I will scatter them, and then I will gather them:
Deuteronomy 4:27; 28:64; 32:26; Isaiah 11:12;
Jeremiah 23:8 / Read
about the African Slave Trade in Deuteronomy 28th Chapter.
REPARATIONS NOW
IN OUR LIFETIME!
N E W S L E T T E R…….#18
JULY 2001
“Take direct action against the U.S. government!” Dr. Robert Brock
*********
GIVE POWER AND
MEANING TO
THE
REPARATIONS MASS MOVEMENT
GIVE OF
YOURSELF!
Note from the
REPNOW Newsletter Editor:
No one would have guessed that the Reparations
Movement would have progressed so swiftly and effectively as it has these past
eighteen months. And thanks are due to
the efforts of the activists, organizations, and even individuals with solid
commitments to end the suppression, degradation, and affliction of Black Humanity
all over this World.
All of you who are making the effort to keep the
focus on Reparations for Descendants of Slaves, Black empowerment, Self
Determination, and true freedom to pursue happiness, please know that YOU ARE
GREATLY APPRECIATED. Stay strong and courageous, as these are
virtues much needed in fighting this battle for the long awaited justice that
has eluded us for far too long. The
sooner we acquire Reparations is the sooner we can begin to mend from being
subjects of White dominated societies that purposely sustain inequalities and
unfair rule over Black Peoples. It
would appear that a great many of us have had enough of suppression,
oppression, and racism and watching our Black Brothers and Sisters’ pain and
suffering in controlled ghetto communities replete with bad elements that
foster and perpetuate the rise and fall of “monsters” created by a system that
keeps Blacks impoverished, uneducated, on drugs, Blacks killing Blacks, and in
deep despair while Whites distinctly prosper and continue to excel and progress
while leaving Blacks in great tribulations!!!
I understand it has been suggested that Blacks must
learn to promote the use of “conflict resolution.” I’m not sure of the intention behind this
notion, but let me give you my concept of “conflict resolution.” The “conflict” is that Blacks out of
Africa were “forced” into Slavery and barbarically and mercilessly
abused, beaten, and categorized with animals and, as a result became the “have
nots” of White dominated societies unto this day. The “resolution” is that justice must be served in the form
of Reparations payments for the crime of forced migration and ethnic cleansing,
so that we can move on and heal ourselves and rise above the ubiquitous
race hatred and prejudice we face on this globe. Please, don’t let us buy into any new programs and/or efforts
that might “seem” worthwhile and “look good on paper,” but in fact can be of no
benefit to us whatsoever. We cannot
continue to be duped into proposals that waste our time, hurt our cause, and
prolong our endeavors. After all these
years of untold suffering, we are supposed to be the wiser now!
We can no longer trust or expect the descendants of
the Slave Masters, who have the same mentality of their forebears, to be
responsible for eliminating racism from this society. There are no
positive or productive programs in place that suggest that racism and prejudice
will ever be eradicated in these United States. And by some Whites validating the fact that racism in fact exists
has nothing to do with eliminating it.
Actually, we can cite a myriad of thriving instances that prove the
United States has a propensity to treat Blacks unfairly, with disdain, and with
prejudice. Consider one of the latest
outrages regarding the COINTELPRO misfortune for Blacks and Native
Americans. If that’s not enough to
demonstrate how much the White powers-that-be are against Black involvement in
politics for minority advancement, nothing will. I ask you to consider the other covert instances of racist acts
against Blacks that are in play of which we are not aware. What else will we discover to prove the
existence of full-blown racism and race hatred of Blacks in this country? What will it take for us to realize that the
US Constitution, even with its Amendments, was written only with Whites in
mind, and wasn’t even a consideration for Slaves or their Descendants? And what more do we need to see done to
Black Folks before we realize that we are not supposed to enjoy fundamental
freedoms don’t care how many of us are Congressional Representatives?
