tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66083108559663203172024-03-19T06:03:38.840-07:00The Official Website of Kiilu NyashaKiilu Nyashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499726491019227728noreply@blogger.comBlogger161125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6608310855966320317.post-13258186782721752122018-02-02T19:49:00.001-08:002018-02-02T19:49:36.378-08:00Freedom Is A Constant Struggle with Rohnda Ramiro and Pierre LabossiereRhonda Ramiro is with BAYAN-USA, a nationwide, multi-sectoral alliance of over a thousand grassroots peoples’ organizations with a membership of more than one million people, fighting for national and social liberation of the Philippines.<br />
<br />
Pierre Labossiere is co-founder of Haiti Action Committee, a local organization dedicated to the liberation of Haiti.<br />
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Both nations are victims of U.S. imperialism and both guests drop lots of knowledge.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qdEcWSD1yMc" width="459"></iframe>Kiilu Nyashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499726491019227728noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6608310855966320317.post-55703245540939417412018-01-25T18:30:00.001-08:002018-01-25T18:30:59.894-08:00Freedom is a Constant Struggle with guests Ziad Abbas and Nadya Tannous<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/POGgIKWVl8k" width="459"></iframe>Kiilu Nyashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499726491019227728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6608310855966320317.post-28488519381844670982018-01-25T18:06:00.001-08:002018-01-25T18:06:36.262-08:00Freedom is a Constant Struggle with guests Rhonda Ramiro & Phavia Kujichagulia <iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_8LmHMm8sK4" width="459"></iframe>Kiilu Nyashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499726491019227728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6608310855966320317.post-21183098283648254162018-01-13T15:40:00.000-08:002018-01-25T18:03:01.034-08:00BOYCOTT THE ELECTION & START THE REVOLUTION! By Kiilu Nyasha October 27,2016<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The vast majority of
Americans regardless of background or ethnicity agree that this electoral
campaign gives us no choice but to vote for someone we don’t like or want to
govern us. The perennial “lesser evil” has become more malevolent, even
ridiculous in the current presidential election.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Some folks want to “hold their
noses” and vote for the “lesser” evil on the belief that one will be worse than
the other. However, we’ve been doing just that for at least 50 years; that’s
why we’ve come to this level of corrupt silliness with candidates Hillary
Clinton and Donald Trump dodging the issues and reducing the process to
trivialities, backbiting, and nonsense.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The reality is that these
races have become <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">selections </i>not
elections.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No one who is not obscenely
rich or has the backing of such can run for president, let alone win office.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">A Big Money Game<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The New York Times reported,
“The political network overseen by the conservative billionaires Charles G. and
</span><a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/david_h_koch/index.html?inline=nyt-per"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">David H. Koch</span></a><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">
plans to spend close to $900 million on the 2016 campaign, an unparalleled
effort by coordinated outside groups to shape a presidential election that is
already on track to be the most expensive in history.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262631; font-size: 14.0pt;">Bloomberg View reports, “Undisclosed "dark money" is
generally funneled by big donors to politically active nonprofits that claim
they operate for social welfare. Many such groups sprang up after a series of
court rulings essentially blessed unlimited spending by corporations, unions
and individuals. Spending on Senate races by groups that don't disclose donors </span><a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/publication/election-spending-2014-outside-spending-senate-races-citizens-united"><span style="color: #15aae1; font-size: 14.0pt; text-decoration: none;">doubled</span></a><span style="color: #262631; font-size: 14.0pt;"> between
2010 and 2014, from $105 million to $226 million. In the 10 </span><a href="http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/politics/key-races/"><span style="color: #15aae1; font-size: 14.0pt; text-decoration: none;">most competitive Senate races</span></a><span style="color: #262631; font-size: 14.0pt;"> last year, almost 60 percent of independent expenditures were
made by non-disclosing groups, according to the Brennan Center.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Others say they’ll vote for
third party candidates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the only
third party to get on the ballot in all 50 states is the Libertarian Party with
the backing of 10 percent of registered voters, according to the Pew poll. But
their candidate, Gary Johnson, still can’t get on the stage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The Green candidates, Jill
Stein and Ajamu Baraka, have polled at about 3%. Not only can they not get in
the debates or garner mass media attention, their party must work within the
confines of a corrupt electoral process that forces them to engage in nonstop
fundraising albeit not from the corporate oligarchy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">It’s been repeatedly proven
that a third party cannot win within this system. That’s been the case for a
myriad of elections, and contradicts the revolutionary principle of fighting
battles you can win.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It demoralizes
people to always lose.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="JA" style="font-family: "ms 明朝"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="JA" style="font-family: "ms 明朝"; font-size: 14.0pt;">“</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">All political
parties, as things stand, will support the power complex….</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The fascists
already have power. The point is that some way must be found to expose them and
combat them..</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">.This is a huge nation
dominated by the most reactionary and violent ruling class in the history of
the world, where the majority of the people just simply cannot understand that
they are existing on the misery and discomfort of the world." (George
Jackson, Blood In My Eye)</span></i><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In fact, we Americans are
hated more and more as President Barack Obama targets innocent civilians with
drones, composes kill lists for massacres and assassinations, supports fascist
dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, military occupations (such as the Zionist
occupation of Palestine and MINUSTAH occupation of Haiti), escalating
militarism across the globe, including Africom, in his aggressive pillaging of
global resources, and dangerous confrontations with Russia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">We are hated because we claim
to democratically elect these imperialist warmongers; and thereby bear full
responsibility for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">our</i> ongoing
atrocities against other peoples in sovereign nations. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">“<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">When any
election is held it will fortify rather than destroy the credibility of the
power brokers. </b> When we participate in this election to win, instead
of disrupt, we’re lending to its credibility and destroying our own. With
all the factors of control over the electoral process in the hands of the
minority ruling class, the people’s party can always be made to seem isolated,
unimportant, even extraneous.”</span></i><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The peoples’ parties, the
Green Party, Peace & Freedom Party, the Revolutionary Communist Party, the
Freedom Socialist Party, are all rendered extraneous and unimportant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet they are the parties that have platforms
to address the enormous problems of climate change, gross inequality and income
disparities, homelessness, health care, mass incarceration, racism, sexism and
homophobia. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">We abolished chattel slavery
but the 13<sup>th</sup> Amendment and our own lack of unified resistance
permits neo-slavery or wage-slavery behind or outside of prison walls. Under <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">chattel slavery</i> when we were the
property of the obscenely rich, it was in their interest to take care of us.
Now we’ve become throwaways – paid unlivable salaries under awful conditions
and laid off with no compensation or safety net.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Subjected to premature death.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">We don’t have a <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">one-person-one-vote </span>electoral process.</span></b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The Framers opted for a
complex system of delegates called <b>the Electoral College </b><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">to ensure the outcome of elections would
favor the owner elites</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b>Each state would have a number of
electors equal to the number of Representatives in the House plus their two
Senators.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Whoever wins the most votes
in a given state <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">gets <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">all</span> the electoral votes</b>, a winner-take-all
ballot in which voters cast their ballots for the candidate of their choice <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">indirectly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span>In practice, they’re really signaling their vote to a slew of unknown
delegates who in turn are supposed to honor the vote a month later at the Electoral
College. This process literally discards all the "losing" votes in
each and every state, giving more power to the small (largely white) states and
putting a check on the power of the majority (people of color). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">For example, in Wyoming, it
takes 167,000 votes to gain a single electoral vote; in California, it takes at
least 645,000 to get one electoral vote, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">giving
the Wyoming voter four times the voting power of Californians</b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, let’s say one million voters in
California split their votes between the two candidates at 49% to 51%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The 49%, or close to a half million votes
would be discounted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Repeat this process
in 50 states and the number of votes discarded is mindboggling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet we continually hear the propaganda that
“Every vote counts!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing could be
further from the truth. In fact, four presidents were elected after losing the
popular vote.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">A number of polls found at
least 70% of the American population favors abolishing the Electoral College. I
think that percentage would be 99% if all eligible voters clearly understood
it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Black folks often say, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“We fought and died for the right to vote.” </b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, we have. We've always been on the front
lines of struggle in this country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From
Sojourner Truth to SNCC, Fannie Lou Hamer, and all the valiant freedom fighters
of the civil rights movement, we honor and revere their uncompromising fight
for our right to vote. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">However, while we got a Voting Rights Act
passed in1965, the reactionaries in power initiated new ways to suppress and
vacate our vote -- new rules and laws of redistricting, registration
procedures, vote tampering, rigged voting machines, denying prisoners and
felons the vote, and ID policies to disenfranchise voters, especially those of
color. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Eric Nielson writes that since 2010, 11
states have passed laws that make it more difficult to vote. The Sentencing
Project reports that 6.1 million people are now barred from voting because of a
felony conviction, about 3.9 percent of the total population compared with 13
percent of adult black men.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wonder
what the tally would be if Black women were included.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">“Here we are, 50 years after the beginning
of the civil rights movement, and we actually have an increasing number of
African-Americans who are disenfranchised each year,” said Marc Mauer of The
Sentencing Project.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In 17 states the estimated
percentage of disenfranchised black men is even higher.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The figure is 31 percent in Florida and
Alabama; in Mississippi it’s 29 percent, and 25 percent in Virginia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Those four states impose a
lifetime ban on voting by felons. The other five states with lifetime bans are
Iowa, Kentucky, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Such a racist/classist
phenomenon in the voting system practically screams for our resistance in the
slogan <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all of us or none.<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In a Truthout article (May
2015), <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Electoral Boycott as a
Revolutionary Tactic,</b> by Brian D. Williams wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">“Voting reinforces the
legitimacy of current system, propping up the status quo and its extensive list
of policy problems. Even a vote for a minor party candidate
-- while expressing a preference for radical policy reform -- is
effectively a vote of approval for the
current electoral system and structure of
