Tag: Cynthia McKinney

Secretary of State John Kerry made headlines this week when he suggested, at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, that President Obama might soon be visiting Africa. Kerry gave no details about when or which countries. KPFA’s Ann Garrison spoke to former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney about the president’s relationship to the continent of his father’s birth.

Six term congresswoman, ‘08 Green Party presidential candidate and international peace activist Cynthia McKinney has been willing to risk her life to represent for Black people, fearlessly investigating such hot issues as Katrina, Haiti, the Congo, Libya and more. Currently she is writing her Ph.D. dissertation on President Hugo Chavez and attended his recent funeral in Caracas. Meet this warm and courageous woman at Bay View fundraisers Wednesday, April 24, at the Laney College Forum, 900 Fallon St., Oakland, at 6:30 p.m., and on Thursday, April 25, at the Arlene Francis Center, 99 Sixth St., Santa Rosa, at 7 p.m.

Pacifica invented public radio; since the beginning, Pacifica stations have been sponsored by listeners, with no corporate sponsorship or underwriting and thus no censorship. But the network faces many dire issues that its listeners need to know and that WBAI programmer Don Debar can knowledgeably talk about. Check out what Pacifica has not been telling its listener supporters ...

As Africans, our struggle must be focused on achieving our inalienable right to self-determination – to develop our own political and economic systems and put in place our own political structures, free of interference from the outside world. Only we can turn the tables – only we can achieve our own liberation from systems that continue to keep us in a state of dependency and disarray.

Hundreds of Siddiqui’s supporters met the two at the airport in the wee hours of the morning, carrying flowers, signs and banners, and chanting “Free Aafia!” and “Welcome!” Siddiqui is a Pakistani political prisoner who has been held in solitary confinement for years in U.S. prisons, after being abducted from Pakistan with her three young children.

The fiery writing of JR Valrey began appearing in the Bay View a dozen years ago. JR made our original vision for the Bay View reality: to inspire Black youth to build a powerful Black community. As the Bay View’s associate editor and one of KPFA’s most popular programmers with his provocative Block Report Radio shows, JR and the youth who grew up on his empowering words and pictures are growing in influence, making a difference every day – and they’re just getting started.

In this country they sing, “God Bless America,” but they mean, “except if you live south of the border or in the hood or if you’re a person of color, a woman, poor or an activist for the common good.” Rock the vote and rock the boat by shopping locally! My Buy Black Wednesday Business of the Month is MG Enhancez Hair Shop.

Recently, I had an opportunity to speak with Cynthia McKinney, and I asked her about leadership. She replied that at the local level in the Black communities, there is leadership. It no longer gets media coverage, but it is there. Real leaders are those with the courage to dissent and to resist. It is the act of resistance that transforms an elected person into a leader.

This Open Letter addresses what is happening to me as I challenge a system that no longer serves the interests of the people and push for the kind of change that will really make a difference. I seek merely to expose covert actions directed at me, and people close to me, that constitute bullying and soft repression that would otherwise go unnoted and whose purpose I surmise is to punish me for my values and political beliefs that favor justice and peace, and, most probably, to dissuade me from future political activities.

The latest Hollywood brouhaha over Gwyneth Paltrow’s decision to tweet the caption “ni**as in Paris for real” to accompany a picture of her with friends Jay-Z and Beyoncé while in Paris doesn’t compare to the new evidence of “fraud upon the court” that has emerged in a largely unnoticed civil rights case that very well should be reopened after being unfairly dismissed six years ago.

As the mother of a young Black man whom I pray for nightly and worry daily about his life being violently ended senselessly either by someone marginalized by the unjust social structure of U.S. life or by some rogue officer of the law or one pretending to be a policeman, I offer my sincerest condolences to the Martin family and friends over the loss of their son Trayvon.

Does the Obama administration plan an African continent-wide Plan Colombia? Why such a militarization of U.S. relationships all over the world – and even here at home? Will chaos and wars – like what is happening in Libya today – be created all over Africa and the rest of Asia? Please circulate this message widely so that maybe we can get some more responses from the administration about its policy direction. Tell the White House that you will cast your vote for peace – to stop the drones and bring our troops home.

It is with great disappointment that I receive the news from foreign media publications and Libyan sources that our president now has 12,000 U.S. troops stationed in Malta and they are about to make their descent into Libya. Black Libyans continue to be targeted for harassment and murder in Libya by U.S.-NATO allies on the ground.

The FBI called to say that four men named in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution story today had listed me as a target for assassination. Please post this message everywhere so that people will know that I will not be deterred from opening communication with other members of the 99 percent and I will not stop my activities for truth, justice, peace and dignity.

Everything that we have witnessed in Libya, all of the bloodshed, is based on the word of one individual, and he admits on camera that he had not one whit of proof that the letter’s contents were true. And now look at Libya. What of the, by some estimates, 20,000 people killed? What of the Libyans whose skin is dark like mine and who have been targeted for murder? What about those left homeless by U.S.-NATO bombing? In the Jamahirya, every Libyan was entitled to a home.

Across Africa, the United States and its allies are creating a new series of future enemies to fight – but after initially working with them or using them to sow the seeds of chaos in Africa. “Human rights” and “democratization” are being used as a smokescreen for colonialism and war.

Abu Ghraib has its antecedents right here in the United States. The violence sponsored by the United States abroad has its origins inside the United States. As the United States and NATO drop bombs on unsubmitting African people in Libya, the United States kills an innocent Black man in Georgia.

NATO and hyperbolic press accounts have introduced a kind of race hatred that the Libyan people have been trying hard to erase. Approximately 50 percent of Libya looks like me. Innocent, darker skinned Libyans have been targeted, tortured, harassed and killed.

A compilation of JR Valrey’s most interesting interviews, “Block Reportin'” is both revolutionary journalism and candid conversation. Combining straight-up questions and answers with much deeper analysis and inquiry, Valrey provides a forum for discussion in which interviewees have the same opportunity to say what they want. This is rare in a world where so much “journalism” is scripted and controlled.

While many had questioned whether Barack Obama was Black enough, in the 2008 elections 96 percent of African Americans cast their vote for him. Today, the question has re-emerged.