The race hatred and racism against Blacks is too
ingrained in the hearts of most Whites and too systemic in the social and
political systems and programs to hope that these maladies will ever be
eliminated in this country or in any White dominated countries. And whatever we do, don’t buy into
what’s called “sensitivity training” for White Folks. How can a semester or even a decade of
drilling the need for compassion for the underprivileged change the mindset of
racist men and women and their children?
Isn’t this also what the Civil Rights groups attempted to do in the
60’s with “Non-violence?” What did it
all prove? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, and that
was over forty years ago! Those who
are racist want no more to do with learning about how to treat Blacks and other
people of color than with wanting to learn about equal opportunities and
justice for all.
It’s no accident that all Black countries are
underdeveloped or, in the case of South Africa, economically controlled by
Whites to make the Blacks second-class citizens. It’s no accident that Blacks and other people of color make up
the poor and the destitute in these United States and the World. Think about it! This is a World for the survival of the fittest Whites – not
Blacks, as wealthy Blacks are no more in control than are ghetto Blacks. What can Oprah, Cosby, or any of the
wealthy Black celebrities do for Black Folks other than assist in the
Reparations Movement. We have
congressional representatives who can’t make it to first base with Congressman
Conyer’s H.R. 40. That speaks volumes
about how much control Blacks have in government or in any matters that affect
our lives. And you can bet that the
powers-that-be choose to keep it that way.
Even Affirmative Action was schemed to work against
us, and those who actually prospered from this arrangement to correct past
injustices against Blacks were White Women.
Hence, Affirmative Action panned out not to be the “tool”
necessary to improve conditions for Blacks who live in the White society. But we don’t hear any outcry from these
White Women about how unfairly the program worked for Blacks, do we? Not in another hundred years will the
White-powers-that-be succumb to and live up to the motto: “Justice for All” in
these United States or in this present World System. Hence, we must demand Reparations for the atrocities of the
Slave Trade – AND WE MUST BE FIRM AND ADAMANT ABOUT IT! The leaders of the countries that
participated in human bondage and our continued pain and suffering must be held
accountable, and that’s all there is to it!
Let’s learn from our mistakes. Let’s not permit those in power to establish
any more useless plans for Blacks that are without substance and that negatively
affect us and the lives of our children.
We don’t need any more false senses of justice. Our objective is to acquire Reparations
for the insane TransAtlantic Slave Trade, so let’s stick to that goal until it
is won. And when our Representatives
for Reparations go to Durban, South Africa for the World Conference Against
Racism (WCAR), at all costs it is imperative that they be relentless in
keeping the focus on OUR demand for Reparations. This “Debt” is long overdue and must be paid, and we cannot
allow Whites to continue to pass the buck and not be responsible for their
crimes against us. If we are not given
an opportunity to speak on this issue in Durban, South Africa, then we will be
faced with the racism and discrimination for which we go to WCAR to
eliminate. You can be sure that the
powers-that-be will be out in mass to sabotage our every effort
to put and keep Reparations and Racism against Blacks on the table. We all know this, therefore,
Representatives of Descendants of Slaves, be prepared, have a plan of action,
and make those of us who can’t attend proud of your efforts.
It is imperative that we acquire Reparations and use
these monies to establish admirable and worthwhile Communities/Settlements
(comparable to those the US tax dollar builds in Israel), educational systems,
quality health care, farms, and small businesses, be they in the United States,
in friendly countries, or in Africa. Only WE have the ability to change what
Whites think about Blacks.
BLACKS ARE NOT INFERIOR TO WHITES! And
it’s absolute nonsense to believe that we need their expertise to survive in
this World. There is no question that
in this World, we will have to work WITH THEM but NOT UNDER THEM. Just take a look at the scholarship and
fascinating proposals that surface in the issues of this REPNOW
Newsletter.
