilization project could not wait forever. Brown’s method was one of “compromising and accommodating” the ignorant. He had studied the religion of the Umoufia clan (Ibo) and concluded it was best not to wage a “frontal attack” as the messenger before him had done, going so far as to informing the natives that their traditional gods were “false gods, gods of wood and stone.”

All the gods you have named are not gods at all. They are gods of deceit who tell you to kill your fellows and destroy innocent children. There is only one true God and He has the earth, the sky, you and me and all of us.

They are gods of deceit who tell you to kill your fellows and destroy innocent children.

Brown’s method of operation was different: he “built a school and a little hospital in Umoufia. He went from family to family begging people to send their children to his school.”

Brown was a humble man, a liberal of sorts.

The villagers came around to his method; they wanted to learn. They came to the church and to the school, but there was some rumbling and even more rumbling among the elders when, to their surprise, “new churches were established in the surrounding villages and a few schools with them.” The messengers of the new god appeared “in the market place,” and the Native Court was surrounded by “strangers” who spoke the District Commissioner’s “tongue.” Now there was the law to be obeyed.

It was peculiar to the elders and others to discover that the head of the church “is in England” where a queen sits, their queen now, and her messenger is the District Commissioner. England, the queen, the District Commissioner’s administration - all have great things to offer the village, if the villages, all of the villagers, including the elders and the priestess, cooperate and assist in the necessary changes that must take place.

“From the very beginning,” Brown concluded, “religion and education went hand in hand.”

Life in Umoufia followed traditions. There was the sacrifice of an “innocent” child as settlement after conflict with a neighboring clan. The elders set the terms, but the younger men who had to carry out the sacrifice did so not without trepidation. It was a hierarchical society that rewarded the brave and fearless warrior, but only a few acted without reflecting on the value to the clan of their deeds.

Traditional ceremonies placed men in authority. “There were many women, but they looked on from the fringe like outsiders,” but the village’s Oracle was Agbala (a woman) and its priestess, Chialo, was the “only living being who ever beheld Agbala.” It was Chialo, too, who, when the “strangers” came, waged her own battle against them, calling the converts to the new god and church “the excrement of the clan.” But now Chialo was denounced and women were to be seen but never heard. The District Commissioner’s administration acknowledged the power of a supreme male god and men to decide the fate of the civilization project in Umoufia.

Individual self-reflection and communal discussions had left room for evolution.

Young adults, as most young adults in any community, questioned the wisdom and lessons of their parents and elders. Most were generally torn between the stories told to them by their mothers, stories of “the tortoise and his wily ways, and of the bird eneke-nti-oba who challenged the whole world to a wrestling contest and was finally thrown by the cat,” and stories told to them by fathers and village elders. “Masculine and violent” stories. Even if a young man preferred the stories of his mother, he was reminded that such stories “were for foolish women and children.” Now, most young, particularly young men, did not hesitate. Many flocked to the new churches and schools.

For a man like Rev. Smith, however, all this confusion and chaos was too volatile. Still too many of the ignorant natives were thinking, opting out of cooperating. Uniformity, and quick! The world was black and white – “and black was evil!”

It was a “battlefield” and “the children were locked in mortal conflict with the sons of darkness.” In his sermons, Rev. Smith “spoke...about sheep and goats and about wheat and tares. He believed in slaying the prophets of Baal.” For all Brown’s efforts, Smith saw an ignorant village, ignorant of “the Trinity and the sacraments.” There was work to be done, and Rev. Smith, “filled with wrath,” set out to display “demonstrations of power. In one dramatic moment, he ordered the unmasking of “an eqwuqwu” in public! Naturally, this scene of power horrified the villagers.

Under Smith, the men of the District Commissioner’s administration “did not carry guns,” for such a display was “too unseemly,” and when he spoke to the village leaders of a “just” court “where we judge cases and administer justice...under a great queen,” he made the leaders understand that this “peaceful administration” is a gift to make them “happy.” But the leaders had to agree to “cooperate.”

Many decided to cooperate; others refused. Among them was the protagonist, Okonkwo, who with a small group of men, decided to take action, to pick up arms and fight. But as always, there was discussion:

If we hit the “strangers,” we will “hit our brothers and perhaps shed the blood of a clansman.”

