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The mind of Gil Scott Heron: an interview wit’ the legendary musician, Part 3
October 21, 2009
Gil Scott Heron is one of the greatest legends that Black music has breathing in this country. To many, his music is the soundtrack to different eras, the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. This piano player, songwriting and composing poet, has set the bar very high when it comes to passionately expressing a wide array of emotions. He is also a beast at getting a political message across through song, right next to people like Fela Kuti, Peter Tosh, Nina Simone and the likes. This is Part 3 of a four-part interview. Here’s Gil Scott Heron in his own words …
Congo Week: an interview wit’ Kambale Musavuli, spokesman for Friends of the Congo
October 20, 2009
Coltan is a mineral necessary for making electronic things work – like cellphones, ipods, PS3s and laptops. Over 6 million Congolese have been murdered to assure that the corporations and governments involved have a corner on the market for the minerals that the Congo produces. This is “Break the Silence” Congo Week. Check out the events and get involved!
Don’t shop where you can’t work and be treated as a human being
October 13, 2009
Did you know that in his eye-opening investigation, filmmaker Aron Ranen revealed that “Koreans have come to control virtually every aspect of the multi-billion dollar black hair care industry, from manufacturing to distribution to retail sales, while simultaneously employing tactics to put African-American merchants and wholesalers out of business?”
Paul Robeson, a great human being
October 8, 2009
Paul Robeson was an extraordinary and versatile individual, world famous during his lifetime, who has been deliberately erased from the dominant myth of U.S. history for speaking the truth about conditions both domestic and abroad – his opposition to racism, fascism and colonialism and his support for civil and human rights, democracy, national liberation, socialism and the day-to-day resistance of working people of all lands to oppression, knowing that his fame would allow these messages to be more widely heard.
The challenges of Congo advocacy in the 21st century
October 5, 2009
One hundred years ago, a global outrage surrounding the death of an estimated 10 million Congolese resulted in the end of King Leopold II of Belgium’s rule in the Congo. Ordinary people around the world from all walks of life stood at the side of the Congolese and demanded the end of the first recorded Congolese holocaust. A century later, the world finds itself facing the same issue, where the Congolese people are subjected to unimaginable suffering.
Black Ramadan: an interview wit’ Muslimah Qadriyyah Abdullah
September 11, 2009
This month Muslims around the world are observing Ramadan, which is compared in the Black revolutionary tradition to how Black August is celebrated in the prisons, where people fast during the day, exercise more, study more and recommit themselves to their belief system. Under this section I am submitting two stories that look at the faith of young Black Orthodox Muslims in the Bay Area, one from a male perspective and one from a female perspective.
The power of vigilance
September 11, 2009
On Thursday, Sept. 3, at their weekly town hall meeting, the leaders of SLAM (Stop Lennar Action Movement) reminded the audience of the kind of power they have in the battle to save Bayview Hunters Point. Minister Christopher Muhammad, Archbishop Franzo King and Francisco Da Costa shared the latest news of SLAM’s progress and urged the audience to understand that by staying focused and vigilant and not letting anything turn them around, they will win the war.
Taboo news and corporate media
September 3, 2009
The corporate media in the United States are ignoring valid news stories, based on university quality research. It appears that certain topics are simply forbidden inside the mainstream corporate media today. To openly cover these news stories would stir up questions regarding “inconvenient truths” that many in the U.S. power structure want to avoid.
Takeover imminent of Honduras’ Garifuna Community Hospital
September 1, 2009
Despite objections by local Garifuna communities, Honduras’ de facto government is moving to take over the first and only Garifuna-managed hospital in the country, ousting its current staff. The facility – built by Dr. Luther Castillo, other Garifuna doctors, local architects and the communities themselves – is located in the remote coastal municipality of Iriona. [The Garifuna, descended from Africans who intermarried with native Arawak and Carib people, number about 600,000 on the Caribbean coast of Central America.]
What U.N. Special Envoy Bill Clinton may do to help Haiti
August 16, 2009
The 9,000 U.N. troops in Haiti are paid over $601.58 million per year and have been in Haiti for four years. That is $50.13 million per month, $1.64 million per day. Yet, during the recent floods and hurricane season in Haiti, the Haitian president had to call for international help from the international community. Wasn’t that help already in Haiti, to the tune of 9,000 U.N. – MINUSTAH – troops already cashing in $1.64 million per day?
