Charges sought in death of Congo leader Lumumba
Charges sought in death of Congo leader Lumumba
By SLOBODAN LEKIC, Associated Press Writer Slobodan Lekic, Associated Press Writer – Mon Jun 21,
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June 29, 2010
From Michael Manley to Christopher Dudus Coke
From Michael Manley to Christopher Dudus Coke: The struggle against neocolonialism in Jamaica
The U.S. request to get Christopher Dudus Coke, a well known leader of the so-called “Shower Posse gang” with ties to the ruling Jamaican Labour Party (JLP), to be extradited to the U.S. on the alleged charge of gun and drug trafficking, strained, at first, the relation between the U.S. and Jamaican governments.
Jamaica chose to resist the U.S. decision by appointing a law firm in the U.S. Things changed when Jamaica’s prime minister, Bruce Golding indicated they were considering handing over Christopher Coke to the U.S. government which had claimed Coke to be a fugitive. Supporters of Dudus responded by setting up barricades and torching police stations in response to Golding’s decision.
Without science and information there is no truth and real understanding of the contradiction that confronts Jamaica and African people today. There are many questions to answer.
Why the mobilization of State violence on such a huge scale and with such intensity against African people in Jamaica? The government uses armored vehicles, truckloads of soldiers and helicopters against our people.
What do we make of the disparity between the high number of Africans detained (500) and killed so far (73) and the low number of weapons seized by soldiers and police (only four, including an AK-47 automatic rifle)?
There were unconfirmed reports of numerous civilian casualties during the Monday, May 24 assault on Tivoli Gardens, an impoverished Jamaican neighbourhood and Coke’s base of support. According to a Reuters news article, some of those reports said military helicopters dropped explosives on the ramshackle district.
Why did the prime minister, Bruce Golding, and his JLP originally pay $50,000 to the U.S. law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips to help overturn the extradition order against Christopher Dudus Coke?
White people enjoy themselves in Jamaica at the expense of African people
Why does the Jamaican government suddenly want Coke dead? This would produce possible disastrous consequences for Jamaica’s tourism industry, which depends on white people enjoying themselves at our expense in Jamaica.
Why did the U.S. want the extradition of Christopher Coke? After all, it is the U.S. that is the kingpin of drug trade and weapons sales in the world.
The attacks on Coke are surely an assault on what he represents as a powerful individual in Jamaica’s political scene.
These attacks are not an assault against the source of violence, poverty and corruption in Jamaica, which is the 500 years of colonial domination by Spain, the United Kingdom and now the U.S. Furthermore, the present wave of violence is a legacy of U.S. involvement in our affairs that links back to the 1970s.
According to Gary Webb’s book “Dark Alliance,” “In 1977, two investigative reporters exposed a ’destabilization program‘ against Michael Manley ‘s government reportedly run by the CIA’s Jamaican station chief, Norman Descoteaux. The campaign included covert shipments of arms to Manley’s opponents, the use of selective bombing and assassinations, covert financial aid to the conservative Jamaica Labour Party, the fomenting of extensive labour unrest, and bribery.”[1]
One thing is certain, the U.S. is not fighting drug and gun smuggling in Jamaica. It was the CIA that flooded Jamaica with guns to prevent the rise of a revolutionary movement in Jamaica in the ‘70s. It is the U.S. that is the number one sponsor of narco states such as those in Colombia and Afghanistan. It is the CIA that runs the drug trade in the world.
The U.S. is not seeking to prevent Jamaica from developing its narco state status. Just look at Afghanistan. The U.S. reversed the Taliban’s efforts to eradicate the poppy fields.
In deprived communities, the so-called gangs have replaced the neocolonial State in delivering welfare, education and other basic social necessities to the people.
The workers did not create the violence in Jamaica. It is a well-known fact that the JLP and the People’s National Party (PNP), two major factions of the African petty bourgeoisie on the island, armed their supporters in the ‘70s to carry out violence to eliminate or neutralize their local opponents and secure votes that would deliver them to power.
This engineered horizontal violence is a form of counterinsurgency, which was consolidated with the introduction of the drug economy.
According to Monsignor Richard Albert, “Because the government is not socially intervening in these communities, community leaders who deal with petty crime in their area also deal with school problems of all children, they provide for the little old lady to make sure she gets food, they distribute legal and illegal jobs, etc. They take the role of the State at a basic level.”[2]
And an April 2008 Amnesty International (http://www.amnesty.org) report said that political leaders acknowledge that consecutive governments actively helped create the environment in which gang violence could flourish. Gang control is at its most pervasive in communities entirely under the control of one or other of the political parties, known as “garrison communities.”
Police violence is the basic domestic policy of the Jamaican government against workers and poor peasants
The statistics coming out of Jamaica are chilling. It is a hellish life for the African masses, who are caught between neocolonial poverty and violence.
“Between 2000 and 2007, 1,422 people were killed by police and a further 1,115 were injured.” (Bureau of Special Investigations) “In 2005, 1,674 people were the victims of homicide – a record high.” (Jamaica Constabulary Force) These statistics compare with colonial assassination in Occupied Palestine. B'Tselem, The Israeli Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, reports that 4,908 Palestinians were killed by Israelis and 1,062 Israelis were killed by Palestinians between September 29, 2000 and December 26, 2008.[3]
“Jamaican police shot dead 113 people last year, down from 133 the previous year. But Jamaica only has a population of 2.6 million, compared with eight million in New York City, which had around 25 fatal police shootings last year... There have been 49 already this year, and it's only May," said Yvonne McCalla Sobers, chairman of Families Against State Terrorism (FAST), a Jamaican pressure group. She told BBC News Online: "It's not as if the police are succeeding in bringing crime down. Crime levels are continuing to go up. We have had 460 murders so far this year.”
Another recent report from Amnesty International presented to the United Nations, clearly shows an escalation of police violence against our people in Jamaica: “According to official statistics, the number was a record high in 2007, when 272 persons died as a result of use of force by the police; 224 were killed in 2008 and 253 in 2009....”[4]
The attack on Christopher Dudus Coke has begun to bring to the attention of the peoples of the world the war without end against African workers in Jamaica. That war is a precondition for the exploitation and looting without end that Jamaica has been submitted to since Christopher Columbus initiated the genocide of the Indigenous people of the Americas over 500 years ago.
For its part, the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) said it is encouraging the members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) and the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) "to continue their relentless and courageous efforts to restore law and order in certain sections of the capital." The PSOJ added, "It is now clear, at this time in our history, that Jamaica is at war with gang violence, drug dons and organized crime. It is a war which we, as a country, must win."[5]
Every war, in any form, at any time and anywhere against the oppressed peoples, against African poor people, by the imperialist bourgeoisie or by the African petty bourgeoisie class, whether Bruce Golding, Obama, Seaga, PJ Patterson or Zuma, is a war to maintain the status quo. It is a war to maintain capitalist relations between the haves and the have-nots.
Who are the real criminals?
Defining crime and the role of the bourgeois neocolonial State is part of the deepening political education of the people. It is critical for those of us who want to see Jamaica and African people free from neocolonial rule to educate the people.
The criminals in Jamaica are those who wiped out the Indigenous population of Jamaica, assaulted Africa, captured us and brought us in slave ships to the foreign land of Jamaica. They used us to build the only world economy that ever existed, a world economy whose maintenance requires us African people to live separated from each other and our natural resources and the fruits of our labor.
The criminals are the African petty bourgeois class who mobilized the people to vote them into public offices solely for the purpose of administering a capitalist economy born and maintained at our expense worldwide.
