Saturday, November 4, 2017
Tuesday, October 10, 2017
Sunday, September 24, 2017
Celebrating the 76th Birthday of Soledad Brother George Lester Jackson, September 23, 1941- August 21, 1971, by Kiilu Nyasha
“I have a plan, I will give, and give, and give of myself
until it proves our making or my end.”
As we honor the 76th birthday of our beloved, Comrade
George Jackson, Field Marshall of the Black Panther Party behind prison walls,
may we remember his revolutionary ideas and practice, his mentors and his sacrifice.
Author of two books, Soledad Brother: the Prison Letters of George Jackson, a 1970 bestseller reprinted three times and translated into several languages; and Blood In My Eye, published posthumously and recently reprinted.
Sunday, August 27, 2017
SLAVERY ON THE NEW PLANTATION (updated March 2012 by Kiilu Nyasha
"Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today. It's the same, but with a
new name. They're practicing slavery under color of law." (Ruchell Cinque
Magee)
The 13th
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution retained the right to enslave within the
confines of prison. “Neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall
have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place
subject to their jurisdiction.” Dec. 6, 1865.
Even before
the abolition of chattel slavery, America's history of prison labor had already
begun in New York's State Prison at Auburn soon after it opened in 1817. Auburn
became the first prison that contracted with a private business to operate a
factory within its walls. Later, in the post Civil War period, the "contract
and lease" system proliferated, allowing private companies to employ
prisoners and sell their products for profit.
Today, such
prisons are referred to as “Factories with Fences.”
(/www.unicor.gov/information/publications/pdfs/corporate/CATMC1101_C.pdf)
Fatal Invention Book Review
by Kiilu Nyasha
March 19, 2012
Dorothy Roberts’ new book, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business
Re-Create Race in the 21st Century is a must read for all human beings desiring to witness the
beginning of the end of racism.
“We have long had scientific
confirmation that race is a political and not a biological category. The
recreation of biological race in genomic science today, like its invention by
scientists in past centuries, results from an ideological commitment to a false
view of humanity,” writes Roberts.
In 2000, The Human Genome
Project mapped the entire human genetic code, proving that race could not be
identified in our genes, that we are not naturally divided into genetically
identifiable racial groups, that there is one human race.
Roberts explains and
elucidates race as a political division, not a biological
one. And details how the new science and
technology of racial genetics is threatening “to steer America on a course of
social inhumanity that already has begun to dominate politics in this
century.
Sunday, May 28, 2017
Haiti’s Fanmi Lavalas and the Black Panther Party
By Kiilu Nyasha (a.k.a. Pat Gallyot)
This year of 2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding
of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, October 1966, in Oakland,
California.
In 1968, prior to joining the Party, I was employed by Community
Progress, Inc. (CPI), the nation’s pilot program of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War
on Poverty,” also euphemistically called “The Great Society.”
I became one of the “Field Trainers” deployed in each of the seven
impoverished neighborhoods of New Haven, Conn.
Assigned to the predominately Black area of Newhallville, I worked at
the Teen Center, a government facility that eventually became the cite for the
Black Panther Party’s free breakfast program; launched by a town hall meeting
and a popular vote.
Monday, February 13, 2017
IDA B. WELLS-BARNETT -- "IOLA," PRINCESS OF THE PRESS & Feminist Crusader for Equality and Justice, by Kiilu Nyasha
A tireless champion of her
people, Ida B. Wells was the first of eight children born to Jim and Elizabeth
Wells in Mississippi in 1862, six months before chattel slavery was ended with
the Emancipation Proclamation.
Her parents, who had been
slaves, were able to support their children because Elizabeth was an excellent
cook and Jim a skilled carpenter. But when Ida was only 16, her parents and
youngest sibling died of Yellow Fever during an epidemic. In keeping with the strength and fortitude
she demonstrated throughout her remarkable life, Ida took responsibility for
raising her six younger siblings with her grandmother’s help. Educated at nearby
Rust College, a school run by white missionaries, Ida was forced to drop out; she
got a full-time teaching job by lying about her age, and spent weekends
washing, ironing and cooking for her large family.
Sunday, January 29, 2017
Women of the Black Panther Party Reflect on Today's Struggle, Staying Engaged and Why Trump's Win Might be a Good Thing
The Black Panther Party just closed out its 50th anniversary year. On this occasion, the Intersectional Black Panther Party History Project spoke with Panther women about leadership, electoral politics and what we should be doing today.
The year 2016 marked the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party (BPP). Facing repression and at great sacrifice, more than 5,000 mostly young Black people joined the BPP between the 1960s and ‘70s to work for “land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.” They built institutions, ran electoral campaigns, created social programs, transformed culture and tried to create a framework of justice that would impact oppressed people worldwide.