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Time For An Awakening (Open Forum)

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Open forum conversation on 5/08/2016 with the listening audience. In 2016, from the need to develop a new mindset in our communities, to our political and economic empowerment, the solution to these problems must come from us.


In a Rigged Court System, Innocent Black People Wait Years for Their Day In Court, Forcing Some to Accept Plea Bargains

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May 14, 2016 | Posted by

 

Throughout the country, the court system is rigged against poor people and communities of color, and Bronx County in New York City is a most extreme and poignant example of a nationwide crisis.

Although there is a constitutionally guaranteed right to a speedy trial, in practice that guarantee does not extend to those without means, particularly the Black and Latino folks who live in places such as the Bronx — the poorest and Blackest county in New York.  These are the people who are arrested and charged with frivolous misdemeanor offenses under a “broken windows” philosophy of policing.  And when faced with an under-resourced and broken-down court system, they may wait years for a jury trial — their lives disrupted, their psyche damaged, and often they are compelled to take a plea.

On Wednesday, the Bronx Defenders — a legal advocacy group providing civil and criminal legal services to the indigent — filed a federal class-action lawsuit against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo; Janet DiFiore, Chief Judge of the State of New York and Chief Judicial Officer of the Unified Court System; and Lawrence Marks, Chief Administrative Judge of the Unified Court System.  The suit, Trowbridge v. Cuomo, filed on behalf of thousands of Bronx residents, claims the state courts are failing to give people their due process and their day in court, making justice an illusion.

The day the lawsuit was filed, Atlanta Black Star spoke with Robin Steinberg, the Executive Director of the Bronx Defenders, on what prompted her organization to take action.

“About three years ago we collaborated with The New York Times on a series on delay in the Bronx … and we hoped that that would bring about some systemic change,” Steinberg said.  “What we began to see was not only was there no structural change, the delay problem was getting worse.  And in fact, it has gotten worse since The Times did the investigative piece three years ago,” she added.  Ultimately, the time had come to do what we need to do, the courts need to come in,” Steinberg said, with the goal to “compel immediate political will” to change the state of the courts in the Bronx.

For the head of the Bronx Defenders, it says a lot that lawyers have to sue the governor and the courts on behalf of their clients because the system is failing.

“It says the clients we represent and the community we represent is one of the most marginalized and overlooked communities in New York City, as is the case across the country.  They have very little political power, no access to political power and have been under-utilized and marginalized.  This does not happen in the tony community in Manhattan,” Steinberg insists.

The statistics gathered by the plaintiffs paint a picture of a serious epidemic of disparities.  As of January 2016, there were 2,378 misdemeanor cases pending for over 365 days in the Bronx, and 538 cases pending for over two years.  Last year, although there were 45,000 misdemeanor arraignments, there were a mere 98 misdemeanor trials.  And for those select few who get a trial, they must wait 642 days on average for a non-jury bench trial, and 827 days for a trial by jury, which is 99 percent higher than in Manhattan, 66 percent higher than in Brooklyn and 48 percent higher than in Queens.

Meanwhile, under New York’s speedy trial statute, prosecutors are required to be ready for trial within 90 days of arraignment for class A misdemeanors (such as assault, theft and drug possession), 60 days for class B misdemeanors (such as harassment, marijuana possession and stalking), and 30 days for non-criminal violations.

“You have to wait 99 percent longer in the Bronx.  You wait longer in the Bronx than any other borough…It speaks to how we resource certain communities and under-resource others,” Steinberg noted.  “This has been a known secret for years, and we hope to compel some change.”

Moreover, there are human faces behind these numbers, with a heavy toll taken in terms of lost jobs, frayed relationships and damaged well-being.  This is the tax levied on the poor and on people of color. For example, John Carridice suffered through 1,009 days and 20 court dates before he had a trial and was acquitted.  Sarah Bello endured 1,166 days and 33 court dates before her charges were thrown out.  Joseph Bermudez was also acquitted, but only after 1,258 days and 38 court dates.  On at least 16 occasions, both parties were ready for trial, but no court rooms were available.

Michael Torres, 43, had to appear in court 14 times for misdemeanor marijuana possession, typically waiting up to six hours at a time.  As a result of numerous absences from work, he was fired. Although his case was dismissed after 877 days because the arresting officer could not recollect the incident, for this father of two, the damage had been done.

“After waiting all that time, I wasn’t even able to have my day in court,” said Torres. “I did everything I was supposed to do, but the system failed me – I joined this case because I want to ensure this doesn’t happen to others.”

One of the devastating effects of the epidemic of court delays is that people are forced to enter into plea agreements to make the case go away.  According to The New York Times, 97 percent of federal cases and 94 percent of state cases end in plea bargains.  The implications are that the courts are not used for the adjudication of cases and deciding who is guilty or innocent, but for deal making.  Rather, the courts become what the American Bar Association, the National Legal Aid and Defender Association and others refer to as a “McJustice” system — one which operates based on the assembly line principles of a fast-food restaurant.  For the indigent it means there is a premium placed on expediency over high-quality treatment.

“The truth is that what happens when you have this kind of delay is people end up with an unconscionable choice to come back in to court every month for 833 days — which is a form of punishment — or plead guilty.  There is no way to end this punishment unless you plead guilty,” Steinberg said.  “Clients continually miss work, miss childcare, miss appointments. It is the system’s best way to extract a guilty plea.”

The Bronx Defender chief shared that when public  defenders advocate to their client to stick it out longer and wait, their clients — faced with the torture of court delays — have a right to take the plea, and often do.

Although this lawsuit is about the Bronx courts, and by extension the state of New York, this is a case with national implications.  There are other jurisdictions like the Bronx.  For example, in downstate Illinois, which does not include the Chicago area, 56 percent of pending misdemeanor cases were over a year old as of 2014, according to the Bronx Defenders.  In North Carolina, 16.5 percent of all pending misdemeanor cases were over a year old, while 7.7 percent were older than 731 days, according to the state’s 2014-2015 Judicial Report.  Moreover, even in a state with a better track record such as Wisconsin, 19 percent of misdemeanor cases are pending more than 180 days, with 95 percent of the cases taking 360 days before resolution.  The state guidelines say that only 5 percent should be pending for that long.

“People need to keep their eyes on this because it is a national problem,” Steinberg emphasized.  “People need to pay attention and defenders need to pay attention because our clients’ lives are deeply impacted,” and their humanity is not being acknowledged, she argued.

It is no accident that the Bronx is the poorest borough of New York City and the poorest county in New York state.  Further, the South Bronx is the poorest congressional district in the entire nation, according to the U.S. Census, with 38 percent of people living below the poverty line, including 49 percent of children.  Bronx also has the highest proportion of people of color of any county in the state, with a population that is 43 percent Black and 55 percent Latino, with whites accounting for 10 percent of the county, according to the most recent Census figures.  Not surprisingly, 95 percent of Bronx misdemeanor arraignments involve people of color, the highest percentage in the city.

Meanwhile, those poor and Black people who are subjected to a dysfunctional and unresponsive court system are the ones facing the massive and frivolous arrests, heavy-handed monitoring and racial profiling by the police.  In recent years, the New York City Police Department has come under fire for a stop-and-frisk policy that has ensnared hundreds of thousands of city residents, typically Black and Latino young men.  As a lawsuit filed against the NYPD by the Center for Constitutional Rights revealed, 85 percent of those targeted by these “suspicionless and racially pretextual stop and frisks” are Black and Latino, who make up 52 percent of the city’s population. According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, more than 4 million New Yorkers have been subjected to police stops and interrogations since 2002, with nine of 10 people being completely innocent.

Ultimately, Steinberg believes this is an issue that will resonate among the public, even among those who are far removed from the court system.

“People will be shocked by this.  It is something that is relatable — even if you aren’t touched by the criminal justice system and live in an affluent white community — because it is such a basic issue of a right to a trial,” she said.

“If I have to go to the department of motor vehicles for one day I am outraged,” Steinberg offered. “Imagine if you have to go every day for three-and-a-half years.  You see this playing out as people struggle to keep their heads above water. They’re living with the economic and psychological toll of this hanging on their heads.”

WE MUST NEVER FORGET!!!

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THE HOUSTON RIOTS/CAMP LOGAN MUTINY OF 1917 AND 19 BLACK SOLDIERS OF THE 24TH U.S. INFANTRY REGIMENT

The Houston Riot of 1917, also known as the Camp Logan Mutiny, involved 156 soldiers of the all-black 3rd Battalion, 24th
Infantry – a unit of the famed Buffalo Soldiers. The incident occurred on August 23, 1917, lasting roughly two hours on a hot, rainy night, and resulted in the deaths of four soldiers and 15 white civilians. The episode has the distinction of being the only
race riot in U.S. history where more whites then blacks were killed, and it also resulted in both the largest murder trial and the largest court martial in U.S. history.