The real criminals are those Jamaican rulers who give away our money to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. They have allowed imperialist products to be dumped in Jamaica at the expense of the development of local production.
The criminals are the Jamaican ruling parties and the U.S. government who introduced drugs and gun violence in poor community districts of Jamaica for the purpose of encouraging horizontal violence amongst people suffering from the same colonial conditions and preventing revolutionary consciousness growth.
That is why the imperialist media is incapable of showing you what the African workers in Jamaica have built for Britain, Spain, the U.S. and the rest of the parasitic capitalist world. They have not shown you all the bauxite and other resources leaving Jamaica to develop the imperialist countries. They cannot show you the wealth the U.S. hotel owners are making in Jamaica.
Well before Christopher Dudus Coke was born, the British colonialist rulers set the trend that we see in the Jamaican economy today. Investment in the bauxite and alumina sector was encouraged by the Bauxite and Alumina Act of 1950. The Hotel Aid Law of 1944 provided a similar catalyst to investment in the tourism sector. Today, in 2010, the Jamaican economy is still based and dependent on bauxite, alumina and tourism.
In 1960, the top 20 percent of society received 61 percent of the national income and 10 percent of the population owned 64 percent of the land. Unemployment averaged roughly 25 percent during the period from 1975 to 1985, affecting women and urban youth the hardest.
Like other countries in the Western Hemisphere, Jamaica quickly compiled a large external debt in the 1970s and 1980s; by the end of 1986 it amounted to $3.5 billion, one of the highest GDP.
Christopher Dudus Coke is no revolutionary
Christopher Dudus Coke is a creation of the alliance between U.S. imperialism and the African petty bourgeoisie. He is a creation of the decadent, backward working class elements and the political ruling class elite of the JLP and the PNP, who work to stifle democratic space in Jamaica.
They have used violence to dominate their opponents and mobilize votes for their respective sponsors. As a result of this intervention, the contradictions amongst our people in the poor neighborhoods were antagonized, leaving the men in arms the main power brokers in the community.
Secondly, the introduction of the drug economy armed and enriched certain dons who are beyond the control of politicians that initially supported them. These dons later became the politicians’ source of financing.
Dudus Coke is not involved in political education of the people. He is not calling for power in the hands of workers. He is not calling for the overthrow of the African petty bourgeoisie. There are even reports that are saying that Coke is willing to hand himself in to the U.S. embassy.
His lawyers call him a legitimate businessman, the major shareholder in two successful Jamaican companies, Incomparable Enterprise and Presidential Click. To such followers, he is the man who sent their children to school, mediated in disputes, clothed and fed them, gave them employment and stopped crime. At his command, no children were allowed on street corners after 8:00 p.m., all men had to work and petty thieving was outlawed. It is claimed there was no stealing or rape in Tivoli Gardens.[6]
African workers need our own power, the power of the worker that depends first on our ability to build the African Socialist International (ASI) that unites and mobilizes all Africans in the Caribbean region for power against the Jamaican State violence and for a democratic State under our own workers’ leadership.
Our struggle for power is also a struggle to eradicate the drug economy that is of no use to the workers.
Our power is a State mass power, of one billion Africans worldwide moving in the same direction releasing black steam to burn all imperialist and neocolonialist bourgeois obstacles in our wake.
Jamaica needs the ASI now to develop a Revolutionary National Democratic Program (RNDP), under the leadership of the African workers in alliance with poor peasants and progressive intellectuals. Dudus and his followers would have to state their position and unity with the RNDP like every single member of the oppressed community.
Dudus comes from a family tied to the JLP, a neocolonialist party in Jamaica. His father and his brother were accredited with being the leaders of the Shower Posse when they met their violent deaths. His father, who was also the bodyguard of Edward Seaga, a former JLP leader and prime minister of Jamaica, was killed in jail while waiting to be extradited to the U.S.
Dudus’ wealth is colonial wealth too, just like the wealth of the members of the government of Jamaica. It comes from a relationship between oppressed nations and oppressor nations, between the African petty bourgeoisie and the African working class.
According to an article in the Daily Mail, “Another of his companies, which handles lucrative government tenders for road contracts, has been ferrying construction materials into Tivoli Gardens, used to erect defensive barricades...Coke’s wealth has enabled him to move out of Tivoli Gardens. He now lives in an opulent former plantation home in Red Hills, a cool, peaceful retreat favoured by entrepreneurs and politicians. A string of senior politicians, including Golding, have been reportedly electronically intercepted talking to Coke at his strongholds.“[7]
His job was to mobilize votes for the neocolonial ruling class organized inside the JLP, of which he is a supporter.
The contradiction is that he has achieved a level of power and influence in the community and inside the JLP. Is it this reality that makes the U.S. insecure to the point of demanding Bruce Golding, the prime minister, extradite Dudus to the U.S? We know that the U.S. cannot tolerate an independent power amongst the African colonized people.
The real issue is the 48 years of Jamaica’s ruling class surrender to imperialist parasitism and how to overturn it
The Jamaica bourgeois media and the Jamaica ruling class have been debating the crisis in Jamaica for years. Most of the local pundits and petty bourgeois intellectuals recognize the source of the crisis that has brought the Jamaican government to collapse.
Here are some of the recent articulations of that crisis from The Gleaner, a neocolonial newspaper, which opposed Marcus Garvey in the days of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).
On April 25, they reported on a speech that the prime minister of Jamaica, Bruce Golding had delivered on April 20. “For the last 14 years consecutively, we have been spending more than our revenues can cover,” the prime minister began by telling us. “Our current expenditure has grown three times as fast as our revenues, he continued — 76 percent versus 24 percent.”
Matalon, the head of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica, who openly supports the assault on Tivoli Gardens, Christopher Dudus Coke’s support base, said that: “Over the 35-year period covered by the Productivity Summary Report, the productivity of the average Jamaican worker has declined at a rate of 1.3 percent each and every year. The decline in recent years has doubled to 3.4 percent per annum...”
“Jamaica's crisis of debt returning to 140 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and debt servicing requiring 60 percent of government expenditure is the result of years of accumulated failure of government to balance its expenditure with the availability of non-borrowed resources. After improvements to the middle of the 1990s, Jamaica's public finances were significantly affected by the costs of resolving the financial sector crisis....”[8]
African Internationalists must define tasks of African revolution in the Caribbean and in the Americas
Jamaica, like the rest of African world, needs revolution that will destroy imperialism forever.
We are not talking about a movement similar to the one Michael Manley led. There is a difference.
Manley was a radical petty bourgeois reformist, who did not believe in the power of the workers. His movement was not a revolutionary movement, although Manley recognized Cuba and carried limited social reforms and programs, which in the short term may have benefited the poor people. He surrendered to the IMF and other parasitic capitalist forces.
In order to defeat U.S. imperialism in the region, the creation and consolidation of the ASI Caribbean Front of the African revolution is necessary.
One of the tasks of such an organization is to give unconditional solidarity to the Indigenous people of america who are fighting to get their land back.
The creation of the World Tribunal for Reparations to Africa and African People must bring U.S. and British imperialism to trial for crimes against Africans in Jamaica and around the world. We must consolidate a revolutionary national democratic program that will call for the immediate seizure of State power by the African working class in alliance with progressive social forces in Jamaica.
The willingness of African masses to defend Christopher Dudus Coke must be turned into the willingness to build the ASI, the revolutionary Party of African workers to complete the long and historical African resistance to imperialism in Jamaica.