In the end, the group decided action was necessary.

“Our fathers never dreamed of such a thing. They never killed their brothers. But a white man never came to them.”

While the men were discussing, a messenger arrived and ordered them to stop the meeting. Okonkwo “drew his machete.”

Okonkwo stood looking at the dead man. He knew that Umoufia would not go to war. He knew because they had let the other messenger escape. They had broken into tumult instead of action. He discerned fright in that tumult. He heard voices asking: ‘Why did he do it?’

He wiped his machete on the sand and went away.

When Okonkwo was last seen, his body was dangling from a tree. He hanged himself.

So ends Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, except for this:

“In the book which he planned to write,” District Commissioner Rev. Smith reminded himself not to include the “undignified details” such as “cutting a hanged man from the tree.” He would not want the “natives” to hold a “poor” opinion of him. He realized that everyday, he was gathering more and more material for his book, and he was happy.

However,

the story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate.

There were more important matters to include in the book. “One must be firm in cutting out details.” And “after much after thought,” he was proud of the title of his book: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.

On March 22, 2013, the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe died.

It is no accident that Achebe’ s Things Fall Apart, published in 1958, ends with the beginning of a new book, written not by a village member, but by the District Commissioner, privileging the interests and goals of Western imperialism. His narrative offers a history of the Umoufia that will imprint in the minds of white readers images of an ignorant people freed from their own tyranny. The interests and goals of the “messengers,” themselves agents of the Almighty - and the queen, legitimizes the use of violence, physical, yes, and that violence of Western religion and education which stipulates submission to and the consumption of a white-centered mindset.

It has been over 10 years since I taught Things Fall Apart. It had become one of those continuous texts in college classrooms because students preferred to focus on the sacrifice of the young boy as an example of violence - African violence. In the meantime, the violence of conquest, civilizing the ignorant, forcefully removing historical and cultural memory and privileging the history, culture, goals, and lives of the invaders, is what had to happen, yes. Did not the Africans benefit from “our” knowledge of the world?

How do professors, white and Black, teach a text like Things Fall Apart? I should re-phrase the question, on which parts of the book do whites focus? The sacrifice, the violence, or the “fringe” “outsider” position of “African” women? From what perspective are Black professors allowed to teach when and if this book is on their syllabus? Would these teachers direct students to consider the U.S.’s messengers who ran covert operations in Latin America and supported murderous, undemocratic regimes or consider those most recent U.S. messengers, who heard the calling of a divine voice, telling them to invade Iraq? What about our current president who continues the drone targeting of communities where innocent children reside or who reviews “kill lists” because U.S. interests and goals supersede the interests and goals of the people and anyone who dares to resist?

Another question I have is this: could Achebe have located a publisher for Things Fall Apart today when the on-going conquest of hearts and minds continues? Today, capitalism’s messengers (not all are death squad trainers, torturers, CIA agents, drone operators but are even more effect) scourer the world in search of those Black, Red, Brown, and Yellow writers in “former” colonies, “former” enslaved “former” genocide survivors in the West, with the “by the grace of god” story to tell of childhood in a slum city or surviving sexual abuse - familial sexual abuse. Marketable stories. Successful stories. White- and imperialist-centered stories and films approved by those in control of the economy that causally teach what we can imagine Rev. Smith’s book taught his readers.

In 1958, Things Fall Apart challenged books and films like the one Rev. Smith was writing by revealing and strongly condemning the violence of the West. Few writers of color today would dare follow Achebe’s example.

After all, the civilization project is still about making people happy! Ask Goebbels.

Manythanks to you, Achebe!

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.

Apr 04, 2013 - Issue 511

“The colonists usually say that it was they who brought us into history: today we show that this is not so. They made us leave history, our history, to follow them, right at the back, to follow the progress of their history.”
- Amilcar Cabral

“Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.”

- Frantz Fanon

In this year of 2013, it remains abundantly clear that the stories [i.e. the narrative] pertaining to the victories and intense past and present struggles of everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people continue to be distorted, disfigured, and/or outright omitted by the national and global power elite – who are intent upon ramming their historical and contemporary narrative down out throats.

