Tag: racism

We must raise the query, what is the value in a monument when our country has fallen so far backwards in race relations under this president? We need a movement. In Dr. King’s honor, every American must join this movement to establish justice, peace and equality of opportunity for all. Through reasoned compromise, both sides resolve every injustice with a plan of action. Each act of reconciliation is one step closer to King’s “Beloved Community.”

This declaration was authored by the pan-Africanist and socialist popular forces of the Caribbean nation of Barbados at Bridgetown, Barbados, on Saturday, Jan. 13, 2018, and submitted to the people and civil society organizations of the Caribbean for their endorsement and adoption. By describing the nations of Africa, the Republic of Haiti and the Central American nation of El Salvador as “shithole” countries, U.S. President Donald Trump has committed a despicable and unpardonable act of anti-Black, anti-African, anti-Brown racism and is “Persona Non Grata” in the entire Caribbean region.

The Jericho Movement to Free All Political Prisoners was started by Safiyah Bukhari (d. 2003), Herman Ferguson (d. 2014) and Jalil Abdulmuntaqim, who is a Black Panther political prisoner incarcerated for over 44 years. Jericho has maintained a steady course for 20 years. Beginning with its famous march on Washington in 1998, Jericho has continued to campaign to free freedom fighters, community activists and revolutionaries primarily from movements of the 1960s and ‘70s.

So tell your little neo-fascist friends – who have no life outside of what revolves around these prison plantations – that they’re right. As long as we have sick individuals who have lost touch with their own sense of humanity, who play with and destroy our lives, who refuse to see us as human beings deserving of respect, I’m going to keep on so-called snitching! Now, go tell, gossip, chat about that!

Every artist has a process, a ritual they go through before working. Some meditate. Some eat a ritual meal. Others listen to a specific kind of music. Director Jayson Johnson, whose credits range from Bollywood films to Lego commercials, prays and eats peanut butter. Lots and lots of peanut butter. Standing opposite a painting evocative of Jackson Pollock which he created, the 40-year-old Batavia, Ill., native gave a toothy grin and showed off a jar he had just purchased three days prior.

The rubber sides of the boat were like arms – thick, round, hard. “These are the boats refugees have to travel in. Men sit on the side, the women, children and elders in the middle, sometimes getting splashed and sick with the leaking gasoline from the engine because they are covering miles of ocean to go from one country to another.” The tour guide from Médecins Sans Frontières, known in English as Doctors Without Borders, was narrating the “Forced From Home” traveling exhibit of removal, imperialist wars and NGO and government abuse of indigenous bodies across the Global South.

On Monday, Nov. 21, the Department of Homeland Security announced its inhumane decision to end Temporary Protected Status for nearly 60,000 Haitian immigrants, putting people who have lived legally in the United States for years – and some, decades – at risk to be detained and deported. On the eve of Thanksgiving, the Trump administration has decided to contravene basic humanitarianism in favor of an immigration agenda that is drenched in racism, nativism and xenophobia.

The Black Alliance for Just Immigration denounces the Department of Homeland Security’s inhumane decision to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for nearly 60,000 Haitian immigrants who are firmly rooted in the United States. On Nov. 20, DHS announced that it would terminate TPS for Haitian nationals effective July 22, 2019. TPS was first granted to Haitian immigrants in 2010 following a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that devastated the island, killing 230,000 residents and displacing nearly 3 million.

I recently attended the first Caribbean Peace Conference in Bridgetown, Barbados, Oct. 6-7, 2017. The theme of the Conference was “Resisting Nuclear and Environmental Disaster: Building Peace in the Caribbean.” Attendees included representatives from Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, Venezuela and Barbados. The purpose of this conference was to consolidate a serious Caribbean Peace Movement equipped with a concrete agenda and guiding philosophy.

Folks have probably heard by now that the African American Museum and Library, Oakland (AAMLO), is without a permanent director. While the search is being articulated and mounted, Susan D. Anderson, Bay Area author and founder of Memory House, will act as interim director and chief curator for the next six to nine months as the Oakland Public Library (OPL) mounts a national search to find the right person for the job.