The blood thirsty African petty bourgeoisie cannot continue to rule as in the old days. The shout to kill police must be transformed to revolutionary struggle against the State. The workers must develop the struggle beyond torching police stations. We must develop the power to appoint and remove police chiefs and police officers anywhere in Jamaica. Workers’ control of police stations and army barracks is the ultimate test of any majority democratic rule.
We must internationalize the issue of police murder and violence against the people. We must make the call for liberty, democracy and power by building around the world to expose and isolate the Jamaican government and win support for the Revolution in Jamaica.
U.S. hands off Christopher Coke and all African people!
End the state of emergency now!
End Jamaican State terrorism against African people
Build the ASI!
One Africa! One Nation!
[1] Page 143, Gary Webb in “Dark Alliance: the CIA, the Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion,” Seven stories printing Press, New York
[2] Monsignor Richard Albert, St. Catherine, Episcopal Vicar, St. Catherine, Jamaica, and Chair of the Crime Prevention Committee in Spanish Town, October 2007.
[3] "Israelis and Palestinians Killed in the Current Violence,” http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/deaths.html
[4] Jamaica, Submission to the UN Universal Periodic Review Ninth Session of the UPR Working Group Human Rights Council, November-December 2010, 19 April, Amnesty International
[5] "Sector groups support security operations," The Gleaner, May 29, 2010
[6]http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/2992150/Slum-battle-over-Jamaican-drugs-baron-Christopher-Coke.html#ixzz0pb4KtMzi
[7] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1281750/Christopher-Coke-The-5ft-4in-Godfather-set-paradise-ablaze.html#ixzz0pbE9B1vk
[8] Colin F Bullock, Contributor, “Fiscal policy in a time of economic crisis.” Colin F. Bullock is lecturer in the Department of Economics, UWI, Mona.
Source:uhurunews
Landless People's Movement militants arrested
Five more Landless People's Movement militants arrested in Soweto
Landless People’s Movement
The crackdown on the Landless People's Movement in Johannesburg continues. Two LPM militants have been killed in recent days, and ten are currently in prison following the arrests of five others last night.
Landless People’s Movement Press Statement
The Attack on the Landless People’s Movement Continues
Five More Have Been Arrested in Protea South
On the night of 3 June 2010, police and an informer went from door to door in the shacks of Protea South, Soweto. They arrested five members of the Landless People’s Movement (LPM). Three of the arrested are children of Maureen Mnisi, chairperson of the LPM in Gauteng, and the other two are her neighbors.
Two people have been killed since the current wave of repression, which began 23 May 2010 when the LPM was attacked by the Homeowner’s Association in Protea South. . One was shot dead by the Homeowner’s Association in Protea South, and one was shot dead by the police in eTwatwa.
Seven LPM members are now in jail in Protea South and thee LPM members in jail in eTwatwa. Others have been beaten, shot, arrested or received threats that their homes would be burned down. The homes of two people already have been burned down in eTwatwa.
The police have promised to make more arrests soon and that the five LPM members arrested 3 June will be charged with burning the electricity transformer in Protea South.
The transformer was burned down on 23 May by other community members not affiliated with the LPM in an effort to show the wealthier residents of Protea South that if electricity is denied to the poor, it will be denied to everyone.
The tactic of disconnecting the rich in retaliation for disconnecting the poor (or asking the state perform the disconnection) has been used in Siyanda, Pemary Ridge and Motala Heights in Durban.
Also on the night of 23 May, the wealthier residents of Protea South, who live in private bonded houses, armed themselves and forcibly disconnected the shack dwellers from the electricity supply. They beat shack dwellers and shot two people. One person has died.
The bonded house residents also attempted to burn down Maureen Mnisi’s house. Her house was saved by LPM members who erected a burning barricade and threw stones at the Homeowner’s Association mob.
Those arrested 3 June were busy defending Maureen Mnisi’s home on the evening they are accused of having burned the transformer in Protea South. It is true they made fires that night, but they were burning tires to keep warm as they protected Maureen’s home.
These arrests are clearly a strategy to hurt Maureen and to undermine her commitment to the struggle. It is the dirtiest tactic to punish a militant by arresting her children and neighbors.
No one has been arrested for the attacks on the LPM in Protea South. In eTwatwa the police stood by as the shacks of two LPM leaders were burned down. Later, the police arrested one person but quickly released them. The police officer who shot dead the LPM militant in eTwatwa has not been arrested.
Liza Cossa, chairperson of the LPM in Protea South, was told by police that they are targeting Maureen Mnisi. She expects now that anything can happen.
The Homeowner’s Association has a long history of placing pressure on Maureen. In early 2009 they signed a petition against her, calling for her removal from the area because she was defending people from outside the country.
It is true that the LPM defends all people from evictions; South Africa belongs to all who live in it, and we make no apology for this.
The LPM is aware that the local ANC councilor, Mapule Khumalo, is behind the actions that have put Maureen under pressure to stop shack dwellers from appropriating electricity. Khumalo was twice seen with members of the Homeowners’ Association after they tried to burn down Maureen’s home. Maureen has refused to give in to these pressures.
The LPM is also aware that the ANC councilor, Baleka, is behind the attacks in eTwatwa.
The media has ignored the attacks on the LPM. The Daily Sun did cover the electricity war in Protea South but only interviewed the Homeowner’s Association. They did not speak to the LPM.
Maureen phoned the The Daily Sun to complain, and the journalist who promised to get back to her did not. The Daily Sun historically has portrayed shack dwellers as criminals, making propaganda for the rich and for the councilors. This newspaper also provided only one-sided coverage of the attack on Abahlali baseMjondolo in the Kennedy Road settlement in Durban in September 2009.
As representatives of the LPM, we want to send a clear message to the media that they have a duty to tell the truth about what is happening in South Africa. These daily injustices must not be swept under the carpet just so that the government can look good while the world is watching South Africa for the World Cup.
We are calling for urgent legal support. We need lawyers for the LPM members who have been jailed. We need to file cases against the Homeowners Association and the police to get justice for the two people who have been killed. We need money to pay bail.
This statement and its call for urgent solidarity with the LPM is supported by the Poor People’s Alliance, which is comprised of the Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, the Landless People’s Movement and the Rural Network.
It is clear to members of the Alliance that there is no democracy in South Africa. Each time there is an election, the poor are promised land, housing, water, electricity, toilets, education and jobs.
After the elections are over, we are again denied these basic things. When we ask for the promises that have been made to us to be kept, we are beaten, arrested and jailed. When we occupy land and appropriate water and electricity, we are beaten, arrested and jailed.
Sometimes we are tortured. Sometimes we are even killed.
We call on everyone who is visiting South Africa for the World Cup to come see the conditions in which we must live and to hear how we are oppressed. Visit us in the shacks, on the farms, in the transit camps and in the jails.
For more information and comment, please contact:
Maureen Mnisi, Chairperson of the LPM (Gauteng): 082 337 4514
David Mathontsi, Chairperson of the LPM (eTwatwa): 073 914 9868.
For information and comment on the wider assault on the organized poor in South Africa, please contact:
S’bu Zikode, Abahlali baseMjondolo (Durban): 083 547 0474
Mzonke Poni*, Abahlali baseMjondolo (Cape Town): 073 25 62036
Rev. Mavuso, Rural Network (KwaZulu-Natal): 072 279 2634
Ashraf Cassiem, Anti-Eviction Campaign (Cape Town): 076 186 1408
*Mzonke Poni has spent the last few days with the LPM in Protea South and can also give a firsthand account of recent events there.