Just months after America’s entry into World War I, the soldiers of this historic all-black unit had been dispatched to build military facilities in Harris County, where they met animosity from whites beyond the everyday insults of Jim Crow law. Here, the service of “arrogant, strutting representatives of black soldiery” was hated and feared. An Army report confirmed the Houstonians view of black soldiers, concluding that both police and white citizens felt that “a nigger is a nigger and that his status is not effected by the uniform he wears.”
On July 24, 1917, construction began for Camp Logan. Houston had gotten its military installation, and on July 28, it got 654 men of the all-black 24th Infantry – with its all-white commanding officer group. The unit had been dispatched from Columbus, N.M. for seven weeks duty guarding Camp Logan’s construction. Their arrival in Houston came three weeks after the most violent race war, a massacre really, had occurred in East St. Louis, when gangs of whites roamed through black neighborhoods
indiscriminately beating and murdering black men, women, and children on July 1-3. (Some of the 24th soldiers had donated money to a fund to help the black victims in East St. Louis.)
In striking their deal with the federal government, Houston officials had promised “in the spirit of patriotism” there would be no racial trouble, that black soldiers would be welcomed, but the city’s whites had no such intention of opening their arms to the 24th, regardless the length of their stay.
Chief of Police Clarence Brock, whose 159-man force already had a miserable reputation of brutality and other forms of ill-treatment towards the city’s black populace, had even instructed his men to avoid using the term “nigger” when
addressing the soliders, but that edict was widely ignored as patrolmen harassed and arrested soldiers for minor infractions and
perceived slights that further increased racial tensions in a city where blacks were openly and routinely referred to as “niggers” by
police and white citizens alike. Gradually, the soldiers began to routinely disobey the Jim Crow laws, especially when it came to public transport and the requirement that they sit in the back of trolleys – which many of the soldiers refused to do. Their disobience and “insolence” led to predictably harsh enforcement from police and white Houstonians hurled insults at the soldiers at every turn, as did white soldiers and workers constructing Camp Logan. But none were more brazen in their verbal and physical attacks than Houston policemen. Yet, for the evening of August 23, the Houston Chamber of Commerce had planned a festive “watermelon party” to officially welcome the black soldiers. Instead, Houston got a chaotic evening of frenzied terror it would never forget, and rarely mention.

That morning, patrolman Lee Sparks, whose penchant for brutality
against blacks was well known, and his partner, Rufus Daniels, had pursued a man accused of participating in a dice game. Their
chase led them to a house where they arrested a thinly clad woman and accused her of hiding the man. Outside, near the police call box, a 24th soldier approached and asked Starks what was going on and if he could get clothes for the woman.
Sparks immediately began pistol-whipping the soldier and supposedly said, “That’s the way we do things in the South. We’re
running things not the damned niggers.”
Later, that afternoon, a military policeman from the 24th, Corporal Charles Baltimore, became involved when he inquired of
the soldier’s arrest. Baltimore was also beaten by Sparks, and then shot at as he fled. He was caught, beaten again and taken to the police station. Once he was set free and sent back to camp all beaten up, the infantry became angry, and decided to strike on the evening of August 23. 156 angry soldiers, stole weapons from the camp depot and marched on the city of Houston. They were met outside the city by the police and a crowd of armed citizens, frightened by the reports of a mutiny. A virtual race riot began, which left 20 people dead – four soldiers, four policemen, and 12 civilians.
Order was restored the next day, and the War Department disarmed the soldiers. The Third Battalion was sent by rail back to New Mexico. Martial law was declared in Houston, and the Third Battalion was returned to Columbus, New Mexico. Seven of its soldiers agreed to testify in exchange for clemency. Once there, 118 of them were arrested and charged with murder and mutiny and were sent to the stockade at nearby Fort Bliss in El Paso to begin their wait for court martial.

Between November 1, 1917 and March 26, 1918, the army held three separate courts-martial with the first, United States v.
William C. Nesbit, convening in San Antonio at Fort Sam Houston’s Gift Memorial Chapel, which had the only space on post large
enough to hold a trial for the first 63 men – all represented by a single attorney working on a mere two weeks preparation. (Maj.
Harry S. Grier was inspector general of the 36th Divison and had taught law at West Point, but had no trial experience and was not
a lawyer.) Their charges were: disobeying orders, mutiny, murder, and aggravated assault. All of the men entered not guilty pleas and throughout the ordeal, even to the gallows, maintained their innocence.
Some witnesses may have been coerced into testifying against their fellow soldiers, others promised leniency or immunity,
others merely unreliable, but none of the testimony was conclusive that any of the men on trail had participated in the event. In all, testimony was heard from 169 prosecution witnesses, but only 29 for the defense. On November 28, 13 of the men were sentenced to be hung, however, they were not notified of their sentence until Dec. 9, two days before their execution.
Sgt. William C. Nesbitt
Corp. Larsen J. Brown
Corp. James Wheatley
Corp. Jesse Moore
Corp. Charles W. Baltimore*
Pvt. William Brackenridge
Pvt. Thomas C. Hawkins
Pvt. Carlos Snodgrass
Pvt. Ira B. Davis
Pvt. James Divine
Pvt. Frank Johnson
Pvt. Rosley W. Young
Pvt. Pat MacWharter

In a final letter to his family, Pvt. 1st Class Thomas C. Hawkins wrote:”Dear Mother and Father, When this letter reaches you
I will be beyond the veil of sorrow. I will be in heaven with the angels…I am sentenced to be hanged for the trouble that
happened in Houston, Texas. Altho (sic) I am not guilty of the crime that I am accused of, but mother, it is God’s will that I go
now and in this way….”
Pre-dawn, on December 11, near Salado Creek, the 13 soldiers were taken to hastily constructed gallows and summarily
hung. There had been no notice given to the media or public and their sentences and hangings would not be formally announced until later that morning. As they were escorted to the gallows, the soldiers were reportedly calm and sang hymns.
A white soldier from Company C., 19th Infantry, which had been charged with guarding the prisoners – “the hanging detail,” it
was called – recounted the scene: “The doomed men were taken off the trucks, not one making the slightest attempt to resist. They
were shivering a little, but I think this was due more to the cold rather than fear. The unlucky thirteen were line up. The conductors took their places and the men for the last time heard the command, “March!” Thirteen ropes dangled from the crossbeam of the scaffold, a chair in front of every rope, six on one side, seven on the other. As the ropes were being fastened about the men’s necks, big (Pvt. Frank) Johnson’s voice suddenly broke into a hymn – “Lord, I’m comin’ home” – and the others joined him. The eyes of even the hardest of us were wet.”
Because the U.S. was at war, the swiftness of the executions was backed by the Articles of War. However, that did not temper
the outrage from the black community, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, but also some
military officials. Acting Judge Advocate Gen., Brig. Gen. Samuel T. Ansell, was particularly angered and said: “The men were
executed immediately upon the termination of the trial and before their records could be forwarded to Washington or examined by
anybody, and without, so far as I can see, any one of them having time or opportunity to seek clemency from the source of
clemency, if he had been so advised.” The sentence was carried out without appeal. Two more mass courts-martial would follow, resulting in six more hangings the following year. While the NAACP began a campaign to obtain the release of the imprisoned soldiers, General Order No. 7 (which Ansell proposed) was issued on January 17, 1918 providing that no enlisted personnel could be executed without first examination of the trial records by the judge advocate general and confirmation of the sentence by the president of the United States. That commuted 10 death sentences in the two other trials, but had no benefit for the 13 black soldiers of questionable guilt buried in the far reaches of Fort Sam Houston in makeshift graves.
The military tribunals indicted 118 enlisted men total for participating in the mutiny and finding 110 guilty. A total of 19 soldiers were hanged and 63 received life sentences in federal prison. One soldier was judged incompetent to stand trial. Two white officers faced courts-martial, but were released. No white civilians were brought to trial. Some soldiers served as many as 20 years before their release.

For years afterward, the incident clouded and complicated race relations, especially in the War Department.
Some blacks openly applauded the mutiny as a justified resistance against racist provocation. This inflammatory opinion piece, quoted in Mark Ellis’ Race, War and Surveillance, landed the editor who agreed to run it in federal prison:

“We would rather see you shot by the highest tribunal of the United States Army because you dared to protect a Negro woman from the insult of a southern brute in the form of a policeman, than to have you forced to go to Europe to fight for a liberty you cannot enjoy. Negro women regret that you mutinied, and we are sorry that you spilt innocent blood, but we are not sorry that five southern policemen’s bones now bleech in the graves of Houston, Tex.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. Army noted “the tendency of the Negro soldier, with fire arms in his possession … to become arrogant, overbearing, abusive and a menace to the community in which he happens to be stationed.” It held down its black enlistment throughout the interwar period.
This policy would continue — until the raw manpower of Black men was required in World War II trumped the discussion .

