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Home Issue: 289

Issue: 289

September 4, 2008

Guest Commentary

The Politics Driving Mississippi’s ICE Raid

By David Bacon Guest Commentator

Laurel, Miss. – On August 25, immigration agents swooped down on Howard Industries, a Mississippi electrical equipment factory, taking 481 workers to a privately-run detention center in Jena, Louisiana. Some 106 were also arrested at the plant, and released wearing electronic monitoring devices on their ankles, if they had children, or without them, if they…

Laurel, Miss. - On August 25, immigration agents swooped down on Howard Industries, a Mississippi electrical equipment factory, taking 481 workers to a privately-run detention center…

Continue reading 9 min

Commentary

Uneven: Poetic Black Fusion – Spoken Word Poetry

By Poet Blackman Preach Spoken Word Columnist (includes MP3 audio)

Uneven I lost my footing stumbling— I went through the floor like a man who losses all— no family no money no friends to lean on he will be a lost complexion depression elevating. I can’t understand what the elders are trying to get across to me because as distant my mind is my eyes…

Uneven I lost my footing stumbling— I went through the floor like a man who losses all— no family no money no friends to lean on…

Continue reading 2 min

Cover Story

1: Living in the Car After Gustav – Justice Watch

By Bill Quigley Columnist

New Orleans, September 2, 2008 The good news is that nearly two million people evacuated and were spared the direct hit of Gustav. Our sisters and brothers in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, who were not able to leave the point of the storm, lost over 100 lives. The people of the U.S. were fortunate…

New Orleans, September 2, 2008 The good news is that nearly two million people evacuated and were spared the direct hit of Gustav. Our sisters and…

Continue reading 3 min

Guest Commentary

2: A Trailer Park Tale – Three Years After Katrina

By Deepa Fernandes Guest Commentator

The elegant-sounding address of 2000 Groom Road belies the reality. “A cow pasture, that’s what I like to call our home” Lena Beard declared back in December 2006, referring to the country’s largest FEMA trailer park in which she had lived since October 2005. The 62 acre field, with its orderly rows of little white…

The elegant-sounding address of 2000 Groom Road belies the reality. “A cow pasture, that’s what I like to call our home” Lena Beard declared back in…

Continue reading 17 min

Commentary

Barack Obama: Playing the “Race Card” While Politically Castrating the Race & the Nation – Keeping it Real

By Larry Pinkney Editorial Board

The problem for political conjurers and tricksters is that sooner or later their trickery will engulf them. They are of course aware of this and spare no hypocrisy in making every effort to expeditiously obtain political power for the historical moment, always at the ultimate expense of the masses of everyday common folk. Due to…

The problem for political conjurers and tricksters is that sooner or later their trickery will engulf them. They are of course aware of this and spare…

Continue reading 4 min

The African World

Labor Vanishes – The African World

By Bill Fletcher, Jr. Editorial Board

Organized labor has vanished, as if it were part of the story line of a science fiction novel. Labor Day 2008 came and went and…nothing. I searched through the newspaper…nothing. I looked at the TV schedule…nothing. It was as if there is not and never was anything called organized labor. You may be saying that…

Organized labor has vanished, as if it were part of the story line of a science fiction novel. Labor Day 2008 came and went and…nothing. I…

Continue reading 5 min

Commentary

Telescreens – More than Technology – Represent Our Resistance

By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD Editorial Board

But then it was precisely the amateur spy who was the greatest danger of all. The American Dream includes the lost and wondering Black young man on some depressed street in Detroit or Los Angeles or New Orleans. It includes those in run down apartments, in run down buildings who know the city negotiators and…

But then it was precisely the amateur spy who was the greatest danger of all. The American Dream includes the lost and wondering Black young man…

Continue reading 11 min

Commentary

Avoiding the Bleedin’ Obvious – Left Margin

By Carl Bloice Editorial Board

The opening line of Kevin Phillip’s new book says the “most worrisome thing” about the present economic situation in the U.S. is “the extent of official understatement and misstatements – the preference for minimizing how many problems there are and how interconnected they are.” In the preface to “Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and…

The opening line of Kevin Phillip’s new book says the “most worrisome thing” about the present economic situation in the U.S. is “the extent of official…

Continue reading 9 min

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