Daily Archives: May 19, 2010

May Day, the day celebrated for over a century as an emblem of workers’ power, seems to have become a symbol of its fall. 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.

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. I am here because of what I believe, not for anything I have done.

The Democratic Republic of Congo does not need more militarization; it needs justice. Canada can help to advance justice, peace and stability in the Congo without sending a single soldier.

Malcolm spoke of U.S. imperialism in Africa when most of us were hoodwinked into believing the U.S. were the good guys. Not only did Malcolm disabuse us of those foolish and faulty notions, he railed against U.S. racism and its racist foreign policies. He envisioned dire consequences of U.S. thuggery around the world but particularly in Africa.

"Damn Detroit Police Department! You burned, shot and killed Aiyana Jones, a little 7-year-old girl. You threw a stun grenade through the front window and lit the little girl’s blanket on fire! And then you shot off a bullet that landed in her neck!" - Read this account by Kimora Lee Simmons, another by a 12-year-old girl and the full story by veteran Detroit journalist Abayomi Azikiwe.