Time For An Awakening (Open Forum)

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Open forum from 5/15/0216

Pres. Obama’s executive order to Public Schools to open restrooms to Transgender Students, was among the topics of open forum conversation with the listening audience.

These People Are Making A Political Statement By Not Voting In The 2016 Election

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AFRICANGLOBE – Larry Fellows III didn’t vote in the Missouri primary and may skip the general election, too. He believes his government has failed him at every level—starting with his home community of St. Louis County, where a grand jury declined in 2014 to indict the police officer who murdered Michael Brown.

After his Twitter feed was inundated with images of Brown’s lifeless body lying in the street, Fellows was one of the first people to join the protests in Ferguson. He eventually quit his job, accumulating debt and even losing his apartment, to protest full-time. He hoped his activism would pressure local authorities into indicting thug cop, Darren Wilson.

When that didn’t happen, Fellows’ confidence in the system eroded to the point that he refused to vote for anyone.

“I don’t know if I want to continuously partake in a system that oppresses so many people,” Fellows, 30, said. “Not to say that voting doesn’t change anything, because I think it does influence change. But I also think a huge part of change happens outside of the system as well.”

Even as Black turnout has steadily climbed over the past generation, a number of Black people feel so disaffected by the electoral process that they refuse to take part. For them, sitting out is a political choice in itself.

Their logic is that there is no point engaging a political process that will not benefit Black people, no matter who the candidate is. For example, some of the cities in which the most infamous examples of abusive police tactics have occurred—Baltimore, Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia—are run by Democrats, the party that is supposed to have Black Americans’ interests at heart.

It’s one of the reasons that Quincy Johnson, 40, a truck driver who lives in Denver, has voted only three times in his life (2004, 2008 and 2014) and has no plans to vote this year.

“Hillary and Bernie are trying extra hard to get that Black vote,” he said. “Sure, they’ll talk to you now to get your vote. But I can guarantee you, once the election is over, try getting a word in then. It’s probably not going to happen.”

“I can’t have faith in my oppressor to not oppress me.

Blacks-Not-Voting-2016-2

There are a lot of reasons Black people feel that voting in what is essentially a two-party system is pointless. Unemployment for Black Americans has been roughly twice that of white Americans since 1963, the year of the March on Washington. Though Black women overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party, their representation in national and local office is minuscule. And Black people continue to be shot and killed by police at disproportionate rates while the cops who kill them are rarely prosecuted.

As far as Rhone Fraser is concerned, both parties are complicit, so neither deserves his vote.

“The Democratic and the Republican parties work together to cause the problems we as a people are experiencing in terms of militarism, mass incarceration, and austerity,” said Rhone, 36, a lecturer at Howard University who lives in Philadelphia. “That is why I advocate boycotting those parties.”

He voted for Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein in 2012 and voted in a local election last year, but is sitting 2016 out.

“I can’t have faith in my oppressor to not oppress me.”

Elisabeth Epps, 36, a legal analyst in Denver, is a big advocate of not voting but says she will cast a ballot this year for Stein, who is running again. “Some people would say voting for a third party candidate is equivalent to wasting your vote, but it’s quite the opposite,” she said. “I feel very strongly that my vote is too important to waste it on a party that doesn’t respect my beliefs.”

The last time Autumn Marie, 33, remembers wanting to be part of the presidential political process was 2000, when George W. Bush and Al Gore were vying for the White House. Bush’s eventual victory convinced her that the election was rigged. Not even the historic campaign of then-Sen. Barack Obama eight years later persuaded her to change her mind.
“I didn’t feel like, ‘Oh, Obama is going to be my savior,’” she said. “I also wondered, ‘Will Black people be complacent and feel like everything is good because we have a Black president?’ Eight years later, Black children are “looking at everybody their age being killed by police.”

You might assume that Rhone, Marie, Epps, Fellows, and Johnson are simply apathetic, but that isn’t the case. Fellows devoted months of his life to protesting in Ferguson, and Rhone is active in a Democratic club in Philadelphia. Marie is active in Black Lives Matter. Epps has volunteered and worked on campaigns in local and presidential elections.

“People tend to read Black folks not voting as a sign of apathy, but, in fact, it is often an indication of a lack of faith in the political process that speaks to the conditions of the Black community,” said Eddie Glaude, a professor of religion and African-American studies at Princeton University. “In some ways, it’s protesting the two-party system. The two-party system seems to force the belief that our only choices are right in front of us. Some people reject those two choices and choose not to chose between them.”

For all the Black people who have given up on voting, many more are going to the polls. Black voter turnout has significantly increased over the last seven presidential cycles. In 1988, when Jesse Jackson ran for president, the turnout rate was 46.8 percent. It reached an all-time high in 2008 at 69.1 percent before dipping to 67.4 percent in 2012.

For many minorities, the stakes in this year’s presidential race could not be higher. Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, has referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and “killers,” and proposed banning Muslims from entering the U.S. His attitude toward the Black Lives Matter movement has been confrontational. He referred to activists protesting the death of Freddie Gray as “thugs.” Trump antagonized Black protesters at one of his rallies by saying that “all lives matter,” a refrain with anti-Black undertones. Accusations of racism against him date to 1973, when the Justice Department sued his real-estate company, alleging discrimination against Black people who wanted to rent his apartments.

In many Black circles, if you say you aren’t voting, you’ll be met with a side-eye or accusations of being irresponsible. One common refrain is that “our people died for the right to vote,” so why dishonor them by not exercising the franchise?

Fellows, who is gay, balks at such thinking. “I also have the right to marry, so that means I should go find a husband?” he asks. “Shaming me is not going to make me go to the polls.”

Since before the Emancipation Proclamation, Black Americans have had a tumultuous relationship with American electoral politics. Black suffrage expanded during Reconstruction, but for the next century, until the 1965 Voting Rights Act, voting laws across the South severely restricted the Black vote. Even today, Republican-led state legislatures are passing laws that critics believe are designed to discourage minorities from voting.

This Election Day, 17 states will have new voting restrictions on the books, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. These include strict photo ID requirements, cutbacks in registration, and limits on mail-in ballots. A study by the University of California, San Diego, found that voter ID laws not only disproportionately target minorities but “skew democracy toward those on the political right.”

In 1956, W.E.B Dubois wrote in The Nation that he refused to vote because “democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no ‘two evils’ exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.” Even as Black Americans began voting for Democrats in large numbers during the 1960s because of the party’s support for strong civil rights legislation, Malcolm X referred to them as “political chumps.” His argument was that Democrats had waited years to address racist policies when they could have dealt with them immediately.

That some Black people would feel disillusioned with voting and the two-party system should not be surprising, said Minkah Makalani, an assistant professor of African and African diaspora studies at the University of Texas in Austin.

“This is a response Black people have had to the political system well before Dubois,” he said. “You see this in the nineteen-teens, 1920s, during the Harlem Renaissance, where the argument at that time was, ‘We aren’t getting what we want from either party. But the socialist or the communist parties are being more responsive to our concerns, so that’s who I’m voting for.”

In 2016, activism is central to the election as organized protests and actions have pressed candidates to address police violence and economic inequality. Throughout this vast movement of organizers and activists are diverse views about how to engage the political process.

Joan Fadayiro, 25, a member of BYP100, a Black millennial organization in Chicago that trains activists and focuses on social justice, told reporters that her organization provides a wide range of ways to engage the political process. For example, critics believed that Cook County prosecutor Anita Alvarez helped suppress dashcam video of an officer shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times. In response, BYP100 organized #ByeAnita. The action included protests, but it also focused on phone-banking that encouraged Chicagoans to vote Alvarez out of office during Illinois’ March primary. The millennial group’s efforts helped Alvarez’s challenger, Kim Foxx, cruise to victory with 62 percent of the vote in a three-way Democratic primary race.

During the #ByeAnita action, some members participated in voter outreach, others protested on the streets, and some did a little of both. While the point of the action was to get people to the polls, BYP100 did not pressure its members to do so.

“The most important thing in our communities when we think about liberation and self-determination is that we don’t all have to do the same thing,” Fadayiro said. “People should have the freedom to engage however they want to engage.”

Ifeoma Ike, co-founder of Black and Brown People Vote, encourages BYP100’s multi-pronged approach to political engagement, saying voting is an essential tool for brokering power—even in an imperfect structure.

“What BYP100 did was turn democracy on its head and said, even within a system that doesn’t work for us, we’re going to use these tools to at least get the people who are harming us out of power,” she said.