It is not only the corporate-stream media that engages in this disfiguring of the everyday people's history at the behest of the power elite; but it is also the vast majority of systemically adorned writers, academicians, and so-called scholars who act as the de facto thought-police on behalf of the corporate/military U.S. and global power elite. Under the guise of supposed objectivity and scholarship these systemic gatekeepers gloss over or omit entirely the narrative of everyday ordinary people. Moreover, even in the relatively rare instances that the important achievements of grassroots/radical organizations are mentioned, it is the leaders of such organizations that are highlighted rather than the the hard work and sacrifices of and by the rank and file membership of such organizations. This represents yet another form of a top-down narrative of history which subtlety reinforces to everyday people both elitism and the fallacious notion that if it were not for the highlighted leaders they/we are (or would be) essentially powerless and/or inconsequential. Such a narrative is of course the exact opposite of reality and demonstrates that many writers, academicians, and alleged scholars replace genuine scholarship with elitism and systemic pretentiousness.

Two notable and refreshing exceptions to the above-described narrative can be found in the excellent and unpretentious books, A People's History Of The United States, by Howard Zinn, and Body And Soul -The Black Panther Party And The Fight Against Medical Discrimination, by Alondra Nelson. These, and far too few similar such works, represent a people's narrative and emphasize and highlight the achievements of everyday ordinary people in the historical and ongoing political struggle for justice and real systemic change.

In the words of the late people's revolutionary Amilcar Cabral, we must not “leave history, our history.” And we must certainly never leave our historical narrative to the interpretation of the systemic gatekeepers of the power elite. We must collectively tell our own stories in the plain, simple, and powerful language of the everyday ordinary people of whom we are a part.

Our everyday people's history is of little practical value if it is not known and applied to today's 21st century people's struggles nationally and throughout our precious Mother Earth. There is a war on against ordinary people by the national and global power elite. This war is a political, economic, military, and most definitely psychological one against we the people. It is a war designed to crush our fighting spirit and our very collective humanity. It is a war whose “rot” must be, in the words of Frantz Fanon, “detect[ed] and remove[d] from...our minds as well.”

We must reject the colonization of our minds. Rather, we must embrace our own stories – our own collective narratives – and utterly dismiss the “rot” of stifling, debilitating, and inaccurate top-down narratives of and by the power elite and their many systemic minions.

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.

Apr 4, 2013 -Issue 511

Click here to view the animation

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

Click here to contact Mark

Apr 04, 2013 - Issue 511

Because Alexander Hamilton is the architect of our miserable, oppressive financial system, I hold significant animosity towards him. I abhor this founder of our nation! My animosity for him is equal to my dislike of Thomas Jefferson and the other founders who were slave holders even though Hamilton opposed slavery. They all left a trail of writings and actions that I find reprehensible. As a conscious black citizen of the US – unlike some conservatives – I have no difficulty making a carefully reasoned assessment of these founders and speaking out about that boldly and loudly. I refuse to be blinded or silenced by – so-called – patriotic mythology. But I seek to also overcome my abhorrence.

My abhorrence is tempered by my understanding that there are no alternatives to “going from what you know.” We make choices based on the totality of our awareness. Western culture fails us as it failed Alexander Hamilton in that it does not place enough emphasis on the long term consequences of our immediate decisions and behaviors. There is little that is comparable in Western culture to that emphasis in the indigenous First Nations’ cultural on what is called Seven Generations awareness: the inclusion of a consideration of the consequences of what we do today on “seven generations” in the future.

A closer examination of Hamilton’s “leavings” does reveal unwise individual-human shortsightedness. Such an examination also totally destroys the conservative’s wont to make him and at least five other of the “major founders” exceptional men. This founder mythology can be discarded. That is a good thing. Discarding it is good not just because it brings us closer to the truth but also because it allows a winnowing of what deserves to be conserved as opposed to what needs to be understood and uprooted. However, the supreme goodness of this analytical approach derives from the example that it offers us. It forces us to reflect with a certain amount of empathy and it goads us to view ourselves and our contemporary leaders and heroes as – what they are – human beings. We all can consciously and thoroughly extend our ability to “go from what we know” and to NOT just let others, who are as flawed as we, lead us in to ignominy.