government. A campaign for electoral boycott avoids
this pitfall….[I]t would probably do more to
build revolutionary momentum than pursuing change via the ballot box.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">“Widespread support for the
Sanders and Trump campaigns -- whose effect (if not intent) has been
to preclude revolution by weaving disaffected voters back into the two-party
system -- are among several signs of this. However, simply staying away from
the polling stations isn't enough. To gain the most momentum from the current
moment, the boycott should be advanced as part
of a longer-term movement for systemic revolutionary change.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">I think it’s high time for us
to form a united front against fascism or on a more positive tip, a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">united front for social revolution.<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">If the small parties can come
together and fight the reactionary duopoly, we could effectively begin the task
of organizing the 99% to save the planet and our grandchildren<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">.<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">"A social revolution after the fact of the modern
corporate capitalist state can only mean the breakup of that state and a
completely new form of economics and culture." <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">"Settle your quarrels,
come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism
is already here, that people are dying who could be saved, that generations
more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be
done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">(George L. Jackson)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Kiilu Nyashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499726491019227728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6608310855966320317.post-85283718839899236482017-11-04T17:31:00.001-07:002017-11-04T17:31:33.541-07:00Hortencia Rodriguez, Kahlil Jacobs-Fantauzzi, Bonafide Rojas on Freedom Is A Constant Struggle 11/2/17<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br /></div>
Kiilu Nyashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499726491019227728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6608310855966320317.post-12260753495800206632017-11-04T17:20:00.001-07:002017-11-04T17:23:24.862-07:00Mike Wong, Paul Liem, and Bobby Rodrigo on Freedom Is A Constant Struggle 10//19/17<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Kiilu Nyashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499726491019227728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6608310855966320317.post-72993305415353495082017-10-10T14:09:00.001-07:002017-10-10T14:09:58.709-07:00Freedom Is a Constant Struggle with guest Eleanor Goldfield and Pierre L...<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TpbeBaxQzew" width="459"></iframe>Kiilu Nyashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499726491019227728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6608310855966320317.post-83734100158276110092017-10-10T14:06:00.001-07:002017-10-10T14:06:16.301-07:00Freedom is a Constant Struggle with guest Margaret Kimberly<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gjJJW-OPI7Y" width="459"></iframe>Kiilu Nyashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499726491019227728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6608310855966320317.post-7396424450548373712017-10-10T13:46:00.001-07:002017-10-10T13:58:44.772-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://Kiilu Nyasha YouTube + Leroy Moore">Freedom Is A Constant Struggle</a> with Leroy Moore<br />
<br /></div>
Kiilu Nyashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499726491019227728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6608310855966320317.post-59557218138115361522017-09-24T18:51:00.001-07:002017-09-24T18:58:18.844-07:00Celebrating the 76th Birthday of Soledad Brother George Lester Jackson, September 23, 1941- August 21, 1971, by Kiilu Nyasha<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I have a plan</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I will give, and give, and give of myself
until it proves our making or my end.”<o:p></o:p></i></b></div>
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As we honor the 76<sup>th</sup> 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.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Author of two books, <u>Soledad Brother: the Prison Letters
of George Jackson,</u> a 1970 bestseller reprinted three times and translated
into several languages; and <u>Blood In My Eye</u>, published posthumously and
recently reprinted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
In a 1971 <u>New York Times</u> editorial titled, <u>Death
of a Brother</u>, the late Tom Wicker described George as a “talented writer, a
sensitive man, a potential leader, and a political thinker of great
persuasiveness.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Born in Chicago, George was one of five children, three
girls and two boys, Jonathan the youngest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>His father was a postal worker, his mother a devout Catholic who sent
their children to Catholic school and church on Sundays. <o:p></o:p></div>
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When George began getting into trouble in Chicago’s Troop
Street projects, his father decided to move his family to Los Angeles in hopes
of finding a better environment for his family. However, there was no escaping
institutionalized racism in America, so George continued to have brushes with
the police, and in 1960 he was captured in a gas station robbery of $70 for
being an accomplice.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Repeatedly denied parole during his 11 years in California
prisons (most in solitary), George spent countless hours secluded in
study.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“I met Marx, Lenin Trotsky, Engels, and Mao when I entered prison and
they redeemed me…”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“We must never forget
that it is the people who change circumstances and that the educator himself
[or herself] needs educating. ‘Going among the people, learning from the
people, and serving the people’ [Mao] is really stating that we must find out exactly
what the people need and organize them around these needs.”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i></b>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“The task of a revolutionary is to make revolution.”<o:p></o:p></i></b></div>
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In a letter to me in 1971, George wrote: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“I’m a Marxist-Fanonist, i.e., a realist....
My life is moving myself and other people into action.... and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">action makes the front</b>.”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Fascism must be seen
as an episodically logical stage in the socio-economic development of </i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">capitalism in a state of crisis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is
the result of a revolutionary thrust that was weak and miscarried – a
consciousness that was compromised. ‘When revolution fails...it’s the fault of
the vanguard parties.’” [Mao]<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“It is clear that
class struggle is an ingredient of fascism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It follows that where fascism emerges and develops, the anti-capitalist
forces were weaker than the traditionalist forces. This weakness will become
even more pronounced as fascism develops!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The ultimate aim of fascism is the complete destruction of all
revolutionary consciousness.” <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br />
This destruction can be seen today in the dominance of
mainstream media, owned and controlled by only six major conglomerates. They
now have control of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">selections</i> of
political candidates, their campaigns, and the vote vis a vis the ongoing
corruption and mendacity of news and information reported.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Fascism has established
itself in a most disguised and efficient manner in this country. It feels so
secure that the leaders allow us the luxury of faint protest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Take protest too far, however, and they will
show their other face.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Doors will be
kicked down in the night and machine-gun fire and buckshot will become the
medium of exchange.”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br />
In <u>Soledad Brother</u>, George noted, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“In his <u>Guerrilla Warfare</u>, Lenin
wrote: ‘New forms of struggle, unknown to participants of the given period,
inevitably arise as the given social situation changes; the coming crisis will
introduce new forms of struggle that we are unable to foresee. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“In other words, the
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space, that there can be nothing dogmatic about revolutionary theory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is to be born out of each popular
struggle.”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br />
George Jackson’s example of developing mind and body to
their highest level or greatest potential was one of his enormous contributions
to the advancement of revolutionary theory and culture.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“I don’t want to die
and leave a few sad songs and a hump in the ground as my only monument. I want
to leave a world that is liberated from trash, pollution, racism,
nation-states, nation-state wars and armies, from pomp, bigotry, parochialism,
a thousand different brands of untruth and licentious, usurious economics.” (“Soledad
Brother”)</i> <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Settle your quarrels,
come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism
is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that
generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do
what must be done; discover your humanity and your love in revolution. Pass on
the torch. Join us; give up your life for the people.”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Long live the
revolutionary spirit of Comrade George!<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Kiilu Nyashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499726491019227728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6608310855966320317.post-21790221354083213532017-09-24T18:33:00.001-07:002017-09-24T18:46:00.697-07:00Freedom is a Constant Struggle <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
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<b class="">Guest: Leroy F. Moore Jr., founder of the Krip-Hop Nation</b></div>
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<a name='more'></a></div>
Kiilu Nyashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499726491019227728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6608310855966320317.post-71341951793795854422017-08-27T12:27:00.003-07:002017-08-27T12:28:54.449-07:00SLAVERY ON THE NEW PLANTATION (updated March 2012 by Kiilu Nyasha<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">"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) <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The 13th
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution retained the right to enslave within the
confines of prison. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Today, such
prisons are referred to as “Factories with Fences.”
(/www.unicor.gov/information/publications/pdfs/corporate/CATMC1101_C.pdf)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a name='more'></a><br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Convict-Lease System<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In Southern
states, Slave Codes were rewritten as Black Codes, a series of laws
criminalizing the law-abiding activities of Black people, such as standing
around, "loitering," or walking at night, "breaking
curfew." The enforcement of these Codes dramatically increased the number
of Blacks in Southern prisons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1878,
Georgia leased out 1,239 convicts, 1,124 of whom were Black.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The lease
system provided slave labor for plantation owners or private industries as well
as revenue for the state, since incarcerated workers were entirely in the
custody of the contractors who paid a set annual fee to the state (about
$25,000). Entire prisons were leased out to private contractors who literally
worked hundreds of prisoners to death. Prisons became the new plantations;
Angola State Prison in Louisiana was a literal plantation, and still is except
the slaves are now called convicts and the prison is known as "The
Farm." (A documentary of that title is available on DVD.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The inherent
brutality and cruelty of the lease system and the loss of outside jobs sparked
resistance that eventually brought about its demise. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">One of the
most famous battles was the Coal Creek Rebellion of 1891. When the Tennessee
coal, Iron and Railroad locked out their workers and replaced them with
convicts, the miners stormed the prison and freed 400 captives; and when the
company continued to contract prisoners, the miners burned the prison down. The
Tennessee leasing system was disbanded shortly thereafter. But it remained in
many states until the rise of resistance in the 1930s. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Strikes by
prisoners and union workers together were organized by then radical CIO and
other labor unions. They pressured Congress to pass the 1935 Ashurst-Sumners
Act making it illegal to transport prison-made goods across state lines. But
under President Jimmy Carter, Congress granted exemptions to the Act by passing
the Justice System Improvement Act of 1979, which produced the Prison
Industries Enhancement program, or PIE, that eventually spread to all 50
states. This lifted the ban on interstate transportation and sale of
prison-made products, permitting a for-profit relationship between prisons and
the private sector, and prompting a dramatic increase in prison labor which
continues to escalate. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">As the leasing
system phased out, a new, even more brutal exploitation emerged -- the chain
gang. An extremely dehumanizing cruelty that chained men, and later women,
together in groups of five, it was originated to build extensive roads and highways.
