Tag: Congress

“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons,” wrote Dostoyevsky. If what he says is true – and I believe it is – then America, which boasts the largest prison population in the world, is perhaps the most uncivilized country there is. Who better to speak to the reality of prison life than someone who is living the experience?

The past 12 months were very intense on the African continent. Some important elections stirred up a whole lot of interests. Shared zones of influence are being renegotiated between the old powers of the world, the Western powers, and the new power, China.

Assassinating Qaddafi is widely believed here to be the only reason NATO continues to re-bomb, some as many as five times, the so-called “command and control center” sites that these days could be just about anywhere in Tripoli.

I just watched Good Morning America, where the anchors denied that there were any social or economic justice concerns driving the London rioters. They were all just criminals and copycats apparently. Shame on you, Robin and Christiane; you’re both a lot smarter than that.

The new book by Manning Marable, “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention,” will help us to get a deeper understanding of Malcolm X and the times we’re living in now. This will not be a direct result of what Marable has done, but rather of what needs to happen now because of what he has done.

President Obama, who many expected to bring peace and civility, has become a warmonger. His predecessor, George Bush, created so much animosity in the world ... So naturally, the world expected Obama to be different. Sadly, this hasn’t been the case.

I visited the residence of the Qaddafi family, bombed to smithereens by NATO. For a leader, the house seemed small in comparison, say, to the former Clinton family home in Chappaqua or the Obama family home. It was a small house in a typical residential area in Tripoli, surrounded by dozens of other family homes.

On Monday, May 23, 2011, our offices were alarmed at the startling news that three camps of internally displaced persons in the Delmas neighborhood of Port-au-Prince were effectively destroyed - at least one at the hands of the Haitian police under direction of Mayor Wilson Jeudy.

Growing evidence suggests the West, led by France, engineered a political and military coup in Cote d’Ivoire to re-colonize that country. The president of Gambia says, "Western neo-colonialist sponsored agents in Africa ... are ready to walk on thousands of dead bodies to the presidency."

I am pleased to stand with my colleagues today who are outraged at Nobel Peace Laureate President Obama’s decision to wage war on Africa in Libya. At the outset, let me state that Libya is home to tens of thousands of foreign students and guest workers. The students come from Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia. The messages I have received from concerned Africans state that these young, innocent people, inaccurately labeled by the U.S. press as “Black mercenaries,” have been trapped in hostile territory and are hated by the U.S.-allied Al Qaeda insurgents.

With growing national alarm over the health and environmental threat of toxic chemicals in natural gas drilling, five members of Congress are reintroducing bills to repeal the exemption of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” from the Safe Drinking Water Act.

We, grassroots organizations located in the south of Haiti, call on all people who believe in democracy to help President Aristide return promptly - to make President Titid come back to us healthy and able this week as expected by us.

On Tuesday the House Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on the Democratic Republic of Congo, the most lethal conflict in the world since World War II, killing over 6 million. No one from the Congo or anywhere in Africa was called to testify.

On Jan. 11, 1944, in the midst of World War II and on the heels of the worst economic disaster in the history of the country, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a new “Economic Bill of Rights.” Today, 67 years later, we must push for a similar set of rights

Among the very few people celebrating our country’s fiscal crisis are criminal justice reformers. Bill Piper of Drug Policy Alliance says, “Next year is probably an unprecedented opportunity to defund the federal drug war.” But colorblind cost-benefit approaches leave intact the racial attitudes, stereotypes and anxieties that gave rise to the system in the first place.

Regardless of region or political ideology, the dozens of Congress members I spoke with agreed that we must take every opportunity we can to improve the ethics process and, by extension, increase the faith of the American people in our ability to uphold the highest standards of ethical conduct.

As the highest ranking African-American in the House, Congressman Clyburn can advocate for the interests of members of the Congressional Black Caucus and our constituents.

Newspaper editorial pages are the moral compass of a community and a strong influence on public policy. Yet many politicians fail to respect the power of the African American vote by ignoring the Black press when they advertise.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters conducts her drug war from the top down. Her view is to follow the money. Our government wages drug war on street vendors. The government’s view is to lock up as many young Blacks as is possible.

The Obama administration is pushing hard to privatize our nation’s 1.2 million public housing units, which would put public housing residents at risk of displacement and homelessness.