Source: libcom, uhurunews
June 28, 2010
Jive Says No to an Outkast Reunion
Jive Says No to an Outkast Reunion
An Outkast reunion has been in the talks for some time now, but Jive Records executives are doing everything in their power to make sure it doesn’t happen. The reunion was supposed to take place in Big Boi’s upcoming album, “Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty” but Jive won’t allow Andre Benjamin to reunite with his ex-bandmate.
He says “Jive is trying to block Dre from being on my record. We can’t be on songs together now.”
Big Boi moved to Def Jam from Jive Records after the label told Big that they were stumped on how to promote his new album.
“Jive Records told me my album is a piece of art, and they didn’t know what to do with it,” Big Boi told GQ in a recent interview.
Source: blacktalentnews
Boycott of Comcast
NCAAOM Calls for Boycott of Comcast
The National Coalition of African-American Owned Media (NCAAOM) further denounced Comcast for its non-existent carriage of 100% African-American owned channels on its nationwide platforms (approximately 24 million homes) and underscored its opposition to the Comcast-NBCU merger unless specific ownership conditions are enforced by the FCC and DOJ.
In a recent LA Times article dated April 27, 2010, Stanley E. Washington, NCAAOM President & CEO stated,
“For decades Comcast has shut the door to widely distributed wholly-owned African-American channels; and pension funds by virtue of their investment in Comcast are supporting apartheid right here in America.” Comcast brings in approximately $3 billion per month, $36 billion per year, from nearly 24 million cable subscribers. Based on the large African-American populated cities in which Comcast serves, we estimate there are millions of African-American subscribers that contribute approximately 40% or $15 billion of Comcast’s annual revenue. Because of the enormous support that the African-American community has shown Comcast over four decades, we find it unacceptable that none of the 250 plus channels that are offered on the Comcast platform are 100% African-American owned and widely distributed on their nationwide platform.”
Further, in many of the U.S. cities where Comcast has a dominant share of the cable market, African-Americans comprise a majority or near majority of the population. For example, in Philadelphia — the city in which Comcast is headquartered — African-Americans make up more than 43 percent of the city’s population.
A little more than half of all residents of Washington, D.C. are African-American. In Detroit, 8 out of 10 residents are African-American. Other Comcast markets with high concentrations of African-American subscribers include: Atlanta, Baltimore, Birmingham, Chicago, Jackson, MS, Memphis, New Orleans, Oakland, CA, Pittsburgh, Raleigh-Durham and many more. Nevertheless, the availability of African-American wholly-owned media does not reflect these statistics. Indeed, not one of the networks on Comcast’s cable television platform is 100% African-American owned and widely distributed. Even channels that carry African-American targeted content are not 100% owned by African-American companies. Viacom owns BET and Comcast owns 33% of TV One. The proposed merger will perpetuate or even worsen the lack of 100% African-American owned cable networks. The deal will reduce competition by permitting Comcast/NBCU to play favoritism to their massive portfolio of 44 owned cable networks, and more to be launched in the future, in lieu of 100% African-American owned channels which will never get widely distributed on the Comcast platform. So we have no opportunity to survive and thrive. And to support these facts, please refer to the FCC Carriage Complaint filed January 5, 2010, by the Tennis Channel against Comcast for this very reason. Additionally, Comcast was caught blocking and slowing down competing video content on their broadband platform which recently resulted in a class action lawsuit against Comcast in which they settled in the amount of $16 million for their deplorable behavior. These are just two examples of their anti-competitive conduct.
Dr. Maya Angelou said it best, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
The 2009 compensation packages of Brian Roberts, Chairman and Steve Burke, Chief Operating Officer of Comcast, were in excess of $35 million each. These two men, Brian Roberts and Steve Burke, paid themselves significantly more than what Comcast paid to wholly-owned African-American media collectively.
Comcast spends approximately $7 billion per year on content from cable networks and less than $2 million per year is allocated to wholly-owned African-American networks. Matt Bond, Comcast Executive Vice President, Programming Content Acquisitions, should be subpoenaed to testify under oath as to how many African-American owned media companies have been allowed to pitch him (or not pitch him) for Carriage Distribution Agreements. How many African-American owned media companies have been consistently denied such opportunities? Clearly the answer is disturbing, given the lack of 100% African-American owned cable networks widely distributed on the Comcast platform. And it’s not for the lack of trying. Businessman Alvin James, along with Marlon Jackson of the Jackson Five, Attorney Willie E. Gary, Heavyweight Champion, Evander Holyfield and Baseball Icon Cecil Fielder, raised in excess of 60 million dollars to fund a 100% African-American owned network called The Black Family Channel. Instead of Comcast ensuring that The Black Family Channel succeeded, they exploited these African-American entrepreneurs by charging them millions of dollars in unnecessary launch fees. If Comcast did not support a network called The Black Family Channel, why should Black families support Comcast?
I had a letter sent to Brian Roberts, dated April 9, 2010, stating our position and requesting a meeting to resolve this urgent issue. On May 12, 2010, I introduced myself to Brian Roberts at the NCTA Cable Show in Los Angeles and requested a meeting with Mr. Roberts about these issues. Unfortunately the meeting request was denied. If this is their conduct while they are trying to secure approval of the largest media acquisition in history, how do you think they are going to act if they get approved? The time has come for Comcast to understand that African-Americans are no longer interested in living on the Comcast plantation. Until Comcast does business with African-American owned media in a significant way, we’re going to boycott and campaign to have African-American families and our supporters disconnect Comcast services immediately.
The National Coalition of African American Owned Media (NCAAOM) is working to ensure that African-American Owned media companies are given the same opportunities as their non-African American counterparts to own, produce compelling content, access distribution, and flourish in today’s integrated media landscape. The organization is focused on creating sustained equality through ownership as a means of rectifying the continued racial imbalance within the competitive media industry.
Source: blacktalentnews
Are White Actresses Stealing Black Women’s Roles?
Are White Actresses Stealing Black Women’s Roles? Angelina Jolie to Play Cleopatra, ‘Queen of the Nile’
Film producer Scott Rudin has purchased the film rights to upcoming biography ‘Queen of the Nile, Cleopatra: A Life,’ and has confirmed that the movie is being developed for and with [Angelina] Jolie.” Jolie, a Hollywood A-lister, will do her best in bringing the story of the famed Egyptian queen to life, and it appears no one doubts she can do it… including Pulitzer prize-winning author Stacy Schiff, who penned the biography, “Cleopatra: A Life,” a book that won’t be on shelves until the fall.
Schiff already heavily endorses Jolie, stating, “I think she’d be perfect for it and I can see a possible Oscar in her future. Physically, she’s got the perfect look.”
Gasp, the nerve! “She’s got the perfect look?” Honestly, I don’t care how full Angelina Jolie’s lips are, how many African children she adopts, or how bronzed her skin will become for the film, I firmly believe this role should have gone to a Black woman. I mean, isn’t it enough that 47 years ago, dame Elizabeth Taylor was cast to portray Cleopatra in one of the most expensive films ever made? That Elizabeth Taylor was actually the third White woman to be tapped for the Cleopatra role — following Vivien Leigh and Claudette Colbert — just makes this all the more comical.
Were Vanessa Williams, Halle Berry and Thandie Newton unavailable for auditions that day? Why does Hollywood think it’s even slightly plausible to cast White women in roles that would be more sensible to cast a Black actress for? Especially when that role is an African queen.