The first state to institute chain gangs was Alabama, followed by Arizona,
Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Montana, and Oklahoma. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Arizona's
first female chain gang was instituted in 1996. Complete with striped uniforms,
the women of a Phoenix jail (to this day) spend four to six hours a day chained
together in groups of 30, clearing roadsides of weeds and burying the indigent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Georgia's
chain-gang conditions were particularly brutal. Men were put out to work
swinging 12 lb. sledge hammers for 16 hours a day, malnourished and shackled
together, unable to move their legs a full stride. Wounds from metal shackles
often became infected, leading to illness and death. Prisoners who could not
keep up with the grueling pace were whipped or shut in a sweatbox or tied to a
hitching post, a stationary metal rail. Chained to the post with hands raised
high over his head, the prisoner remained tethered in that position in the
Alabama heat for many hours without water or bathroom breaks. (Human Rights
Watch World Report 1998).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thanks to a
lawsuit settled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Alabama's Department of
Corrections agreed in 1996 to stop chaining prisoners together. A few years
later, the Center won a Court ruling that ended use of the hitching post as a
violation of the 8th Amendment's ban on "cruel and unusual
punishment." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In response to
the demands of World War II, the number of both free and captive road workers
declined significantly. In 1941, there were 1,750 prisoners slaving in 28
active road camps for all types of construction and maintenance. The numbers
bottomed out by war's end at 540 captives in 17 camps. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Proliferation of Prisons,
Jails, and Camps<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In the 1940s,
California Governor Earl Warren conducted secret investigations into the
State's only prisons, San Quentin and Folsom. The depravity, squalor, sadism,
and torture he found led the governor to initiate the building of Soledad
Prison in 1951. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Prisoners were
put to work in educational and vocational programs that taught basic courses in
English and math, and provided training in trades ranging from gardening to
meat cutting. At wages of 7 to 25 cents an hour, California prisoners used
their acquired skills to turn out institutional clothing and furniture, license
plates and stickers, seed new crops, slaughter pigs, produce and sell dairy
products to a nearby mental institution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Within a
decade this "model prison" at Soledad had become another torture
chamber of filthy dungeons, literal "holes," virulently racist
guards, officially sanctioned brutality, torture, and murder. Though prison
jobs were supposed to be voluntary, if prisoners refuse to work they were often
given longer sentences, denied privileges, or thrown into solitary confinement.
Forced to work long hours under miserable conditions, in the 1960s,
"Soledad Brother," George Jackson, organized a work strike that
turned into a riot after white strikebreakers tried to lynch one of the Black
strikers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Black
Movement's resistance, led by George Jackson, W. L. Nolen, and Hugo
"Yogi" Pinell, eventually brought Congressional oversight and
overhaul of California's prison system. (The Melancholy History of Soledad
Prison, by Minh S. Yee.). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">California’s
prison system rose exponentially to approximately 174,000 prisoners crammed
into 90 penitentiaries, prisons and camps stretched across 900 miles of the
fifth-largest economy in the world, as Ruth Gilmore's book, "Golden
Gulag" reports. That number can be doubled or tripled by those on other
forms of penal control, probation, parole, or house arrest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Since 1984,
the California has erected 43 prisons (and only one university) making it a
global leader in prison construction. Most of the new prisons have been built
in rural areas far from family and friends, and most captives are Black or
Brown men, although the incarceration of women has skyrocketed. Suicide and
recidivism rates approach twice the national average, and the State spends more
on prisons than on higher education. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(The seeming contradiction between the
official figure of 33 prisons relates to the additional buildings constructed
at a given prison complex, and the various camps and county jails.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Between 1998
and 2009, the CDCR’s budget grew from $3.5 billion to $10.3 billion (the latest
figures available). </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At its peak in August 2007, the
department had 72 gyms and 125 dayrooms jammed with 19,618 inmate beds.</span><span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">"They provided an accurate and
extremely graphic example of the crowding and inhumanity that engulfed the
entire system," said Don Specter, director of the nonprofit Prison Law
Office in Berkeley, which sued to force the state to ease crowding as a way to improve
the treatment of sick and mentally ill inmates.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The Privatizing of Federal and State Prisons<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">U</span><span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">nder court order to
reduce overcrowding, by 2009, the CDCR had transferred 8,000 prisoners to <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">private prisons</b> in four states
–Tennessee, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Arizona, among the most virulently
racist states in the country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rest
of the prisoners were transferred to county jails.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Currently, the inmate population is about
142,000 and must remove another 17,000 prisoners to reach the June 2013 court
deadline. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In 1985, U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger lauded China's prison labor program:
"1,000 inmates in one prison I visited comprised a complete factory unit
producing hosiery and what we would call casual or sport shoes... Indeed it had
been a factory and was taken over to make a prison." Burger called for the
conversion of prisons into factories, the repeal of laws limiting prison
industry production and sales, and the active participation of business and
organized labor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Heeding the
judge's call, California voters passed Prop 139 in 1990, establishing the Joint
Venture Program allowing California businesses to cash in on prison labor.
"This is the new jobs program for California, so we can compete on a Third
World basis with countries like Bangladesh," observed Richard Holober with
the Consumer Federation of California.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Currently,
California's Prison Industrial Authority (CALPIA) employs, 7000 captives assigned
to 5039 positions in manufacturing, agricultural service enterprises, and
selling and administration at 22 prisons throughout the state. It produces goods
and services such as office furniture, clothing, food products, shoes, printing
services, signs, binders, gloves, license plates, cell equipment, and much
more. Wages are $.30 to $.95 per hour before deductions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">For the
State's highest wage, $1 hour, prisoners provide the "backbone of the
state's wild land fire fighting crews," according to an unpublished CDC
report. The State Department of Forestry saves more than $80 million annually
using prison labor. California's Department of Forestry has 200 Fire Crews
comprised of CDC and CYA (California Youth Authority) minimum-security captives
housed in 46 Conservation Camps throughout the state. These prisoners average
10 million work hours per year according to the CDCR.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">"Their
primary function is to construct fire lines by hand in areas where heavy
machinery cannot be used because of steep topography, rocky terrain, or areas
that may be considered environmentally sensitive." (I.e., the most
dangerous fire lines).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Now at least
37 states have similar programs wherein prisoners manufacture everything from
blue jeans to auto parts, electronics and toys. Clothing made in Oregon and
California is exported to other countries, competing successfully with apparel
made in Asia and Latin America.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">One of the
newest forms of slave labor is the U.S. Army's "Civilian Inmate Labor
Program" to "benefit both the Army and corrections systems" by
providing "a convenient source of labor at no direct cost to Army
installations," additional space to alleviate prison overcrowding, and
cost-effective use of land and facilities otherwise not being utilized.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">"With a
few exceptions," this program is currently limited to prisoners under the
Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) that allows the Attorney General to provide
the services of federal prisoners to other federal agencies, defining the types
of services they can perform. The Program stipulates that the "Army is not
interested in, nor can afford, any relationship with a corrections facility if
that relationship stipulates payment for civilian inmate labor. Installation
civilian inmate labor program operating costs must not exceed the cost
avoidance generated from using inmate labor." In other words the prison
labor must be free of charge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The three
"exceptions" to exclusive Federal contracting are as follows: (1)
"a demonstration project" providing "prerelease employment
training to nonviolent offenders in a State correctional facility" [CF].
(2) Army National Guard units "may use inmates from an off-post State
and/or local CF." (3) Civil Works projects. Services provided might
include constructing or repairing roads, maintaining or reforesting public land;
building levees, landscaping, painting, carpentry, trash pickup, etc. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This Civilian
Inmate Labor Program document includes in its countless specifications such
caveats as "Inmates must not be referred to as employees." A prisoner
would not qualify if he/she is a "person in whom there is a significant
public interest," who has been a "significant management
problem," "a principal organized crime figure," any "inmate
convicted of a violent crime," a sex offense, involvement with drugs
within the last three years, an escape risk, "a threat to the general
public." Makes one wonder why such a prisoner isn't just released or
paroled. In fact, the "hiring qualifications" -- makes me suspect the
"Civilian Inmate Labor Program" is a backdoor draft, especially in
lieu of a military already stretched to its limit. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Note:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I tried to find an
updated web page on the Civilian Inmate Labor Program, there was none. The date
remains 2005 for its latest report. Could the latest data be classified?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Federal Prison Industries (FPI), a nonprofit
Justice Department subsidiary, that does business as UNICOR, was created in
1935, and began supplying the Pentagon on a broad scale in the 1980s. </span><span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The prison
privatization boom began in the 1980s, under the governments of Ronald Reagan
and George Bush Sr., but reached its height in 1990 under Bill Clinton when the
Wall Street stocks were selling like hotcakes. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, President Clinton accomplished a
record $10 billion prison building boom in the 1990s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">His program
for cutting the federal workforce resulted in the Justice Department’s
contracting of private prison corporations for the incarceration of
undocumented workers and high-security inmates. (Global Research, 2008)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">By 2003, there
were 100 FPI factories working 20,274 prisoners with sales totaling $666.8
million. And currently FPI employs about 19,000 captives, slightly less than 20
percent of the federal prison population, in 106 prison factories around the
country. Profits totaled at least $40 million! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In 2005, FPI
sold more than $750,000,000 worth of goods to the federal government. Sales to
the Army alone put UNICOR on the Army's list of top 50 suppliers, ahead of
well-known corporations like Dell Computer, according to Wayne Woolley,
Newhouse News Service.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In 2011, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI)
released a <a href="http://www.justicepolicy.org/uploads/justicepolicy/documents/gaming_the_system.pdf"><span style="color: #333333;">report</span></a> that exposes how private prison
companies are “working to make money through harsh policies and longer
sentences.” The report notes that while the total number of prisoners increased
less than 16 percent, the number of people held in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">private</b> federal and state facilities increased by 120 and 33
percent, respectively. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Government spending on so-called corrections rose
to $74 billion in 2007. And last year (2011) the two largest private prison
companies — Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group — made over
$2.9 billion in profits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These
corporations use three strategies to influence public policy:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>lobbying, direct campaign contributions and
networking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They succeeded in getting
Arizona’s harsh new immigration laws passed, and came close to winning the
privatization of all of Florida’s prisons.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A relatively
new </span><span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">ordering
tool used by BOP (Bureau of Prisons) is GSA Advantage!, the federal
government’s premier online ordering system that provides 24-hour access to
over 17 million products and services, solutions available from over 16,000 GSA
Multiple Award Schedules contractors, as well as all products available from
GSA Global Supply<span style="color: #231f20;">. https://www.gsaadvantage.gov</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Since the
beginning of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, the Army's Communication and
Electronics Command at Fort Monmouth, N.J., has shipped more than 200,000
radios to combat zones, most with at least some components manufactured by
federal inmates working in 11 prison electronics factories around the country.