Speech delivered at the Millions for Prisoners Human Rights March Aug. 19, 2017, in Washington, D.C.: Let me tell you what’s going on here today. This is the largest gathering of slavery abolitionists in the history of the United States, happening right here today. In 16 cities across America, they are marching in unison with us and in solidarity with us, and they’re not doing it to end mass incarceration. They’re doing it to end what? (Slavery!) Slavery.

My life began in the Jim Crow South, in Houston, Texas. I remember the segregated world I was born into …  the separate water fountains, the back of the bus, the going around to the back door of Mr. Fontnoe’s grocery store to buy milk for my mother and grandmother. I recall the segregated section of the movie theaters – and the long, seemingly endless net partitioning the giant sandy beaches, separating the “Colored” folks from the “Whites.” Can you imagine that it once was a reality, a segregated beach!

It is urgent that the security of Shaka Shakur and Jimmy Jones be ensured, but the only way is through mass pressure from the outside. IDOC Watch asks that people call Wabash Valley warden Richard Brown at 812-398-5050 and IDOC Commissioner Robert E. Carter Jr. at 317-232-5711. Say that you are aware that Shaka Shakur, 135647, is being charged for defending himself against mistreatment by guards and that Jimmy Jones, 891782, is facing repression for exposing the situation. Demand that charges against Shaka be dropped and all disciplinary action against Jones be ceased.

On Aug. 11, white supremacists rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia, against the removal of the statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, It turned deadly. The Charlottesville events happened just a week before Aug. 19, the date of the planned mass rally in Washington, D.C., against mass imprisonment. This rally and the growing movement of which it is part are aimed at dismantling not merely symbols of past racism and slavery like Confederate monuments, but the 13th Amendment, which still authorizes slavery today and is directed predominantly against people of color.

Rep. Maxine Waters delivered a mic-dropping speech at the Black Girls Rock! award show, taped Aug. 5 and broadcast Aug. 22, thanking her supporters and sternly reminding her critics that she is a strong Black woman who will not be intimidated. Waters, who was recognized as the honoree for the show’s social humanitarian award, began her speech by underscoring the importance of safe spaces like Black Girls Rock! and reiterated why representation matters.

After thousands in Phoenix had rallied in support of immigrants to loudly denounce Trump’s attempts to pardon White supremacy, President Trump did it anyway. He pardoned former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted for criminal contempt for disobeying a federal court judge’s order to stop the unconstitutional practice of detaining individuals based solely on suspicion about their immigration status.

Even though many whites thought of him as the father of the “lost cause,” Jefferson Davis was for most African-Americans what racism symbolizes. From the end of slavery, recently freed ex-slaves felt the same way about him. Ex-slave Dilly Yellandy remembers, “Old Jeff Davis said he wus goin’ to fight de Yankees till hell wus so full of em dat their legs us hangin’ over de sides.” Slaves like Mr. Yellandy had heard about Jeff Davis, all right. They had heard about how he tried to run away and hide in a hole, like a fox, and how he tried to escape by wearing his wife’s dress.

Supporters of the British Labour Party and its leader Jeremy Corbyn marched through London streets on Saturday, from the BBC headquarters to the Parliament Building at Westminster. KPFA’s Ann Garrison filed this report. The London-based Independent reports that tens of thousands joined the “Not One More Day” march against the Conservative Tory government and its austerity policies. Jeremy Corbyn addressed the crowd upon their arrival outside Parliament.

Ruchell Magee’s legal knowledge was instrumental in stopping the legal lynching of the San Quentin Six. We owe him a debt of gratitude for his efforts and for the legal documents he prepared for us. I first met Ruchell in January 1970 upon my release from San Quentin’s B Section. I was housed in A Section and there is where I met James McClain and Ruchell. Ru was recognized on the yard as a sharp legal mind and helped many brothers get their cases overturned.

The Central California Intelligence Center received a Suspicious Activity Report from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in 2010. A guard reported that he conducted a search of two inmates’ cells. “Both inmates are Muslims who appear to have radical Islamic views. Both inmates have since been placed in our Administrative Segregation” (the hole). Anti-Muslim sentiments do not only exist in the outside world, they exist in prison, too.