***
If the powers-that-be do not demonstrate that we
deserve justice in the form of Reparations for the atrocities of the
TransAtlantic Slave Trade, then after the World Conference Against Racism
(WCAR) in Durban, South Africa, our next trip has got to be to a Belgian court
to sue the United States and all countries that took part in the TransAtlantic
Slave Trade.
For those of you who are not aware of this being a
possibility, please know that Belgium has a unique 1993 law that allows the
Belgian court to try people, regardless of their nationality, for genocide and
other crimes against humanity. As many as 100 million Blacks lost their
lives enroute to Slave Ships, on the Middle Passage, and in the countries where
they were forced to serve as Slaves.
Countries responsible for these deaths and that prospered from those
Slaves who survived the degradation and humiliation of the voyage and enslavement
must pay for their crimes. The atrocities
and injustices that our forbears endured and that we continue to endure cannot
be dismissed. Let the White society
know that we are not going to shut up until they put up Reparations!
JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED! And if descendants of the Slave Masters yet enjoy the benefits
from the free labor of those who were enslaved, then our job is to do what
White Jews continue to do which is go after the descendants of the guilty
parties! It wouldn’t be difficult at all to list the companies/businesses
that existed during the days of Slavery and prove their involvement in this
institution of Slavery. If we are going
to fight this battle, we must fight on ALL FRONTS! We must use every weapon at our disposal, therefore, let’s
also present our case to the United Nations (the international community) to
tell the WHOLE SORDID TRUTH about forced migration and ethnic cleansing,
racism, and all that this has entailed, and then let’s take our case to all
the Courts – every last one of them!
By all means necessary, WE HAVE GOT TO MAKE OUR CASE AND BE
COMPENSATED FOR THE DISPLACEMENT AND CRUEL ENSLAVEMENT OF OUR FOREBEARS, FOR
LOSS OF OUR FREEDOM AND LIBERTY, AND FOR BEING LEFT PEONS IN THIS WORLD.
Those of us who wish to leave the United States or
other European countries have got to be given the right to relocate to
countries of our choosing and with Reparations, or we are still captives of the
countries responsible for stealing us out of Africa. And those
who wish to remain in the lands of our captors must be given an opportunity to
enjoy an equal distribution of wealth and empowerment and pursue a genuine
happiness. Slim chance, I hate to tell
you, but if Blacks remain in lands where our forebears were enslaved, you may
as well be prepared to continue an even greater fight to be accepted in the
countries built by Slave labor.
Finally, I have to admire Mawusi’s (Rhazard) desires
to establish a 55th State in Africa for Descendants of Slaves to
build a Nation of which Blacks can be proud.
Don’t frown on his efforts, as they make a lot of sense. His desires have fascinating merit that can
prove to be exactly what is needed to rise above the frustrations,
humiliations, and indignities Blacks face in White Societies. Give Mawusi a chance and lend your expertise
to his plans. By the way, if riots are
taking place all over this World, DO NOT rule out this also happening in the
United States. With police brutality
and murder of Blacks, racial profiling, and increasing knowledge of more and
more acts of atrocities and injustices
committed against African Americans, this place is fast becoming a ticking time
bomb that can go off at any time and in any place. Also take to heart what is being said about the need for a
Missile Defense Program. If the US has
a need to worry about being attacked, then Blacks should have a need to leave
this horrible place. Therefore,
Descendants of Slaves desperately need a State in Africa that’s stable and safe
for Blacks to start anew, but this time with the use of the Black “mind,” for
assured prosperity and progress for the benefit of all Black Peoples and for
the World. Somebody has got to end
the pollution and the destruction of people, animals, and living matter on this
Earth. We may as well set the stage and
the example, as no one else is doing it!
*********
Work with me, work with others, but let’s all work
TOGETHER for the betterment of Blacks all over the World. Either we attain this goal and be
successful and prosperous Black Peoples, or we can continue on the destructive
paths headed for the demise of Black Peoples that Descendants of the Slave
Masters have paved for us.