Under current law, UNICOR enjoys a contracting preference known as
"mandatory source," which obligates government agencies to try to buy
certain goods from the prisons before allowing private companies to bid on the
work. This same contracting restriction applies to state agencies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The demand for
defense products from FPI became so great that "national exigency"
provisions were invoked so the 20 percent limit on goods provided in each
category could be exceeded. The rules were waived during the 1991 Persian Gulf
War. Private manufacturers say they've been hurt by such practice, as they are
unable to bid on various products. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">According to
the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of all
military helmets, ammunition belts, bulletproof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants,
tents, bags, and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98%
of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93% of paints and
paintbrushes; 92% of stove assembly; 46% of body armor; 36% of home appliances;
30% of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office furniture. Airplane
parts, medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye
dogs for blind people. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">By 2007, the
overall sales figures and profits for federal and state prison industries had
skyrocketed into the billions. Apparently, the military industrial complex (MIC)
and the prison industrial complex (PIC) have joined forces. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The PIC is a
network of public and private prisons, of military personnel, politicians,
business contacts, prison guard unions, contractors, subcontractors and
suppliers all making big profits at the expense of poor people who comprise the
overwhelming majority of captives. The fastest growing industry in the country,
it has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and
mail-order/Internet catalogs and direct advertising campaigns. Corporate
stockholders who make money off prisoners' labor lobby for longer sentences, in
order to expand their workforce.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Replacing the
"contract and lease" system of the 19th Century, private companies
that have contracted prison labor include Microsoft, Boeing, Honeywell, IBM,
Revlon, Pierre Cardin, Compaq, Victoria Secret, Macy’s, Target,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nordstrom, and
countless others.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In 1995, there
were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000
inmates; now, private companies operate 264 correctional facilities housing
some 99,000 adult prisoners. The two largest private prison corporations in the
US, GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut) and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)
are transnationals, managing prisons and detention centers in 34 states,
Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A top
performer on the New York Stock Exchange, CCA called California its "new
frontier," and boasts of investors such as Wal-Mart, Exxon, General
Motors, Ford, Chevrolet, Texaco, Hewlett-Packard, Verizon, and UPS. Currently, CCA
has 80,000 beds in 65 facilities, and GEO Group operates 61 facilities with
49,000 beds, according to Wikipredia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Employers
(Read: slavers) don't have to pay health or unemployment insurance, vacation
time, sick leave or overtime. They can hire, fire or reassign inmates as they
so desire, and can pay the workers as little as 21 cents an hour. The inmates
cannot respond with a strike, file a grievance, or threaten to leave and get a
better job. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #231f20; font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">On September 19, 2005, UNICOR
was commended for its outstanding support of the nation’s military. Deputy
Commander of the Defense Supply Center Philadelphia (DSCP), presented the
Bureau of Prisons Director with a “Supporting the Warfighter” award. The award
recognized UNICOR for its tremendous support of DSCP’s mission to provide equipment,
materials, and supplies to each branch of the armed forces. “We at DSCP are
very appreciative of UNICOR, especially with our critical need items. With more
than $200 million worth of orders during Fiscal Years 2004 and 2005, UNICOR has
not had a single delinquency.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mass roundups
of immigrants and non-citizens, currently about half of all federal prisoners,
and dragnets in low-income 'hoods have increased the prison population to
unprecedented levels. Andrea Hornbein points out in Profit Motive: "The
majority of these arrests are for low level offenses or outstanding warrants,
and impact the taxpayer far more than the offense. For example, a $300 robbery
resulting in a 5-year sentence, at the Massachusetts average of $43,000 per
year, will cost $215,000. That doesn't even include law enforcement and court
costs."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nearly 75% of
all prisoners are drug war captives. A criminal record today practically forces
an ex-con into illegal employment since they don't qualify for legitimate jobs
or subsidized housing. Minor parole violations, unaffordable bail, parole
denials, longer mandatory sentencing and three strikes laws, slashing of
welfare rolls, overburdened court systems, shortages of public defenders,
massive closings of mental hospitals, and high unemployment (about 50% for
Black men) -- all contribute to the high rates of incarceration and recidivism.
Thus, the slave labor pool continues to expand.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Among the most
powerful unions today are the guards' unions. The California Corrections Peace
Officers Association (CCPOA) wields so much political power it practically
decides who governs the state. Moreover, its members get the State's biggest
payouts, according to the L.A. Times. "More than 1600 officers' earnings
exceeded legislators' 2007 salaries of $113,098." Base pay for 6,000
guards earning $100,000 or more totaled $453 million with overtime adding
another $220 million to wages. One lieutenant guard earned more than any other
state official, including the Governor, or $252,570. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">California’s
per prisoner cost has raised to $49,000, and that figure doubles and triples
for elderly and high-security captives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That’s enough money to send a person through Harvard!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The National Correctional Industries Association (NCIA)</span></b><span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">,
is an international nonprofit professional association, whose self-declared
mission is “to promote excellence and credibility in correctional industries
through professional development and innovative business solutions.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">NCIA's members
include all 50 state correctional industry agencies, Federal Prison Industries,
foreign correctional industry agencies, city and county jail industry programs,
and private sector companies working in partnership with correctional
industries. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Chattel
slavery was ended following prolonged guerrilla warfare between the slaves and
the slave-owners and their political allies. Referred to as the “Underground
Railroad,” it was led by the revolutionary General Harriet Tubman with support
from her alliances with abolitionists, Black and White.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It only makes sense that this new form of
slavery must produce <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">prison
abolitionists.</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">As George
Jackson noted in a KPFA interview with Karen Wald (Spring 1971), "I'm
saying that it's impossible, impossible, to concentration-camp resisters....We
have to prove that this thing won't work here. And the only way to prove it is
resistance...and then that resistance has to be supported, of course, from the
street....We can fight, but the results are...not conducive to proving our
point...that this thing won't work on us. From inside, we fight and we
die....the point is -- in the new face of war -- to fight and win."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "ariel" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Power
to the people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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Kiilu Nyashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499726491019227728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6608310855966320317.post-28139790365562767052017-08-27T12:23:00.001-07:002017-08-27T12:23:06.786-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My blog got hacked and I lost the contents of some of the archived articles. It will take a minute for me to upload them again, but I'm working on it.</div>
Kiilu Nyashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499726491019227728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6608310855966320317.post-45564765318749547232017-08-27T12:18:00.004-07:002017-08-27T12:20:05.617-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Fatal Invention </b><b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Book Review</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">by Kiilu Nyasha<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">March 19, 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Dorothy Roberts’ new book<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">, <u>Fatal Invention:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How Science, Politics, and Big Business
Re-Create Race in the 21<sup>st</sup> Century</u></b> is a must read for all <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">human beings</i> desiring to witness the
beginning of the end of racism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">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 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">human race</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Roberts explains and
elucidates <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">race</i> as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">political</i> division, not a biological
one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Government policies that have
drastically slashed social services…accompanied by particularly brutal forms of
regulation of [so-called] racial minorities: mass imprisonment at rates far
exceeding any other place on Earth or any time in the history of the free
world; roundup and deportation of undocumented immigrants, often tearing
families apart; abuse of children held in juvenile detention centers or locked
up in adult prisons, some for the rest of their lives;…torture in police
stations and prison cells; and rampant medical neglect that kills.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">In addition to exposing how
the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries are developing and marketing
products erroneously applied to racial groupings, Roberts alerts us to our own
racist tendencies and false assumptions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Pointing out how we walk into
a crowded room of diverse individuals and promptly identify “the race of every
single person in that room. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Americans are so used to
filtering our impressions of people through a racial lens that we engage in
this exercise automatically – as if we were merely putting a label on people to
match their innate racial identities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But the only way we know which designation to assign each person is by
referring to the invented rules we have been taught since we were infants.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“A biological race is a
population of organisms that can be distinguished from other populations in the
same species based on differences in inherited traits. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">There are no human
populations with such a high degree of genetic differentiation that they
objectively fall into races. There is only one human race.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Quoting a famous geneticist, “Chimpanzees
have races; honeybees have races; we don’t have races.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The distinction between the
two meanings of race – as a biological versus a political grouping – is
monumentally important.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">If race is a
natural division it is easy to dismiss the glaring differences in people’s
welfare as fair and even insurmountable; even liberals could feel comfortable
with the current pace of racial progress, which leaves huge gaps between white
and nonwhite well-being.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">But if race is a political system, then we must use
political means to end its harmful impact on our society</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">.” [my emphasis]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“It is the belief in
fundamental human equality that inspires many people to fight collectively
against racism and its dehumanizing practices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Locating the causes of inequality in social rather than genetic
structure is liberating because it is much easier to change society than
genes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">It is more enlightened to
understand the potential for political alliances apart from biological
distinctions than to believe we are inevitably divided and shackled by
immutable differences programmed in our genes.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Roberts explodes some of the
myths surrounding slaves and slavery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
example, “The word ‘slave’ comes from Slavs, who were held in bondage from as
early as the ninth century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
ancestors of people now considered white, who think of themselves as the
slaveholding race, were once held as slaves themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Even in the New World,