Every white, black, and yellow person on this land is an immigrant or the descendent of immigrants. Too much has been made, for too long a time, of the distinction between those who happen to be birthed on this land from those who walk across the border – whether in chains, whether by other means forced, or whether by free choice. Hamilton suffered from that distinction. He was one of the eight immigrants (folks not born in the Colonies) who attended the 1787 Constitutional Convention. In the book, The Founders and Finance: How Hamilton, Gallatin, and Other Immigrants Forged a New Economy, it posits that in large part Hamilton’s immigrant status influenced the decisions he made. The author, Thomas K. McCraw, writes with an element of appreciation – which I do not share. I do share the author’s developmental character assessment of the importance of immigrant status to Hamilton.

“To this day, no one knows with complete assurance when or where he [Alexander Hamilton] was born, or even who his father was.” It is believed that he was born on the Caribbean Island of Nevis, near St. Croix. “At that time, Nevis contained about 1,000 whites and…8,000 enslaved blacks.” Alexander got the family name of a “ne’er-do-well” that his mother lived with after she abandoned her husband and an earlier child. Subsequently Hamilton Sr. abandoned Alexander and his mother. Rachel Faucett, Alexander’s mother, spent two months “imprisoned in a dank fortress” for the crime of adultery. None of the men she spent time with were punished. After her release she opened a small store in the port city of Christiansted, St. Croix, where she and Alexander worked and lived. It was where Alexander learned rudimentary lessons about business and finance. When he was nine, his mother died of yellow-fever. Hamilton had demonstrated such a facility with numbers that he had impressed his mother’s friends. He went on to work at a New York-based merchant trading house there in the Caribbean.

At fifteen this white youth got the opportunity to seek his fortune in New Jersey and to study at a Presbyterian school to complete his education. [Up until the late 1800s when Congress wanted to keep free people-of-color out, the Colonies’ borders and later the U.S. borders were completely open.] In 1773 Alexander was admitted to King’s College which is now Columbia University. “The Boston Tea Party occurred during his first academic year at King’s College…” Hamilton’s background disposed him to seek legitimacy, respect, and inclusion. His male youthfulness and penchant for numbers propelled him into the gathering storm of the War of Independence which was principally caused by differences over taxes, trading regulations, and the economic power of the wealthy.

He made his “political bones” on a pamphlet he wrote at this time that attempted to make the argument that the Colonies could be economically self-sufficient. “This assertion was at best debatable, but the essay was an impressive debut for someone so young.” Hamilton went on to become one of General George Washington’s aide-de-camps. He distinguished himself in terms of his accounting and organizing skills to the extent that Washington refused Hamilton’s frequent requests to be given command fighting assignments. The mutual appreciation that developed between them became critical later when President Washington declined the request of Thomas Jefferson and others to veto Hamilton’s Bank of the United States bill.

Conservatives who uncritically swallow the mythology about the major founders might be surprised about some of the stances that Alexander Hamilton took. In some of his early writings in The Continentalist Hamilton was in “conscious opposition to the laissez-faire prescriptions contained in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.” Hamilton is quoted as having said that “A national debt if it is not excessive will be to us a national blessing; it will be a powerful cement of our union.” He was the friend of U.S. resident “loyalists” who were against total independence and who constantly hoped that the War would come to a negotiated end and the Colonies would remain the possession of Britain. At the Constitutional Convention Hamilton said “that the British government was the best in the world; and that he doubted much whether anything short of it would do in America.” Like too many of us in the struggle are, Hamilton admired and was jealous of the power of imperialists.

Hamilton was “going from what he knew” and from his ego needs and hunger for social status. From an early age he had been given desperately needed attention and appreciation for his facility with numbers. [He was the oppositional Paul Ryan of his day.]This channeled him to study every economic philosophy, business, and accounting text that he could get his hands on. These were texts that expounded economic imperialism. Additional appreciation of his learning and skills followed which propelled him into the elite circles of the revolutionary colonists at the age when young men seem to have the most need for external respect.

Hamilton, being a border crosser, had less attachment to any particular Colony or land than did Jefferson or the majority of the revolutionary leaders of the time. Jefferson and others were agriculturalist (albeit based on slave labor) who rejected national centralized power; Hamilton’s experiences were at urban port communities and enterprises that had ocean-spanning connections and high dependencies for “success” on the manipulation of far flung nations and communities. Alexander’s allegiance was more to the formation of a “powerful” nation (a concept) than it was to the land or to a more definable set of people.