It happened just two years ago, in 2007’s thriller “Stuck,” directed by Stuart Gordon, based on the true story of a Chante Mallard. The story tells a tale of a woman who hits a homeless man with her car and results with him trapped in her car’s windshield. Instead of getting the man help, Mallard (played by actress Mena Suvari) opts to let him die slowly in her garage.
The interesting thing is Mallard is a Black woman, and Suvari, who was cast to play the role, is — surprise, surprise — a White woman. Adding insult to injury, instead of just casting a Black woman to play the role, the film gave Suvari a more “ethnic look” for the role, by adding stereotypical cornrows to her hair. Hollywood, are you serious?
Now, Jolie is set to play Cleopatra, who isn’t as technically perfect as some would claim if you study the Queen of the Nile’s distinguished history. First and foremost, the role should be given to a younger actress — think Jurnee Smollett — considering Cleopatra began her reign as Queen of Egypt at the tender age of 18 and ended her own life at the age of 39.
Secondly, while historically there is no concrete confirmation that Cleopatra was of a darker complexion, there is more evidence than not that she was Black, and not entirely of Macedonian Greek ancestry, as Shakespeare , leagues of painters and now Hollywood would have us believe. And, ultimately, while Cleopatra’s heritage remains under speculation, it remains that she was in fact an African queen. Jolie — not so perfect.
What’s next? A biopic on Sojourner Truth played by Betty White?
via http://www.essence.com
Enrique Iglesias
Enrique Iglesias – Euphoria
Enrique Iglesias returns his eagerly-anticipated new album, Euphoria. With its seductive pop, driving hip hop beats and heart of pure passion, Euphoria is set to bring a rush of blood to the dancefloor, with VIP guests including Akon, Nicole Scherzinger, Usher, Puerto Rican reggaeton duo Wisin and Yandel, Juan Luis Guerra and the legendary Lionel Richie. His most diverse, eclectic collection to date, Euphoria is also Enrique’s first album to feature songs sung in both Spanish and English. “This territory is so exciting for me,” says Enrique. “It taps into so many different styles of music. It’s like nothing I’ve ever done before.”
‘I Like It’ is the first international single from the forthcoming album, produced by Red One, it features a vocal cameo from Lionel Richie, reprising the chorus of his timeless hit ‘All Night Long’. The track is an upbeat floor-filler and comes backed with a crazy hot remix from #1 selling US rapper Pitbull (‘I Know You Want Me’). Enrique was thrilled to work with his friend Lionel Richie, but it was Pitbull who really took it out of him. "Man, working with Pitbull, it’s like he’s got everybody in the world’s mojo, his energy is so intense. And shooting the video together was just insane… "
Other tracks on Euphoria include Enrique’s Spanish-language smash ‘Cuando Me Enamoro’, featuring Latin superstar Juan Luis Guerra, which crash landed in top 10s across Latin America and Spain on its release. Then there’s the sizzling ‘Heartbeat’, a duet with Nicole Scherzinger of the Pussycat Dolls. It’s utterly pop but emotionally naked. Says Enrique, “If you can create an upbeat song and still put sentiment in it like that… man, that song is raw.”
‘One Day At A Time’, is a departure into mellow calypso, the melody coming to Enrique after he had spent so long battling on the song that he was driving home from the studio in despair. “I turned straight round and went back to record it,” explains the perfectionist. “It was one of those special songs that make you fight for it.” ‘Dirty Dancer’ is a party piece, thick with slamming synthesisers and featuring vocals from Usher, who announces that this is a song “for the dirty girls, all around the world.”
Born in Spain, raised in Miami, and now an international superstar, Enrique discovered his musical talent young, but got his first record deal from a small Mexican label while using a fake name. In 1995 he won a Grammy for his first ever Spanish release (Enrique Iglesias) and in 1999 his eponymous English language debut went on to sell six million albums, go double-platinum in the US, and achieve gold or platinum status in 32 countries. Since then he has had a string of successful albums, from Escape (2001), 7 (2003) and Insomniac (2007) to his Greatest Hits album (2008), while his sold-out world tours have established him as a captivating live performer.
In the US he is one of the biggest-selling Spanish artists of all time, with over 12 million albums sold and 19 #1 Billboard Latin hits across the Americas. Meanwhile, in the UK Enrique has sold 2.2 million albums and 1.6 million singles, the biggest of which – the inimitable ‘Hero’ – spent four weeks at #1 and is now a staple of teary X Factor scenes. Enrique has had 12 top 20 singles, and six Top 10 singles in the UK, including ‘Bailamos’, ‘Could I Have This Kiss Forever’, ‘Escape’, ‘Not In Love’ (ft Kelis), and ‘Do You Know’.
Traditionally, Latin artists release Spanish and English versions of the same songs. “But I always wanted to combine completely different songs, rather than translate them,” Enrique explains. “I’d write one I liked in Spanish, but then I’d write one I liked even more in English, so then there’d be this internal competition to write an even better one in Spanish, and vice versa. The US is now the biggest market for Spanish songs, so this is an experiment.”
“I know people always believe their new record is the best thing they’ve ever done, but truly, this record is my most diverse, my most exciting and the most surprising album I’ve made in my career,” he says, grinning wildly. The anticipation is tangible.
Source:ThinkTankMktg
June 23, 2010
Deadly silence
Deadly silence: Rwanda’s never again is once again?
by Alice Gatebuke
People often say, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” As a Rwandan Genocide survivor, I would not be alive if not for good people who stood up, advocated for and protected me, facilitating my ultimate survival amidst the deafening silence of the international community. I was 9 years old when I found myself caught in a maelstrom of violence that threatened to destroy everything I knew and held dear. And in many ways, all of those things, including family, friends, neighbors, home and communities were destroyed.
I remember having a group of men wrap me in a blanket and smuggle me to a safe house in a different neighborhood. Petrified, I watched as these men accosted and negotiated with my would-be killers on a daily basis to save my life. I watched in horror and helplessness as my mother and brother were taken from my sister, young cousin and me to be killed. My mother and brother were told they had reached the end of their lives and were then given tools to dig their own graves. Through the intervention of old friends, strangers and new allies, my mother and brother’s lives were spared, and our family was reunited.
I cannot imagine how my life would have been different had these individuals not intervened. They placed themselves and their families in danger by advocating for us. In our darkest moments I witnessed the zenith of human compassion. I saw the beauty and potential of the human spirit when good people unite for a good cause. Farmers, street kids, courageous women with children raised their voices against a group of evil doers. Through their acts of solidarity, lives were spared. My faith in humanity was reassured even in the midst of so much violence, death and destruction. Sadly though, the international community remained silent about what was taking place in my country.
As I watch today the increasingly disturbing downward spiral in my country of birth, I am once again reminded of the international community’s complicity and silence in the destruction of an entire nation. In recent times, when the first woman ever to run for president in my country was attacked by a mob, there was silence. While local newspapers were shut down, their writers exiled and others incarcerated, I witnessed nothing but shrugs from the international community. When Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reported on the growing repression and jailing of an increasing number of people based on vague laws applied to political opponents of the ruling regime, I saw nothing but rationalization from the international community.
Recently, an American lawyer and professor, who is representing a hopeful presidential candidate, was jailed in Rwanda. His arrest and subsequent charges were based on his work as a defense lawyer at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania. He stands accused of genocide ideology and negationism, the same crimes of which his client is also accused.