‘slave’ did not automatically mean ‘black.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The vast majority of people compelled to work in the fields of the American
colonies were vagrant children, convicts and indentured servants shipped from
Britain.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Before the 18<sup>th</sup>
century boom in the African slave trade, between half and two-thirds of all
white immigrants came as unfree laborers, up to 400,000 Europeans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Captured Africans, Europeans
and indigenous peoples shared the same status, and worked alongside each other
regardless of color, even forming families together. They also joined ranks in
a series of revolts, and even the few Africans who gained freedom and purchased
land seemed to have been treated as equals to other landowners. (And, yes,
there were African slave owners.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“By 1700, however, Africans
were treated as a distinctly different kind of slave: they were made into the
actual property of their masters, a lifelong bondage that passed down to their
children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In contrast, the status of
white indentured servants was neither permanent nor inherited; whites could
work off their bond.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“As officials split white
indenture from black enslavement and established ‘white,’ ‘Negro,’ and ‘Indian’
as distinct legal categories, race was literally manufacture by law.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Whites were subsequently
given special rights over Black slaves:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Pass laws restricted the latter’s movements and poor whites could
enforce the laws requiring public, often naked, beatings of rebellious slaves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Christian” came to mean “white,”
and laws were established to protect any Christian from being attacked by a “negroe
or other” slave. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Anti-miscegenation laws
outlawed interracial sex and marriage, “White people were held out as a
privileged race that should be protected from contamination by inferior races.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such laws were also used to protect the
property rights and “the great heritage of the white race.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Laws prohibiting marriage
between whites and “coloreds” remained until the 1967 Supreme Court ruling in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Loving v. Virginia </i>rendered them
unconstitutional in Virginia and 16 other states.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>South Carolina kept its ban until 1998, and
even then was opposed by 38% of voters in the referendum.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The combining of “Africans
into a single race eventually obliterated the physical, linguistic, and
cultural distinctions that had existed among thousands of ethnic groups on the
African continent….W.E.B. DuBois observed that ‘the discovery of personal whiteness
among the world’s peoples is a very modern thing.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was only with the slave trade, Indian
conquests and a legal regime that installed a racial order that Europeans
assumed whiteness as a personal identity and possession that naturally entitled
them to a privileged social position.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“It is in this acute
distinction between the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">political</i>
status of whites and blacks…that we find the origins of race.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Colonial landowners inherited slavery as an
ancient practice, but they invented race as a system of power.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“There is no test for
whiteness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">White</i> means belonging to the group of people who are entitled to
claim white privilege.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nevertheless, the medical profession has “historically
promoted a racial construction of disease that in turn perpetuates a biological
construction of race.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Roberts’ elaboration on the
erroneous application of racial theories in medical treatments and therapies
should be cause for alarm among all people of color.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It reminded me of the racism displayed by
doctors in my medical history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
example, a rheumatologist once told me I didn’t have to worry about
osteoporosis because I was not a white woman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After changing doctors, a bone test revealed that indeed I did have
osteoporosis, a side affect of the drug he was administering to me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Roberts also disavows as “patently
unscientific” the “idea that blacks and whites represent opposite races.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Noting that Africans and Europeans are
swimming distance apart, “the intimate intertwining of Europeans and Africans
in the ensuing centuries through trade, conquest, enslavement, and migration
make it absurd to consider them opposites from a genetic standpoint.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">One of the more fascinating
chapters in her book discusses <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">genetic
ancestry </i>equated with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">geographic
ancestry. “</i>Believing in race can be compared to believing in
astrology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People who have faith in
astrology find constant confirmation that horoscope predictions are reliable
and that astrological signs determine personality types.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">In clarifying the political
nature of our differences, Roberts raises the following questions:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“If races are fixed
biological groupings, how can the test defining who belongs in each group
change?....[H]ow can a judge officially assign (and reassign) it according to a
legal classification system?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If race is
written in nature, how can people rewrite the rules?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The very first U.S. census of
1790 counted the number of persons in each household according to the following
categories:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>free white males 16 and
older, free white males under 16, free white females, and all other free
persons and slaves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since then, census
groupings have changed 24 times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the
2010 census provides 15 categories as wells as spaces to write in an identity
not listed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“This classification scheme
suggests that there is one white race, one black race, one American
Indian/Alaska Native race, but an unspecified number of Asian and Pacific
Islander sub-races.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The wave of immigrants from
southern and eastern Europe who arrived between the 1840s and 1930s were among
those subjected to the 1924 exclusionary laws passed by Congress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But they threw off their customs, names and
accents to assimilate and be granted the privileges of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">whiteness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>Italians, e.g.,
were called Guineas, an epithet originally reserved for Africans from the West
Coast of the continent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even the Irish were
considered to be closer to Africans than to the English, often caricatured as
apelike and not full members of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">white
race</i> 100 years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More evidence
that “race is a political category that is defined according to invented rules.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“To this day, the delusion
that race is a biological inheritance rather than a political relationship
leads plenty of intelligent people to make the most ludicrous statements about
black biological traits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Worse yet, this delusion
permits a majority of Americans to live in perfect comfort with a host of
barbaric practices and conditions that befall blacks primarily – infant deaths
at numbers worse than in developing countries, locking up children in adult
prisons for life, the highest incarceration rate in the history of the free
world – and still view their country as a bastion of freedom and equality for
all.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">In short, “race is the
product of racism; racism is not the product of race.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Quoting anthropologist
Deborah Bolnick, Roberts notes, “From a genetic perspective, non-Africans a</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">re
essentially a subset of Africans.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Since genetic diversity
evolved in Africa, the continent’s populations vary the most, or have
accumulated more genetic differences than those people who migrated from Africa
and dispersed throughout the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“In fact, the entire range of human variation
for some genetic traits can be found on the African continent,” writes Roberts.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She notes that individuals from Congo,
Ethiopia, and South Africa are more genetically different from each other than
from French people. “This seems astonishing because we are so used to focusing
on a tiny set of physical features, especially skin color, to assign people to
racial categories.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Crediting anthropologist, Richard
S. Cooper, Roberts explains, “Sub-Saharan Africa is home to both the tallest
(Maasai) and the shortest (pygmies) people, and dark skin is found in all
equatorial populations, not just in the ‘black race’ as defined in the United
States,” and most genetic variation is found <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">within </i>any human grouping.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Perhaps the most compelling
evidence that race is a political category is its instability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Since its invention to manage
the expansion of European enslavement and the colonization of other peoples,
the definitions, criteria and boundary lines that determine racial categories
have constantly shifted over the course of U.S. history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Who qualifies as white, black
and Indian has been the matter of countless rule changes and political
decisions. These racial reclassifications did not occur in response to
scientific advances in human biology, but in response to sociopolitical
imperatives.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“When a South Carolina judge
declared in 1835 that ‘a slave cannot be a white man,’ he made clear that
racial identity was not a biological fact that could be ascertained with
scientific proofs, but rather a socially and legally defined status that rested
on a deeper ideological commitment to race, in which white equaled free (civic,
responsible, manly) and black equaled slave (degraded, irresponsible, unfit for
manly duties).”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Another set of racial cases involved
litigation over the legal question, Who is white?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Naturalization Act of 1790…restricted eligibility
[for citizenship] to free white immigrants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Until this racial requirement was abolished in 1952, being either a
‘white person’ or (after the Civil War) a person of ‘African nativity or African
descent’ was a prerequisite for becoming a citizen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The test of whiteness for
naturalization became a vital legal issue for nearly a century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Between 1878 and 1952, state and federal
judges issued 52 decisions, including two before the Supreme Court in the
1920s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“In these cases, Chinese,
Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, Hawaiians, Afghanis, Native Americans, and anyone
of mixed ancestry were not white.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Arabs,
Syrians and Asian Indians were considered white by some judges and not by
others.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“In the wake of the Civil War
and the 14<sup>th</sup> Amendment, Congress amended the law in 1870 to extend
naturalization to persons of ‘African nativity or African descent,’ while
deliberately denying Chinese immigrants that right on the grounds they posed a
risk to American morals and jobs.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Congress moved more directly
to stanch the ‘Mongolian invasion’ with the Chinese Immigration Act of 1882,
barring entry to Chinese workers for 10 years, including the wives and families
of immigrants already in the country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Subsequent laws passed in 1917, 1924, and 1934 extended the exclusion to
immigrants from Japan, India, and to the Philippines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The supposedly biological category ‘Asian’
commonly employed today was solidified by the series of statutes and court
decisions that classified immigrants from each nation as nonwhite. The racial
question was ultimately a political question about which groups the federal
government deemed qualified for citizenship. Ironically, a Texas judge bestowed
white status on Mexicans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“The infamous one-drop rule, passed
in Tennessee in 1910…defined a person as Negro if he or she had…one drop of
Negro blood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">A “reverse one-drop rule” (i.e.,
