Table of Contents

There are 20 chapters in this issue

About BlackCommentator.com

Cover Story: She’s No Terrorist - The Bizarre Move By The FBI Against Assata Shakur - The African World By Bill Fletcher, Jr., BC Editorial Board

Terrorism Experts - BC Political Cartoon By Chuck Siler

God’s Judgment of White America (The Chickens Come Home to Roost) Malcolm X speech of December 4, 1963

The Dangerous Ghetto Hustler - Sharp n’ Blunt By Desi Cortez, BC Columnist

Assata Shakur’s Shining Light - Represent Our Resistance By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD, BC Editorial Board

Bush's Legacy - Political Cartoon By Eric Garcia, Chicago IL

Austerity Has Lost All Credibility & Threatens Social Upheaval - Left Margin - By Carl Bloice - BC Editorial Board

The Economic Terrors in Our Lives By Margaret Rose Dominado, BC Guest Commentator

Theodore W. Allen’s The Invention of the White Race - Analysis By Dr. Jeffrey B. Perry, PhD, BC Guest Commentator

It's Time To Declare A General Amnesty for All Political Prisoners - Keeping it Real By Larry Pinkney, BC Editorial Board

"Sequesterless Airlines" - Animated Political Cartoon By Mark Fiore, San Francisco CA

U.S. “Paper of Record” Strikes A Blow Against Black Farmers - Solidarity America - By John Funiciello - BC Columnist

Meme Dimensional Confusion in a Black World - Nafsi ya Jamii - By Wilson Riles - BC Columnist

Anti-Keynesian Homophobe, Niall Ferguson – Inclusion - By The Reverend Irene Monroe - BC Editorial Board

Israel’s Role in Syria’s War - Political Cartoon By Carlos Latuff, Rio de Janeiro Brazil

Quit the Post-Racial Talk - The Other Side of the Tracks - By Perry Redd - BC Columnist

African Liberation Day, 2013: Part I - Worrill’s World - By Dr. Conrad W. Worrill, PhD - BC Columnist

Quote to Ponder: "Arms control is by definition a rejection of disarmament." - David T. Dellinger

A Moment In The Dance - Art By Margaret Warfield, Atlanta GA

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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.

May 09, 2013 - Issue 516

Seemingly out of nowhere the FBI announced that fugitive Black activist Assata Shakur was now declared a “terrorist” on their Most Wanted list. In addition, a bounty for her capture was raised from $1 million to $2 million. There are several questions that immediately arise but the most important is perhaps this: why now?
Assata Shakur, known earlier as Joanne Chesimard, was a leading member of the Black Panther Party.

Following the split in the Panthers in 1971 she became involved with the Black Liberation Army, an organization that saw itself as the military wing of the Black Freedom Movement. In 1973 Assata Shakur was in a car that was stopped by the police on the New Jersey Turnpike. A shootout took place during which she was wounded, a comrade of hers was killed along with a police officer. After several very controversial trials covering various allegations against her, Assata was ultimately convicted of murder and assault in connection with the Turnpike shootout, despite evidence of her innocence. In 1979 she escaped prison and fled to Cuba where she was granted political asylum. She has lived there ever since.

Assata Shakur has lived in relative silence, only periodically offering interviews. The Black Liberation Army was crushed, and in either case never engaged in military attacks on civilians. The Cuban government saw in Assata’s case that of an individual who was politically persecuted by the United States government and, therefore, concluded that she had a legitimate right to remain in Cuba and not be forced to return to prison.

Terrorism?

Independent of any organization in the USA and living in a country that has been victimized by terrorist acts by US-supported Cuban exile groups, Assata Shakur has been the ‘poster child’ for segments of the political Right in the USA, including but not limited to those in the Cuban exile community. Elements of the law enforcement community as well as those who wish to freeze any discussion of normalized relations between the USA and Cuba have periodically seized upon the image of Assata Shakur in order to suggest that not only is she a terrorist but that the Cuban government is aiding and abetting terrorism. This begs at least one question: has there ever been a connection between Assata Shakur and terrorism?

The simple answer is “no,” but that answer necessitates further explanation. Assata Shakur, like many other activists in the 1960s—including but not limited to African Americans—witnessed the active infiltration and repression of liberal, progressive and radical movements by the US government. Through programs such as the notorious COINTELPRO (the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program), an active effort was undertaken by various branches of the US government to disrupt and suppress a wide variety of social justice movements and organizations. This disruption and suppression included the use of murder, such as the infamous drugging and killing of Chicago Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark by the Chicago Police.

It was in this environment of severe repression that certain elements within the Black Freedom Movement concluded that a military organization needed to be built to both defend against attacks from the government (and from non-governmental right-wing organizations) as well as prepare for what many people thought was a pending revolution. Assata Shakur was part of that section of the movement.

Assata Shakur has never denied having been a member of the Black Liberation Army. She has also never denied being a revolutionary. She has a very well developed critique of US capitalism, imperialism and racism. In no case has anything ever associated with terrorism been alleged against her. Just to be clear, the armed actions that were taken never conformed to any approximation of the notion of “terrorism,” i.e., the use of military/violent actions against civilians in order to advance a political agenda.

The label of “terrorist” in this case then has nothing do with actual terrorism. Assata never targeted civilians; her political beliefs and practice never suggested actions be taken against non-combatants. Yet the label of terrorist, particularly in the post-9/11 world is a very convenient means of stirring fear and irrationality among many people and, in effect, of getting a segment of the public to simply stop thinking. Label someone a “terrorist” and all sorts of actions can be justified, including targeted killings whether through drones or renegade bounty hunters.

This moment

In the aftermath of the reelection of President Obama whispers started to be heard suggesting that there might be efforts to take Cuba off the list of countries that support terrorism. There were other whispers that further suggested that there may be efforts aimed at normalizing relations with Cuba. The frenzy in connection with Assata Shakur is precisely the sort of step that those who wish to derail such efforts could either implement or celebrate.

Since the 1959 overthrow of the US-supported Batista regime by the July 26th Movement (led by Fidel Castro), supporters of the old regime as well as elements who fell out with the Castro-aligned leadership, have cooperated with the US government in destabilization and anti-government activities. Such efforts have ranged from guerrilla activities within Cuba to clear examples of terrorism, such as those associated with the notorious Luis Posada Carriles (e.g., the bombing of a Cuban civilian airplane killing all the passengers).

The hatred of the Cuban revolutionary government by this element (and their friends in the USA) has its root in not only the stated commitment of the Cuban government to socialism, but also the demographics of the Cuban Revolution. Cuba’s revolution was not only on the Left, but it was also very black and brown. Given the history of US domination of the Western Hemisphere and the absolute fear of movements arising from the descendants of former slaves and those of the indigenous peoples, the Cuban Revolution was a nightmare for much of the ruling elite in the USA.

Thus, there is a battle that has been underway for some time within the US establishment as to how to handle the existence of Cuba. A small, vocal and actually narrowing constituency in the USA, largely based in Miami and New Jersey, aligned with various politicians in both political parties, are trying everything that they can to forestall any hope for the normalization of relations. Instead they wish to see a continuation of the illegal and immoral US blockade of the island with the aim of bringing it to its knees.

…which brings us back to Assata…

It is in this context that the peculiar and threatening announcement of the placing of Assata Shakur on the terrorist list and the increase in the bounty can be better understood. Leaving aside for a moment that the combination of these announcements represents a threat to Assata’s life; that it violates Cuba’s law; and that people could be killed if bounty hunters attempt to seize Assata. The reality is that this disingenuous action by the FBI and their political supporters potentially boxes in those who wish to see a change-for-the-better in US/Cuban relations.

In that regard, the case against Assata Shakur is nothing more than a cynical pawn to move a more diabolical agenda. For that reason, silence in the face of this travesty is unacceptable. President Obama and Attorney General Holder must take immediate steps to reverse these actions.

The bottom line is that the USA needs to keep its hands off of Assata, and while so doing, get on with the business of normalizing relations with Cuba rather than playing Cold War games.

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’re Bankrupting Us” - And Twenty Other Myths about Unions. He is also the co-author of Solidarity Divided: 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.

May 09, 2013 -Issue 516

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

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

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

Click here to contact Mr. Siler

May 09, 2013 - Issue 516

Malcolm X

Born: Malcolm Little, May 19, 1925, Omaha, Nebraska

Died: El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, February 21, 1965, Audubon Ballroom, Harlem, New York City

New York City, December 4, 1963

Edited by Benjamin Karim

When this speech was delivered, Malcolm X was at the height of his influence as a minister and spokesman for the Nation of Islam. He was largely credited with increasing NOI national membership to 30,000 from an estimated 500 in 1952, the year Malcolm left prison as a follower of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

Shortly after making this speech, Malcolm was asked his opinion on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the previous month. Malcolm replied that Kennedy “never foresaw that the chickens would come home to roost so soon" – the reason some call this Malcolm’s “Chickens Come Home To Roost” speech. The remark set off a firestorm, leading Elijah Muhammad to sentence his spokesman to 90 days of silence. Malcolm formally broke with the NOI in March 1964, to found the Muslim Mosque, Inc. (See the Malcolm X Web Site.)

Benjamin Karim, Malcolm’s Assistant Minister, edited this speech. We have taken the liberty of beginning the text about one-third the way into the speech.

White America is doomed! Death and devastating destruction hang at this very moment in the skies over America. But why must her divine execution take place? Is it too late for her to avoid this catastrophe?

All the prophets of the past listed America as number one among the guilty that would be too proud, and too blind, to repent and atone when God's last Messenger is raised in her midst to warn her. America's last chance, her last warning, is coming from the lips of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad today. Accept him and be saved; reject him and be damned!

It is written that White America will reject him; it is also written that White America will be damned and doomed ... and the prophets who make these prophecies are never wrong in their divine predictions.

White America refuses to study, reflect, and learn a lesson from history; ancient Egypt didn't have to be destroyed. It was her corrupt government, the crooked politicians, who caused her destruction. Pharaoh hired Hebrew magicians to try and fool their own people into thinking they would soon be integrated into the mainstream of that country's life. Pharaoh didn't want the Hebrews to listen to Moses' message of separation. Even in that day separation was God's solution to the "slave's problem." By opposing Moses, the magicians were actually choosing sides against the God of their own people.

In like manner, modern Negro magicians are hired by the American government to oppose The Honorable Elijah Muhammad today. They pose as Negro "leaders." They have been hired by this white government (white so-called liberals) to make our people here think that integration into this doomed white society will soon solve our problem.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad warns us daily: The only permanent solution to America's race problem is the complete separation of these twenty-two million ex-slaves from our white slave master, and the return of these ex-slaves to our own land, where we can then live in peace and security among our people.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad warns us daily: The American government is trying to trick her twenty-two million ex-slaves with promises that she never intends to keep. The crooked politicians in the government are working with the Negro civil rights leaders, but not to solve the race problem. The greedy politicians who run this government give lip service to the civil rights struggle only to further their own selfish interests. And their main interest as politicians is to stay in power.

In this deceitful American game of power politics, the Negroes (i.e., the race problem, the integration and civil rights issues) are nothing but tools, used by one group of whites called Liberals against another group of whites called Conservatives, either to get into power or to remain in power.

Among whites here in America, the political teams are no longer divided into Democrats and Republicans. The whites who are now struggling for control of the American political throne are divided into "liberal" and "conservative" camps. The white liberals from both parties cross party lines to work together toward the same goal, and white conservatives from both parties do likewise.

The white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way: the liberal is more deceitful than the conservative. The liberal is more hypocritical than the conservative.

Both want power, but the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro's friend and benefactor; and by winning the friendship, allegiance, and support of the Negro, the white liberal is able to use the Negro as a pawn or tool in this political "football game" that is constantly raging between the white liberals and white conservatives.

Politically the American Negro is nothing but a football and the white liberals control this mentally dead ball through tricks of tokenism: false promises of integration and civil rights. In this profitable game of deceiving and exploiting the politics of the American Negro, those white liberals have the willing cooperation of the Negro civil rights leaders. These "leaders" sell out our people for just a few crumbs of token recognition and token gains. These "leaders" are satisfied with token victories and token progress because they themselves are nothing but token leaders.

According to a New York Herald-Tribune editorial (dated February 5,1960), out of eleven million qualified Negro voters, only 2,700,000 actually took time to vote. This means that, roughly speaking, only three million of the eleven million Negroes who are qualified to vote actually take an active part. The remaining eight million remain voluntarily inactive ... and yet this small (three million) minority of Negro voters hold the decisive edge in determining who will be the next President.