As a genocide survivor, I take genocide crimes very seriously and strongly believe that each and every perpetrator of these crimes should be brought to justice and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I also believe that each accused deserves and must be accorded a fair trial. The right to a fair trial and due process is a highly valued universal principle. Therefore, I am perplexed by the silence around the professor’s arrest and the length of time it took the international community to intervene.
Due to Rwanda’s economic progress, some of which is unfortunately derived from Congolese minerals and “supply side economics,” human rights abuses are mere inconveniences to those strictly focused on economic growth. While Rwanda has become one of the most praised and progressive economies in Africa, the international community has watched it ravage neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo with impunity. An estimated 6 million Congolese lives have been claimed and, tragically, half of those deaths are children under the age of 5.
The Rwandan Genocide was catastrophic. I know … I was there. And I survived. However, it should not be used as a pretext for repressing freedom of others and destroying innocent lives. Although the international community still remains silent in the face of all these grotesque abuses and human rights violations within and outside of Rwanda, the potential positive impact the international community could have on the situation should not be underestimated.
I witnessed first hand the power of good people who cared for a frightened 9-year-old girl and her family. Everyday people opened their mouths and raised their voices. My family, especially my mother and brother, were spared because of ordinary people’s courageous acts of generosity. I am eternally grateful to have lived to share my story. With all that is taking place in Rwanda today, especially the present-day eerie similarities to the pre-1994 genocide period, will the international community intervene now? One can only imagine the millions of lives that could be saved.
Alice Gatebuke is a Rwandan Genocide and war survivor, Cornell University graduate and human rights activist. She can be reached at gatebuke.alice@gmail.com. To learn more about the resource wars that are slaughtering millions in Congo and threatening renewed violence in Rwanda, visit and join Friends of the Congo, at http://friendsofthecongo.org/.
May Day amidst global mayhem
May Day amidst global mayhem
by Mumia Abu-Jamal
May Day, the day celebrated for over a century as an emblem of workers’ power, seems to have become a symbol of its fall.
That’s because, as the economic system has gone through shocks, aftershocks and tremors, social and communal wealth has been funneled to banking and corporate interests – bailouts for billionaires – while workers have faced, at best, a plague of cutbacks; at worst, mass layoffs and firings as businesses reorganize by being even more antagonistic to labor.
Marx and Engels rightly determined that “the modern state is but the executive committee of the bourgeoisie.” Why else would the world’s economic powers pour hundreds of billions into corporate coffers – virtually no questions asked – while dropping a pittance – like coins in the cup – to workers and their families?
May Day began in America in the midst of the Haymarket Rebellion of the 1800s, during the struggle for the 40-hour work week and an end to child labor.
May Day still represents workers’ struggle in America, in Europe, in Africa and Asia, against state and corporate repression and greed.
In a nutshell, capitalism is in severe crisis, and the phony wars and very real rise of cronyism are but mirrors of that crisis.
If workers are to use their billions to change the world, they must join together across false barriers to build a new and better world where life and liberty are more precious than profit.
It’s not only possible; it’s necessary.
© Copyright 2010 Mumia Abu-Jamal. Read Mumia’s new book, “Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A.,” available from City Lights Publishing, www.citylights.com or (415) 362-8193. Keep updated at www.freemumia.com. For Mumia’s commentaries, visit www.prisonradio.org. For recent interviews with Mumia, visit www.blockreportradio.com. Encourage the media to publish and broadcast Mumia’s commentaries and interviews. Send our brotha some love and light at: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM 8335, SCI-Greene, 175 Progress Dr., Waynesburg PA 15370.
‘The Greatest Threat’
‘The Greatest Threat’: New book by political prisoner Marshall ‘Eddie’ Conway
by Marshall ‘Eddie’ Conway
Eddie Conway
I hope this update finds everyone in good health and high spirits. April of 2010 will mark the 40th year that I have been held unjustly. I would say illegally but the fact is that those in power change the definition of what is legal whenever it suits them. However, regardless of what definition they ascribe to my imprisonment, the facts remains I am here because of what I believe, not for anything I have done.
In 2009, we started a mentoring project known as Friend of a Friend at the institution where I’m now housed. The last seven months of 2009 were spent training 20 prisoners to be mentors. Eighteen of these men graduated with the help of the American Friend Service Committee’s Peace with Justice Program in Baltimore. We are currently training 25 new mentees. Our goal: Through our shared skills, experience and knowledge we will produce prisoners that are critical thinkers and able leaders. This will go a long way in changing the direction of the prison system and the communities from which these young men come.
During our initial training process, we worked with a local Baltimore production group, WombWork Productions. Together we presented a play for the general population entitled “The Birth of Peace.” The success of this collaboration can be measured by the feedback we got from the general population here.
The men crave these types of activities because they help them overcome the boredom and monotony of incarceration, and this in turn helps to reduce the violence. We have a lengthy waiting list for new mentees and our current mentees are very enthusiastic about being a part of Friend of a Friend. The play was about finding a peaceful resolution to conflicts between the various street organizations in our communities. We intend on presenting this play again.
As the years have rolled by, my concern for my family has grown significantly. Too many of my young family members are growing up and I am missing out on being there for them or experiencing their progress. For example, some of my grandchildren are now going to school and others are going to college. These are memories I’m only able to experience from afar. My older family members – in particular my mother Eleanor – are experiencing some minor health issues. The fact is many of us are just getting old. Personally, I’m still struggling with high blood pressure, but I believe it is under control. Gaining my freedom will correct most of these things.
In “The Greatest Threat: The Black Panther Party and COINTELPRO,” Marshall “Eddie” Conway, a veteran of the Black Panther Party who has been held as a political prisoner for four decades, has compiled the available documentation and research on COINTELPRO and traced its dirty history from the active repression of the Black revolutionary movement of the 1960s and 1970s to the conditions of Black America today and the dozens of political prisoners who remain in U.S. prisons on charges stemming from their involvement in the Black liberation movement.
My new legal team is researching my case in order to wage the next legal battle to gain my freedom. My role in this effort will be focused on fundraising activities. So far, we have been very successful in this endeavor. The support committees in Oakland and Los Angeles and individuals in Baltimore have done great fundraising work. Other supporters around the country and abroad have helped with both large and small donations. I extend a heartfelt thanks to everyone. We are only $15,000 short of our goal, and hope to raise this amount during our next fundraising drive. To this end, we plan to use my new book, “The Greatest Threat.”
“The Greatest Threat” examines the plight of the Black Panther Party Political Prisoners/POWs and the role of the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Program in their imprisonment. It is my belief that we need to examine this phenomenon and how it has impacted anti-establishment activities and dissent. This book is my attempt to put into political perspective the system’s response to any form of social discontent.
To help in our fundraising drive we are giving a copy of “The Greatest Threat” to anyone who donates $20 to the legal defense fund effort. Anyone who can pledge future contributions, please contact Erica Woodland at (410) 908-9865 or erica_woodland@hotmail.com for additional information. Thanks for your continuing support.
Send our brother some love and light: M. Eddie Conway, 116469, Jessup Correctional Institution, P.O. Box 534, Jessup MD 20794.
Coming soon
“Marshall Law: The Life and Times of a Baltimore Black Panther,” by Marshall “Eddie” Conway is his autobiography. Release is anticipated in February 2011 by AK Press.
In 1970, the feds framed Eddie Conway for the murder of a Baltimore City police officer. He was 24 years old. They threw him in prison, took him away from his family, his friends and his organizing and tried to relegate him to a life marked by nothing but legal appeals, riots and lockdowns, transfers from one penal colony to the next. But they failed.
