Tag: Universal Negro Improvement Association

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.

Fifty years ago, on June 16, 1966, in Greenwood, Mississippi, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Chair Kwame Ture, then known as Stokely Carmichael, addressed a crowd of youthful demonstrators and the media covering the militant March Against Fear and forcefully re-echoed our millennial and generational demand for “Black Power.”

The Saint John Coltrane Church is a historical fixture in the San Francisco Black community and a direct descendant of the work of the late great Marcus Mosiah Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association. One reason the Coltrane Church is important is that it defines for itself who are the saints that are worthy of our praise, instead of basing its doctrine on the philosophy and understanding of god that came out of the Council of Nicea.

Jason Anderson has been a staunch activist in the Oakland area for about half a decade and has been working very hard on keeping the historic Liberty Hall building, the original Oakland home to Marcus Garvey’s UNIA in West Oakland, in the hands of the Black community. It has been an uphill battle, but this veteran of Occupy Oakland is up for the challenge.

Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia said: “I have heard of that idea (that I am the reincarnation of Jesus Christ). I also met certain Rastafarians. I told them clearly that I am a man, that I am mortal, and that I will be replaced by the oncoming generation, and that they should never make a mistake in assuming or pretending that the human being is emanated (originated) from a deity (God).”

The Scottsboro Boys have been vindicated, but there are many more waiting in the wings – waiting for justice. It is often said that justice delayed is justice denied. Many years have passed in so many unresolved civil rights crimes and injustices. And if no one is prepared to step up and pursue these cases, we must wonder if justice will ever come.

TaLea “Ms. Incredible” Monet and Debray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter were married on the afternoon of 12.12.12 to the soft strains of Erykah Badu and Stephen Marley’s rendition of the beautiful “In Love with You” from Badu’s “Mama’s Gun” album at the Lighthouse Full Gospel Church, Pentecostal, 2212 Lane St., San Francisco.

The Marcus Garvey Building, also known as Liberty Hall, located at 1485 Eighth Street in West Oakland, is an A-1+ rated national historic landmark that has fallen victim to the mortgage crisis and has been taken from the community through a foreclosure bulk purchase by Citi Property Holdings, Inc., a Florida-based hedge fund. Join the fight to keep Liberty Hall, the Marcus Garvey Building, in the hands of the West Oakland community that it has cared for, loved and served for more than 100 years.

We are the ones who refused to be captured in Afrika without a fight, who staged daring raids on enemy supply lines and brought our nationals back to freedom. We are the ones the enemy calls, “criminals,” “terrorists,” “gangs,” “militants,” “leftists,” “separatists,” “radicals,” “feminists,” “worst of the worst,” “America’s Most Wanted” and enemy combatants.