If who will be the next President is influenced by only three million Negro voters, it is easy to understand why the presidential candidates of both political parties put on such a false show with the Civil Rights Bill and with false promises of integration. They must impress the three million voting Negroes who are the actual "integration seekers."

If such a fuss is made over these three million "integration seekers," what would presidential candidates have to do to appease the eight million nonvoting Negroes, if they ever decide to become politically active?

Who are the eight million nonvoting Negroes; what do they want, and why don't they vote?

The three million Negro voters are the so-called middle-class Negroes, referred to by the late Howard University sociologist, E. Franklin Frazier, as the "black bourgeoisie," who have been educated to think as patriotic "individualists," with no racial pride, and who therefore look forward hopefully to the future "integrated-intermarried" society promised them by the white liberals and the Negro "leaders." It is with this hope that the "integration-minded" three million remain an active part of the white-controlled political parties. But it must never be overlooked that these three million "integration seekers" are only a small minority of the eleven million potential Negro voters.

The eight million nonvoting Negroes are in the majority; they are the downtrodden black masses. The black masses have refused to vote, or to take part in politics, because they reject the Uncle Tom approach of the Negro leadership that has been handpicked for them by the white man.

These Uncle Tom leaders do not speak for the Negro majority; they don't speak for the black masses. They speak for the "black bourgeoisie," the brainwashed, white-minded, middle-class minority who are ashamed of black, and don't want to be identified with the black masses, and are therefore seeking to lose their "black identity" by mixing, mingling, intermarrying, and integrating with the white man.

The race problem can never be solved by listening to this white-minded minority. The white man should try to learn what the black masses want, and the only way to learn what the black masses want is by listening to the man who speaks for the black masses of America. The one man here in America who speaks for the downtrodden, dissatisfied black masses is this same man so many of our people are flocking to see and hear. This same Mr. Muhammad who is labeled by the white man as a black supremacist and as a racist.

If the three million white-minded Negroes are casting their ballots for integration and intermarriage, what do the nonvoting black masses want? Find out what the black masses want, and then perhaps America's grave race problem can be solved.

Think how the late President himself got into office by only scant margin which was "donated" to him by Negro voters, and think how many governors and other white politicians hold their seats (some by less than five thousand votes). Only then can you understand the importance of these white liberals place on their control of the Negro vote!

The white liberals hate The Honorable Elijah Muhammad because they know their present position in the power structure stems form their ability to deceive and to exploit the Negro, politically as well as economically.

They know that The Honorable Elijah Muhammad's divine message will make our people (1) wake up, (2) clean up, (3) stand up. They know that once The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is able to resurrect the Negro from this mental grave of ignorance, by teaching him the truth about himself and his real enemy, the Negro will then be able to see and think for himself. Once the Negro learns to think for himself, he will no longer allow the white liberal to use him as a helpless football in the white man's crooked game of "power politics."

Let us examine briefly some of the tricky strategy used by white liberals to harness and exploit the political energies of the Negro.

The crooked politicians in Washington, D.C., purposely make a big noise over the proposed civil rights legislation. By blowing up the civil rights issue they skillfully add false importance to the Negro civil rights "leaders." Once the image of these Negro civil rights "leaders" has been blown up way beyond its proper proportion, these same Negro civil rights "leaders" are then used by white liberals to influence and control the Negro voters, all for the benefit of the white politicians who pose as liberals, who pose as friends of the Negro.

The white conservatives aren't friends of the Negro either, but they at least don't try to hide it. They are like wolves; they show their teeth in a snarl that keeps the Negro always aware of where he stands with them. But the white liberals are foxes, who also show their teeth to the Negro but pretend that they are smiling. The white liberals are more dangerous than the conservatives; they lure the Negro, and as the Negro runs from the growling wolf, he flees into the open jaws of the "smiling" fox.

The job of the Negro civil rights leader is to make the Negro forget that the wolf and the fox both belong to the (same) family. Both are canines; and no matter which one of them the Negro places his trust in, he never ends up in the White House, but always in the dog house.

The white liberals control the Negro and the Negro vote by controlling the Negro civil rights leaders. As long as they control the Negro civil rights leaders, they can also control and contain the Negro's struggle, and they can control the Negro's so-called revolt.

The Negro "revolution" is controlled by these foxy white liberals, by the government itself. But the black revolution is controlled only by God.

The black revolution is the struggle of the nonwhites of this earth against their white oppressors. The black revolution has swept white supremacy out of Africa, out of Asia, and is getting ready to sweep it out of Latin America. Revolutions are based upon land. Revolutionaries are the landless against the landlord. Revolutions are never peaceful, never loving, never nonviolent. Nor are they ever compromising. Revolutions are destructive and bloody. Revolutionaries don't compromise with the enemy; they don't even negotiate. Like the flood in Noah's day, revolution drowns all opposition, or like the fire in Lot's day, the black revolution burns everything that gets in its path.

America is the last stronghold of white supremacy. The black revolution, which is international in nature and scope is sweeping down upon America like a raging forest fire. It is only a matter of time before America herself will be engulfed by the black flames, these black firebrands.

Whenever an uncontrollable forest fire is roaring down upon the farmhouse, the only way the farmer can fight that forest fire is by building a "backfire," a smaller fire that he himself can control. He then uses this "controlled fire" to fight the fire that is raging beyond his control.

Here in America, the black revolution (the "uncontrollable forest fire") is personified in the religious teachings, and the religious works, of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad. This great man of God cannot in any way be controlled by the white man, and he will not compromise in any way with the wrongs this government has inflicted upon our people.

The Negro "revolt" is controlled by the white man, the white fox. The Negro "revolution" is controlled by this white government. The leaders of the Negro "revolution" (the civil rights leaders) are all subsidized, influenced and controlled by the white liberals; and all of the demonstrations that are taking place on this country to desegregate lunch counters, theaters, public toilets, etc., are just artificial fires that have been ignited and fanned by the white liberals in the desperate hope that they can use this artificial revolution to fight off the real black revolution that has already swept white supremacy out of Africa, Asia, and is sweeping it out of Latin America ... and is even now manifesting itself also right here among the black masses in this country.

Can we prove that the Negro revolution is controlled by white liberals? Certainly!

Right after the Birmingham demonstrations, when the entire world had seen on television screens the police dogs, police clubs, and fire hoses brutalizing defenseless black women, children, and even babies, it was reported on page twenty-six in the May 15 issue of The New York Times, that the late President Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, during a luncheon conference with several newspaper editors from the State of Alabama, had warned these editors that they must give at least some token gains to the moderate Negro leaders in order to enhance the image of these moderate Negro leaders in the eyesight of the black masses; otherwise the masses of Negroes might turn in the direction of Negro extremists. And the late President named the Black Muslims as being foremost among the Negro extremist groups that he did not want Negroes to turn toward.

In essence, the late President told these southern editors that he was trying to build up the weak image of the Negro civil rights leaders, in order to offset the strong religious image of the Muslim leader, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He wasn't giving these Negro leaders anything they deserved; but he was confessing the necessity of building them up, and propping them up, in order to hold the black masses in check, keep them in his grasp, and under his control.

The late President knew that once Negroes heard The Honorable Elijah Muhammad the white liberals will never influence or control or misuse those Negroes for the benefit of the white liberals any more. So the late President was faced with a desperate situation.

Martin Luther King's image had been shattered the previous year when he failed to bring about desegregation in Albany, Georgia. The other civil rights leaders had also become fallen idols. The black masses across the country at the grass roots level had already begun to take their cases to the streets on their own. The government in Washington knew that something had to be done to get the rampaging Negroes back into the corral, back under the control of the white liberals.

The government propaganda machine began encouraging Negroes to follow only what it called "responsible" Negro leaders. The government actually meant, Negro leaders who were responsible to the government, and who could therefore by controlled by the government, and be used by that same government to control their impatient people.

The government knows that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is responsible only to God and can be controlled only by God. But this white government of America doesn't believe in God!

Let us review briefly what happened last spring: In May in Birmingham, Negroes erupted and retaliated against the whites. During the many long weeks when the police dogs and police clubs and the high-pressure water hoses were brutalizing black women and children and babies, and the Birmingham Negroes had called for the government to intervene with Federal troops, the late President did nothing but sit on his hands. He said there was nothing he could do. But when Negroes in Birmingham exploded and began to defend themselves, the late President then sent in Federal troops, not to defend the Negroes, but to defend the whites against whom the Negroes had finally retaliated.

At this point, spontaneous demonstrations began taking place all over the country. At the grass roots level Negroes began to talk about marching on Washington, tying up the Congress, the Senate, the White House, and even the airport. They threatened to bring this government to a halt. This frightened the entire white power structure.

The late President called in the Negro civil rights leaders and told them to bring this "march" to a halt. The Negro civil rights leaders were forced to tell the late President that they couldn't stop the march because they hadn't started it. It was spontaneous, at the grass roots level across the country, and it had no leadership whatsoever.

When the late President saw that he couldn't stop the march, he joined; he endorsed it; he welcomed it; he became a part of it; and it was he who put the six Negro civil rights leaders at the head of it. It was he who made them the Big Six.

How did he do it? How did he gain control of the March on Washington? A study of his shrewd strategy will give you a glimpse of the political genius with which the Kennedy family was ruling this country from the White House, and how they used the American Negro in all of their schemes.

The late President endorsed the march; that should have been the tip-off. A few days later in New York City, at the Carlysle Hotel, a philanthropic society known as the Taconic Foundation, headed by a shrewd white liberal named Stephen Currier, called a meeting of the six civil rights leaders in an effort to bring unity of action and purpose among all the civil rights groups.

After Martin Luther King had been released from his Birmingham jail cell in May, he traveled from coast to coast in a fund-raising campaign for his Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Roy Wilkins then began to attack King, accusing him of stirring up trouble, saying that after the NAACP would bail out King and the other demonstrators, then King would capitalize on the trouble by taking up all the money for his own organization, leaving the NAACP to hold the bag at a great financial loss.

As King, Wilkins, and the other civil rights leaders began to fight publicly among themselves over the money they were trying to get from the white liberals, they were destroying their own leadership "image."

The white liberal, Stephen Currier, showed them how they were destroying themselves by attacks upon each other, and it was suggested that, since most of their divisions and disagreements stemmed from competition for funds from white liberals, they should unite their fund raising efforts. Then they formed the Council for the United Civil Rights Leadership, under the pretext that it would be for fund-raising purposes. They chose the Urban League's Whitney Young as the chairman, and the white liberal Stephen Currier became the co-chairman.

It took the white man to bring those Negro leaders together and to unite them into one group. He let them select their own chairman, but he himself became the co-chairman. This shrewd maneuver placed the white liberal and the Taconic Foundation in the position to exercise influence and control over the six civil rights leaders and, by working through them, to control the entire civil rights movement, including the March on Washington.

(It also put the white liberals in a position to force the Big Six to come out against the recently proposed Christmas boycott by threatening to withdraw their financial support from the civil rights drive.)

According to the August 4 edition of The New York Times, $800,000 was split up between these six Negro civil rights leaders on June 19 at the Carlysle Hotel, and another $700,000 was promised to be given to them at a later date after the march was over, if everything went well with the march.

Public relations experts were made available to these "Six Big Negroes," and they were given access to the news media throughout the country. The press skillfully projected them as the leaders of the March on Washington, and as soon as the Big Six were looked upon in the public eye as the organizers of the march, their first step was to invite four white "leaders" to become a part of the march "godhead." This group of leaders would supposedly okay all the plans and thereby control the "direction and the mood" of the march.

These four white "leaders" represented the same factions that had put the late President in the White House: Catholics, Jews, Labor, and Protestant liberals. When the late President had learned that he couldn't stop the march, he not only joined it himself but he encouraged all of his political bedfellows to join it. This is the way the white liberals took over the March on Washington, weakened its impact, and changed its course; by changing the participants and the contents, they were able to change the very nature of the march itself.

Example: If I have a cup of coffee that is too strong for me because it is too black, I weaken it by pouring cream into it. I integrate it with cream. If I keep pouring enough cream in the coffee, pretty soon the entire flavor of the coffee is changed; the very nature of the coffee is changed. If enough cream is poured in, eventually you don't even know that I had coffee in this cup. This is what happened with the March on Washington. The whites didn't integrate it; they infiltrated it. Whites joined it; they engulfed it; they became so much a part of it, it lost its original flavor. It ceased to be a black march; it ceased to be militant; it ceased to be angry; it ceased to be impatient. In fact, it ceased to be a march. It became a picnic, an outing with a festive, circus-like atmosphere ... CLOWNS AND ALL.