He was allied with those who wanted to create a powerful central government. He was concerned with maintaining or reestablishing the basic colonial economic structure that was dependent on international trade, the new technologies of the industrial revolution, and the extraction of resources from local communities. His concept of national self-sufficiency was to break away from the British so-that the United States could be like Britain. [This is the natural dream of most juveniles: how can I be a daddy too.] What Hamilton knew was a Britain which had emerged out of and which was still encrusted with the culture, institutions, and understandings of feudal monarchy. Alexander Hamilton set about recreating the British national model with marginal differences but still “shot through” with much that we are told the Colonists rebelled against: militarism, imperialism, and the lack of true democracy beyond the elites. Alexander Hamilton’s creative horizon was limited.

The imperialism of the financial system that Hamilton initiated is oppressing us today. Our national government began heavily burdened with the unpaid costs of war and massive debt owed to distant governments; after more than two hundred years we still suffer from that insanity. Our national prosperity is not built on the abilities and industriousness of local farmers, merchants, and crafts-persons serving a local market as Jefferson envisioned but on the basically colonial-based economics of exports and imports that enrich a few elites and that are unsustainable. Like too many public agencies in the US, Oakland is also caught in interest rate swap deals or other extractive debt-based mechanisms that suck millions of desperately needed dollars annually out of the community with absolutely no benefit: we need a national-Anti-Goldman-Sachs Tea Party. Stockton California is only the latest city going bankrupt due to the “fractional reserve,” central-bank, monetized-debt currency systems that Hamilton craftily initiated. Detroit and too many mostly black communities across the country are being oppressed and democratically suppressed in obeisance to the centralized bankers and the debt financing of militarism. They are being saddled with colonial viceroys to make sure that the financial elites get their “pound of flesh.”

Even though I abhor him, I explore and attempt to understand the life and decisions of Alexander Hamilton and the other founders of this nation but I reject the conservatives mythologizing of them. Neither do I consider him less than human which is the mistake of reverse-mythologizing. [Buddhist culture is clear about the dangers of being entangled in reactive revulsions as no better than the entanglements in unmitigated attractions. Both lower the creative horizon and keep the focus on limitations.] Most importantly, I will submit myself, my colleagues, and contemporary leaders to a similar cultural and social psychological analysis to better understand and correct the negative impacts that our current day actions and decisions will have on future generations. By not conserving all of Alexander Hamilton’s limitations as if they are fundamental, my creative horizon will be raised.

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

Apr 04, 2013 - Issue 511

A picture, but especially this Kodak Moment is worth thousands-upon-thousands of words, yet the two words I think of are... “Black Power.”

Forgive me... by no means am I suggesting Black folks have “overcome,” nor am I saying we, as a people, have been to the “mountaintop.” What I am offering up for cocktail conversation is this; the highly exalted position of US President, for even a once but no longer United States of America, and the position of “NFL Quarterback” are two of the most prominent positions within American society and culture.

With these two men come a couple of other aspects of Black influence and clout... a Nubian beauty as “First Lady” - as a representative and standard-bearer of American femininity – as opposed to the traditional Snow White.

As well as the most popular gridiron gladiator in all the land, the Golden Boy, the Field General/Signal Caller boys want to be, and little Black... and White girls want marry, has the nerve to defy the “purists” on both sides of the racial spectrum and exercise his option to take himself a White woman and the greater White society may not like it... but they have to tolerate it.

They hanged Black men for that, in my lifetime...

Times have changed in America. This isn’t my ol’ man’s US of A.

Granted these “changes/advancements” I’m citing can clearly be categorized as mere “window dressing.” If you look beyond President Obama and Washington Redskins franchise Quarterback, Robert Griffin III... we all know Black men are damn near becoming, between self-destruction and societal persecution, an endangered species.

Nonetheless, the singular accomplishments of these two men are something which was, let us say, debatable at best, and realistically doubtful in the eyes of millions a quarter-century ago at the height of Reagan’s 2nd term, which began in 1985. If one considers the racism, the White backlash, that propelled the Ronnie “666” Ray-Gun Revolution, it seemed improbable White America would ever pull the lever for a Black person.

But I don’t believe the story here is “progress.”