one white ancestor) applied to Mexicans, permitted them to assume the
privileged <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">whiteness.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">While these classifications
remind us that these racial categories and institutionalized inequities are not
natural, when “Americans see black and brown people doing most of the menial
jobs, dying younger from most diseases, and filling most of the prison cells,
it’s easy for many to see race and believe it must be part of nature.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Finally, Roberts asked the
question I had asked myself when I first learned of the Human Genome Project
breakthrough in 2000:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Why, then, do
most Americans cling to a false belief that biological races really do exist?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why do they latch on to whatever trivial
proof they can muster to confirm their misconceptions about race? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Children in the U.S. learn to divide all
people into racial groups and come to have faith in race as a self-evident
truth, like a traditional creation story that explains how the world works.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Racism is a faith,” noted
George B. Kelsey (who mentored Dr. Martin Luther King).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Roberts continues:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It is the faith in race – the religion of
separating human beings into racial groups – that makes it difficult for
Americans to think like scientists.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“Race persists because it
continues to be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">politically useful. </i>It
is therefore imperative to evaluate the political function of race at the
present time and wage a political assault against it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">In conclusion, I’m most
grateful to Dorothy Roberts for writing this book from which I’ve learned so
much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My criticisms are: 1) I felt like
she was addressing her academic colleagues, not the general public, making it a
difficult read albeit well worth it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2)
As she elucidates the social construction of race, some of her language still reflects
old paradigms and ideas, including the use of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nonwhite, mulatto, </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">racial
minorities</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we are equally human
beings, then no one group should be referred to as a minority.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Even as she points out that
whites are about 35% of New York City’s population, she fails to note that
whites are a minority. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">In California, it’s long been
established that “people of color” are the majority, yet one never hears whites
referred to as a minority.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Obviously,
whites are loathe to call themselves<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“inferior
in importance” or “less than” (Webster). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">In lieu of this timely
contribution to our understanding of race and racism, it’s my hope that we will
begin to change our language to reflect the new reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>E.g., we can stop using races, substituting
ethnicities or nationalities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We can
stop calling people <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">minorities</i>, and
we can begin to re-examine our own attitudes, prejudices, and beliefs with the
idea in mind of one human race.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One step
at a time, we must begin to eliminate race as a category as we move toward a
planet of peace and harmony.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">[This review was published
online in “The Black Commentator.”]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Kiilu Nyashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499726491019227728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6608310855966320317.post-25120444547281737162017-08-27T10:37:00.002-07:002017-08-27T10:37:17.593-07:00Freedom Is A Constant Struggle with Keith Wattley <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Kiilu Nyashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499726491019227728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6608310855966320317.post-55877360131937232322017-05-28T11:09:00.003-07:002017-05-28T11:09:47.934-07:00Freedom is a Constant Struggle with guest Walter Turner <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Kiilu Nyashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499726491019227728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6608310855966320317.post-62856711669257782432017-05-28T09:42:00.000-07:002017-05-28T11:14:47.786-07:00Haiti’s Fanmi Lavalas and the Black Panther Party<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">By Kiilu Nyasha (a.k.a. Pat Gallyot)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">This year of 2016 marks the 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the founding
of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, October 1966, in Oakland,
California.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">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.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I became one of the “Field Trainers” deployed in each of the seven
impoverished neighborhoods of New Haven, Conn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>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.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">My work for the Community Action Institute (CPI) was to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">organize the community</i> around
practically every issue relevant to the needs of the residents. However, on
doing so, I quickly came under attack and was eventually fired. The intention
of this so-called “war on poverty” was in fact NOT to serve the people; but to
set up neighborhood corporations run by local governments to monitor and
control community activists and quell any potential resistance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">As part of my job, I had been attending (without overtime pay) numerous
community meetings re health care, lead-paint poisoning, education, housing,
etc.; working with various groups, such as “Welfare Moms,” already addressing
those issues. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Upon recognizing the divide & rule tactics of CPI, and joining with
community leaders from each neighborhood, some of us formed a group called “Seven
Together.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, such <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">organizing</i> got me in hot water fast.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">At nearly every community meeting, I would encounter Black Panthers who
were organizing on a strictly volunteer basis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Once I was fired, I quickly discovered there was no safety net. I couldn’t
get unemployment insurance because both of the jobs I’d had -- working for Yale
and the Government – disqualified me. So I went to the City Welfare Department
where I was offered $25 a week to support my son (9) and myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">“What!!? I was giving you nearly double that in taxes per week, I told
them (paraphrasing). How was I supposed to pay my rent, my bills, support my
child on such a pittance?” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">At that time, 1969, Panthers across the nation had come under vicious
attack by J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO (counterintelligence program) and by
year’s end a reported 28 Panthers had been murdered by police. The most blatant
murders of Panthers happened on December 4, 1969 in the Chicago chapter when
police raided the Panther pad in the pre-dawn, premeditated murder of Fred
Hampton, 21, and Mark Clark, 20.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I knew then it was time to stand up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I decided to join the Party and commit myself to a lifetime of
revolutionary struggle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We single moms
pooled our AFDC (Aid for Dependent Children) checks and lived communally,
sharing all our resources.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Fred Hampton, Chairman of the Chicago Chapter, was a dynamite organizer
who brought together the first rainbow coalition and called on folks to “Repeat
after me; I AM a revolutionary!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">He was also very conscious of the struggles of Black people throughout
the diaspora and particularly in Haiti.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He denounced the infamous brutal dictator known as Papa Doc Duvalier who
was conducting a reign of terror on the Haitian people fighting for dignity and
human rights.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Since I was one of the oldest members of the Party (30!) comprised
mostly of youth in their teens and early 20’s; and one of the few with an
employment history, office skills, and church experience in quantity cooking, I
started off working as the Breakfast Program Coordinator.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Later on, I was recruited to work as legal
secretary to the Panther lawyers on the two capital trials of Panthers Lonnie
McLucas and the joint trial of Chairman Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I continued to do community organizing as a
rank and file Panther in the New Haven Chapter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I loved working at the breakfast program, despite the difficulties of
getting up at before 5 a.m. to rally the troops and begin the task of feeding
scores of kids every weekday morning. Sending young students to school with a
full stomach instead of going hungry was very gratifying. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">There were no food stamps at that time, no school lunch programs in the
City.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What shocked me and raised my
political consciousness was when we found ourselves under attack for feeding
hungry kids.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I’m reminded here of Father Jean Juste of Haiti who was brutalized and
imprisoned for feeding hungry children in Haiti. May he rest in peace.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Later on, during the course of the Panther trials, in order to include
all the forces in the community willing to work to save Panthers’ lives from
the possibility of life in prison or the death penalty, we formed<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The People’s Committee,” comprised of
nonmembers of the Party such as Yale students, Welfare Moms, Puerto Ricans,
White radicals, et al.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We used Attorney
Charles Garry’s temporary law offices, including the phone service, to support
a Bobby & Ericka Free Food Program among other activities in support of the
Panthers and opposition to the War. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">A coalition of movement forces organized an anti-Vietnam-war/free the
Panthers rally scheduled for May Day, 1970 on the New Haven Green (a huge
city-center area surrounded by the courthouse, post office, etc.).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rally drew tens of thousands of
protesters from all over the country and beyond.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The City called in the National Guard who
lined side streets with rifles & bayonets in a display of military
occupation I had never before seen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">We added “bring a can of food” to the flyers announcing the May 1 event
for our Free Food Program. So much food was contributed; we filled a whole room
of Garry’s offices (near the Green) with cans of food later distributed to
needy families.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">As many of you know, Panthers in chapters across the country established
various programs to serve the basic needs of our people whose civil and human
rights were under constant attack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Panthers’ Ten Point Platform contained the demand for “land, bread,
housing, clothing, education, justice and peace” and we set about to organize
our communities to meet those basic needs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Fast forward to the early 1990s: I got involved with the Haiti Action
Committee and the struggle to return to the presidency exiled President Jean
Bertrand Aristide, ousted by the Haitian Army in a coup d’état in 1991, backed
up by the U.S. in cahoots with the Haitian militias, death squads.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">On learning about Aristide who was a priest practicing liberation
theology and serving the people, I became a supporter and advocate of Fanmi
Lavalas (Lavalas meaning a cleansing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">flood</i>
that would wash away political corruption and Fanmi meaning <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">family</i>).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I saw the similarities in practice of our Panther and Lavalas activists
whose dedication to the liberation of our peoples and provision of essential
goods and services were paramount and well worth any risk to our lives. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Indeed, upon his return to the Presidency, Aristide served out his
abbreviated term, was reelected in 2000 with some 90% of the vote, and
proceeded to fulfill the promises of his campaign.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More schools were built in Haiti while the
former priest was in office (or until the 2<sup>nd</sup> coup of 2004) than in
the nation’s entire history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">In rural areas, where no schools had ever
existed, 195 new primary schools and 104 new public high schools were built.