The government had learned that in cases where the demonstrators are predominantly black, they are extremely militant, and oft-times very violent. But to the same degree that whites participate, violence most times is decreased. The government knew that in cases wherein blacks were demonstrating all by themselves, those blacks are so dissatisfied, disenchanted, and angry at the white man that they will oft-times strike back violently regardless of the odds or the consequences. The white government had learned that the only way to hold these black people in check is by joining them, by infiltrating their ranks disguised as integrationists; by integrating their marches and all their demonstrations, and weakening them: in this way only could they be held in check.

The government told the marchers what time to arrive in Washington, where to arrive, and how to arrive. The government then channeled them from the arrival point to the feet of a dead President, George Washington, and then let them march from there to the feet of another dead President, Abraham Lincoln.

The original black militants had planned to march on the White House, the Senate, and the Congress and to bring all political traffic on Capitol Hill to a halt, but the shrewd politicians in Washington, realizing that those original black militants could not be stopped, joined them. By joining the marchers, the white liberals were able to lead the marchers away from the White House, the Senate, the Congress, Capitol Hill, and away from victory. By keeping them marching from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Monument, marching between the feet of two dead Presidents, they never reached the White House to see the then living President.

The entire march was controlled by the late president. The government in Washington had told the marchers what signs to carry, what songs to sing, what speeches to make, and what speeches not to make, and then told the marchers to be sure to get out of town by sundown.

One of the Big Six leaders, John Lewis, chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, was prevented from making a very militant speech. He wanted to attack the Kennedy administration for its hypocrisy on civil rights.

The speech was censored by the Rt. Rev. Patrick O'Boyle, the Catholic Archbishop of Washington, D.C. This was a case in which the Catholic Church itself, for whom Rev. O'Boyle speaks, put itself in the position of censoring the legitimate opinion of one of the Big Six Negro civil rights leaders.

The late President's shrewd strategy was: If you can't beat them, join them. The Catholic President placed his Catholic bishop in a strategic position to exercise censorship over any one of the Big Six Negro leaders who tried to deviate from the script in this great "extravaganza" called the March on Washington which the government had controlled right from the very beginning.

So, in the final analysis of the march: It would have to be classified as the best performance of the year; in fact it was the greatest performance of this century. It topped anything that Hollywood could have produced.

If we were going to give out Academy Awards in 1963, we would have to give the late President an Oscar for the "Best Producer of the Year"; and to the four white liberals who participated should go an Oscar as the "Best Actors of the Year," because they really acted like sincere liberals and fooled many Negroes. And to the six Negro civil rights leaders should go an Oscar for the "Best Supporting Cast," because they supported the late President in his entire act, and in his entire program.

Now that the show is over, the black masses are still without land, without jobs, and without homes ... their Christian churches are still being bombed, their innocent little girls murdered. So what did the March on Washington accomplish? Nothing!

The late President has a bigger image as a liberal, the other whites who participated have bigger liberal images also, and the Negro civil rights leaders have now been permanently named the Big Six (because of their participation in the Big Fix?) ... but the black masses are still unemployed, still starving, and still living in the slums ... and, I might add, getting angrier and more explosive every day.

History must repeat itself! Because of America's evil deeds against these twenty-two million "Negroes," like Egypt and Babylon before her, America herself now stands before the "bar of justice." White America is now facing her Day of Judgment, and she can't escape because today God himself is the judge. God himself is now the administrator of justice, and God himself is to be her divine executor!

Is it possible for America to escape this divine disaster? If America can't atone for the crimes she has committed against the twenty-two million "Negroes," if she can't undo the evils she has brutally and mercilessly heaped upon our people these past four hundred years, then America has signed her own doom ... and our own people would be foolish to accept her deceitful offers of integration into her doomed society at this late date!

How can America atone for her crimes? The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that a desegregated theater or lunch counter won't solve our problems. Better jobs won't even solve our problems. An integrated cup of coffee isn't sufficient pay for four hundred years of slave labor, and a better job in the white man's factory or position in his business is, at best, only a temporary solution. The only lasting or permanent solution is complete separation on some land that we can call our own.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that the race problem can easily be solved, just by sending these twenty-two million ex-slaves back to our own homeland where we can live in peace and harmony with our own kind. But this government should provide the transportation, plus everything else we need to get started again in our own country. This government should provide everything we need in machinery, materials, and finance; enough to last us for from twenty to twenty-five years, until we can become an independent people in our own country.

If this white government is afraid to let her twenty-two million ex-slaves go back to our country and to our own people, then America must set aside some separate territory here in the Western Hemisphere, where the two races can live apart from each other, since we certainly don't get along peacefully while we are here together.

The size of the territory can be judged according to our own population. If our people number one-seventh of America's total population, then give us one-seventh of this land. We don't want any land in the desert, but where there is rain and much mineral wealth.

We want fertile, productive land on which we can farm and provide our own people with sufficient food, clothing, and shelter. This government must supply us with the machinery and other tools needed to dig into the earth. Give us everything we need for them for from twenty to twenty-five years, until we can produce and supply our own needs.

If we are a part of America, then part of what she is worth belongs to us. We will take our share and depart, then this white country can have peace. What is her net worth? Give us our share in gold and silver and let us depart and go back to our homeland in peace.

We want no integration with this wicked race that enslaved us. We want complete separation from this race of devils. But we should not be expected to leave America and go back to our homeland empty-handed. After four hundred years of slave labor, we have some back pay coming, a bill owed to us that must be collected.

If the government of White America truly repents of its sins against our people, and atones by giving us our true share, only then can America save herself!

But if America waits for Almighty God himself to step in and force her into a just settlement, God will take this entire continent away from her; and she will cease to exist as a nation. Her own Christian Scriptures warn her that when God comes He can give the "entire Kingdom to whomsoever He will" ... which only means that the God of Justice on Judgment Day can give this entire continent to whomsoever He wills!

White America, wake up and take heed, before it is too late!

May 09, 2013 - Issue 516

All My life, all my entire life I’ve heard this phrase recited over and over and over again in regards to the critical condition, predicament, whatever-in-the-hell you want to call it, which most of Black America finds itself mired in; babies havin’ babies . . .havin babies. That’s been the rock-steady beat, the same beat, a chorus redundantly repeated for over half-a-century.

Babies havin’ babies . . .havin babies

It’s a funky n’ lowdown situation we find ourselves in . . . the mass-production of black babies, born to 18 year old girls. No daddies in site, the father either in Big momma’s basement, or the big house - no education, both unenlightened, rudderless n’ clueless to their role in life as parents and the expectations demanded of young Nubians in 21st century America.

So I can say to you with all sincerity this has been the consistent and constant underlying ill within the “Black community” at-least since the early 1960s, and what we all know - it’s gotten worse, not better. Illegitimacy is now the norm, marriage n’ fidelity is regarded as “actin” White” - “husbands n’ wives” have morphed into “my niggah and my bitch/ ho/babies momma . . .”

“Work” is a four letter word to some. . . . sorry, just like there’s “White trash,” there’s “Black trash” and at some junction in the road, we’ve got to throw overboard the trash, and focus on the reachable, teachable, salvageable . . . savable.

It’s virtually impossible to save those who don’t wish to be saved . . . .

Now, just as the “Chickens do come home to roost,” so do the gangsters, hustlers, hoodlums and thugs . . . they roost amongst us - raping, pillaging and murdering their own - us, you n’ I. Of course few of us we admit this . . We live in fear of our children. And how do we solve a problem we made, hand-crafted, sat in front of the TV or allowed to “rip n’ run the streets . . . ?”

Trust me, I know I’m airing our dirty laundry, I once got sued by the Denver NAACP for millions, the case was thrown out, but I was making the point, over a 50’000 watt radio waves, I’m making here - most Black folks, be they in Boston, Austin, Seattle or Battle creek . . .ain’t nobody really running from hooded White boys with shotguns, over-zealous cops in paramilitary uniforms - yes, but that's another conversation over cocktails. No, instead we’re all walking’ around living in-fear-of LeTay neesha's 3 fatherless boys, who’re breakin in houses and cars, nuggin’ folks . . . . molesting girls . . , killing each-other and the in-the-way innocents, the “collateral-damage” at a pace of 500 a year, a year, year-after-year.

Yeah, that’s where we are, as a people, as a crumbling nation within a crumbling empire.

No, here’s where we are . . . . .CHICAGO, (UPI) - Chicago law enforcement officials should reach out to Illinois and U.S. governments for help stop homicides in Chicago, a retired U.S. Army general said. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honore, during a news conference Thursday, suggested Chicago officials call on the National Guard, if necessary, the Chicago Tribune reported.

"Just like we do with any disaster, when the tornado comes or the floods come, the federal government comes in to help," he said.

"Let's not let this be about pride: 'We are big ol' Chicago, we are too proud, we can handle this.'

"Maybe you can't handle it. If you need help, get the federal government here. But let's control the streets so children and elderly people can be in a safe community," Honore added.

Yes, it’s horrifically gotten to the chaotic point, to save the children and grandmothers . . . the argument can, and is being made to bring in the White man’s army to assist the local police to stop Black men from killing Black people . . .

Unbelievable isn’t it?

The General here is the Cajun cat you may recall from Hurricane Katrina who came on the scene like “Sergeant Buffalo” and told the army men to “put them god damn guns down, don’t point them at these folks, there refugees, not criminals . . . “Or something to that John Wayne effect. Translation and classification for my militant comrades. . he ain’t no Uncle Clarence Thomas . . .

Nonetheless, the dire-situation Chicago is in isn’t solely the White man’s fault. Forget excuses to bring in troops, look at the valid reasons. We‘ve played a significant role in our own decline. We don’t want to hear any of Bill Cosby’s grandfatherly, and thus constructive criticism of our “Black people gone buckwild” lifestyles which lead to the gangster/hustler characters which dominate our music, movies . . . we don’t read so i can’t say books . . .

How do You keep a secret from a Black man . . . put it between the covers of a book - he’ll never look there.

If this ain’t some deep and dire times we are livin’ in . . . go ask Angela Davis or Bobby Seale, Black Power blue-bloods both - they'll tell you the Soledad brothers, George n’ Jonathan Jackson, Huey P. all the Revolutionaries of my youth, they’re spinning in their graves . . . witnessing the carnage, the self-destruction played out on the streets of Fresno, Omaha, Birmingham . . . . We’re doing the dirty work of the Klan and the TEA Party.

Her, let me load-it-up, and break-it-down with a piece of Malcolm’s mind from his autobiography;

“And because I had been a hustler, I knew better than all whites knew, and better than nearly all of the black 'leaders' knew, that actually the most dangerous black man in America was the ghetto hustler. Why do I say this? The hustler, out there in the ghetto jungles, has less respect for the white power structure than any other Negro in North America. The ghetto hustler is internally restrained by nothing. He has no religion, no concept of morality, no civic responsibility, no fear--nothing. To survive, he is out there constantly preying upon others, probing for any human weakness like a ferret. The ghetto hustler is forever frustrated, restless, and anxious for some 'action'. Whatever he undertakes, he commits himself to it fully, absolutely. What makes the ghetto hustler yet more dangerous is his 'glamour' image to the school-dropout youth in the ghetto.These ghetto teen-agers see the hell caught by their parents struggling to get somewhere, or see that they have given up struggling in the prejudiced, intolerant white man’s world. The ghetto teen-agers make up their own minds they would rather be like the hustlers whom they see dressed ‘sharp’ and flashing money and displaying no respect for anybody or anything. So the ghetto youth become attracted to the hustler worlds of dope, thievery, prostitution, and general crime and immorality.”

Key line; What makes the ghetto hustler yet more dangerous is his 'glamour' image to the school-dropout youth in the ghetto

Does anyone want to argue the impact, from about Superfly, 1972/73 on - to life ain’t nutin’ but bitches n’ money, to “Get rich or die trying.” Hollywood’s glamorization has led to a culture-wide glorification of gang-bangin’ pimpin’, n’ pushin across the real Black world, has it not?

Today Black American culture has regressed to the Atlanta Housewives, the Braxton Family Values, , Married To Medicine . . . it’s Sapphire, BuckWheat, Stepp-in’ Fetch-it, Uncle Remus brought back to life by Black folks, useful idiots trying to keep it “real.”

Let me circle-the-block on that one . . . , yes, useful idiots them all, pawns in a bigger game.