Forty years later, still incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit, Eddie Conway continues to resist. “Marshall Law” is a poignant story of strength and struggle. From his childhood in inner-city Baltimore to his political awakening in the military, from the rise of the Black Panther Party to the sham trial, the realities of prison life, escape attempts, labor organizing on the inside and beyond, Eddie’s autobiography is a reminder that we all share the responsibility of resistance, no matter where we are.
Source:SFBayView
Michelle Alexander’s ‘The New Jim Crow
Michelle Alexander’s ‘The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness’
Review by Lenore Jean Daniels, Ph.D.
“This book is not for everyone. I have a specific audience in mind – people who care deeply about racial justice but who, for any number of reasons, do not yet appreciate the magnitude of the crisis faced by communities of color as a result of mass incarceration.” – Michelle Alexander in the preface to “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”
Cover design by Jamaal Bell
On Aug. 3, 1980, in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the U.S. government officially declared war against Black people residing in its borders. Long live the Southern strategy! Sniper shots and dynamite blasts had efficiently terrorized these people into abject numbness. A pogrom could do the trick! Troops, weaponry, ammunition! Call it the War on Drugs. And the beauty of the pogrom – the American public wouldn’t notice the war underway right on its homeland!
Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” (published by The New Press, 2010) looks at the invisible people and the invisible birdcage that keeps the masses of Black people locked in and alienated from society – the targets of the War on Drugs. She asks questions: How could a government wage a war to practice genocide against Black people after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights bill – after everyone recognized the hatred of a Bull Connors and a KKK pogrom? How could a government conciliatory to civil rights leaders be accused of engaging in war against the same people the government agreed to protect against discrimination? How are we to understand and confront a racial caste system in the age of colorblindness?
History isn’t irrelevant in “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” History here is tangible. As Alexander writes, “Since the nation’s founding, African Americans
Slavery ended, but “the idea of race lived on.”
A new form of enslavement arrived on stage. A system of peonage that included the Black Codes, developed to re-establish control over Blacks while also providing free or cheap labor, sought to reign in the freedom of predominantly Black men, family men – fathers and husbands. “Nine southern states adopted vagrancy laws – which essentially made it a criminal offense not to work and were applied selectively to blacks.”
When the Black Codes were outlawed, “a slew of federal civil rights legislation protecting the newly freed slaves was passed during the relatively brief but extraordinary period of black advancement known as the Reconstruction Era.” Masses of Blacks began to vote. Before the dismantling of Reconstruction, the Freedmen’s Bureau provided basic necessities. Schools opened up allowing Blacks to learn to read and write. “Literacy climbed.” Fifteen percent of all Southern elected officials were Black. The Black community looked toward a just future.
That vision of a just future, however, didn’t sit well with most white Southerners. Loopholes in the language of the 15th Amendment didn’t prohibit states from imposing educational, residential, or other qualifications for voting. “The backlash against gains of African Americans in the Reconstruction Era was swift and severe,” and poor freed Blacks were left without legal resource.
In the North, racial segregation already prevented “race-mixing” to preserve the “racial hierarchy.” Now, in the South, conservative whites began “a terrorist campaign against Reconstruction governments and local leaders” to “‘redeem’” the South.
The U.S. government withdrew federal troops from the South, the budget for the Freedmen’s Bureau was cut so severely as to make the agency “virtually defunct” and the U.S. government made no effort to “enforce federal civil rights legislation.” So here are the freed Blacks left unprotected in a hostile environment. For white Southerners, the drawback of the federal government meant freedom – to turn to the criminal justice system to control African Americans.
“The criminal justice system was strategically employed to force African Americans back into a system of extreme repression and control, a tactic that would continue to prove successful for generations to come.” Vagrancy laws subjected Blacks to criminal charges, debt and death. A gesture could be interpreted as an “insulting gesture,” thus a crime! It’s no coincidence that “slavery remained appropriate as punishment for a crime” after “Emancipation.”
Southern whites “concluded that it was in their political and economic interests to scapegoat blacks.” Jim Crow would be a return to “‘sanity,’” a return to a racial caste system that came to represent the “‘natural’” order of the New South. Northern liberals and Populists had already turned a blind eye to African American people, and the South interpreted this silence as “‘permission to hate.’” The racial caste system flourished for many years in the U.S. while many whites turned a blind eye to it and to the suffering of African Americans.
Blacks fought back in increments until small movements became the massive Civil Rights Movement of Black, Brown and white Americans. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. drew national and international attention to the criminal caste laws and the hypocrisy inherent in Americans’ understanding of democracy. The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were passed. Many believed that Jim Crow died.
“The New Jim Crow” rightly claims that the caste system didn’t end there. Our educational system and the corporate media usually concludes the civil rights narrative with Dr. King standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial before a huge crowd speaking to the world about a vision, a dream of whites and African Americans sitting together in colorblind America where a person is not judged by the color of his or her skin but by his or her character.
But Alexander recalls a crucial omission in the post-Civil Rights Era’s narrative. It’s the voice of Dr. King who spoke in the last three years of his life about economic inequality that led to poverty not only for Blacks but for poor whites as well. King called for a Poor People’s Movement to eradicate poverty in the U.S.
“Jim Crow” was undergoing reconstruction following the backlash to the civil rights gains. Conforming to the needs and constraints of the time, the new racial caste order “would have to be formally race-neutral – it could not invoke explicit or clearly intentional race discrimination.” It would appeal to “racist sentiments” and accompany a political movement that would succeed “in putting the vast majority of blacks back in their place.”repeatedly have been controlled through institutions such as slavery and Jim Crow, which appear to die but then are reborn in new form, tailored to the needs and constraints of the time.”
Michelle Alexander - Photo: zocalopublicsquare.org
Above all, it would grant the nation, once again, the permission to hate Black people. The new racial caste system, finally, wouldn’t violate the law or limit “acceptable political discourse.” But the effects of the new caste order would be the same as “‘segregation forever.’”
The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 imposed “minimum sentences for the distribution of cocaine, including far more severe punishment for the distribution of crack – associated with blacks – than powder cocaine, associated with whites.” In 1988, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act “authorized public housing authorities to evict any tenant who allows any form of drug-related criminal activity to occur on or near public housing premises and eliminated many federal benefits, including student loans, for anyone convicted of a drug offense.”
Reagan’s War on Drugs, “cloaked in race-neutral language,” offered “whites opposed to racial reform a unique opportunity to express their hostility toward blacks and black progress, without being exposed to the charge of racism.” Senior Bush followed with crafty Willie Horton ads.
Bill Clinton’s Ricky Ray Rector, Welfare Reform and “One Strike and You’re Out” kept the American public’s attention focused on the terror within while the federal government began funding police departments to engage in the War of Drugs. Barack Obama himself, as Alexander reminds us, a past user of illegal drugs, now lectures African American communities about responsibility and points to the image of absentee Black fathers but he and the media, writes Alexander, never ask “where the missing fathers might be found.”
In prison, more African Americans are under correctional control today, she explains, than were enslaved in 1850. More are disenfranchised today than in 1870. African Americans are warehoused in out-of-the-way rural areas where whites make up the majority of employed law enforcement personnel and where white towns benefit in terms of tax dollars and services. Convicted felons “enter a separate society, a world hidden from public view,” governed by “oppressive and discriminatory rules and laws.” In most states, they are denied to right to vote and excluded from public housing and education.