Many, many thanks to everyone making an
effort to do their part and/or work with others for Reparations.
Don’t forget to send me FEEDBACK regarding your meetings, Conferences,
dialogues, and debates, so that everyone can be informed of the progress of
Reparations’ activities and affairs.
By the way, make it your business to attend as many
Reparations Conferences as possible in order to be in the know, learn new
ideas, network, and pass the word along:
REPARATIONS NOW IN OUR LIFETIME!
Just one more thing, kindly realize that this
is OUR “Reparations” Newsletter. As much as I’d like to publish all the articles that come my way
regarding the injustices we face in White Societies, please know that I just
can’t. I must dedicate this Newsletter
to the “Reparations” Fight for Descendants of Slaves and our Liberation. Thank you for your support in this
regard.
Tziona
Yisrael, Editor
REPARATIONS NOW
IN OUR LIFETIME Newsletter
www.thelawkeepers.org
(Click on
“Repnow”)
***
If anyone has a list of E-mail
addresses of University and College Black Student Unions, please advise: Afraqueen@AOL.COM.
*********
June 19, 2001
Declaring
the Slave Trade a Crime Against Humanity:
In
September of this year in Durban, South Africa, the United Nations will hold
what could be one of the most momentous events of the 21st century, the World
Conference on Racism. Thousands of
people from around the world are expected to attend a conference, which will
address one of the most malignant maladies to plague the darker peoples of the
world historically - racism and white supremacy.
People
of African descent and other people of color from the developing world are
anxious to discuss the past and present effects of the castigation and
oppression of groups of people on the basis of skin color. As might be expected, the United States and many of
the nations of Europe are casting a leery eye towards the conference for fear
that the issue of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and the demand for
"restitution" will become a dominant theme of the proceedings. Indeed,
the United States is taking extraordinary steps to prevent the slave trade and
the question of reparations from appearing on the agenda at all.
This
is proving to be a difficult task. Spearheaded by veteran human rights
activists and organizers from the December 12th Movement and the National Black
United Front, a formidable coalition of organizations is mounting a determined
effort not only to ensure that the slave trade and restitution are on the
agenda, but in a bold and visionary move, these organizations are pressing for
the introduction and passage of a resolution at the World Conference on Racism
that would declare the Trans-Atlantic slave trade a "crime against
humanity."
The
prospects that such a resolution will pass is causing grave trepidations in the
United States and among the circle of nations which are culpable in the most
horrendous holocaust in human history.
Without question, the passage of this resolution will provide an unassailable
moral foundation for the call for reparations. Equally important, this
resolution will also provide legal undergirding for the demand for reparations
in international law since there is no statute of limitations on crimes against
humanity. Hence, the argument that the slave trade was a long time ago and
therefore should not be subject to litigation or other forms of redress will be
severely undermined.
There
should be no question about the veracity of the claim that the Trans-Atlantic
slave trade was a crime against humanity. By some estimates more than 100 million Africans lost their lives
during the holocaust of enslavement. Beyond the unthinkable loss of life
however, in "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa," Walter
Rodney documents the devastating effects of the slave trade on African people
in terms of the disruption and destruction of families, communities and
nations, the distortion of social, economic and political relations and the
loss of "development opportunity."
The
economies of Europe and America developed off the free labor of enslaved
Africans while the continent of Africa was pillaged, ravished and
underdeveloped. Rodney recounts that
whole industries and cities were born and flourished as a consequence of the
involvement of Britain and France in the enslaving and trafficking of Africans.
Concurring with Rodney, Eric Williams in "Capitalism and
Slavery" documents how the fruits of the lucrative Triangular
Trade made huge fortunes for Europeans in the Caribbean and North America,
particularly New England. An entire continent was demonized, demoralized,
devastated and hurled backward in history by the holocaust of enslavement.