What other choice are we left with but to have a Black General, with Black Officers commanding Buffalo Soldiers. Hopefully bring “law n’ order” to the streets of Oakland, Dallas, Miami, Detroit . . . ? Yes, let’s do this coast-to-coast, counterbalance the Redneck police forces. Perhaps this is a realistic opportunity to “take back” our communities, recreate neighborhoods, safe, secure, family-friendly neighborhoods with good schools that have actual PTA’s. A place where trade and commerce can thrive, industry will provide breadwinner jobs.

Pollyannish yes, Black Mayberry RFD, yeah . . . but why not? Why can’t little Black boys n’ girls walk home from school and not fear gunfire from the Bloods, Crips, Vice-lords or Dum-Dums might take their life; when will peace and tranquility be a priority for the politicians, educators, preachers and activist?

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.

May 09, 2013 - Issue 516

Assata Shakur, aka JoAnne Chesimard:
“I Saw Your Light/And It Was Shining”

The FBI's systematic surveillance of and attacks on Black groups and individuals were orchestrated by its counterintelligence program (COINTEPRO), which was directed specifically against what the FBI termed 'Black nationalist hate groups.' COINTELPRO's first targets were Martin Luther King and thousands of less prominent civil rights activists.

- Lennox S. Hinds, attorney, Assata: An Autobiography

There was a bullet in my chest (it's still there); an injured lung with fluid in it, a broken clavicle, and a paralyzed arm with undetermined damage to the nerves. I kept asking if i would be able to use my hand again. One or two doctors said, flatly, no. The others said, 'Maybe yes, maybe no.'

Anyway, i was gonna live.

- Assata: An Autobiography

I didn't know what a fool they had made out of me until i grew up and started to read real history.

- Assata: An Autobiography

One of the most memorial teaching experiences I had in the last ten years came the summer of 2008 in Philadelphia. I devised a course for an Upward Bound program, and I believe the course featured chapters from the works of Black women, including memoirs and autobiographies. Because of the “budget” restraints, I made a copy of the first chapter of Assata: An Autobiography.

In previous years, readings of and discussions on Assata Shakur's autobiography with my college students always went well and generated, on the part of students, further inquiry on Assata, for sure, and COINTELPRO. With my high school students, I was hoping to just generate an interest in reading.

I planned to do my best to introduce Assata and discuss what lead to her exile in Cuba.

These high school students, mostly Black, from economically poor working class neighborhoods in Philadelphia had not been introduced to such a figure, let along a representation of resistance by Black people living in “Amerikkka.”

Would they turn away and grab hold onto their iPods and cell phones for dear life?

The students were appalled to read of the narrative and physical violence committed against this young Black woman. I should mention that most of the students in this class were girls/women.

How could this happen?

Here in the U.S.?

This happened to a Black woman?

Suddenly, the door flew open and i felt myself being dragged out onto the pavement. Pushed and punched, a foot upside the head, a kick in the stomach. Police were everywhere. One had a gun to my head...

'Ya find the gun?' they kept asking each other. Later, one of them asked another, 'Should we put'er in the car?'
'Naw. Let'er lay in the gutter were she belongs. Just get'er out the way.

Their voices stopped asking out loud: how could this happen? They looked at one another and then stare down at the pages in front of them. Each was listening to their own voices; each seeing... All these students needed to do was to think. To see, once again, the brother, father, uncle, or the former classmates or neighbors, all young like themselves, all Black, living their youth away in prison cells or existing among the dead. They only had to think and recall the days and nights of hearing police sirens, seeing the police run with guns chasing and firing.

Assata reached these high school students. Her words tapped into the body of knowledge each carried within them. There was no need to push and pull. Their experiences, their knowledge made the collective memory of our history in “Amerikkka” as palpable as the desks, chairs, walls, and windows in that classroom.

Schools in amerika are interested in brainwashing people with amerikanism, giving them a little bit of education, and training them in skills needed to fill the positions the capitalist system requires. As long as we expect amerika's schools to educate us, we will remain ignorant.

Now, these students were awake!

At the end of that class session, the students demanded--”we gotta have...”--that the program purchase the book. They wanted to read this summer, now, the whole book!

They left class talking among themselves about Assata Shakur.

You have done it again, I thought, as I left class that day. You are teaching young people you have never seen, but who see you and see themselves...

...despite, as you write, that “first step” in which the enforcers of the system's law attempt to destroy the Black community from within by isolating “revolutionaries from the masses of people, making us horrible and hideous monsters so that our people will hate us.”

It did not work this time!

The next morning on campus, I stopped by the Upward Bound office to request that the director purchase copies of Assata: An Autobiography, and before I could say a word, he, a young Black man himself, stopped me. The students had come to him, so the order was already in!

Assata's autobiography arrived and for the next week, students organized themselves around the book.
One student loved the poetry and read out loud the poems over the course of that week.

For Rema Olugbala—Youngblood

They think they killed you...

But i saw you yesterday,
standing with your hands in your pockets
waiting for the real deal to go down...

They think they killed you.
But i saw you yesterday.
All them youngbloods
musta gave you a transfusion.
All that strong blood.
All that rich blood
flowing through your veins
toward tomorrow.

And

I love you mommy
cause you are beautiful,
and it am life that springs from you:
part tree, part weed, part flower.

My roots run deep.
I have been nourished well.

(from “TO MY MOMMA”)

Some students “reported” on the proceedings of the kangaroo court while others selected their favorite passages to read out loud in class. And dramatization? I learned to seat myself everyday at a student desk along the wall to watch these students shining so brightly. Everyone wanted more - what was it like in the 1970s? What was COINTELPRO?

Pairs of students held discussions followed by these pairings presenting their take to the class. Elbows shoved. Hands waved books sporting annotation and bookmarks!

Any Black person in amerika, if they are honest with themselves, have gt to come to the conclusion that they don't know what it feels like to be free. We aren't free politically, economically, or socially.

This is what education should look like, feel like.

The schools we go to are reflections of the society that created them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.

***

And the 65 year old grandmother, Assata Shakur - they are afraid of her. They are afraid of her power to shine light on the nightmare that envelopes the world in the repressive, terrifying atmosphere of greed and inequity, torture and war.

They can see in your eyes
a thousand nightmares
that they have made come true.

Forty years since the crime Assata Shakur could not have committed and the FBI, on behalf of the capitalist, has plastered New Jersey with billboards announcing a financial reward for her capture. Friday, May 3, 2013, “Angela Davis and Assata Shakur's Lawyer Denounce FBI's Adding of Exiled Activist to Terrorists List,” transcript, Democracy Now! Interview).

The young JoAnne Chesimard whose political awakening would be labeled “mad,” “crazy,” and now, 40 years later, a terrifying nightmare, reveals the desperation of the U.S. Empire's capitalist/corporate rulers to stamp out the light in the eyes of dissenters. (More about Assata Shakur available at freedomarchives.org)

But trumpets will sound: “'I was, I am, I shall be'” (Rosa Luxemburg, “Speeches and Letters on the War and Revolution,” The Rosa Luxemburg Reader).

Through the lies and the sell-outs.
The mistakes and the madness.
Through pain and hunger and frustration,
We carried on.

Carried on the tradition.
Carried a strong tradition.
Carried a proud tradition.

Carried a Black tradition.

Pass it down to the children.
Pass it down.
Carry it on.
Carry it on now.
Carry it on
TO FREEDOM!

(from Assata Shakur, “The Tradition”)

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

May 09, 2013 -Issue 516

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

May 09, 2013 - Issue 516

When Michael Higgins, the president of Ireland, finished speaking he received a standing ovation from members of the European Parliament. In a stirring April 17 address to the delegates meeting in Strasbourg, he said the continent’s policy makers must not “ignore the fact that European citizens are suffering the consequences of actions and opinions of bodies such as rating agencies, which, unlike parliaments, are unaccountable.”

“Many of our citizens in Europe regard the response to the crisis in their lives as disparate, sometimes delayed, not equal to the urgency of the task and showing insufficient solidarity with them in their threatened or actual economic circumstances,” Higgins, a left-leaning poet, sociologist, author and broadcaster who holds the largely ceremonial post as his country head of state, continued. “They feel that in general terms the economic narrative of recent years has been driven by dry technical concerns; for example, by calculations that are abstract and not drawn from real problems, geared primarily by a consideration of the impact of such measures on speculative markets, rather than driven by sufficient compassion and empathy with the predicament of European citizens who are members of a union, and for whom all of the resources of Europe’s capacity, political, social, economic and intellectual might have been drawn on, driven by the binding moral spirit of a union.”

Last week, Higgins said pretty much the same thing to the Financial Times, which said he told Dublin correspondent, Jamie Smyth the European Union “risked social upheaval and losing popular legitimacy” unless it changed course. He called for “radical economics” and a “radical rethink” of how to deal with the current economic crisis.

Higgins’ views stirred a political hornet’s nest in Ireland. When a Sinn Fein delegate brought up his remarks the lower house of parliament (the Dail) the day the interview appeared, the parliamentary speaker ruled such a discussion out of order.

Higgins’ expression appears to have gone over well in Ireland, however and reflects a growing sentiment in Europe that by continuing on the present path of fiscal austerity and failure to confront the problem of joblessness raises the specter of social upheaval.

“There is a sense of foreboding in the region” Financial Times correspondent Komal Sri-Kumar wrote April 30.

"Socially and politically, one policy that is only seen as austerity is, of course, not sustainable," the president of the European commission Jose Manuel Barroso said recently. "We haven't done everything right … The policy has reached its limits because it has to have a minimum of political and social support."

Olli Rehn, the E.U. commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, issued a statement last month calling on the union’s leaders to “do whatever it takes to overcome the unemployment crisis.’

Meanwhile, the Economist reported April 27 that “more young people are idle than ever,’ citing statistic that show 26 million 15-to -24-year-olds in developed countries are idle and the number of young people without a job has risen by 30 percent over the past five years and across the planet 75 million young people are seeking work. “Depending on how you measure them, the number of young people without a job is nearly as large as the population of America,” said the magazine.

“The result is an ‘arc of unemployment’, from southern Europe through north Africa and the Middle East to South Asia, where the rich world’s recession meets the poor world’s youthquake,’ said The Economist. “The anger of the young jobless has already burst onto the streets in the Middle East. Violent crime, generally in decline in the rich world, is rising in Spain, Italy and Portugal - countries with startlingly high youth unemployment.”

“It is difficult to be festive when 26m Europeans are jobless and economic recession blights the continent,’ Tony Barber wrote in the Financial Times last month. “For the first time in generations, numerous parents fear that the future living standards of their children will be lower than their own. Their sense of powerlessness is all the greater because, in or out of government, Europe’s centre-left parties – once the formidable political voice of the organized working classes – no longer appear capable of fulfilling their historical mission as protectors of jobs, welfare and social cohesion.”

“Our task is to continue with policies of fiscal consolidation and keeping public accounts in order,” he said. But, he added, it was “absolutely necessary” to foster growth and job creation “so that our citizens see Europe not as something negative but as something positive,” Italy’s new Prime Minister Enrico Letta said last week.

“Politics has lost all its credibility. Either we regain it, everyone and together, or there cannot be the instruments to resolve the country’s problems.”

“Seemingly endless recession and truly catastrophic levels of unemployment are fostering distrust, despair and a rise in political extremism,” the British daily Independent observed on May Day. “Joblessness is soaring in recession-mired Italy, and a series of suicides linked to the economic crisis have hit the headlines in recent months.”

Meanwhile here at home, the April U.S. employment statistics came out last week. For the most part little changed over the month. On the jobs front the country is treading water.

The figures released by the Labor Department “means there were enough jobs to keep the unemployment rate stable, but not much more,” says analyst Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute. “While this report would be fine in good times, at a time of persistent economic weakness, it represents an ongoing disaster.”

“The American economy continues to add jobs in proportion to population growth. Nothing less, nothing more,’ observed Binyamin Appelbaum in the New York Times,’ adding that the country’s economy “is not getting any closer to recreating the jobs lost during the recession.”

“Despite more than three years of job growth, the labor market still has a deficit of 8.7 million jobs, and the lack of demand for workers means unemployment remains high, labor force participation is low, and wage growth for people with jobs is sluggish,” says Shierholz.

The April jobless rate for African Americans was 13.2 percent, practically unchanged from 13.3 percent in March. According to Steven Pitts of the University of California Labor Center, “For the nation as a whole, unemployment was 7.5 percent in the month of April; this was virtually unchanged from March when the national unemployment rate stood at 7.6 percent. Among whites, unemployment was 6.7 percent; among Latinos, unemployment was 9.0 percent. Comparable March 2013 figures were 6.7 percent and 9.2 percent respectively.”