The challenge behind not casting a ballot is that our current political structure does not recognize the non-vote as power-brokering, said Anthea Butler, an associate professor of religion and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

“I understand perfectly their right to say that these people do not have our best interests in mind, so I can’t vote for them,” she said. “But the other part of the problem is how are you going to influence anything. So the kinds of interests you might have, you can’t affect changes that you want because you aren’t part of the process. You don’t have anything to hold against them.”

Marie doesn’t see it like that. She believes her activism is, in fact, enough to hold politicians accountable. And she believes that the political system is too crooked for voting to really change it. There are exceptions, she said: The election of the late Chokwe Lumumba as mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, in June 2013 was an indication that Black people could vote for candidates who challenged American imperialism and white supremacy, Marie said.

But such candidates are rare, she said. Asked whether she would consider ever voting again, Marie said she there was no chance.

“I have no faith in this system when it comes to delivering freedom for me and my people,” she said. “I can’t have faith in a system that was built by people to oppress us and protect their interests. I can’t have faith in my oppressor to not oppress me.”

 

By: Terrell Jermaine Starr

 

There are options:

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Dr. Richard D. Benson II

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Guest was Author, Assistant Professor in the Education Studies Program at Spelman College, Dr. Richard D. Benson II. Dr. Benson’s book is called “Fighting for Our Place in the Sun: Malcolm X and the Radicalization of the Black Student Movement 1960 -1973. We discussed aspects of the book in relation to what’s going on presently in our society, with our guest.

Top Civil Rights Attorney Offers Compelling Argument on Why the Justice System Is an Expensive Continuation of Slavery and Jim Crow

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May 22, 2016 | Posted by

 

On Friday’s episode of PBS NewsHour, in the latest installment of their “Broken Justice” series, attorney and activist Bryan Stevenson talks about mass incarceration and his Equal Justice Initiative that advocates for prison reform in the U.S.

Stevenson tells NewsHour that many states have fallen short in their effort to make amends for damage to Black communities caused by mass incarceration. The increase in probation and parole supervision are not the proper fixes needed, he said.

In Stevenson’s interview, he goes on to say:

“Well, I think it’s a continuation of using crime narrative to control social and political dynamics that can’t be controlled in more legitimate ways.

And we created this so-called war on drugs, and we targeted people of color, and we got everybody to buy into the fact that if we don’t put these dangerous people into jails and prisons, we are non-safe. And that’s how we went nationwide from a prison population of about 300,000 in the 1970s to 2.3 million today. And now we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world …

I think people realize that we’re spending way too much money on jails and prisons. And I think that’s true in Alabama. It’s true nationwide. We went from $6 billion spent on jails and prisons in the United States in 1980 to $80 billion last year.”

 

 

South African Professor Unapologetically Defend His Comparison of Hitler and White People

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May 25, 2016 | Posted by

 

Last March, Mcebo Dlamini, South African Student Representative Council president of Wits University, resigned from his post after making a Facebook post praising Adolf Hitler for his organizational skills.

Dlamini talked about his comments on South Africa’s eNCA last year. In the nearly 11-minute interview, he praises German dictator Adolf Hitler. He says Hitler should be recognized for bringing the nation together. However, this is not the highlight of the interview.

In the final minutes, Dlamini says that all white people have an “element of Hitler in them.” To the surprise of the interviewer, she brings up “good” white people who were part of dismantling the country’s Apartheid to counter his claim.

He defends his statement by stating that “white people have blood on their hands, white people colonized us, dispersed us and enslaved us … that is white people … they are racist and full of hate.”


The Trauma of Slavery Is Encoded In The Genes of Black People

AfroColombian Unity: Million Man March to Freedom in Colombia

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In Colombia, the month of May is African Heritage month. All over the country you can see and experience events which celebrate the rich history of the community, as well as dialogues on the current state of affairs.

The 21st of May, in particular, marks an important moment in the sojourn of the population; known as “Dia de la Afrocolombianidad,” it’s the day slavery was abolished in the South American nation in 1851. Yet, even with these holidays in place, the reality is that the Latin-American nation is rife with systemic and cultural racism–and the over weekend, thousands marched in cities across the country to call out the prevalence of racial discrimination and to demand for the social recognition of these issues.

A group known as Marcha de la Comunion Afrocolombiana spearheaded the nationwide demonstrations. Taking inspiration from the Black Panther Party and movements such as the Million Man March and Black Lives Matter, they put together a 10-point list of demands and called for millions to come out and march in cities including Cali, Buenaventura, Pareira and Quibdo. The organizers also used the hashtag #PorEsoMarchamos (this is why we march) to encourage unity, spread awareness, and give examples of how racism pervades Colombian society.

I went to downtown Bogota on Sunday to cover the local demonstration. I saw many women in attendance wearing braids and headscarves in celebration of their roots. Out of the estimated 1400 people, it was inspiring to see that the majority of the crowd were teenagers and young adults. Shouting a variety of call-and-response chants and holding up signs of their demands, what struck me most was the sight of the gathering in the capital. Unlike the coastal cities where the majority of the Afro-Colombian population resides, Bogota often seems very whitewashed and frequenting certain areas as a black person you can blatantly be profiled or made to feel uncomfortable. While there was a large turnout in each participating city, ending the series of demonstrations with the march in the capital seemed to be the perfect way to cap-off the weekend.

The most recent census records report that around 12% of the Colombian population identifies as black or of African descent, yet some estimate that it is actually up to 30% with a large percentage of the ethnic group not being documented or choosing to identity as mixed-race/other. The local media adds to the erasure by promoting a euro-centric beauty standards and stereotypical images of black people, and to this day blackface is a widely accepted form of entertainment.

In the hope to live up to a self-perception as a multi-cultural racial utopia, many shun recognition or discussion of race, leaving those whose experience discrimination and colorism regularly to be silenced or outcaste. Still, the reality is undeniable. A recent study conducted by the Anti-Discrimination Observatory of Cartagena found that employers are more likely to hire white or light-skinned Colombians for high-ranking jobs. It´s also be found that those with light skin earn twice as much as those with darker skin, and this is reflected in the fact that most impoverished areas of the country are home to mostly African descendants.

As leaders and organizers rise up in the Afro-Colombian community to have their needs and rights met, it’s amazing to see the interconnectedness of the respective struggles throughout the diaspora. From the U.S. to the Caribbean to South America, since Africans were brought to the shores of the Americas, we’ve been in a constant fight for freedom, justice and equal rights. Living in Colombia for over a year now, I can see there is much to be done in respect to racial injustice. But, as this past weekend has showed me, the fighting spirit for change that has helped African descendants all over to push forward, is undoubtedly here within the Afro-Colombian community.

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SHAHIDA  MUHAMMAD

Local Jails Now Profiting from Warehousing Prisoners from Overcrowded State Jails, Expanding Slave Labor

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June 11, 2016 | Posted by

The U.S. locks up more people than any other country in the world. A nation that represents just under 5 percent of the world’s population, is home to more than 20 percent of the globe’s prisoners.

America’s mass incarceration problem is not such a big problem at all for the correctional facilities that house the convicted. In fact, it’s a significant source of revenue for state corrections departments across the country and the private corporations they do business with, and a new report by the Prison Policy Initiative suggests local jails have joined in on the money making scheme.

Some state prisons have become so overpopulated that local jails have made a profitable business out of renting out their spaces to them. In Kentucky, more than 45 percent of the beds intended for temporarily detaining individuals awaiting trial are filled with convicted state and federal prisoners. Over in Arkansas, the rate is 40 percent.

“Nationwide, 12 percent of the local jail population is actually there under contract with state or federal authorities,” the report read.

The Massachusetts criminal justice think tank analyzed data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Mortality in Local Jails and State Prisons Series and National Prisoners Statistics Series to calculate the figures.

“We knew that people incarcerated at the state and federal level were counted in local jail data and when we parsed some of that out we realized that this was much bigger problem that we had initially thought,” Peter Wagner, executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative told the Intercept.

But the biggest offender in the nation was by far Louisiana, where more than three-quarters of parish jails are full of state prison inmates. Not a big surprise, as the state has been dubbed the world’s ‘Prison Capital.’ Back in 2012, the Times-Picayune’s award-winning expose shed light on how the state earned its dubious title.

Apparently local sheriffs and wardens stand to make a lot of money by keeping the prisons at maximum capacity and regularly trade inmates between districts to keep facilities full. Some Louisiana wardens spend the better part of the work day making calls to other centers in hopes of acquiring leftover inmates.

According to the Times-Picayune, each inmate is worth $24.39 a day in state money.

The PPI reports this system is not unique to Louisiana. Local sheriffs in Oklahoma make $27 per day, per state inmate and Mississippi state inmates garner $29.74 per day.

Mississippi isn’t too far behind Louisiana, 55 percent of its county jail cots are occupied by state detainees. But Mississippi takes it one step further by forcing local jails to only accept prisoners who will work for free.