No, instead I’ve concluded most Black folks and other Americans-of-Color have no idea how a snapshot of these two men together sends chills up n’ down the spines of Republican TEA Party card-carriers.

Black Power...

That’s what “conservatives” see, “Black Power.”

This photo will motivate scores of people, hundreds if not thousands of nervous, scared, paranoid people who populate the “Right” to go out and purchase a gun...

Because the sky is falling and Niggers are coming.

It seems most of my somewhat simple-minded Black peers are so busy gloating over how we’ve “overcome” with the reelection of Obama, it seems we can’t see, nor care to give a damn about the growing “White backlash” we see rippling through US society. We’re so excited we won, we don’t see the “next move” coming. And there is a “next move;” the opposition will not go quietly into the night or the annals of US history.

We’re like a back-alley checker player in a multi-tier chess game.

The sight of Black Power is unsettling and unnerving for most of White America. Why? I’d think it had something to do with how this empire was created, constructed and maintained - by any horrific means deemed necessary - as a society we’re ok building more for-profit prisons then pre-schools.

Look at South Africa: with Mandela unfortunately nearing the inevitable-end, there’s a fear amongst White South Africans (oxymoron) the Blacks will lose their moral compass, understand the numerical Black Power they represent, turn on the Godfather, James Brown’s classic 1972 Black anthem, ”Payback,” and commence to extracting revenge for centuries of Apartheid.

That same fear is preset in the US.

Please, please, please, don’t delude yourself; all those bullets being sold at gun shows aren’t for Bambi and Yogi, but for your brothers-in-law Ray Ray, LaJermaine and LaMichael...

The gun debate in America is driven, by not the desire to hunt or target practice, but by the fear White folks harbor inside. One day, perhaps soon, Americans-of-Color will “unite,” go after our “common oppressor” and seek retribution for everything from the unemployment numbers to police brutality to the erection of an alligator infested moat along the Southern US Border to just the day-to-day incivility and condescending attitudes we encounter in our daily black, brown, red and yellow lives.

So, when a picture of the President of the free world, Barack Obama, is broadcast worldwide via the World Wide Web and standing with him is RGIII, the new “face” of America’s national Pastime, it says to millions of White folks across a racially divided and polarized nation... the sky is falling, the Niggers are coming.

I know you want me to dress that word up, find a better way to make my point, but I don’t believe there is a better way to verbally illustrate the real, true feelings of angry White men than to use the terms they throw around in the cabs of their trucks, at the bowling alley, at church, in the hot tub with friends.

The picture of President Obama with Tiger Woods a few weeks back, those two Black men, in a country club setting, “slappin’ whitey around” (golfing) was without argument a representation of “Black Power.” One which ignited a blue flame under the asses of Rand Paul, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity’s rank n’ file Redneck followers. It signals an end to a lengthy era in US history where White men had all facets of life “fixed.”

Especially the Good Life...

President, pro-quarterback, a policeman or school principal... White men had it “rigged” so only they, White men, could attain any of these alpha positions within American life. “Colored” and” White” signs have remained atop these categories despite laws and rules being changed.

Invisible is all they’ve become.

But what is visible are the tell-tale signs of Black Power. How many little Black boys and girls are going to decide they, too, can be President or can knock down country club doors if they put their minds to it?

This picture of Black Power emboldens, inspires, encourages and motivates people to go a little higher in life, and that’s what I want to see: we, as a people, going a little higher in life.

Can I take you higher?!

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Desi Cortez, was hatched in the heart of Dixie, circa 1961, at the dawning of the age of Aquarius, the by-product of four dynamic individuals, Raised in South-Central LA, the 213, at age 14 transplanted to the base of the Rockies, Denver. Still a Mile-Hi. Sat at the feet of scholars for many, many moons, emerging with a desire and direction… if not a sheep-skin. "Meandered thru life; gone a-lot places, done a-lot of things, raised a man-cub into a good, strong man, produced a beautiful baby-girl with my lover/woman/soul-mate… aired my mind on the airwaves and wrote some stuff along the way." Click here to contact Mr. Cortez.

Apr 04, 2013 - Issue 511

No other city practices the upkeep and maintenance of White Supremacy in all it’s intricacies more than New York City. Today, Steven A. Pagones runs a private investigation firm. He needs to investigate himself.