Once
in this hemisphere, enslaved Africans destined for North America were subjected
to a slave breaking process which not only involved raw naked terror and
intimidation but cultural aggression, the calculated attempt to dehumanize and
de-Africanize the African. Malcolm
X once said that of all the crimes committed by Europeans against Africans, the
greatest crime was to take away our names.
By that assertion Malcolm meant the effort to destroy our culture.
Our
ancestors were forbidden to speak in their native tongue, to practice
indigenous religions or to play African musical instruments. In addition, our
ancestors were taught that their African heritage tainted them and that their
color was a "badge of degradation." Any White person, no matter what their status or station in life was to
be respected and obeyed at all times. And, as chattels, property, our ancestors
could be sold and traded at will with no obligation to keep families together.
There should be no question but that the slave trade was a crime against
humanity. Slave labor made America prosperous while destroying and
stagnating the lives of the captive sons and daughters of Africa in this
country; a crime compounded by the fact that we were eventually
"emancipated" without compensation, no forty acres and mule, no
property or capital in a growing capitalist economy, whose explosive growth was
directly attributable to the free labor of our ancestors.
Europe
and America know that they owe African people a debt too enormous to be
calculated. But like cowards, they
continue to refuse to take responsibility for their dastardly deeds. And, they
will continue to refuse to acknowledge their crimes until the victims of the
holocaust of enslavement unite and fight to compel the perpetrators to confess,
apologize and make suitable compensation.
It
is for this reason that African people, other historically oppressed people and
our allies must transform the World Conference on Racism into a forum for
discussing the greatest crime against humanity in history. In so doing, we will
build momentum for the just and righteous demand for reparations for Africans
in America and the world!
Contributed by:
ronmae@aol.com (Ron Daniels)
rdaniel@ccr-ny.org,
ronmae@aol.com
worker-brc-news@lists.tao.ca
brc-news@lists.tao.ca
http://www.tbwt.com/content/article.asp?articleid=911
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The
Black World Today
http://www.tbwt.com/content/article.asp?articleid=965
CREATORS
SYNDICATE
Contributed
by AlArkam@webtv.net
***
[Black Slaves were first used throughout the Thirteen Colonies and were then supplied to so-called Southern gentlemen – also known as Slave Masters. And let’s not forget that the North also reaped benefits from this heinous Slavery. People should realize that many European countries participated in the TrasnsAtlantic Slave Trade, and those who indulged in Slavery in their mother countries emigrated to the United States and most perpetuated the crime. But we don’t hear about these culprits, as they are assumed to be innocent in this matter. However, the United States is guilty as sin, all because this atrocity took place on US soil and with the US government stamp of approval.
And don’t believe the hype that $ 6 trillion were spent on welfare mothers who were politely placed in welfare projects. We aren’t stupid!!! Just as the Pentagon wastes $ 700 of taxpayer’s money for a hammer, obviously these trillions of dollars went into the pockets of the White Folks on the watch. If Blacks had this kind of money, they wouldn’t be living in rat-infested projects or in slums. Please know that Black “criminals” are victims of this unjust society of “Privileged Haves.” Good try, Ms. Charen, but your article with its weak analogy doesn’t fly – not even with Blacks of minimal intelligence. T.Y., Editor]
*********
BROAD RANGE OF TACTICS
Successful
liberation movements have always employed a broad range of tactics to achieve
their goals: educational campaigns, political campaigns and cultural campaigns. They
also typically operate effectively at several different levels at the same
time: the grass-roots level, the national level and the international level. Today the Movement to obtain Reparations for
all African-Americans shows the potential of developing into the most
successful liberation movement which has ever sought justice for the
long-oppressed Black masses, whose ancestors were brought to America in chains
in 1555.
The
focus of this Movement has been educating and mobilizing our people throughout
the length and breadth of the USA, and more recently throughout the Americas. In preparatory conferences leading up to the World
Conference Against Racism, we have seen African-Americans from the United
States linking hands and mapping strategies with African-Americans from Central
America, the Caribbean, and South America.