The Huffington Post covered the predicament Mississippi law enforcement officials are facing, as prison reforms have led to dwindling jail populations and in turn, shrinking revenue.

Money has become so scarce that legislators are relying on free prison labor to save their increasingly tight budgets and appease taxpayers.

“You’re either gonna go up on everybody’s garbage bill, or you’ve gotta house those inmates,” George County Supervisor Henry Cochran told the Post.

“You’re using that inmate labor, so [taxpayers are] getting a little good out of that inmate for their tax dollars. You either gotta hire a bunch of employees or keep that inmate. It’s like making a deal with the devil,” Cochran added.

In the end, incarcerated felons suffer the most. Unlike larger federal institutions, local jails lack the appropriate resources to rehabilitate inmates, making them more likely to reoffend upon release and end up right back where they started.

It Makes No Sense Asking White Politicians About A ‘Black Agenda’

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Oppressors are never under any obligation to give justice and equality to those who are oppressed.

The master has no moral justification to the slave because a slave is chattel.

Sadly, shamefully, and sinfully, we are living in these so-called ‘United States of America’ whereby people – especially African-Americans –are still raising the question to politicians and political parties, “What about the Black Agenda?”

Why Ask?

Why do we keep raising this question every election cycle to people who don’t really care about the Black Agenda? To be blunt about it, it’s stupid, insane, and irrational.

In asking the question of political candidates about their solutions to decrease Black unemployment, Black poverty, and anything revolving around Black issues gives a direct as well as indirect signal to them as well as to masses of people that we cannot handle our own business. They are under no obligation to help us as long as they see a needy attitude.

Every four years, it’s sickening and disturbing to see Democratic candidates pandering Black people for a vote. They come to our churches, eat our food, take pictures, and suck up so that many people are brainwashed into believing a lie.

During these interactions, there’s little deep discussion about issues that impact masses of people.

There’s little deep discussion about their absence in neighborhoods and communities they fail to visit until it’s voting time.

No Progress

Whenever African-Americans (definitely not all) become so comfortable in asking politicians and the government for a handout, progress and prosperity will never be made. Why? Because self-determination and self-expectation will be sidelined.

The success of any race and culture has to begin within. If there isn’t the desire to want better, do better, and expect better, a problem will always exist.

The challenge for African-Americans during this election year and future election years is to stop asking White people to address the Black Agenda. In a real sense, when we, as a people, learn to own, operate, and support our own entities, we will create opportunities for people to succeed. And when we learn to take care of our surroundings, we don’t have to worry about foolishness coming in.

While this is only a small step towards empowerment, the goal should be to do for self. It makes no sense to always keep asking the oppressors to help the oppressed.

It’s important to note here that I’m not categorizing all non-Black people as oppressors. I’m not saying all African-Americans are oppressed. But without a doubt, there are systems and institutions that are racist in nature.

Collective Effort

The best way to eliminate this mindset is to fight it through political involvement, social interaction, and financial empowerment. Unless there’s a collective effort to want better, nothing will be done.

So what’s the agenda for Black America? Clean up our communities and neighborhoods. Create and support Black-owned businesses. Establish programs that will eliminate Black-on-Black crime.

Stop blaming White people and other non-Blacks for some of the ills that’s plaguing us as African-Americans. Get involved politically and not become party loyalists. Develop a liberating mindsets

The Black Agenda isn’t about asking others to do for us when in fact we can and should do for ourselves.

 

By: Dr. Sinclair Grey III

 

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“One Million Conscious Black Voters and Contributors” (OMCBV&C)

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Robert McKay & Chief Organizers for OMCBV&C.

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“Time For An Awakening” guests for 5/29/2016 was Robert McKay – spokesman for political prisoner and friend Rev. Edward Pinkney, as well as Monica Williams and Donnie Bradford, chief organizers for OMCBV&C. Mr. McKay updated us on the status of imprisoned activist, Rev. Pinkney. Monica Williams and Donnie Bradford updated us on all things One Million Conscious Black Voters and Contributors (OMCBV&C) leading to the National Convention in Atlanta.

Rev. Edward Pinkney (Prison Interview)

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Political Prisoner and friend Reverend Edward Pinkney, interviewing from Marquette prison in Michigan.

Born Builders NRCS & Dr. Sinclair Grey III

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Entrepreneur, Organizer, Bro. Born of Born Builders NRCS, as well as Inspirational Speaker, Freelance Columnist, Author, Dr. Sinclair Grey III were guest. Bro. Born Understanding talked about the company mission to transform our community housing through training and implementation. Dr. Sinclair Grey III discussed his current article in the African Globe entitled, “It Makes No Sense Asking White Politicians about a “Black Agenda”


Bigots are Yelling for Black People to ‘Go Back to Africa!’ – But What Does It Mean? And Is It Possible to Return?

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“Go back to Africa!”  It is the phrase du jour for racist whites, typically when used as part of a bitter, angry, expletive-laden rant against Black people.  There are so many examples of the popularity of this insult these days.

A Beaufort, South Carolina teacher told a Black high school student to go back to the continent after he refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.  In Virginia, the Sons of Confederate Veterans told the African-American community to go back amid calls for the city council to remove the Confederate flag from a local museum.  A Black student at Southern Illinois University was told the same thing when she was confronted by Donald Trump supporters in a residence hall.  And at Trump rallies in Chicago and Cleveland, Trump supporters were heard yelling the phrase, along with other racial epithets.

“If you call yourself an African-American, go back to Africa. If you’re an African first, go back to Africa,” said a white man to a Black woman and #BlackLivesMatter supporter at a Trump rally in Cleveland this past March, as reported by MSNBC.

 And recently, a Bank of America employee in Atlanta was fired for her racist Facebook rant.
 “When a bigot says ‘Go back to Africa,’ he or she is simply being nasty and irrational,” Dr. Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Ferree Professor of American History at the Pennsylvania State University, told Atlanta Black Star.  Moses is the author of Classical Black Nationalism: From the American Revolution to Marcus Garvey and Liberian Dreams: Records of an African Return 1853, among other works.  “I am not wise enough to know to how one can best respond to nastiness and irrationality.”

To be sure, there is a nastiness to the phrase, particularly when accompanied by other insults, threats and acts of violence.  For example, in October 2014, when a group of Black protesters outside a St. Louis Cardinals game sought to bring attention of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, they were met with a crowd of virulent white racists.  As Crooks & Liars reported, the white fans responded to the Black protesters by chanting “Let’s go Cardinals,” which changed to “Let’s go, Darren!” in honor of Officer Darren Wilson, who shot and killed Brown. While attempting to initiate acts of violence, the white fans told the protesters to go back to Africa and called them jobless, while one of the white men called a Black activist a “crackhead.”

 “We’re the ones who gave all y’all the freedoms that you have!” shouted one white woman at the African-Americans, as a number of fans began chanting “Africa, Africa” – shorthand for the suggestion they go back to the motherland.

“Go back to Africa!”  It is the phrase du jour for racist whites, typically when used as part of a bitter, angry, expletive-laden rant against Black people.  There are so many examples of the popularity of this insult these days.

A Beaufort, South Carolina teacher told a Black high school student to go back to the continent after he refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.  In Virginia, the Sons of Confederate Veterans told the African-American community to go back amid calls for the city council to remove the Confederate flag from a local museum.  A Black student at Southern Illinois University was told the same thing when she was confronted by Donald Trump supporters in a residence hall.  And at Trump rallies in Chicago and Cleveland, Trump supporters were heard yelling the phrase, along with other racial epithets.

“If you call yourself an African-American, go back to Africa. If you’re an African first, go back to Africa,” said a white man to a Black woman and #BlackLivesMatter supporter at a Trump rally in Cleveland this past March, as reported by MSNBC.
 And recently, a Bank of America employee in Atlanta was fired for her racist Facebook rant.
 “When a bigot says ‘Go back to Africa,’ he or she is simply being nasty and irrational,” Dr. Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Ferree Professor of American History at the Pennsylvania State University, told Atlanta Black Star.  Moses is the author of Classical Black Nationalism: From the American Revolution to Marcus Garvey and Liberian Dreams: Records of an African Return 1853, among other works.  “I am not wise enough to know to how one can best respond to nastiness and irrationality.”
 To be sure, there is a nastiness to the phrase, particularly when accompanied by other insults, threats and acts of violence.  For example, in October 2014, when a group of Black protesters outside a St. Louis Cardinals game sought to bring attention of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, they were met with a crowd of virulent white racists.  As Crooks & Liars reported, the white fans responded to the Black protesters by chanting “Let’s go Cardinals,” which changed to “Let’s go, Darren!” in honor of Officer Darren Wilson, who shot and killed Brown. While attempting to initiate acts of violence, the white fans told the protesters to go back to Africa and called them jobless, while one of the white men called a Black activist a “crackhead.”