In keeping with the usual pattern, the group taking the biggest hit on the jobs front is African Americans between 16 and 19 years old. For them the unemployment rate in April was 40.5 percent, up from 33.8 percent in March for Black female teens, unemployment stood at 37.6 percent, up from 30.9 percent in March). For young black males the unemployment rate was 44.7 percent up from 37.1 % in March.

As Pitts notes, “teen unemployment rates are extremely volatile from month to month.” Yet, it is clear that the catastrophic employment situation for young African Americans shows no sign of improvement.

Over 20 percent of 18-29-year-old African Americans are without a job.

Just in case there was an impression that the May Day appeal by Pope Francis to “give new impetus to employment,” was applicable only to Europe consider this from David Leonhardt of the New York Times May 3: The U.S. “has quietly surpassed much of Europe in the percentage of young adults without jobs. It’s not just Europe, either. Over the last 12 years, the United States has gone from having the highest share of employed 25- to 34-year-olds among large, wealthy economies to having among the lowest.”

Would it really be easy to end “the scourge of unemployment?” in the U.S. economist Paul Krugman asked March 30. “Yes — but powerful people don’t want to believe it. Some of them have a visceral sense that suffering is good, that we must pay a price for past sins (even if the sinners then and the sufferers now are very different groups of people). Some of them see the crisis as an opportunity to dismantle the social safety net. And just about everyone in the policy elite takes cues from a wealthy minority that isn’t actually feeling much pain.”

“The Class of 2013 will graduate into a labor market that is still very weak,” observed Shierholz. “As discussions take place this spring about what to do for these young workers entering a dire labor market, it is important to note that although young workers are a unique group, their currently high unemployment levels do not require a unique solution. The thing that will bring down the unemployment rate of young workers most quickly and effectively is strong job growth overall. Focusing on policies that will generate demand for U.S. goods and services (and therefore demand for workers who provide them) - policies such as fiscal relief to states and substantial additional investment in infrastructure - is the key to giving young people a fighting chance as they enter the labor market during the aftermath of the Great Recession. This would require policymakers to prioritize job creation over deficit reduction.”

“Over 20 million people are in need of full-time work,” wrote Robert Borosage of the Campaign for America’s Future May 3. “Thirty seven percent of the officially unemployed have been out of work for more than 27 weeks. Wages of those who are working are not keeping up with prices. Families are losing their homes. Marriages break under the strain. The young are idled; their hopes crushed. Americans are paying a terrible price for Washington’s folly.”

“A first and urgent task must be to get Europe back to sustainable and fulfilling employment and a return to real growth,” the Irish poet said to the EU Parliament. “There is nothing more corrosive to society and more crushing to an individual than endemic unemployment, particularly among the young. Today there are 26 million people across the Union without work, 5.7 million young people, and 115 million in or at risk of poverty and social exclusion. We cannot allow this to continue.”

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare union. Bloice is one of the moderators of Portside. Other Carl Bloice writing can be found at leftmargin.wordpress.com. Click here to contact Mr. Bloice.

May 09, 2013 - Issue 516

The recent Boston bombing, like the Sandy Hook massacre and other similar incidents, jolted Americans, forcing them to look into the face of horror and terror. Yes, there is another form of terror that confronts the people of America on a regular basis. Mounting bills, health care issues, unemployment and underemployment, homelessness , hunger, poverty and other kinds of threats to our livelihood and survival are the silent terror that creeps subtly into our lives.

According to the US Department of Agriculture’s 2011 Economic Research Service Report of Household Food Security in the U.S., almost seven million households have very low food security - one or more members of the household have reduced food intake because they can no longer afford to have enough food on the table. One out of seven Americans needs food assistance even when the majority of these families have one or two members on a full time job and earning roughly $36,000 a year. An additional number of full time government employees may go on a furlough anytime soon as a result of sequestration. This is the other face of terror; the terror of a mother unable to feed her children and pay rent or mortgage in the days ahead.

In the meantime, Congress declares a budget deficit, cuts the budget, and enforces sequestration and then blames the food stamps and social welfare as culprits to our draining economy. Congress allocated only $4.5 billion to “improve” school meals by 0.06 cents per lunch while the military spend $10 billion monthly for the war on Afghanistan. The USA cannot bail out the millions of hungry kids but it bailed out big banks, subsidized huge corporations; and, gave tax cuts to the wealthy elites. This situation is so irrational. Good nutrition prevents illnesses such as heart diseases and diabetes that would eventually cut down the cost of long term health care and reduce the taxpayer’s burden.

Beyond the urgency of reform in Congress to fund healthy meals for kids, however, American families are in need of a living wage that would prevent hunger and disease. For millions of Americans to have access to affordable food, they should be lifted out of poverty. According to the U.S. Bureau of Census, 46.2 million people in 2011 are living below the poverty threshold based on pre-tax income and an estimated 50 millions are living in poverty right now. These families do not have enough food to eat and are under severe economic stress. The National Alliance to End Homelessness reported that as of January 2012, more than half a million people are still without shelter from hunger and the elements, and about 60 to 65 thousand of them are veterans. Based on the national rate of homelessness, there are 20 homeless people for every 10,000 people in the general population. The bursting of the housing bubble pushed many, many more into homelessness when they were faced with foreclosures and evictions.

Overseas, the local communities in South Africa and the Philippines for example, are living under severe repression, intimidation, insecurity and terror as they continue to fight for their ancestral lands and protect their environment that is plundered and ravaged by huge global corporations such as Anglo American Mining Company and others like St. Augustine Gold & Copper which holds the right to the mountains of Compostela Valley of Southern Philippines where gold resides along with the 600 families living on the mountain slopes. On the other hand, the Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights in the Philippines documented 131 extrajudicial killings from mid-year of 2010 to the last quarter of 2012 and more than half of these victims were protecting their ancestral lands and environment from the onslaught of mining operations such as massive displacements, soil destruction, pollution of rivers by toxic chemicals, marginalization of women as food producers, and occupational hazards impacting mine workers. Another way of looking at this is that economic terrorism is not only the ramifications of economic policies that throw people out of work, out of their homes, or deny them food. That economic terrorism can also be the armed terror carried out through sponsorhip of multinational corporations seeking to advance their own interests.

Concisely, according to the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (2005), economic terrorism is a coordinated and sophisticated undertaking by a transnational or non-state actor that disrupts the economic stability of a society through massive destabilizing actions, violent or not, which carries psychological effects and economic consequences.

Let us take another look at the face of terrorism one more time. When we do, we must remember that it may be a bomb, or it may be a calculated policy aimed at advancing the interests of the “1%” over the rest of humanity. This terrorism is responsible for far more deaths, injuries and illnesses, not to mention displacements, than almost anything imaginable by some socio-pathic paramilitary organization.

Now, that is scary.

References:

U.S. Bureau of the Census, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010, Report P60, n. 238, Table B-2, pp. 68-73. U.S. Census, Highlights; Poverty Thresholds) How the Census Measures Poverty; The Orshanky Method; University of Wisconsin, Alternatives to the Official Poverty Measure

http://www.endhomelessness.org/library/entry/the-state-of-homelessness-2013

Statement on the 64th International Human Rights Day, Human Rights Defenders-Philippines (HRDP), 10 December 2012

Philippine Task Force For Indigenous People’s Rights, “Juvy Capion, a Blaan woman fighter”, Northern Dispatch (nordis) Weekly, 2 December 2012

Mayvelin U. Caraballo “Gold not giving much glitter to economic, jobs growth”, Manila Times.net, 12 April 2012

Bae Women Leaders, “Defending their right to land, their right to life: Stories of Women from the frontline”, Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), October 2012

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Margaret Rose Dominado is a nurse from the Philippines with three decades of professional experience in public health and nursing education. Earned her Master of Science in Nursing (M.S.N.) degree from the University of Phoenix with a membership to the Honor Society of Nursing-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.

May 09, 2013 - Issue 516

Theodore W. Allen’s two-volume The Invention of the White Race (The Invention of the White Race, Volume 1: Racial Oppression and Social Control, The Invention of the White Race, Volume 2: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America), presents a full-scale challenge to what Allen refers to as “The Great White Assumption” – “the unquestioning, indeed unthinking acceptance of the ‘white’ identity of European-Americans of all classes as a natural attribute rather than a social construct.” Its thesis on the origin and nature of the “white race” contains the root of a new and radical approach to United States history, one that challenges master narratives taught in the media and in schools, colleges, and universities. With its equalitarian motif and emphasis on class struggle it speaks to people today who strive for change worldwide.

Allen’s original 700-pages magnum opus, already recognized as a“classic” by scholars such as Audrey Smedley, Wilson J. Moses, Nell Painter, and Gerald Horne, included extensive notes and appendices based on his twenty-plus years of primary source research. The November 2012 Verso edition adds new front and back matter, expanded indexes,and internal study guides for use by individuals, classes, and study groups. Invention is a major contribution to our historical understanding, it is meant to stand the test of time, and it can be expected to grow in importance in the 21st century.

“When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no ‘white’ people there; nor, according to the colonial records, would there be for another sixty years.”

That arresting statement, printed on the back cover of the first (1994) volume, reflected the fact that, after pouring through 885 county-years of Virginia’s colonial records, Allen found “no instance of the official use of the word ‘white’ as a token of social status” prior to its appearance in a 1691 law. As he explained, “Others living in the colony at that time were English; they had been English when they left England, and naturally they and their Virginia-born children were English, they were not ‘white.’” “White identity had to be carefully taught, and it would be only after the passage of some six crucial decades” that the word “would appear as a synonym for European-American.”

Allen was not merely speaking of word usage, however. His probing research led him to conclude – based on the commonality of experience and demonstrated solidarity between African-American and European-American laboring people, the lack of a substantial intermediate buffer social control stratum, and the “indeterminate” status of African-Americans – that the “white race” was not, and could not have been, functioning in early Virginia.

It is in the context of such findings that he offers his major thesis -- the “white race” was invented as a ruling class social control formation in response to labor solidarity as manifested in the later, civil war stages of Bacon's Rebellion (1676-77). To this he adds two important corollaries: 1) the ruling elite, in its own class interest, deliberately instituted a system of racial privileges to define and maintain the “white race” and 2) the consequences were not only ruinous to the interests of African-Americans, they were also “disastrous” for European-American workers, whose class interests differed fundamentally from those of the ruling elite.

In Volume I Allen offers a critical examination of the two main lines of historiography on the slavery and racism debate: the psycho-cultural approach, which he strongly criticizes; and the socio-economic approach, which he seeks to free from certain apparent weaknesses. He then proceeds to develop a definition of racial oppression in terms of social control, a definition not based on “phenotype,” or classification by complexion. In the process, he offers compelling analogies between the oppression of the Irish in Ireland (under Anglo-Norman rule and under “Protestant Ascendancy”) and white supremacist oppression of African Americans and Indians.

Allen emphasizes that maximizing profit and maintaining social control are two priority tasks of the ruling class. He describes how racial oppression is one form of ruling class response to the problem of social control and national oppression is another. The difference centers on whether the key component of the intermediate social control stratum are members of the oppressor group (racial oppression) or the oppressed group (national oppression).

With stunning international and domestic examples he shows how racial oppression (particularly in the form of religio-racial oppression) was developed and maintained by the pheno typically-similar British against the Irish Catholics in Ireland; how a pheno typically-similar Anglobourgeoisie established national oppression in the Anglo-Caribbean and racial oppression in the continental Anglo-American plantation colonies; how racial oppression was transformed into national oppression due to ruling class social control needs in Ireland (while racial oppression was maintained in Ulster); how the same people who were victims of racial oppression in Ireland became “white American” defenders of racial oppression in the United States; and how in America racial oppression took the form of racial slavery, yet when racial slavery ended racial oppression remained and was re-constituted in new form.

In Volume II, on The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America, Allen tells the story of the invention of the “white race” in the late seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century Anglo-American plantation colonies. His primary focus is on the pattern-setting Virginia colony, and he pays special attention to the fact that England alone, of all the European colonizing powers, exported so many of its own surplus poor laboring population. He also pays particular attention to the process by which tenants and wage-laborers in the majority English labor force in Virginia were reduced to chattel bond-servants in the1620s. In so doing, he emphasizes that this reduction was a qualitative break from the condition of laborers in England and from long established English labor law, that it was not a feudal carryover, that it was imposed under capitalism, and that it was an essential precondition of the emergence of the lifetime hereditary chattel bond-servitude imposed upon African-American laborers under the system of racial slavery.