In the northeast it’s not the racist perpetrator that’s the problem as much as their supporters who hold on to their ridiculous beliefs. These are the regular “normal” blue-collar whites who suddenly fill in the holes of these unholy incidents. The height of racism is being racist and having a disclaimer.

They still want us to believe that a 15-year-old black female honor student concocted a “hoax.” We were specifically instructed, if you recall, that it’s entirely possible for a black woman to rape, beat, scrawl racial epithets, and smear dog feces on herself, stuff herself in a plastic bag and leave herself for dead. Extreme measures, we were told, to make up an alibi for coming home from a party to avoid the wrath of her strict Stepfather.

New York City wishes all black females raped by white men to be hoaxes of convenience to keep their white selves and their records clean, so they can avoid placing value on black skin and continue attending sporting events and pizza and sub shops in peace. New York City chooses to ignore the statements of the Executive Director of the ambulance service who said Brawley did not respond to three tests to help her regain consciousness, 1-verbal and shaking, 2-painful stimuli i.e. pinching the skin, 3-opening an ammonia capsule and running it underneath the nose. Yes that’s right, most of Pagones’ fans are pizza-and-beer-guzzling paramedics. So when the same ambulance service stated that on a scale of 1-to-4 relative to death, Brawley was a two and a half, white New Yorkers and their few black supporters knew better.

On the question of alleged co-rapist police officer Harry Crist, some consider his death to be unrelated to Tawana. In fact, a grand jury ruled his death a “suicide” (Brawley’s attorney, Alton Maddox, says she identified Crist after he was dead), and just a coincidence that it came a day after she made another statement to the police on 11/30/87. Her legal team strongly suspected homicide. “If we had thought that Tawana was lying, we would have taken her to the woodshed and whipped the daylights out of her,” said Maddox. Strangely enough, big media opts not to examine his death as closely as other aspects of the case. This is a miracle considering the tabloid-supermarket-style of the Times and Post.

Grand jury rulings - except for their direct legal affect on the case - are really neither here nor there. A grand jury can tell you it’s Tuesday on a Saturday and all you need do is count the number of people who’ll believe them. Brawley (Now a LPN living in Virginia and according to the NY Post going by the name Gutierrez) seems to have been done-in by a Judge who handed down a default ruling without serving a summons or complaint. It’s not the first time they went after her financially, but this time they stand to garnish her for a 4th of her income pretty much for life. Rapists wanted, willing to do BFs only. Top pay.

Steven Pagones is enjoying his time on the white horse of criminal immunity in a city where racism wins often enough to make the old south jealous... It’s no coincidence he refused to talk to the FBI or take a polygraph from them. A charge of a rape kit being stolen from a hospital by an arson investigator said to be known to Pagones, should be looked into also. If you are really interested in the truth then understand the real relationship and circumstances between Pagones and Crist. It would behoove you to watch “The Real Story of Tawana Brawley” and listen to the results of autopsy and pathologists and not talk-radio and racist cheerleaders. Two attorneys no longer practice law as a result of this, so finding out as many facts as you can is imperative. The biggest message this sends is, how hard and vigorous can any black lawyer defend a black defendant against a white perpetrator or accuser? In a city as extreme as New York, there doesn’t seem to be much room for that (not that this should discourage you - truth is priceless). There seems to be some animus towards Maddox because he went to the mat for a lot of black defendants pro bono. It behooves black attorneys to be policy-breakers that same way a black cop has to be.

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.

Apr 04, 2013 - Issue 511

DREAMS & NIGHTMARES

Silent tears

Stifled sobs

Eyes tightly shut

Refusing to see

and remember

what the night looks like

A hand covering the mouth

The scream unheard

The body folded like fetus

Until the break of dawn

She has to wake up and rise

To begin her day

No matter what

Water running down her body

She needs to wash away last night’s pain

That left no visible cuts and fractured bones

Except the broken pieces inside of her

No bruises, no blood

just an ugly scar in her soul

and the crushed spirit

from angry words and lost hopes

To make it through the night

She dreamed of childhood joys

and her father’s strength

and her mother’s patience

She clings to the memories

Of her grandmother’s song

And her grandfather’s wisdom

She let them stay as long as they can

So she would not lose her mind

And the memories

She goes to work and smiles sweetly

Hides the pain of broken-ness

Nobody knew what she goes through

When nights have cruel shadows

And creeping demons

They call her pretty and smart

She smiles and say thank you

The ugliness of the night forgotten

Until it is time to go to bed

(All Rights Reserved Pitsik Dominado March 30, 2013)