“We’re the ones who gave all y’all the freedoms that you have!” shouted one white woman at the African-Americans, as a number of fans began chanting “Africa, Africa” – shorthand for the suggestion they go back to the motherland.

nd part of the assumption among whites is that Black folks should be happy to be in America, which, through its kindness and generosity, has rendered African-Americans the most fortunate Black people around. There is a perverse, outlandish assertion that Black people — kidnapped at gunpoint and brought to these shores in the belly of a slave ship, and, if they survived, were raped, tortured and forced to toil in prison camp plantations — should leave if they cannot appreciate all that white people have done for them. Of course, the parties to whom Black people would presumably return the favor came to North America from Europe — unannounced and uninvited — and stole the land from the indigenous population right from under their feet. Yet, never are there any calls for whites to return to Europe.

This sentiment was best articulated by conservative commentator Pat Buchanan in 2008.

“First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known,” Buchanan wrote on his website.

“Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream,” he added. “Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks — with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas — to advance black applicants over white applicants.”

While the concept of returning to Africa is pejorative and insulting when articulated by white racists, it also represented a movement throughout history, with Blacks and whites involved in “back-to-Africa” movements — Sierra Leone and Liberia in the 19th century, Marcus Garvey in the early 20th century, and Pan-African activists and intellectuals such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Kwame Ture settling in West Africa.  It is a complicated history.

“In the later editions of From Slavery to Freedom, John Hope Franklin gave a nuanced analysis of the multiple and complicated reasons why some whites and blacks supported African deportation before the Civil War,” said Dr. Moses.

 In that book, Franklin wrote that as early as 1714, there was a proposal to send Blacks back to Africa.  Whites believed the races could not live together in harmony, and free Black people could not adjust to life in America, and created a problem for maintaining the system of slavery.
“There is no adequate history of the American Colonization Society,” said Moses of the organization which helped relocate thousands of freed Black people to what would become Liberia.  “There is no satisfactory treatment of Henry Clay’s advocacy of African deportation or of Abraham Lincoln’s decreasing interest in African deportation, as he evolved from a Whig to a Republican. In my view, Lincoln was never convinced of the practicality of deportation, for reasons that Alexis de Tocqueville had articulated,” Moses offered.   “I touched on my reasons for believing that Lincoln was not serious in my biography of Alexander Crummell (Oxford UP, 1989).   As for Jefferson, I think he was absolutely insincere about African deportation.  Jefferson was a complete phony, and like many populists he used democratic rhetoric to cover up aristocratic programs.   He never joined the American Colonization Society and contrary to popular belief, never supported the abolition of slavery.  Jefferson only called for ending the Atlantic slave trade except in order to inflate domestic slave prices,” he added.

“I would suggest that no discussion of the Back to Africa movements, either the white racist ones, or especially the Black ones (such as Garvey’s), is complete without considerable explanation of the nadir of race relations,” said James W. Loewen, the author of Lies My Teacher Told Me; Lies Across America; Sundown Towns; Teaching What Really Happened; and The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader.  During the nadir, which began during the end of Reconstruction and lasted through the early 20th century, was a time of white supremacy, Jim Crow segregation, racial terrorism and a loss of civil rights for Black people.

“Going back to Africa was hardly irrational, given how race relations grew worse and worse after 1890. That needs to be explained, lest Garvey, et al., come across as charlatans,” Loewen, who taught race relations at the University of Vermont, told Atlanta Black Star.

Meanwhile, many African-Americans today are crossing the Atlantic to live in Ghana, once a major starting point of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and one of the first African nations to emerge from colonial rule. While millions crossed the Middle Passage by force via Ghana for a life of permanent enslavement in America — 40 percent never making it to the other side — some of their descendants are returning for a better, more comfortable life, business opportunities and to rediscover their roots.

Ghana has a Right of Abode program that grants permanent residency and dual citizenship to people of African descent.  According to the African-American Association of Ghana, 3,000 African-Americans live in Ghana, most in the capital of Accra.  So, some Black people are going back to Africa, but they are doing so on their own terms.  And as the future becomes more difficult and more uncertain for people of African descent in the U.S., certainly more will consider the option

Breaking Down the Stats: Report Reveals Blacks Make Up More than Half the Prison Population in 12 States

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June 17, 2016 | Posted by

Black people are incarcerated in the nation’s state prisons five times as often as whites, a new study indicates.

The Sentencing Project’s latest report on racial and ethnic inequalities in the American prison system examined the prevailing issue on a state-by-state basis.

“Since the majority of people in prison are sentenced at the state level rather than the federal level, it is critical to understand the variation in racial and ethnic composition across states,” Ashley Nellis, author and senior research analyst wrote in the report, “and the policies and the day-to-day practices that contribute to this variance.”

The criminal justice advocates used federal data to compare rates of imprisonment for Black, white and Hispanic populations. And the findings show that African-Americans continue to face seemingly insurmountable odds in the fight for blind justice in this country.

The High(low)lights:

  • Overall, Blacks are locked up in state prisons at a rate of of 1,408 per 100,000 people; Hispanics, 378 per 100,000; and whites, 275 per 100,000.
  • African-Americans in Iowa, Minnesota, New Jersey, Vermont and Wisconsin are imprisoned at a rate more than 10 times that of whites.
  • In 12 states, African-Americans make up more than half of the prisoners: Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
  • 72 percent of Maryland’s prison population is Black — the highest proportion in the U.S.
  • 11 states report at least 1 in 20 adult Black males in prison.

Oklahoma, which has the country’s highest population of Black prisoners, holds 1 in 15 Black males aged 18 and older in prison.

The problem of Black mass incarceration is present in every state in the union. In Hawaii, the state with the lowest racial disparity, Blacks still serve time at a rate two times that of whites. It is a systemic matter states can not continue to ignore.

According to the report, at least three factors come up over and over again in the multiple studies done on the subject: “policies and practices that drive disparity; the role of implicit bias and stereotypes in decision making; and, structural disadvantages in communities of color which are associated with high rates of offending and arrest.”

Nellis suggests states look to New Jersey’s reforms, which included the revisions to drug laws that have contributed to the mass incarceration of African-Americans since the 1990s, specifically drug-free school zone laws.

The Sentencing Project study concludes with five recommendations for state policymakers:

  • Scale back on prison sentences for low-level drug offenders, and put more resources into drug prevention and rehabilitative programs.
  • Re-evaluate and amend statutory mandates on minimum sentences that prevent judges from considering cases on an individualized basis.
  • Reduce the use of “Three Strikes”-inspired penalties that result in excessively long sentences for repeat offenders.
  • Train criminal justice officials at every level on the dangers of implicit bias, or the stereotypes and attitudes that affect our judgments and behavior on a subconscious level.
  • Introduce Racial Impact legislation, which encourages lawmakers to consider how proposed laws might disproportionately affect minority communities.

KWAME NKRUMAH 1909-1972

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I SPEAK OF FREEDOM, 1961


For centuries, Europeans dominated the African continent. The white man arrogated to himself the right to rule and to be obeyed by the non-white; his mission, he claimed, was to “civilise” Africa. Under this cloak, the Europeans robbed the continent of vast riches and inflicted unimaginable suffering on the African people.

All this makes a sad story, but now we must be prepared to bury the past with its unpleasant memories and look to the future.All we ask of the former colonial powers is their goodwill and co-operation to remedy past mistakes and injustices and to grant independence to the colonies in Africa….

It is clear that we must find an African solution to our problems, and that this can only be found in African unity. Divided we are weak; united, Africa could become one of the greatest forces for good in the world.

Although most Africans are poor, our continent is potentially extremely rich. Our mineral resources, which are being exploited with foreign capital only to enrich foreign investors, range from gold and diamonds to uranium and petroleum. Our forests contain some of the finest woods to be grown anywhere. Our cash crops include cocoa, coffee, rubber, tobacco and cotton. As for power, which is an important factor in any economic development, Africa contains over 40% of the potential water power of the world, as compared with about 10% in Europe and 13% in North America. Yet so far, less than 1% has been developed. This is one of the reasons why we have in Africa the paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty, and scarcity in the midst of abundance.

Never before have a people had within their grasp so great an opportunity for developing a continent endowed with so much wealth. Individually, the independent states of Africa, some of them potentially rich, others poor, can do little for their people. Together, by mutual help, they can achieve much. But the economic developmentof the continent must be planned and pursued as a whole. A loose confederation designed only for economic co-operation would notprovide the necessary unity of purpose. Only a strong political union can bring about full and effective development of our natural resources for the benefit of our people.