Fanmi Lavalas provided thousands of scholarships for children to attend private
schools, subsidized schoolbooks and uniforms, and expanded school lunch
programs to serve 700,000 hot meals a day to children who otherwise might have
had no meal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I was reminded of the school lunch programs
instituted in New Haven public schools as well as schools across the country
that resulted from the Panther breakfast programs highlighting the lack of free
food programs in our schools.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Not unlike the Panthers’ free health clinics and their battle against
sickle cell anemia,<b> </b><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">the Aristide
government built health clinics, hospitals and dispensaries and added improved
medical services. It greatly increased the number of health care workers
including doctors, and spent a larger percentage of its budget on health. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Just as Panthers came under attack in the
Sixties and Seventies for feeding the people, Aristide came under attack for
serving his congregants in his Parish of the poor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ironically, his church was burned to the ground
and parishioners massacred on September 11, 1988 (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">9/11!).</i> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">This was not the first or the last attempt on
Aristide’s life; he bravely faced down assassins, challenged the Catholic
hierarchy, and was ultimately forced out of the Salesians order and the
priesthood for his opposition to the corrupt regimes of the Duvalier
dictatorship and their death squads known as the Tonton Macoutes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">In 1990, the people drafted Aristide as their
candidate to run for President, overcoming his initial reluctance. This
signaled the origin of the Lavalas movement that swept Aristide into the
Presidential Palace in 1991 with 67% of the vote. Seven months later, in the
first coup d’état supported by the U.S., Aristide was exiled, and General Raoul
Cedras was installed to conduct a reign of terror against the Haitian masses
including anyone associated with Fanmi Lavalas. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The people demanded Aristide’s return, so
after an international campaign centered here in the Bay Area and led by Pierre
Labossiere and the Haiti Action Committee; he was flown to Haiti in 1994 to finish
his term in office.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Re-elected in 2000 with 90% of the vote, his
presidency was again interrupted with a U.S. backed coup, forcing Aristide into
exile once again, this time in Africa.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The Black Panther Party turned to electoral
politics after Bobby Seale was released from prison (following our people’s
court victory) -- running Seale for Mayor of Oakland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At this point, there was a split in the party
due to political differences and orchestration by COINTELPRO. Some members had
gone underground, eschewed elections, and advocated urban guerrilla
warfare.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Neither strategy worked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Look at the current electoral debacles in
Haiti and America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The 2015 Haitian
Presidential election was replete with fraud, violent voter repression, and “zombie”
votes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet </span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">the US, European Union,
United Nations and other donors that make up the “Core Group” in Haiti all
endorsed the results as credible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Now that an election committee has determined new elections must be held
in October, the U.S. has threatened to withdraw millions of dollars in campaign
funding if they proceed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They spent over
$33 million on the fraudulent 2015 election, although millions never went to
electoral authorities.<span style="color: #262626;"> </span>Hillary Clinton
descended on Haiti to see that corrupt Michel Martelly was installed, and her
husband is leading international investors in the establishment of an
industrial park designed to grossly exploit Haitian labor. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">In short, if the candidates chosen by the U.S. imperialists and their
cohorts (the Core Group) backed by MINUSTAH (the UN troops occupying Haiti
since 2010) are not installed as planned, they’ll take their marbles and go
home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Here in the U.S. we’re faced with fraudulent elections as well, but
they’re accomplished in a much more subtle and sophisticated (less violent) way.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">This government and its people are at the mercy of the ruling-class
donors and their controlled corporate media. Candidates are chosen and nominees
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">selected</i> for their loyalty to Wall
Street and the ruling class multibillionaires – not for their loyalty to the
masses of people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, there’s no
such thing as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">people’s candidate</i> in
America, one who serves the best interests of the people, not Wall Street.
Third party candidates can’t even get on the stage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">In Haiti, the people’s candidate, Maryse Narcisse, is from Fanmi Lavalas
and was 4<sup>th</sup> runner up in the 2015 fraudulent election. She probably
should have been number one given the massive support she received.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">As BPP Field Marshall George L. Jackson noted, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">With all the factors of control over the electoral process in the hands
of the minority ruling class, the people's party can always be made to seem
isolated, unimportant, even extraneous...”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The people’s choice in Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide, leader of the
people’s movement (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">people’s party</i>),
Fanmi Lavalas, has been quashed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">because</i>
he serves the people, not the ruling elites.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .25in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">So the question remains for Haitians and Americans:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How do we implement real change if we cannot
do it through the ballot box?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the BPP in this presidential campaign
year, coinciding with the upcoming rerun election in Haiti, puts voting on the
front burner in 2016.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In contemplating
the above question, also consider the following words by the freedom fighter
and revolutionary author, Frantz Fanon:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">“Sometimes people hold a
core belief that is very strong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When
they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new
evidence cannot be accepted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would
create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive
dissonance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And because it is so
important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even
deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Black Skin, White Masks)</span></i><span style="color: #131313; font-size: 14.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">“Each generation must
discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity.” (The
Wretched of the Earth)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">All power to the people!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Kiilu Nyashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499726491019227728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6608310855966320317.post-1810237484513800342017-02-13T20:10:00.001-08:002017-09-24T19:10:46.470-07:00IDA B. WELLS-BARNETT -- "IOLA," PRINCESS OF THE PRESS & Feminist Crusader for Equality and Justice, by Kiilu Nyasha<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a name='more'></a><br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">Wells eventually moved to
Memphis, Tenn., where she taught school in a small town called Woodstock and
continued her education by attending Fisk University and Lemoyne Institute
during the summers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">Ida’s career as a writer
was sparked by an incident that occurred in 1884, while riding a train back to
her job in Woodstock. Wells was asked by the conductor to move from her seat in
the ladies' car into the smoking car. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">"I refused," she
later wrote, describing how the conductor tried to drag her out of the seat:
"the moment he caught hold of my arm I fastened my teeth in the back of
his hand. I had braced my feet against the seat in front and was holding to the
back, and as he had already been badly bitten he didn’t try it again by
himself. He went forward and got the baggage man and another man to help him
and of course they succeeded in dragging me out."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh48MR2W1L05fVHzKz4pC6ytw-ih11I0GPK-ePnEHpNHH5dZ3kTRpCeYokV25y_xShra2u4FUI1azY5IkftrieaULMpCnzqo2wEnUTFwUF2LKn_3Ni9vyeQVAqIX_uJ7gWm8G36ImBkTJ9C/s1600/Ida+B.+Wells.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh48MR2W1L05fVHzKz4pC6ytw-ih11I0GPK-ePnEHpNHH5dZ3kTRpCeYokV25y_xShra2u4FUI1azY5IkftrieaULMpCnzqo2wEnUTFwUF2LKn_3Ni9vyeQVAqIX_uJ7gWm8G36ImBkTJ9C/s320/Ida+B.+Wells.jpg" width="234" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">When Wells got back to
Memphis, she brought suit against the Railroad Company. The court ruled in her
favor and awarded her $500 in damages. The judge presiding over the trial
stated the railroad company violated the separate but equal laws by forcing Wells
to ride in a smoking car that was separate but not first class, for which she
had paid. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">Even though the Tennessee
Supreme Court reversed the decision three years later, this was the first case
of its kind in the South, and generated tremendous public interest. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">Thrilled with her victory
and eager to share her story, Wells wrote an article for <u>The Living Way,</u>
a Black Memphis newspaper, using the pen name "Iola."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">Her prolific writing soon
earned her the position of editor for three Memphis newspapers, <u>The Living
Way</u>, <u>The Evening Star</u> and <u>Free Speech</u>, becoming part owner of
the latter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">"All of this,
although gratifying surprised me very much for I had no training except what
the work on <u>The Evening Star</u> had given me, and no literary gifts and
graces. But I had observed and thought much about conditions as I had seen them
in the country schools and churches. I had an instinctive feeling that the
people who had little or no school training should have something coming into
their homes weekly, which dealt with their problems in a simple, helpful way.
So in weekly letters to <u>The Living Way,</u> I wrote in a plain, common sense
way on the things which concerned our people. Knowing that their education was limited,
I never used a word of two syllables where one would serve the purpose. I
signed these articles "Iola."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">On exposing the inferior
facilities of Black schools around Memphis, Wells was fired from her teaching
job, but was then free to devote full time to the fight for justice and
equality. She quickly became a famous writer whose articles appeared in journals
and newspapers throughout the nation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">One reporter noted:
"Miss Ida B. Wells, Iola, has been called the Princess of the Press, and
she has well earned the title. No writer, the male fraternity not excepted, has
been more extensively quoted."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">In her autobiography, she
wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">"While I was thus
carrying on the work of my newspaper, happy in the thought that our influence
was helpful and that I was doing the work I loved and had proved that I could
make a living out of it, there came the lynching in Memphis which changed the whole
course of my life. I was on one of my trips away from home busily engaged in
Natchez when word came of the lynching of three men in Memphis."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">It was during a cold night
in March 1892. Wells' close friends, Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell and Henry
Stewart, owners of<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">People's Grocery Co., had
angered white men who considered them "uppity" and sought to
eliminate the competition they posed by an armed attack on their grocery store.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">But the brothers fought back,
shooting one of the attackers. Shortly thereafter, all three were arrested. A
mob of cursing, shouting white men broke into the jail at Memphis, dragged them
away from town and brutally murdered them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">Wells responded to this
atrocious act of violence by writing an editorial in the <u>Free Speech</u>:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She noted the lynching was really "an
excuse to get rid of Negroes who were acquiring wealth and property and thus
keep the race terrorized and ‘keep the nigger down.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">“The city of Memphis has demonstrated
that neither character nor standing avails the Negro if he dares to protect
himself against the white man or become his rival. There is nothing we can do
about the lynching now, as we are out-numbered and without arms. The white mob could
help itself to ammunition without pay, but the order is rigidly enforced
against the selling of guns to Negroes. There is therefore only one thing left
to do; save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives and
property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts, but takes us out and murders us
in cold blood when accused by white persons."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">Memphis Blacks took Wells'
advice, and in two month's time, six thousand black people left Memphis, many
relocating to the Oklahoma Territory. Those who remained organized boycotts of white
owned businesses in response to the lynchings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">The very night her article
appeared, a mob invaded Wells' offices and destroyed the printing equipment and
all the newspapers they could find. Her very life in danger, Wells moved to
Chicago where she continued her blistering attacks on racist criminality and
Southern injustice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">After the demise of <u>The
Free Speech</u>, a Black newspaper called <u>The New York Age</u> began
printing her articles, and Wells launched a lecturing tour throughout the
northeast to further spread her message on the horrors of lynching.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">Later on in 1892, Wells
spoke at a conference of black women's clubs, where she was given $500 to
investigate lynching and publish her findings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">"I then began an
investigation of every lynching I read about. By 1893, over a thousand Black
men, women and children had been hanged, shot and burned to death by white mobs
in America."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">During the late 1800's,
violence against blacks increased at alarming rates and mob rule was becoming
the norm. The KuKluxKlan established a "reign of terror," murdering
and lynching innocent blacks, while most southern whites looked the other way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">Ida B. Wells traveled
across the country interviewing eyewitnesses and visiting the scenes of
lynchings. Of the 728 murders she investigated, Wells found that only a third
involved Blacks actually accused of crimes. Not only men, but women and children
were victims of mob violence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">Many blacks were hung, shot
and burned to death for trivial things such as not paying a debt, disrespecting
whites, testifying in court, stealing hogs, and public drunkenness. At least
one third of the charges against black men were for the rape of white women.