Allen describes how, throughout much of the seventeenth century, the status of African-Americans was being fought out and he documents significant instances of labor solidarity and unrest, especially during the 1660s and 1670s. Most important is his analysis of the civil warstage of Bacon’s Rebellion when, in the final stages, "foure hundred English and Negroes in Arms" fought together demanding freedom from bondage.

It was in the period after Bacon's Rebellion, in response to class struggle, that the “white race” was invented as a ruling-class social control formation. Allen describes systematic ruling-class policies, which conferred “white race” privileges on European-Americans while imposing harsher disabilities on African-Americans resulting in a system of racial slavery, a form of racial oppression that also imposed severe racial proscriptions on free African-Americans. He emphasizes that when African-Americans were deprived of their long-held right to vote in Virginia and Governor William Gooch explained in 1735 that theVirginia Assembly had decided upon this curtailment of the franchise in order "to fix a perpetual Brand upon Free Negros & Mulattos," it was not an "unthinking decision." Rather, it was a deliberate act by the plantation bourgeoisie and was a conscious decision in the process of establishing a system of racial oppression, even though it entailed repealing an electoral principle that had existed in Virginia for more than a century.

The key to understanding racial oppression, Allen argues, is in the formation of the intermediate social control buffer stratum, which serves the interests of the ruling class. In the case of racial oppression in Virginia, any persons of discernible non-European ancestry after Bacon's Rebellion were denied a role in the social control buffer group, the bulk of which was made up of laboring-class"whites." In the Anglo-Caribbean, by contrast, under a similar Anglo-ruling elite, "mulattos" were included in the social control stratum and were promoted into middle-class status. For Allen, this was the key to understanding the difference between Virginia’s ruling-class policy of “fixing a perpetual brand” on African-Americans, and the policy of the West Indian planters of formally recognizing the middle-class status “colored” descendant and other Afro-Caribbeans who earned special merit by their service to the regime. This difference, between racial oppression and national oppression, was rooted in a number of social control-related factors, one of the most important of which was that in the West Indies there were “too few” poor and laboring-class Europeans to embody an adequate petit bourgeoisie, while in the continental colonies there were '’too many’' to be accommodated in the ranks of that class.

The references to an “unthinking decision” and “too few” poor and laboring class Europeans are consistent with Allen's repeated efforts to challenge what he considered to be the two main arguments that undermine and disarm the struggle against white supremacy in the working class: (1) the argument that white supremacism is innate, and (2) the argument that European-American workers “benefit” from “white race” privileges and that it is in their interest not to oppose them and not to oppose white supremacy. These two arguments, opposed by Allen, are related to two master historical narratives rooted in writings on the colonial period. The first argument is associated with the “unthinking decision” explanation for the development of racial slavery offered by historian Winthrop D. Jordan in his influential, White Over Black. The second argument is associated with historian Edmund S. Morgan’s similarly influential, American Slavery, American Freedom, which maintains that, as racial slavery developed, “there were too few free poor [European-Americans] on hand to matter.” Allen’s work directly challenges both the “unthinking decision” contention of Jordan and the “too few free poor” contention of Morgan. Allen convincingly argues that the “white race” privileges conferred by the ruling class on European-Americans were not only ruinous to the interests of African-Americans; they were also against the class interest of European-American workers.

The Invention of the White Race is a compelling work that re-examines centuries of history. It also offers Allen’s glimpse of “the future in the distance.” When he completed Volume II sixteen years ago, the 78-years-old Allen, in words that resonate today, ended by describing “unmistakable signs of maturing social conflict” between “the common people” and “the Titans.” He suggested that “Perhaps, in the impending . . . struggle,” influenced by the “indelible stamp of the African-American civil rights struggle of the 1960s,” the “white-skin privileges may finally come to be seen and rejected by laboring-class European-Americans as the incubus that for three centuries has paralyzed their will in defense of their class interests vis-à-vis those of the ruling class.” It was with that prospect in mind, with its profound implications for radical social change, that the independent, working class intellectual/activist Theodore W. Allen (1919-2005) concluded The Invention of the White Race.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator Dr. Jeffrey B. Perry, PhD is an independent, working-class scholar formally educated at Princeton, Harvard, Rutgers, and Columbia. For almost forty years he has been active in the working class movement as a rank-and-file worker and as a union shop steward, officer, editor, and retiree. He has also been involved in domestic and international social justice issues including affirmative action, union democracy, and anti-apartheid, anti-war, and anti-imperialist work. His Website is www.jeffreybperry.net. Contact Dr. Perry.

May 09, 2013 - Issue 516

“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”

- Frederick Douglass

“There was one of two things I had a right to: liberty or death. If I could not have one, I would take the other, for no man should take me alive. I should fight for liberty as long as my strength lasted.”

- Harriet Tubman

Government should exist to serve the everyday ordinary people, not entrap and enslave them.

The prison industrial complex in the U.S. is essentially a 21st century form of economic and psychological slavery. Poor and disenfranchised men and women of all colors are its targets and victims, with 'people of color' enduring the brunt of this 21st century slavery.

Earlier this month, drone man Barack Obama's FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and its police minions placed Black Panther Party veteran - the de facto rebellious runaway slave - sister Assata Shakur, on the so-called 'terrorists' list and increased the already despicable bounty for her capture to 2 million dollars. Assata, who was a target of the infamous and continuing U.S. government COINTELPRO activities, was framed, imprisoned, and tortured in the U.S. prison gulag system in 1973. Subsequently, in 1979, Assata escaped from her tormentors and enslavers, fled into exile, and was ultimately granted political asylum in Cuba, where she resides. Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown would all be very proud of Assata Shakur. Long live Assata! Long live the Cuban people and their ongoing revolution! And long live the just and necessary collective struggle of everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in the United States, and throughout our Mother Earth!

In this year of 2013, the imperialist, avaricious, corporate/military U.S. power elite is intensifying its activities to oppress and disenfranchise ordinary people in this nation and throughout the world. One of the manifestations of this political, economic, and social systemic oppression is the burgeoning U.S. prison population which is, in fact, the largest in the world -- in this sinister bastion of hypocrisy.

Notwithstanding the fact that the overwhelming majority of persons incarcerated in the massive U.S. prison gulag system of slavery are poor and disenfranchised, in addition to being the victims of a an unjust and corrupt judicial system; there is the glaring reality of thousands of women and men political prisoners whose real so-called 'crime' was to stand in opposition to the internal and external political policies of the corporate / military U.S. power elite and its puppet government.

Political prisoners such as Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Sundiata Acoli, Russell Shoatz, Lynne Stewart, Bradley Manning and so very many others are but the tip of a gigantic iceberg of U.S. hypocrisy and injustice right here in this nation. (Reference the March 28, 2013, Black Commentator article titled, Pimping the Pain of Political Prisoners in this Bastion of Hypocrisy).

As the war mongering and bloody Obama/Biden regime, and its proxies, murder Palestinians, Libyans, Afghanis, Pakistanis, and Somalis, etc. all over the world; subterfuge, entrapment, and the fabrication of evidence remain, to this day, the tools of choice of the U.S. government and its corporate-stream 'news' media, to continue COINTELPRO at home, in order to “discredit, defame, neutralize, and imprison” political activists here in the U.S. This nation's corporate-owned 'leaders,' be they Democrat or Republican, are a blight upon everyday ordinary people of all colors in the U.S., and upon humanity as a whole. This is why there are so many political prisoners in this nation, many of whom have languished in U.S. prisons for three, four, or more decades.

The time has come to free all political prisoners in this nation, of all colors! It is time that a general amnesty be declared for all political prisoners!

The slavery of the U.S. prison gulag system (and indeed the U.S. political system as a whole) is not simply a 'New Jim Crow.' It is an extended, fine-tuned 21st century Jim Crow. It is a divide-and-conquer system of economic apartheid against people of all colors that actually enhances racism rather than eradicating it.

As we engage in the struggle to free our men and women political prisoners in this nation, let us also remember the detainees imprisoned at the U.S. prison gulag torture chamber of Guantanamo. We must do this. Why? Frederick Douglass answered this question best when he said, “No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”

We must stop being the dupes of the U.S. corporate-owned government and its propaganda arm – the corporate media. These people and institutions are utterly incapable of telling the truth and have built their lives and fortunes (however large or small) upon the incessant propagation of myths and lies. Their narrative is that of liars who are intent upon beguiling, distracting, ensnaring, confusing, dividing, and controlling everyday ordinary people. We, the everyday ordinary people, 'will not be moved' by their machinations.

Economic austerity, massive incarceration, and police brutality etc. at home, and perpetual U.S. wars abroad, are all inextricably linked. Let us understand and be crystal clear about this!

Drone man Barack Obama is not merely a liar. He is a bloody murderer with his very own 'Kill List.' Nevertheless, he is currently the most potent weapon of the U.S. power elite against the legitimate needs, aspirations, and human rights of everyday people in this nation and throughout Mother Earth! He and his cohorts must be recognized for who and what they really are and dealt with accordingly. I remind you of the words of Steve Biko: “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” Free your minds and reclaim your humanity. Whatever our differences, we must and can do this collectively, based upon firm principles and our own reclaimed consciousness and humanity.

Though our struggle is a long, hard, and protracted one, it is time to face reality in order to change it.

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

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

Apr 09, 2013 -Issue 516

Click here to view the animation

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

Click here to contact Mark

May 09, 2013 - Issue 516

A New York Times reporter in late April wrote a piece titled, “U.S. Opens Spigot After Farmers Claim Discrimination,” and opined that the structure of the settlement between black farmers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) had b888een a “magnet for fraud.”

A latecomer to the issue of rampant discrimination against black farmers, Sharon LaFraniere, filed a story that virtually ignored the structural racism in most dealings between USDA’s most local level, the “county committees” and black farmers. Rather, she reported that bureaucrats inside the federal government, as well as the political establishment, had said there “was no credible evidence of widespread discrimination” against the black farmers who had made the charges.

The first question one would be inclined to ask is: What country did she grow up in? And, has she learned anything about the struggle for civil rights in the U.S. over the past century? A problem that she had in researching (the term is used loosely) the story is that she is not likely to have spoken at length with the farmers in the class action lawsuit that had its origins nearly a quarter-century ago. The story apparently was based solely on the assertions of those inside the USDA who might have been some of those who actually presided over the rampant discrimination in the first place. Or, they might have just blindly carried out the discriminatory policies that were in place.

With some fanfare, the USDA revealed the settlement with black farmers several years ago, with individual payments set at $50,000 for each claimant. Some in the government thought that it was an open-and-shut case, that there were just a few dozen claimants, who, once they were paid, would cause the issue to disappear. The case was much more complicated than that and, after Barack Obama became president, the amount set aside for payout was $1.13 billion. That’s how the number of claimants grew.

As in any litigation involving government and bureaucracy and the principle of “discovery,” it was shown that many more farmers had suffered regular discrimination by the county committees, which across the South, were peopled primarily by white farmers. It was these committees, black farmers claimed, who took the actions that nearly led to the demise of black farm agriculture in most of the southern states.

The alleged fraud in claims came as the result of the opening of the lawsuit to more black families who said they were victims of discrimination. Many were sons or daughters or descendents of farmers who suffered the discrimination all their lives and died before they got their measure of justice. The increase in claims came largely as the result of the notification of black communities by the USDA that there was such a lawsuit.

The LaFraniere story resulted in a firestorm of criticism about the tone and the facts (or lack thereof) of the story. Black farm organizations, academics, and others pointed out the flaws in the piece and showed that the research for the story was incompetent at best or intentionally misleading.

One fact that seemed to evade Ms. LaFraniere, in her assessment of a lack of discrimination is this: There were more than 900,000 black farmers at about the end of World War I and, by the time those same farmers were prepared to do something about it (somewhere around 1990), there were said to be only 18,000 black farmers left and they were being forced off their farms at an alarming rate. One would have to avoid knowledge of the workings of Reconstruction after the Civil War and of Jim Crow after World War I to not know the kind of naked racism and discrimination that was being practiced routinely. So much for there being “no credible evidence” of widespread discrimination…it was there to be seen, even by a reporter in 2013. That is what the civil rights movements were about.