The political situation in Africa today is heartening and at the same time disturbing. It is heartening to see so many new flags hoisted in place of the old; it is disturbing to see so many countries of varying sizes and at different levels of development, weakand, in some cases, almost helpless. If this terrible state of fragmentation is allowed to continue it may well be disastrous for us all.

There are at present some 28 states in Africa, excluding the Union of South Africa, and those countries not yet free. No less than nine of these states have a population of less than three million.Can we seriously believe that the colonial powers meant these countries to be independent, viable states? The example of South America, which has as much wealth, if not more than North America, and yet remains weak and dependent on outside interests, is one which every African would do well to study.

Critics of African unity often refer to the wide differences in culture, language and ideas in various parts of Africa. This istrue, but the essential fact remains that we are all Africans, and have a common interest in the independence of Africa. The difficulties presented by questions of language, culture and different political systems are not insuperable. If the need for political union is agreed by us all, then the will to create it is born;and where there’s a will there’s a way.

The present leaders of Africa have already shown a remarkable willingness to consult and seek advice among themselves. Africans have, indeed, begun to think continentally. They realise that they have much in common, both in their past history, in their present problems and in their future hopes. To suggest that the time is not yet ripe for considering a political union of Africa is to evade the facts and ignore realities in Africa today.

The greatest contribution that Africa can make to the peace of the world is to avoid all the dangers inherent in disunity, by creating a political union which will also by its success, standas an example to a divided world. A Union of African states will project more effectively the African personality. It will command respect from a world that has regard only for size and influence.The scant attention paid to African opposition to the French atomic tests in the Sahara, and the ignominious spectacle of the U.N. in the Congo quibbling about constitutional niceties while the Republic was tottering into anarchy, are evidence of the callous disregard of African Independence by the Great Powers.

We have to prove that greatness is not to be measured in stockpiles of atom bombs. I believe strongly and sincerely that with the deep-rooted wisdom and dignity, the innate respect for human lives, the intense humanity that is our heritage, the African race, united under one federal government, will emerge not as just another world bloc to flaunt its wealth and strength, but as a Great Power whose greatness is indestructible because it is built not on fear, envy and suspicion, nor won at the expense of others, but founded on hope, trust, friendship and directed to the good of all mankind.

The emergence of such a mighty stabilising force in this strife-worn world should be regarded not as the shadowy dream of a visionary, but as a practical proposition, which the peoples of Africa can, and should, translate into reality. There is a tide in the affairs of every people when the moment strikes for political action. Such was the moment in the history of the United States of America when the Founding Fathers saw beyond the petty wranglings of the separate states and created a Union. This is our chance. We must act now. Tomorrow may be too late and the opportunity will have passed, and with it the hope of free Africa’s survival.

From Kwame Nkrumah, I Speak of Freedom: A Statement of African Ideology (1961)

WE MUST NEVER FORGET!!!

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WALTER RODNEY 1942 – June 13, 1980

Was a Pan-Africanist, Historian, Political Activist and Preeminent Scholar, who was assassinated in Guyana in 1980.

Walter Rodney was born in Georgetown, Guyana on March 23, 1942. His was a working class family-his father was a tailor and his mother a seamstress. After attending primary school, he won an open exhibition scholarship to attend Queens College as one of the early working-class beneficiaries of concessions made in the filed of education by the ruling class in Guyana to the new nationalism that gripped the country in the early 1950s.

While at Queens College young Rodney excelled academically, as well as in the fields of athletics and debating. In 1960, he won an open scholarship to further his studies at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. He graduated with a first-class honors degree in history in 1963 and. he won an open scholarship to the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. In 1966, at the age of 24 he was awarded a Ph.D. with honors in African History.

His doctoral research on slavery on the Upper Guinea Coast was the result of long meticulous work on the records of Portuguese merchants both in England and in Portugal. In the process he learned Portuguese and Spanish which along with the French he had learned at Queens College made him somewhat of a linguist.

In 1970, his Ph.D dissertation was published by Oxford University Press under the title, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800. This work was to set a trend for Rodney in both challenging the assumptions of western historians about African history and setting new standards for looking at the history of oppressed peoples. According to Horace Campbell “This work was path-breaking in the way in which it analyzed the impact of slavery on the communities and the interrelationship between societies of the region and on the ecology of the region.”

Walter took up his first teaching appointment in Tanzania before returning to his alma mater, the University of the West Indies, in 1968. This was a period of great political activity in the Caribbean as the countries begun their post colonial journey. But it was the Black Power Movement that caught Walter’s imagination.

Some new voices had begun to question the direction of the post-independence governments, in particular their attitude to the plight of the downpressed. The issue of empowerment for the black and brown poor of the region was being debated among the progressive intellectuals. Rodney, who from very early on had rejected the authoritarian role of the middle class political elite in the Caribbean, was central to this debate. He, however, did not confine his activities to the university campus. He took his message of Black Liberation to the gullies of Jamaica. In particular he shared his knowledge of African history with one of the most rejected section of the Jamaican society-the Rastafarians.

Walter had shown an interest in political activism ever since he was a student in Jamaica and England. Horace Campbell reports that while at UWI Walter “was active in student politics and campaigned extensively in 1961 in the Jamaica Referendum on the West Indian Federation.” While studying in London, Walter participated in discussion circles, spoke at the famous Hyde Park and, participated in a symposium on Guyana in 1965. It was during this period that Walter came into contact with the legendary CLR James and was one of his most devoted students.

By the summer of 1968 Rodney’s “groundings with the working poor of Jamaica had begun to attract the attention of the government. So, when he attended a Black Writers’ Conference in Montreal, Canada, in October 1968, the Hugh Shearer-led Jamaican Labor Party Government banned him from re-entering the country. This action sparked widespread riots and revolts in Kingston in which several people were killed and injured by the police and security forces, and millions of dollars worth of property destroyed.. Rodney’s encounters with the Rastafarians were published in a pamphlet entitled “Grounding with My Brothers,” that became a bible for the Caribbean Black Power Movement.

Having been expelled from Jamaica, Walter returned to Tanzania after a short stay in Cuba.. There he lectured from 1968 to 1974 and continued his groundings in Tanzania and other parts of Africa. This was the period of the African liberation struggles and Walter, who fervently believed that the intellectual should make his or her skills available for the struggles and emancipation of the people, became deeply involved.. It was from partly from these activities that his second major work, and his best known –How Europe Underdeveloped Africa – emerged. It was published by Bogle-L’Ouverture, in London, in conjunction with Tanzanian Publishing House in 1972.

This Tanzanian period was perhaps the most important in the formation of Rodney’s ideas. According to Horace Campbell “Here he was at the forefront of establishing an intellectual tradition which still today makes Dar es Salaam one of the centers of discussion of African politics and history. Out of he dialogue, discussions and study groups he deepened the Marxist tradition with respect to African politics, class struggle, the race question, African history and the role of the exploited in social change. It was within the context of these discussions that the book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa was written.”

Campbell also reports that ” In he same period, he wrote the critical articles on Tanzanian Ujamaa, imperialism, on underdevelopment, and the problems of state and class formation in Africa. Many of his articles which were written in Tanzania appeared in Maji Maji, the discussion journal of the TANU Youth League at the University. He worked in the Tanzanian archives on the question of forced labor, the policing of the countryside and the colonial economy. This work– ” World War II and the Tanzanian Economy”– was later published as a monograph by Cornell University in 1976″.

Rodney also developed a reputation as a Pan-Africanist theoretician and spokes person. Campbell says that “In Tanzania he developed close political relationships with those who were struggling to change the external control of Africa He was very close to some of the leaders of liberation movements in Africa and also to political leaders of popular organizations of independent territories. Together with other Pan-Africanists he participated in discussing leading up to the Sixth Pan-African Congress, held in Tanzania, 1974. Before the Congress he wrote a piece: “Towards the Sixth Pan-African Congress: Aspects of the International Class Struggle in Africa, the Caribbean and America.”

In 1974, Walter returned to Guyana to take up an appointment as Professor of History at the University of Guyana, but the government rescinded the appointment. But Rodney remained in Guyana, joined the newly formed political group, the Working People’s Alliance. Between 1974 and his assassination in 1980, he emerged as the leading figure in the resistance movement against the increasingly authoritarian PNC government. He give public and private talks all over the country that served to engender a new political consciousness in the country. During this period he developed his ideas on the self emancipation of the working people, People’s Power, and multiracial democracy.

On July 11, 1979, Walter, together with seven others, was arrested following the burning down of two government offices. He, along with Drs Rupert Roopnarine and Omawale, was later charged with arson. From that period up to the time of his murder, he was constantly persecuted and harassed and at least on one occasion, an attempt was made to kill him. Finally, on the evening of June 13, 1980, he was assassinated by a bomb in the middle of Georgetown..

Walter was married to Dr Patricia Rodney and the union bore three children- Shaka, Kanini and Asha.