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Margaret Rose Dominado is a nurse from the Philippines withthree decades of professional experience in public health and nursingeducation. Earned her Master of Science in Nursing (M.S.N.) degree fromthe University of Phoenix with a membership to the Honor Society ofNursing-Sigma Theta Tau International. Actively involved with Katarungan - International Center for Peace, Justice and Human Rights in the Philippines based in Washington, D.C. Click here to contact Ms. Dominado.

Apr 04, 2013 - Issue 511

On April 6, 1982, the worldwide Black Liberation Movement lost one of its most important freedom fighters. Dr. Bobby E. Wright died on this day at Rush Presbyterian Hospital after a long illness, at the age of forty-eight.

During the mid 1960s, Dr. Wright worked as a truant officer in the Chicago Public School system. Most of the Black teachers in the Chicago public schools, prior to 1970, were hired in the category called FTBS (Full Time Basil Substitute). Very few Black teachers were hired on a regularly certified basis due to the racism in the hiring practices of the Chicago Board of Education.

Dr. Wright organized and led a group called the Black Teachers Caucus which challenged this racist policy. They mobilized thousands of Black teachers to take a stand against the board’s racist hiring and promotional policies. Eventually the Chicago Board of Education was forced to change their hiring policies because of the movement led by Dr. Wright and the Black Teachers Caucus.

Dr. Wright was a fearless champion of the causes of Black people worldwide. He was a genuine uncompromising freedom fighter who took up the most unpopular issues which affected Black people. As a trained clinical psychologist, receiving a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1972, he went on to become the executive director of the Garfield Park Comprehensive Mental Health Center on Chicago’s West Side. This is the largest Black mental health facility of its kind in the nation and has now been renamed the Bobby E. Wright Comprehensive Community Mental Health Center, Incorporated.

Dr. Wright always used his skills and expertise to help Black people. He was a tireless worker in the cause of Black liberation and independence. Dr. Wright was a scholar, teacher, lecturer, organizer, writer, and computer expert, always giving and sharing with his community. Perhaps the most important of Dr. Wright’s written works is his article, “The Psychopathic Racial Personality,” written in the fall issue of the Black Books Bulletin in 1974.

Among his many professional, civic associations, movements, activities and memberships were the Association of Black Psychologists, National Alliance of Black School Educators, Communiversity, National Black United Front (NBUF), Temple of the African Community of Chicago (TACC) and the Political Action Conference of Illinois. Dr. Wright also served on the Science and Technology commission of the Sixth Pan African Conference in Tanzania in 1974.

The spirit and memory of Dr. Bobby E. Wright lives on. Although he did not physically participate in the successful election of Chicago’s first Black mayor, he helped lay the foundation for this historic event through his many political activities.

If Bobby were here today, he would be helping us in rebuilding unity in the Black Movement to address the major challenges facing African people in this country and worldwide. He would be urging all the streams of our movement to unite.

And here in Chicago, he would be encouraging the Black community to come together to resist the imposition of outside forces of people who are making decisions about school closings and don’t have children in inner city schools. The onslaught of school closings will have a devastating impact on the Black community in Chicago.

On a special note, Bobby would be raising questions of the numerous schools we fought to be named in honor of Black heroes that are on the school closing list. Bobby Wright, if he were here, would be urging us to revive and re-energize our movement.

As Bobby always said, “A Luta Continua Lasima Tushinde Mblishaka - The struggle will continue and we shall conquer without a doubt.”

[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 the National Chairman Emeritus of the National Black United Front (NBUF). Click here to contact Dr. Worrill.

Apr 04, 2013 - Issue 511

Ray Ferrer ~ Urban Wall Art & Murals

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

Artist Statement: 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 consultant and business strategist for many years. I've traded it all in for a paint can and love what I do. I make very unique and custom artwork for people and businesses all around the world by hand cutting stencils and painting them onto canvas and onto large walls. I travel 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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