In a letter in response to the LaFraniere story, Ralph Paige, executive director of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives (FSC), wrote, “Mainly, it does not offer historical context of the vast scope of discrimination in rural areas throughout the country by the Agriculture Department. It does not mention the decades of studies by the Commission on Civil Rights and the Agriculture Department itself that confirm discrimination against black farmers. It also does not mention the countless black farmers who worked diligently on farm plans only to have their loan applications thrown in the trash can right in front of them by the Agriculture Department’s county supervisor.”

And that was the impunity with which the most local representatives of the USDA acted throughout the generations, throughout the South. As an aside, the only reason there was not the same problem in other regions of the country was that there were so few black farmers, their numbers did not register for agricultural statistics. The FSC has kept track of these issues throughout its nearly 45-year history, during which it has assisted black family farmers across the South with farm management, debt restructuring, alternative crop suggestions, marketing expertise and a whole range of services to ensure family farm survivability. Also, Paige added: “Also, the fraud alleged in the article was minuscule. The 60 claims investigated by the F.B.I. amounted to less than three-tenths of 1 percent of the 22,000 claims filed.”

The discrimination the USDA was attempting to address occurred over generations, not just since the beginnings of the class action lawsuit, in the early 1990s. When it began, there were only about 18,000 black farmers left on the land, while thousands of others still held the land that had been farmed by parents or grandparents, who had been forced out of farming by routine discrimination. One of the reasons for pushing them off the land was that someone else wanted the land, usually much bigger farmers and usually, they were white.

Rachel Slocum, a professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse, in a letter co-written by nine other academics from several states, told the Times: “We do not deny the accuracy of the claim that some fraud has occurred. In any sign-up program with tens of thousands of participants and billions of dollars at stake, a few people will try to cheat the system. Those who do should be punished. The article is not really about those few proven cases, however. It is instead an effort to depict the settlement, without providing any real evidence, as a ‘runaway train’ of fraud.”

Agricultural historian, Pete Daniels, whose latest book, “Dispossession: Discrimination Against African-American Farmers in the Age of Civil Rights,” addressed the problems of integral discrimination in the policies of the USDA, wrote of the LaFraniere story, “But there is a long train of evidence of discrimination, much of it from the USDA records at the National Archives, as well as from records of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, National Sharecroppers Fund, NAACP, SNCC, and land grant universities, among other sources. Since the mid-1960s, USDA officials have continually denied discrimination, but the record indicates otherwise.”

Daniels has concentrated on that long history of discrimination before 1981, which was eventually made the cutoff year for discrimination claims. Writing for the History News Network, his contention is that the record is full of examples: “When SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee) in the mid-1960s organized African American farmers to vote in ASCS (Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service) elections, county offices issued inaccurate maps, neglected to send black women ballots, manipulated ballots to confuse black farmers, all with the complicity of the Washington USDA office.

“There was also violence, intimidation, and economic retaliation. Some black farmers were eventually elected to community committees and a few alternates elected to powerful county committees, but the system remained tightly controlled by whites. Millions of dollars flowed through these committees that in many ways shaped rural life. As the civil rights movement wound down, USDA administrators belittled SNCC’s contribution to organizing black farmers in ASCS elections, outrageously claiming that it was the USDA that encouraged black participation.”

There is enough evidence that discrimination was rampant through at least three generations and we know that it did not stop with any “settlement” made between the black farmers and the Department of Agriculture or the government at any level. There are those who died waiting for justice and, if their descendants did not make their claim, the historical record might show that there was no justification for the payments, as paltry as they were. A $50,000 payment for someone who hung on for years and faced two or three times that amount in debt would not represent justice. Fortunately, there are historians like Daniels who will not let the historical record lie.

As Ralph Paige wrote, “One would hope that the Agriculture Department would finally address the dreadful discrimination within its ranks, and thanks to Secretary Tom Vilsack, it is doing precisely that. The journey to overcome racial issues is not an easy one, but to ignore the existence of this injustice is the very definition of discrimination. Unfortunately, the article criticizes farmers who have been victimized rather than the Agriculture Department’s history of corrupt policies.”

When this kind of lopsided coverage of an issue as vital as the demise of black farmers and landowners is distributed around the country, it is that story that is the one the general public remembers. Despite the accurate portrayal of the issue by people like Ralph Paige, Rachel Slocum, and Pete Daniels, it is the New York Times version that is likely to be remembered, because any number of newspapers large and small, as well as other news outlets, will have used the story, as is, and there is no counter to the power of the mainstream media.

In recent years, there have been numerous stories in the press about the “land grabs” by the richer nations, mostly in the global south, in which corporations, governments, and private individuals are taking control of large swaths of poorer countries to grow food and cash crops for their own countries. Many developing countries in Africa have fallen prey to the land grabbers and have seen tribal and indigenous people removed from the land. In reality, the land grab of millions of acres of American soil that was once owned by black farmers has been going on for the better part of a century and it happened under the noses of virtually all Americans.

Gary Grant, president of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association (BFAA), said many years ago, when he was gearing up for the discrimination lawsuit on his parents’ farm in North Carolina, “A landless people is a powerless people.”

That appears to have been the long-term goal of those who worked so hard for so many decades to eliminate black farmers in America.

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.

May 09, 2013 - Issue 516

On Sunday’s CNN Newsroom, Don Johnson (the anchor) (black and out-gay) had on two other folks who – for whatever reason – seemed to embrace some “rivulets” of black-cultural presence to talk about black youth deaths and terrorism (?) in urban “hoods.” These neighborhoods are otherwise known as “neighborhoods near where white people want to live.” Those where black youth die and no white people are around are never heard of except in the same seemingly inexplicable rising and falling annual statistics. This show is as black culturally as any minute of commercial TV time any where ever gets. I have to say that it was pleasing to see three handsome, healthy black faces on the screen all at one time – for a long time. After catching everyone’s eye with a quick interview of Michelle (MO) – in a garden setting – Don brought out Rasheda Ali (female boxer and daughter of Mohammed Ali) and L. Z. Granderson (CNN Contributor) with his collarbone length Dred locks.

I was rather rapidly shocked back from a pleasant “dream state” to this much skewed reality that was being presented when Don and his guests began to speak. It started innocently enough with the First Lady saying “Every day (children in Chicago) wake up…everyone of them…wake up and wonder whether they are going to get to school alive…millions living in these circumstances and we have to embrace these kids.”

Rasheda, next, talked about her program to get youth from “the hood” into boxing and karate classes to learn civil behaviors [which is noble but wrong, more later] and then astounded me by referring positively to something she admitted to know nothing about, the Los Angeles Comprehensive Gang Strategy. Don followed this by stating that he and L. Z. felt that these violent groups of African American teenagers and young adults needed to be treated as if they were terrorists because they are terrorizing the community. I am now at the apex of my shock! I do not think that I have ever heard such meme confusion in my life which contributed so disruptively to clear understanding of the obvious nature of violence. And coming out of the mouths of beautiful people with authentic claims on blackness was too much!

The First Lady’s word was embrace “these kids.” There is a powerful feminine meme encapsulated in that word. Don Johnson flashed her interview-presence past us as if he was spreading holy incense for a people who have only noses that include olfactory glands and which do not connect to their brains. It was a “we are in a caring zone” mood he wanted. From then on the First Lady was ignored.

Ms. Ali seemed to have linked to a deeper, older “idle hands” meme; she deeply personalized and concentrated it into what had kept her and many person’s – particularly young men’s – hands and moments busy: with boxing and karate. She truly believed that expressions of violence can be sufficiently channeled into a relatively benign activity such as boxing (the gloves are padded and sometimes the heads too). Since not everyone goes professional even though that is held out to be desirable, boxing can be considered benign. I know that professionals have died in the ring. Self involvement and this mission seem to have blinded Ms. Ali to the violence and death that emanates from all sectors and all educated and socioeconomic levels of Western society. So her answer is totally self training to keep the violence acceptable. Organized groups in this Western culture often engage in disciplined “keep hands from being idle” behavior and have elements that exhibit increased lethality and subtlety as one looks up the socioeconomic levels. Applying the “idle hands” meme has rarely made more than a marginal, temporary impact on youth violence or any violence and the impact that arises is dependent on the current juvenile popularity of the activity and its degree of effortless availability.

Although she didn’t specify the part, Rasheda stated that she agreed with part of what both Don and L. Z. said. I hope it was that the community was being terrorized. She stated emphatically that she did NOT agree that using antiterrorism tactics was the way to proceed with the young black men in Chicago. For her, such was a misuse of the term, terrorism. In other words she must have been saying that “terror” applies in terms of its impacts but not in terms of source-agency. “American” “blind spots” are tricky; Ms. Ali refused to give these young black men much agency in their behavior. Yet she, Don, and L. Z. attributed “foreign” young men who face similar waves of societal impingement at the same time of their juvenile growth much personal agency. Also, national U.S. source-agency in committing and furthering terrorism was on no one’s table in this discussion; barely voiced were the forces, or the lack of them, in urban areas that result in lethally harmful behavior.

Terrorism is always, ultimately, left “in the eye” of the target. “You know it because you experience it.” Having been a part of a family who lost a promising black male to street violence, Ms. Ali knows terror well. Yet she would not go all the way with the two CNN employees: that a young black man in the “hood” is a suspected terrorist and/or they and their associates should be treated like terrorists or as members of terrorists’ cells. What she is unfortunately not aware of is that such is exactly how the Los Angeles Comprehensive (evidenced-based) Gang Strategy treats young black and brown men and their associates! The truth is that the U.S. army attempted to use handheld computers in Iraq that were first designed with software programs for gang surveillance and identification in Los Angeles.

From the prospective of members of target communities where so-called terrorists are relatively un-camouflaged members, the view is significantly different. The solutions offered by the community are also often very different. They frequently include a heavy dose of feminine, maternal embrace. They almost always have some positive impact and they never are an element of further or additional harmful behavior. These methods’ limitations are primarily shaped by who is considered to be included in the embrace of the general society. The more that the social psychological health of one’s more narrowly familial, ethnic, geographical, linguistic, and religious community is weak, weakened, and suppressed, the more significant general society inclusion does make a difference. The availability of positive alternatives and real opportunities is immensely efficacious. This is how real embrace is actualized.

The militarism meme, whether applied domestically or foreign policy-wise, contains a dominating element of no alternative and therefore best alternative. The efficacy of violence as the means to peace is a deeply held belief – deeper than religious belief systems which all vainly attempt to cling to the efficacy of peace. The unquestioned belief in violence is held DESPITE the facts being exactly the opposite from the point of view of everybody but the people committing the most violence. “American” violence is justified without question and no other is justifiable; that is completely irrational.

The question of who is included in the First Lady’s embrace is critical and it applies differentially on a contemporary and horizontal dimensional view of meme application versus a vertical (through historical time) view. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a practicing boxer in Boston, yet he was not apparently embraced nor distracted from hurtful violent acts through filling “idle hands” in this way. Neither Don, nor L.Z., nor Rasheda mentioned this glaring fact; Ms. Ali’s arguments were left hanging with a glaring stain that no one spoke about. However, Tamerlan’s focus remained less local geographical and contemporary because he had insufficient depth of inclusion in local Boston society. Without social inclusion, boxing is just exercise.

Like almost everything else we do in Western capitalist culture, the ability to easily target violence towards a group of people is held as sacrosanct (ultimate justice) and is defined and refined by the degree of subtly and target definition at other beyond-embraceable-communities. Those distinctions get extended by geographical, ethnic, religious, and other perceived boundaries. They are also extended or concentrated by how we engage history and hereditary relations on the vertical time scale.

If we go as deep as hereditary science can take us, we not only embrace all of humanity, we embrace all of life. This is akin to what we lost – as an African American people cut off from the African understanding that is ancestor worship – and all that that meme means. Like so much that white Europeans did not understand, they demonized it as a mysterious, dark thing that rivaled their religious beliefs to be imposed on us. They took away our ancestors and gave us their Book. A military stance – and rapacious, thieving, enslaving stance – against all African Christian and non-Christian-believers then became appropriate. These meme-replicating, recycling, relational, historical understandings erupt into the presence attaching to the behaviors and implements available. They are glommed onto by disparate maturing juveniles attempting to exercise their hero stories and find community acceptance.

These confused tangled memes that are the instigators of this stupid, extinction-causing behavior must be exposed and uprooted, not endorsed! More species-saving memes like embrace can be honed and applied both domestically and internationally and more supportive, furthering institutions can be constructed around these memes. Unfortunately, neither Resheda Ali nor First Lady Michelle Obama (MO) will carry that message deep or wide. The First Lady has not yet challenged urban militaristic police tactics to any degree of which I am aware. And Obama’s hero model is too individual, too vilified, and still to inaccessible to ghetto youth. There is meme dimensional confusion in the black world.