Jack Daniel’s Releases Hidden Ingredient: Help From a Slave

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In a photo in Jack Daniel’s old office, Daniel, with mustache and white hat, is shown at his distillery in Tennessee in the late 1800s. The man to his right could be a son of Nearis Green, a slave who helped teach Daniel how to make whiskey.

 

By CLAY RISEN

LYNCHBURG, Tenn. — Every year, about 275,000 people tour the Jack Daniel’s distillery here, and as they stroll through its brick buildings nestled in a tree-shaded hollow, they hear a story like this: Sometime in the 1850s, when Daniel was a boy, he went to work for a preacher, grocer and distiller named Dan Call. The preacher was a busy man, and when he saw promise in young Jack, he taught him how to run his whiskey still — and the rest is history.

This year is the 150th anniversary of Jack Daniel’s, and the distillery, home to one of the world’s best-selling whiskeys, is using the occasion to tell a different, more complicated tale. Daniel, the company now says, didn’t learn distilling from Dan Call, but from a man named Nearis Green — one of Call’s slaves.

This version of the story was never a secret, but it is one that the distillery has only recently begun to embrace, tentatively, in some of its tours, and in a social media and marketing campaign this summer.

“It’s taken something like the anniversary for us to start to talk about ourselves,” said Nelson Eddy, Jack Daniel’s in-house historian.

Frontier history is a gauzy and unreliable pursuit, and Nearis Green’s story — built on oral history and the thinnest of archival trails — may never be definitively proved. Still, the decision to tell it resonates far beyond this small city.

For years, the prevailing history of American whiskey has been framed as a lily-white affair, centered on German and Scots-Irish settlers who distilled their surplus grains into whiskey and sent it to far-off markets, eventually creating a $2.9 billion industry and a product equally beloved by Kentucky colonels and Brooklyn hipsters.

Left out of that account were men like Nearis Green. Slavery and whiskey, far from being two separate strands of Southern history, were inextricably entwined. Enslaved men not only made up the bulk of the distilling labor force, but they often played crucial skilled roles in the whiskey-making process. In the same way that white cookbook authors often appropriated recipes from their black cooks, white distillery owners took credit for the whiskey.

In deciding to talk about Green, Jack Daniel’s may be hoping to get ahead of a collision between the growing popularity of American whiskey among younger drinkers and a heightened awareness of the hidden racial politics behind America’s culinary heritage.

Some also see the move as a savvy marketing tactic. “When you look at the history of Jack Daniel’s, it’s gotten glossier over the years,” said Peter Krass, the author of “Blood and Whiskey: The Life and Times of Jack Daniel.” “In the 1980s, they aimed at yuppies. I could see them taking it to the next level, to millennials, who dig social justice issues.”

Jack Daniel’s says it simply wants to set the record straight. The Green story has been known to historians and locals for decades, even as the distillery officially ignored it.

According to a 1967 biography, “Jack Daniel’s Legacy,” by Ben A. Green (no relation to Nearis), Call told his slave to teach Daniel everything he knew. “Uncle Nearest is the best whiskey maker that I know of,” the book quotes Call as saying.

Slavery ended with ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865, and Daniel opened his distillery a year later, employing two of Green’s sons. In a photo of Daniel and his workers taken in the late 19th century, a black man, possibly one of Green’s sons, sits at his immediate right — a sharp contrast to contemporaneous photos from other distilleries, where black employees were made to stand in the back rows.

But corporate history-keeping was a rare practice in those days, and over time memories of Green and his sons faded.

“I don’t think it was ever a conscious decision” to leave the Greens out of the company’s story, said Phil Epps, the global brand director for Jack Daniel’s at Brown-Forman, which has owned the distillery for 60 years. Still, it is unlikely that anyone in the Jim Crow South thought a whiskey marketed to whites should emphasize its black roots.

As the brand’s anniversary approached, the company started researching its various origin stories. It decided that the case for Nearis Green’s contribution was persuasive, and should be told. “As we dug into it, we realized it was something that we could be proud of,” Mr. Epps said.

A business built on slave help may not seem like a selling point, which may explain why Jack Daniel’s is taking things slowly. The Green story is an optional part of the distillery tour, left to the tour guide’s discretion, and the company is still considering whether it will flesh out the story in new displays at its visitors center.

However far the distillery decides to go, it is placing itself at the center of a larger issue that distillers and whiskey historians have begun to grapple with only in the last few years: the deep ties between slavery and whiskey.

“It’s about paying down the debts of pleasure that have accrued over time,” said John T. Edge, the director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi.

A re-creation of the grist mill and distillery at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home in Virginia. Washington relied on six slaves to help run his rye whiskey distillery, one of the largest on the East Coast.

A re-creation of the grist mill and distillery at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home in Virginia. Washington relied on six slaves to help run his rye whiskey distillery, one of the largest on the East Coast.

An exhibit on George Washington and slavery opening this fall at the first president’s Northern Virginia home, Mount Vernon, documents how he relied on six slaves (and two Scottish foremen) to run his rye whiskey distillery, one of the largest on the East Coast.

“They were key to the operation in making whiskey,” said Steve Bashore, who helps run a working replica of Washington’s distillery. “In the ledgers, the slaves are actually listed as distillers.”

Slavery accompanied distilling as it moved inland in the late 18th century, to the newly settled regions that would become Tennessee and Kentucky. Though slave owning was nowhere near as common there as it was farther south, by the 1800s many successful farmers had at least a few slaves, who tended to be closely involved with whiskey production.

Some of the earliest prominent Kentucky distillers, like Elijah Craig, Henry McKenna and Jacob Spears, relied on slaves to run their operations. (Craig and McKenna’s names are now on whiskeys made by Heaven Hill Brands, but those were created long after slavery was abolished.)

Washington wasn’t the only president to use slaves in his distillery. In an 1805 advertisement, Andrew Jackson offered a bounty for a runaway slave named George, whom he identified as “a good distiller.”

Databases of ads for slave sales, as well as runaway slaves, are full of references to slaves as skilled whiskey distillers. In 1794, a Richmond, Va., man placed a $20 bounty on a slave named Will, who “has a large scar on his right side just below his ribs” and “understands making of whiskey.”

Slaves did more than just provide physical labor. If Green taught Daniel to distill, said Michael Twitty, a food historian, he probably would have drawn on generations of liquor-making skills: American slaves had their own traditions of alcohol production, going back to the corn beer and fruit spirits of West Africa, and many Africans made alcohol illicitly while in slavery.

“There’s something to be said for the fact that Africans and Europeans were both people in the Southeast who carried with them ancient traditions for making alcohol,” Mr. Twitty said.

Another aspect of the Jack Daniel’s tradition that is being reassessed is the so-called Lincoln County process, in which unaged whiskey is passed through several feet of maple charcoal, which removes impurities and imparts a slight sweetness.

According to legend, the process was invented in 1825 by a white Tennessean named Alfred Eaton. But Mr. Eddy, the Jack Daniel’s historian, and others now say it’s just as likely that the practice evolved from slave distilling traditions, in which charcoal helped remove some of the sting from illicitly made alcohol.

Other contributions are even harder to pin down. Though slave owners tended to value their slaves’ distilling prowess, they rarely documented how the slaves made such fine spirits.

Evidence often has to be found outside the archives. Recent archaeological work in Kentucky has uncovered material pointing to slave distilling at a number of sites, including the famed Pepper distillery near Frankfort and another operation owned by Jack Jouett, a Revolutionary War hero.

“It’s like looking at slave distillers out of the corner of your eye,” said Nicolas Laracuente, an archaeologist who has worked extensively at the site of Jouett’s house. “The reason we’re not finding them in the archives is that they didn’t have the right to be recognized.”

Mike Veach, a whiskey historian, said the influence of enslaved African distillers may explain a mystery in the development of American whiskey. Traces of German, Scots-Irish and English distilling traditions are evident in the American style, but there’s much that can’t be traced to an earlier source — a gap that slave traditions might fill.

“I don’t know what role slaves would have played,” Mr. Veach said, “but I’m sure it was there.”

Fred Minnick, the author of “Bourbon Curious: A Simple Tasting Guide for the Savvy Drinker,” said it’s doubtful that a full accounting of enslaved people’s contribution to American whiskey will ever be written. “It’s extremely sad that these slave distillers will never get the credit they deserve,” he said. “We likely won’t ever even know their names.”

Despite the recent attention from Jack Daniel’s, Nearis Green’s name is just a faint echo, even among several of his descendants who live in the area. Claude Eady, 91, who worked for the distillery from 1946 to 1989, said he was related to Green “on my mother’s side,” but didn’t know much about him.

“I heard his name around,” he said. “The only thing I knew was that he helped Jack Daniel make whiskey.”

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