More African Americans are under correctional control today than were enslaved in 1850. More are disenfranchised today than in 1870.
In the meantime, “today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals. That is what it means to be black.” White crime doesn’t exist; “white crime lacks social meaning.”
The new Jim Crow re-establishes a caste system that makes race – Black people – invisible. We must admit out loud, writes Alexander, that “it was because of race that we didn’t care much what happened to ‘those people’ and imagined the worst possible things about them.”
The prison industrial complex hasn’t failed in its goal, she tells us. On the contrary, it has succeeded in marginalizing African Americans and disrupting thousands of families and their communities. It has also allowed the American public to continually sacrifice the idea of democracy.
The battle for democracy can’t be won exclusively in the courtrooms, Alexander argues. Litigation work, often focusing on affirmative action cases, omits the voice and the engagement of those without legal expertise.
“Today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: Black people, especially black men, are criminals. That is what it means to be black.”
Alexander asks that we consider this: Is it possible to see affirmative action – racial “cosmetic” diversity initiatives – as diversions from the frontline battle, that is, the creation of a caste of people through the criminal justice system? The “abandonment of a more radical movement” opened the space for fear and hatred to mask itself in the rhetoric of diversity, adopted by moderate and liberal whites and elite Blacks. But however comforting to some, a sprinkling of Blacks here and there doesn’t make for a democracy.
The new racial caste system, Alexander argues, depends on this rhetoric of diversity and the “black exceptionalism.” Look at Oprah! Look at Michael Jordan! But Alexander asks, “Who is the us that civil rights advocates are fighting for?” Who is the “us,” since the masses of Black Americans are caught in the correctional system and disenfranchised by and from society? What economic system benefits from this dysfunctional scheme of law and order?
The War on Drugs must end, declares Alexander! “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” ends by urging its readers to pick up the mantle where Dr. King left off. Take up the radical movement that King believed “held revolutionary potential.” Alexander proposes that we accept the “all of us or none” philosophy as we look to amend this egregious wrong by re-igniting a human rights movement in this country.
Lenore Jean Daniels, Ph.D., is a columnist and editorial board member with the Black Commentator. Contact her at http://www.blackcommentator.com/contact_forms/jean_daniels/gbcf_form.php.
Mumia conversation with Cornel West
Mumia on the death penalty – and in conversation with Cornel West
From trees to needles: an address to the ‘Lynching Then, Lynching Now, The Roots of Racism and the Death Penalty in America’ national tour
by Mumia Abu-Jamal
Friends, brothers, sisters: Ona Move!
The anti-death penalty movement is an offshoot of the global human rights movement as expressed by private associations and later by a variety of governments.
It is noteworthy, then, for us to cite the state abolition of the death penalty in Kenya in 2009.
We should also note the fact that the rate of juries meting out death sentences has fallen to its lowest in 30 years.
And finally, several months ago, the group that was perhaps most instrumental in fashioning the present death penalty, the American Law Institute, announced it would no longer participate in formulating laws governing the death penalty. The ALI, a distinguished group of 4,000 judges, law professors and lawyers, were the people who initially proposed the aggravating and mitigating circumstances that the U.S. Supreme Court adopted in 1976 when it reinstated the death penalty.
And yet, despite this, the death penalty is alive and well in America. Why?
It makes no economic sense, but politicians are wedded to it.
That’s because at its core, the death penalty derives from, and thus replaces, lynch law. Is it mere coincidence that the states which are most active in capital punishment are Southern ones?
This is also generally true when we examine the establishment and expansion of the American prison system. After the Civil War, when slavery was abolished by law, states in the former confederacy established the convict lease system, where prisoners worked, without pay, for the state. One man, observing the dreadful loss of life and health for such people, called it “worse than slavery.”
In essence, these states made a private institution a public one – and both Black men and women became “slaves of the state.”
The U.S. death penalty system performs a similar function. It socialized, or made public, that which had been heretofore the province of individuals – lynchings.
Above is the very well-received message from Mumia Abu-Jamal to the “Lynching Then, Lynching Now, The Roots of Racism and the Death Penalty in America” national tour about the historic link between the death penalty and lynching in the United States.
The message was first played at the Bay Area tour stop, March 24, at Laney College in Oakland, California, where speakers with personal links to the death penalty spoke. Lawrence Hayes, a former death row prisoner himself, in New York, and founding member of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, spoke powerfully about his own case.
Kevin Cooper, an innocent man on San Quentin’s death row, called in to CEDP (Campaign to End the Death Penalty) leader Crystal Bybee’s telephone with his message of encouragement to those in attendance. His answers to questions posed by audience members were relayed by phone and microphone to the audience.
Jack Bryson, the father of two young men who were with Oscar Grant the night he was murdered in cold blood by the Bay Area Rapid Transit police, spoke about how his consciousness was jolted awake by that brutal murder, and how his life has become more meaningful through his connection with Kevin Cooper and the prisoners and activists in the death penalty abolition movement.
Jabari Shaw of the Laney College Black Student Union spoke of his personal experience incarcerated in San Quentin and how prisoners are treated there and how the prison industrial complex serves the rich and the capitalist system.
Barbara Becnel, founder of the Stanley Tookie Williams Legacy Network, spoke of her recent trip to the Senegal port through which slaves from all over Africa were shipped out to the Americas. She compared the “door of no return” there with the door to the death chamber of San Quentin. She had witnessed the torture and slow death of Stanley Tookie Williams on Dec. 13, 2005.
The purpose of the tour is to educate and recruit new activists to the movement to end the death penalty and the Campaign to End the Death Penalty organization. From all appearances, that will certainly be one result of the Bay Area tour.
When he heard Mumia Abu-Jamal’s voice on the line, noted scholar Cornel West could barely contain his excitement. “My dear brother, my dear brother,” he exclaimed, his baritone voice full of admiration.
Dr. West was the keynote speaker at an event at Labyrinth Books in Princeton, N.J., March 3, celebrating the release of Mumia’s new book, “Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A.” The event was recorded by C-SPAN for broadcast.
Mumia was able to call in from SCI Greene, the supermax prison in rural Pennsylvania where he lives in lockdown 22 hours per day. He is limited to three short phone calls per week.
Over the next 15 minutes an illuminating, moving and at times humorous dialogue took place between the two men. Mumia read from the preface of his book and answered questions about his life, his ideas and his work. Dr. West was the keynote speaker at an event celebrating the release of Mumia’s new book, “Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A.” The event was recorded by C-SPAN for broadcast.
Dr. West, one of America’s most provocative public intellectuals, is a Princeton professor, philosopher, activist and the author of 19 books. His writing, speaking and teaching weave together the traditions of the Black Baptist church, progressive politics and jazz.
At one point in their animated conversation, Dr. West declared, “You are a FREE Black man on death row.” Mumia responded, “Now don’t tell nobody.”
© Copyright 2010 Mumia Abu-Jamal. Read Mumia’s new book, “Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A.,” available from City Lights Publishing, www.citylights.com or (415) 362-8193. Keep updated at www.freemumia.com. For Mumia’s commentaries, visit www.prisonradio.org. For recent interviews with Mumia, visit www.blockreportradio.com. Encourage the media to publish and broadcast Mumia’s commentaries and interviews. Send our brotha some love and light at: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM 8335, SCI-Greene, 175 Progress Dr., Waynesburg PA 15370.
Prisoners forced to submit to radiation experiments
Prisoners forced to submit to radiation experiments for private foreign companies
by Eddie Milton Garey Jr.