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

May 09, 2013 -Issue 516

There are a lot of sound reasons to critique Keynesian economics, but a reason that its creator was gay shouldn’t be one of them.

Niall Ferguson, the Laurence A. Tisch, Professor of History at Harvard University, has sadly, in 2013, just found that out.

Ferguson’s speech to investors and financial analysts at the Tenth Annual Altegris Conference in Carlsbad, Calif., that should have awed his audience, instead shocked and offended them.

And what some say was characteristically Fergusonian - contrarian, provocative and offensive - the Harvard economic historian hinted that John Maynard Keynes’ (one of the most influential economists of the Twentieth Century) long-term economic theories were misguided at best, and flawed at worst, because he was childless and gay.

“Keynes was a homosexual and had no intention of having children. We are not dead in the long run … our children are our progeny. It is the economic ideals of Keynes that have gotten us into the problems of today.”

In a moment that should have highlighted Ferguson’s erudition on economic history during the question-and-answer session when asked to speak on Keynes’ philosophy of self-interest versus Edmund Burke’s philosophy of a free market system, Ferguson, some would also say, classically stuck his foot in his mouth.

“He was married to a ballerina with whom he likely talked of ‘poetry’ rather than procreated.”

Now, Ferguson, like all high profiled homophobes, must publicly do damage control to avoid potentially jeopardizing job security as well the reputation of institutions affiliated with him. Ferguson’s mea culpa, “An unqualified apology” can easily be accessed from his website.

“My disagreements with Keynes’s economic philosophy have never had anything to do with his sexual orientation. It is simply false to suggest, as I did, that his approach to economic policy was inspired by any aspect of his personal life. As those who know me and my work are well aware, I detest all prejudice, sexual or otherwise.”

If these words aren’t contrite or authentic enough, let’s remember that every bigot has at least one good friend to bail him or her out. And to Ferguson’s rescue is renown gay author and editor of the blog, “The Dish,” Andrew Sullivan.

“If he really believed gay men had no interest in future generations, why would he have asked me, a gay man with HIV, to be the godfather to one of his sons? And why would I have accepted?”

Good query, Andrew.

And perhaps the answer is embedded somewhere in the fact that Ferguson and Sullivan, back in the day, were college cronies at Magdalen College, Oxford. Both colleagues, then as now, share a near zealous affinity for right-wing politics.

Among conservatives like Ferguson, Keynesian economics, since its inception, has confronted a barrage of criticism. While some of the critiques are, without doubt, substantive, sadly an overwhelming number of them have been ad hominem attacks on Keynes, the man, beginning with his contemporary and arch rival, Joseph Schumpeter.

“He was childless and his philosophy of life was essentially a short-run philosophy,” Schumpeter cuttingly wrote his 1946 “American Economic Review” obituary for Keynes.

Critics of Keynes who downplay Schumpeter’s and Ferguson’s gay-bashing spin these homophobic remarks not as ad hominems but rather as important and insight tidbits about the man. Some will go so far as to appropriate the feminist creed “The personal is political and the political is person” to obfuscate their malign intent.

“To ignore elements of Keynes’s private life, however, as does his first major biographer, Roy Harrod - particularly Keynes’s homosexuality, despite its featuring in nearly two decades of passionate and poignant correspondence from the early 1990s - is to underplay the importance of Keynes’s associations outside official college and government circles, in particular with members of the Cambridge “Apostles” male secret society and the iconoclastic Bloomsbury group of London intellectuals and aesthetes,” Benn Steil, Council on Foreign Relations director of international economics, wrote in his February released book The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order (Council on Foreign Relations Books (Princeton University Press)).

To Keynes credit, critics of his sexual orientation didn’t force him to live a closeted life. In his early years Keynes openly had many same-sex relations, and kept a diary of his exploits.

The fluidity of Keynes’ sexuality became evident in his later years when he fell in love with the renown Russian ballerina, Lydia Lopokova. While many biphobics would suspect that Keynes became a “down low” philanderer, historical records inarguably state that Keynes and Lopokova lived a life of marital bliss.

While Ferguson’s gay-bashing of Keynesian economics was to discredit Keynes and his entire body of work, it has rather done the reverse - brought renewed international attention to a renown economist and to another one of our LGBTQ unsung forebears.

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.

May 09, 2013 -Issue 516

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

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

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

Click here to contact Mr. Latuff

May 09, 2013 - Issue 516

I was watching the Sunday morning talk shows on the five major networks two weeks ago, and got hung up on one of the earlier shows. I saw several political pundits opine on the state of the country and the intent of congress as we grapple with the nation’s problems. It occurred to me that none of these people on my TV screen looked like me. Then, I went outside, walked to the corner of the closest, busy intersection near my house. I stood there for five minutes and watched people walking and cars go by. I saw people who looked like me.

I then walked back home, sat down in front of the television again and watched the ratings leader. The host was interviewing four top advisors to former President George W. Bush: former Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, his predecessor Andy Card; former counselor to the president, Dan Bartlett, and former Chief of Staff to the First Lady, Ann McBride.

As they conversed about the Bush legacy, I rewound my memory to the three earlier political talk shows (no, I don’t have cable) and realized that every single pundit was a white person! What? You mean to tell me that all of the people in the top recesses of government are white…still?

It occurred to me that my grandsons who watched with me the bit of TV I do watch, will come away with the impression that all things authoritarian in America is dictated by white people. I’m glad I’m watching with them. It is imperative that I refute and retard that impression. That impression also comes with the inference that anyone selected to speak on issues of importance are also “the smartest people in the room.” From the Bush legacy, there’s clear evidence that such is not the case.

Later that afternoon, I trolled through the radio dial for political talk and every single voice of authority was a white one. Whether incendiary AM talk or pro-corporate soft news, It’s a white voice on the end of all things authority.

I am embittered by the premise. I just ran for DC’s Council and debated issues with some thought to be the “smartest minds in the room.” They didn’t outsmart me nor overpower my linguistic skill set. We were equals before the public. Even though the public chose the status quo in the end, the consensus of media pundits and pols’ was that I won - knowledgeable and authoritative on the issues.

Now, as this commentary was sitting in the can awaiting publication, this past week’s Sunday morning talk show leader pulled a left turn on me - and featured two Black pundits! Of course, they were sharp, articulate, informed and accurate. It was as if they were reading my commentary (which wouldn’t be so bad). Another notable front-runner featured a Black, a woman and two Latinos! Although one of the Blacks and one of the Latinos were questionably lighter-hued, I had to ask, were they reading my mind?

Just like the spin on race relations in America, “one show don’t make no cabaret!” Of course I’ll be waiting for next week’s panel, next week’s subject authorities. The whos are as important as the whats. It appears that Blacks (and minorities) can be featured speakers on social injustice issues: affirmative action, immigration, voting rights, while whites-only panels are reserved for constitutional discussions, national defense and corporate debates—“big boy” matters.

Why do I bring this up? Simply because watching the mainstream broadcasts reminded me why I no longer frequent mainstream broadcasts. If un-educated, I’d come away believing that white people have all the answers, all the solutions and everything in-between. This is the perception of missionaries, colonists, and imperialists.
Regardless of the color of your skin, this is an erroneous Belief System - or BS. This BS is the reason why we cannot get past race and racism. This BS is why we have to continue the fight against voter suppression, gentrification, selective prosecution, wealth disparity, employment discrimination, mass incarceration or racially-driven home mortgage foreclosures. Racism is not over, not past and we cannot “move on.” America is still racist, still prejudiced and still steeped in its sordid history.

We’re having the same debates 50 years later that prevailed 50 years ago: Bull Conner was preventing Black folks from voting in 1963; in 2012, we battled against voter ID laws. Black folks were prevented from owning homes in white-dominated neighborhoods prior to 1965; in 2013, Blacks folks, in the District of Columbia, are forced out of neighborhoods by white gentrifiers. Schools were legally segregated before the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling; now we’ve got traditional schools vs. charter schools—disparate resources, same system: “separate but equal.” Nothing’s changed in this racist paradigm, except that our children are veiled to the truth and none the wiser.

I repeat: Racism is not over. Whether it’s overt or covert, it’s not over. Whether it’s politics or entertainment, it’s not over. Whether the media is social or mainstream, it’s not over. So the next time someone comes to you with that BS that we can just “move forward in our changed America,” slap ‘em upside the head for me and tell ‘em to quit the post-racial talk.

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

May 09, 2013 - Issue 516

This is the first of a two-part article on the origin and development of African Liberation Day (ALD). The celebration of African Liberation Day (ALD) in the United States began in May 1972 in Washington, D.C. More than 60,000 people participated in this historic event.

In 1973, ALD was decentralized and Chicago sponsored its first ALD celebration in May of that year. Since that time, we have celebrated ALD in various ways, with parades, rallies, and cultural programs.

From the 1980s through 1997, NBUF Chicago Chapter sponsored African Liberation Day / ALD on the Westside, where we marched down Madison Street and culminated with a rally and cultural program in Garfield Park. These ALD events have been very successful and we have been honored to sponsor them. Other groups are now sponsoring African Liberation Day celebrations and activities throughout the United States.

African Liberation Day has become an institution throughout the African world. It is a day when all people of African ancestry should come together. Whether you were born in Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia, Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Haiti, Jamaica, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Belize, Bahia, Canada, Cuba, Trinidad, Puerto Rico, Paris, or Chicago, as long as you are Black, you are an African, with a common heritage, and a common set of conditions.

As we prepare to participate in the upcoming weekend of events and activities, we must always remember the origin and development of African Liberation Day. Our ancestor, Kwame Ture, explained, “ALD was founded by Kwame Nkrumah on the occasion of the First Conference of Independent States held in Accra, Ghana and attended by eight independent states. The 15th of April was declared African Freedom Day to mark each year the onward process of the liberation movement, and to symbolize the determination of the people of Africa to free themselves from foreign domination and exploitation.”

Further, the AAPRP (All-African People’s Revolutionary Party) points out that, “On the 25th of May 1963, 31 African heads of state convened a summit meeting to found the Organization of African Unity. They proclaimed May 25th as ALD and called for mass demonstrations and manifestations in every comer of Africa and the African Diaspora.”

The idea of ALD has its origins in the long history of African people to break free of the yoke of European domination and white supremacy. This is a time in which we emphasize our oneness as a people with a common past, common set of problems, and a common future.

The capturing of millions of African people, who were placed in slavery and introduced into the western hemisphere as property and commodities, is the backdrop upon which we commemorate African Liberation Day.

It was the slave trade industry of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth-centuries involving Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, and Germany that served as the foundation for these western powers and provided them the margin of profit in getting the greatest return off of their investment. The western world still seeks to keep Africa and African people worldwide in bondage, so they can continue to maximize the greatest return off of their initial investment.

After chattel slavery was abolished in England and the United States, the slave trade industry began to wind down. The former slave-trading nations found themselves no longer needing slaves, but yet stumbled upon the other natural resources of Africa. They began to fight each other over the gold, diamonds, and other mineral and plant resources they were discovering.

This resulted in the calling of the Berlin Conference in 1884, where the European powers united to divide the continent of Africa among themselves. It has been discussed, historically, that those who control Africa, control the world. Therefore, the Berlin Conference was a crowning blow in African history. The results of this conference led to the carving up of Africa so that France, Britain, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, and Germany controlled separate territories throughout the continent. This became known as the colonial period in African history. The colonial period in Africa, just as the enslavement of African people captured and brought to North America, had a devastating impact on Africa and African people. It was not until the early 1950s that the first African country gained political independence in the movement to reclaim Africa. That country was Ghana under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah who led the Ghanaian people in their fight against British colonialism.

I will continue the discussion of the origin and development of African Liberation Day in my next column. Many groups around the country and the world where African people reside will be hosting ALD Celebrations this year. Don’t forget to support African Liberation Day activities in your area of the world.

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.

May 09, 2013 - Issue 516

Click here for more about David T. Dellinger

May 09, 2013 - Issue 516

Margaret Warfield ~ Artist

www.margaretwarfield.com

$2,500

Size:48” x 48”

Medium: Acrylic

Ground: Gallery wrapped canvas

Click here to purchase A Moment In The Dance

Click here to view the first fifteen pages of "Changing"

Click here to contact Ms. Warfield

Artist Statement: A Moment In The Dance, There is always a moment, in each circumstance, that calls out to use to pause, take a step back or forward, before we make a life changing decision.
Wait for that moment and…

Represented by BlackCommentator.com