The racist violence against Black men was thus "justified" as
protecting "white womanhood." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">Wells wrote that in many
of these so-called "rape" cases there was evidence of a consensual
relationship between black men and white women, evoking outrage among whites.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her findings were published in a pamphlet
titled <u>Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases</u>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">Repeating an assertion she
frequently made during her anti-lynching crusade, Wells said that she had but
one life to give, and if she must die by violence, she would take some of her
persecutors with her. She kept a pistol available in the house and dared anyone
to cross her threshold to harm her or any member of her family.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">While remaining diligent
in her anti-lynching crusade, Wells spearheaded the development of numerous
African women's organizations in Chicago and Boston. She became a tireless
worker for women’s right to vote, befriending both Susan B. Anthony and Jane
Adams, and becoming a familiar face at suffrage meetings. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">She became the first
female representative to a press convention. And in 1889, at a Washington, D.C.
convention, Wells was elected secretary to the National Press Association where
she met for the first time, the great Frederick Douglass.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">Later on, Wells
collaborated with Douglass and others, including her future husband, in writing
a pamphlet titled "Reasons Why the Colored American is not in the World's
Colombian Exposition" in response to the exclusion of Blacks in the 1893
Chicago World's Fair. It documented the progress of blacks since their arrival
in America, and was distributed to over 20,000 people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">Wells also became an
activist in the struggle to block the establishment of segregated schools, and
established the first kindergarten in a Black neighborhood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">In 1893, Wells embarked on
a lecture tour of England, Scotland, and Wales, inspiring international
organizations to apply pressure on America to end segregation and lynching.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">Two years later, she
published a report titled "A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged
causes of Lynching in the United States,” which argued that the impetus behind
lynching was economic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">That same year, 1895, at
the age of 33, Wells married Ferdinand L. Barnett, a Chicago lawyer, activist
and editor. Barnett was the owner and founder of The Conservator, the first
black newspaper in Chicago. Together, they had two sons and two daughters.
Although the renowned journalist then took time out to focus on her family, she
remained politically active.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">In 1906, she joined with
W.E.B. DuBois and others to further the Niagara Movement. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">She helped found the
National Association of Colored Women and the NAACP. In 1910 she formed the
Negro Fellowship League, which she housed in a three-story building on Chicago's
south side. It served as a fellowship home for new settlers from the south and
provided space for religious services, an employment office, and a homeless
shelter for men.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">In1913, Wells established
the first Black women's suffrage club.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That
same year she marched in a suffrage parade in Washington DC and met with
President William McKinley about a lynching in South Carolina.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">In 1916, She became
involved with Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association. And in
the years following World War I, she covered various race riots in Arkansas,
East St. Louis and Chicago, publishing her reports in pamphlets and newspapers nationwide.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">In 1928, Wells began her
autobiography, stating that "the history of this entire period which
reflected glory on the race should be known. Yet most of it is buried in
oblivion... and so, because our youth are entitled to the facts of race history
which only the participants can give, I am thus led to set forth the
facts."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">By 1930, her impatience
with politicians and her growing concern for Chicago's Black ghetto led Wells
to run for the Illinois State Senate, which she lost to the incumbent. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">Wells continued her
community organizing till the end of her life, determined to change the
conditions of poverty and hopelessness on Chicago's South Side.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">On March 25, 1931, at the
age of 69, Ida B. Wells-Barnett joined the ancestors, leaving an incredible
legacy of courage, sacrifice, dedication and activism. Given the harsh,
dangerous conditions of the post Civil-War context in which she struggled, her
accomplishments were truly amazing. She was surely one of the 20th century's
most remarkable women.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">In 1941, a Chicago housing
development was named in her honor, and in 1990 the U.S. Postal Service issued
an Ida B. Wells-Barnett postage stamp. Her autobiography, "Crusade for Justice,"
edited by A. Duster, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1970.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Geneva;">Long live the spirit of Ida B. Wells-Barnett.</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Kiilu Nyashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499726491019227728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6608310855966320317.post-88903930935984343872017-01-29T11:32:00.001-08:002017-09-24T20:10:46.323-07:00Women of the Black Panther Party Reflect on Today's Struggle, Staying Engaged and Why Trump's Win Might be a Good Thing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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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.<br />
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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. <br />
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One often-overlooked component of the Panthers was the leadership of women. At one point, women made up the majority of the BPP’s membership but their contributions are frequently written out of history. <br />
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We at the Intersectional Black Panther Party History Project believe there is value in amplifying the voices of Black women who served on the front lines of the BPP. We asked former members of the now-defunct organization to provide guideposts for activists responding to this political moment and to share their thoughts about how Donald Trump’s election could impact communities of color.<br />
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Barbara Cox Easley<br />
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I would not be so bold as to suggest what activists should do now. So much has changed since the ’60's. But I do like the way that today’s activists use social media, the marches and the "rainbow coalitions" across race, culture, etc. I remember meeting with many non Black groups, such as the Brown Berets, the Red Guard, White Panthers and many others. Yes, we, the early BPP members, did have coalitions and partners. This was a method of spreading the BPP’s message, across race, culture and theory. We were working together to [focus] attention on the true enemies of oppressed people around the world.<br />
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Due to the racist uprising, as shown by the elections, I would suggest some caution. It appears the oppressor has gotten bolder and will kill or knock off, in some fashion, the leadership of opposition movements. Why not have three or four persons representing organizations? Let us suppress our egos.<br />
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All power to the people.<br />
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Barbara Cox Easley was a member of the Black Panther Party from 1967 to 1971. She worked in the Party offices in Oakland, Philadelphia and New York. She worked in Germany from 1971 to 1973 with the Voice of the Lumpen educating GI’s about the Vietnam war. She volunteers as a consultant for a community housing group in Philadelphia and she played a pivotal role in organizing the city's first Panther Film Festival in 2005.* <br />
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Judy Juanita <br />
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I've been a Buddhist for 37 years, practicing [with] Soka Gakkai International (SGI). Once, when an SGI peer visited the Palace of Versailles in Paris, he stood outside at a circular pool with floating goldfish. The caretaker told him that these fish are content to stay in place, get fat and die young. So occasionally staff throw in a barracuda to get the fish moving swiftly. And they live longer. Donald Trump is the barracuda in the pond outside our palace of democracy. <br />
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Already, Trump has announced initiatives and policies to redesign the American social contract in place since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. I would expect that the barracudas set loose will get many people all over the country, even the world, moving, protesting and organizing, as we did in the ‘1960s, in earnest. The ‘60s don't seem so ancient now that the specter of state repression is casting its shadow over the hyper-materialism that has sedated many Americans. As the ACLU reminds us, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."<br />
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Judy Juanita was a one-time editor of the Black Panther Party newspaper and was an instructor in the first Black Studies program in the nation at San Francisco State University. She is a novelist, playwright, poet and educator. For more than three decades she has practiced Nichiren Buddhism, a philosophy devoted to peace, culture and education. <br />
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Kiilu Nyasha<br />
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Frankly, I’m relieved that Trump won instead of [Hillary] Clinton. Had she won, folks would be singing “Kumbaya” and celebrating the first woman president of the United States. We could have looked at another four to eight years of a warmongering Clinton Administration with our people pacified like they were behind the first Black president, [Barack Obama].<br />
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What have we gained from the latter? We know what we got with the first Clinton Administration — welfare de-form and mass incarceration; Rwandan genocide and Bosnian bombing.<br />
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Apparently, George Jackson was right when he said, “The holder of so-called high public office is always merely an extension of the hated ruling corporate class. It is to our benefit that this person be openly hostile, despotic, unreasoning.”<br />
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Trump’s election prompted mass demonstrations immediately all across the country. Students are walking out of class. Coalitions are being formed and plans made for a huge mass protest on January 20 in [Washington], D.C. Folks are talking about reorganizing a United Front Against Fascism, an effort of the ‘60s. I agree that something like that needs to happen and suggest we go more positive by calling for a United Front for Social Revolution (picking up on the slogan made popular by Bernie Sanders).These are just ideas. I’m [also] thinking, along with others, that we do need something like the United Democratic Front of South Africa, the umbrella group that brought together all the anti-apartheid organizations. We must all unite and organize, organize, organize! Dare to struggle! Dare to win!<br />
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Kiilu Nyasha has been a revolutionary artist, activist and journalist in the liberation struggle for more than35 years. A former Black Panther, she is a radio and newspaper journalist who has done much to keep political prisoners in the public eye. <br />
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Frankye Malika Adams-Johnson<br />
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This two-party system does not seem to work in the best interest of the masses. The election of Donald was clearly an example of the White power structure, the 1 percent flexing their muscles to maintain their power base. Although Donald Trump was not their likely choice, their sexism would not and will not ever allow them to even entertain the thought of a woman running the country. <br />
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Those of us who are activists must begin to explore our own understanding of a capitalist system and explore whether it is the best system for the masses. In the meantime, on the question of what we do in this political moment, I think more than ever activists need to begin massive political education among the masses around the issues of self-determination so that we as a people don’t fall any deeper in despair waiting on government to improve the quality of our lives.<br />
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Frankye "Malika" Adams-Johnson served with the Black Panthers in New York City, helping to educate and feed young people and make a difference in the areas of human and civil rights.Today she is an educator at Jackson State University. She has donated papers from her time in the Black Panther Party to Jackson State, which are on display in the Margaret Walker Center.<br />
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published in <u>Colorlines</u><br />
http://www.colorlines.com/articles/women-black-panther-party-reflect-todays-struggle-staying-engaged-and-why-trumps-win-might</div>
Kiilu Nyashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00499726491019227728noreply@blogger.com0