We have also witnessed African-American leaders delivering oral and
written interventions before diverse United Nations bodies, including the
Working Group On Minorities and the Human Rights Commission. These interventions have exposed the diverse
ways in which the U.S. government has practiced genocide, ethnocide and forced
assimilation upon our people--while pretending to be keenly interested in
improving race relations. In his
April 12th 2001 intervention in the Geneva, Mr. Silis Muhammad asked that the
U.N. place a Reparations Sanction upon the U.S. government. On May 3rd 2001, the U.N. voted the USA off
the Human Rights Commission.
The
strongest aspect of the battle for Reparations emphasizes that this is a
struggle for the Restoration of a people who were robbed of their mother
tongue, original religion and original culture. In other
words, Reparations concerns far more than mere money. We are demanding justice in the broadest sense from the U.S.
government. We want both the U.S.
government and U.N. to acknowledge our collective political identity and the
need for Reparations to be defined by the African-American victims, not by the
oppressor.
In
truth, we need our own government and economy on some of this Earth that we can
call our own. We also want membership
in the United Nations.
While
we are focusing on educating and mobilizing our people, we should never
overlook the many tactics which our adversaries have historically employed to
side-track and destroy genuine liberation movements. The
government of President George Bush is keenly aware and deeply afraid of the
growing momentum of the Reparations Movement and its appeal to
African-Americans of diverse classes and persuasions. Many white media have
failed to even mention once the critical interventions which have been going on
inside the United Nations since 1998.
Others have suggested that maybe Blacks can receive restitution in the
form of educational "benefits" and "health care" benefits
to be determined by Caucasian America.
However, a growing number of our people do acknowledge that this
would be a far cry from real justice, namely full-strength Reparations and
self-determination.
As
the legal and spiritual war for justice unfolds on diverse levels, our people
should not hesitate to expose the U.S. government, private corporations and the
wicked mass media (e.g. ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post,
the Boston Globe and many others) who have been systematically hiding the scope
of the Reparations Movement for years. African-Americans are well within our rights
to insist that all media comprehensively cover our liberation movement and to
legally chastise those who fail to do so.
Peace Be Unto The Righteous,
Minister Malik Al-Arkam
Boston Representative of the
Honorable Silis Muhammad
www.afre-ngo.org
*********
NATIONAL BLACK UNITED FRONT (NBUF)
REPARATIONS, AND BLOCK-BY-BLOCK
ORGANIZING
The National Black United Front (NBUF) is preparing for
the Twenty-second Annual National Convention to be held in San Francisco,
California from July 12-15, 2001. Since the launching of the NBUF Genocide
Campaign in October of 1996, NBUF has become one of the leading
organizations in the reparations movement, working closely with the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in
America (N`COBRA), in the United States and throughout the African World
Community.
NBUF’s
work in the Reparations Movement has intensified through our alliance with the
December 12th Movement in organizing to participate in the upcoming United
Nations World Conference Against Racism that will be held August 31 – September
1, 2001 in Durban, South Africa.
Over
the past two years, the December 12th Movement, with the support of NBUF, has
effectively made public, throughout the world, the African Group Resolution
that takes the position that the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and Slavery was
a Crime Against Humanity, and the Economic Roots of Racism should be examined.
In this context, we take the position that African people are owed
reparations throughout the world.
Currently, the
December 12th Movement and NBUF, along with African Governments, Non
Governmental Organizations (NGO’s), the African and African Descendents Caucus,
are fighting for the above positions to be included in the World Conference
Against Racism (WCAR) Durban Declaration. Obviously, led by the United
States, the European Union is opposed to the inclusion of these positions in
the Durban Declaration. They don’t want to admit that the Trans Atlantic Slave
Trade and Slavery was a Crime and that African people are owed reparations.