Thousands of California elders losing long-term care
August 14, 2009
Renowned bassist Ortiz Walton was once the youngest person and first African American to play in the Boston Symphony. But at 75, not only can’t Walton play his bass, but he cannot bathe, dress, eat or move in his wheelchair without the help of his wife, Carol, and assistance from state-subsidized services designed to keep him in their Berkeley, Calif., home and out of a nursing institution.
Letter to Hillary: In Congo, rape of women results from rape of resources
August 6, 2009
“We applaud your focus on the horrors of the conflict in the Congo by addressing sexual and gender based violence; however, such violence against women is a direct result of the resource war. The United States can play a key role in bringing an end to the conflict,” Friends of the Congo wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The implications of the coup in Honduras on Afro-descendants
July 20, 2009
Currently, the country of Honduras in Central America is experiencing its worst political crisis in decades. In the aftermath of the military coup that forcibly removed President Manuel Zelaya Rosales, there have been various developments that have raised our concern about the security of citizens’rights and the impact of the situation on people of African descent.
Racist, white supremacist military rule in Honduras
July 20, 2009
The racist assault on United States President Barak Obama by the Honduran military coup government, installed on June 28, 2009, was greeted by the U.S. media with what John Pilger called “contrived silence, a censorship by omission.” (Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, 7/6/09) The poisonous racist attack on the first Black U.S. president was based on racist preconceptions and was carried out by interim Honduran Foreign Minister Enrique Ortez Colindres on June 29, the day after the democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya was arrested and sent into exile in his pajamas.
Jamie and Gladys Scott: Wrongfully convicted
July 8, 2009
“As the social order continues, it devises other ideals of social danger, among them women. In the United States today, there are more than 90,000 women in prisons. Of that number, over 80 percent are mothers, who have left more than 167,000 children behind, living in a tenuous freedom.” – Mumia Abu Jamal, “Jailhouse Lawyers”
Patrice Lumumba’s Independence Day speech, June 30, 1960
June 30, 2009
“The basic cause of most of the trouble in the Congo right now is the intervention of outsiders — the fighting that is going on over the mineral wealth of the Congo and over the strategic position that the Congo represents on the African continent. And in order to justify it, they are doing it at the expense of the Congolese, by trying to make it appear that the people are savages. And I think, as one of the gentlemen mentioned earlier, if there are savages in the Congo, then there are worse savages in Mississippi, Alabama and New York City, and probably some in Washington, D.C., too.” – Malcolm X on radio station WMCA Nov. 28, 1964
Enough! wants peace in Sudan but war in Congo
June 17, 2009
Now while all these militias, rebel groups and armies have been causing horrific wars at great cost to human lives in central Africa, so-called developed countries have been enjoying a lifestyle that is sustained in large part by the resources that come from Africa. The DRC supplies the world’s diamonds, coltan, tantalite, oil and so forth.
First report since US rejoins UN Human Rights Council condemns racist denial of housing to Katrina survivors
June 15, 2009
The United Nations report, submitted by Special Rapporteur on Racism, Racial Discrimination and Xenophobia Doudou Diene, presents an overview of the United States’ compliance with international norms governing racial equality. It sets out several areas where the U.S. has failed to protect its citizens from racially discriminatory practices.
Shell agrees to pay for Ken Saro-Wiwa’s death but denies complicity
June 11, 2009
“Have you forgotten the holocaust? Have you forgotten the gulags in Russia? Communism, nazism, fascism did not come from Africa. … A Western country was the first to use weapons of mass destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those countries have been able to rise. Africa, there is hope,” Bishop Tutu assured.
As hurricane season begins, pressure builds on Congress to pass Gulf Coast Civic Works Act
June 8, 2009
HR 2269, which is co-sponsored by 16 Congress members and supported by 165 regional and national organizations, funds “green” resident-led recovery projects to help meet the overwhelming unmet needs of the individuals, families and communities devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