Our
voices have been made loud and clear as we continue our organizing work to
participate in the WCAR. In this regard, the theme of this year’s NBUF
Convention is:
Reparations: The Key to the African Struggle—
Building a Black Mass Movement through Block-By-Block Organizing.
The
central focus of this convention
is to address the growing organizing taking place in this country, and
worldwide, around the various demands and strategies in the worldwide African
Reparations Movement. To facilitate organization of our people, a primary
concern of this conference is the concept of "Block-By-Block
Organizing."
The
growing demand for reparations relates to the continued governmental and
corporate racist policies providing a rationale for the increased demand for
reparations, above and beyond slavery and the slave trade, and what happened to
African people before the Civil War. Therefore, in line with our theme, the
convention will address issues and strategies for organizing our people around
the case for reparations as a means of addressing the larger issue of
mobilizing our people for the liberation of African people worldwide.
Time
has a way of moving forward and it’s hard to believe that NBUF has been in
existence twenty–two years. It is a
remarkable achievement that a Black Movement organization made up of committed
volunteers, with limited resources, has survived and continues to grow and
develop.
NBUF
grew out of the spirit of the 1960’s and 70’s when African people in this
country were aggressively organizing around numerous issues. The activism of
the Civil Rights Movement and its challenges against legal segregation was a
spark that set off the mass motion of African people in America.
Over
this twenty-two year period, NBUF has organized around the following
principles:
To struggle for self determination,
liberation, and power for Black People in the United States.
To work in common struggle with
African liberation movements and African people throughout the world.
To build a politically conscious,
unified, committed, and effective Black mass movement.
To struggle to eliminate racism
(including Zionism and Apartheid), sexism (the oppression, exploitation, and
inequality of women), monopoly capitalism, colonialism, and neo–colonialism,
imperialism, and national oppression.
To maintain strict political and
financial independence of the National Black United Front.
To build unity and common struggle
with oppressed peoples in the United States and throughout the world, as long
as the best interests of people of African descent are not contradicted or
compromised.
To continue to struggle to maximize
the unity of the Black Liberation Movement and of people of African descent; to
eliminate internal violence, character assassination, and self-destruction; to
establish a viable process to arbitrate all major conflicts within the Black
Liberation Movement and the African community.
To continue the political/cultural
revolution to create a new vision and value system and a new man, woman, and
child based on the common struggle around the needs of the African majority.
NBUF
believes that in order for Black people in America to become free, liberated,
and independent, we must be organized.
Therefore, we believe all Black people should join an organization that is
working in the interest of our people. We believe that the National Black
United Front is such an organization and we urge you to join us and participate
in our Twenty–second National Convention.
Conrad Worrill
National Chairman
National Black United
Front (NBUF)
Contributed by
amcgee@well.com (Art McGee)
*********
News
Report from AFRE, June 2001
May has been a month of real progress in the reparations
movement. Clearly the movement has reached the point where a new question
is emerging. The question is not
reparations yes or no. Yes is the answer,
and the world now knows it. The new
question is... reparations for what?
Four
notable things occurred during the month: 1) The Reparations
Mobilization Campaign announced that it is organizing a seminar. Reparations seminars are not new, but this
one is unusual in that it seeks to be inclusive of leadership voices that have
previously been excluded. It appears
that the organizers are sincerely working to raise the standard of reparations
seminars. 2) Mr. Randall
Robinson, author of The Debt, was uplifted on television at the
Essence Image Awards ceremony for his reparations advocacy. This step taken by Essence Magazine tells
white America that all levels of Black society are behind reparations. 3) Dr. Ray Winbush of Fisk University
reported that a number of organizations of African Americans from the
Diaspora gathered themselves into the World Council of Churches headquarters in
Geneva, Switzerland, and in their meeting they all agreed that reparations are
due. The organizations were in
Geneva to attend the 2nd preparatory meeting for the World Conference Against
Racism. 4) One week earlier Mr.
Silis Muhammad was at the UN in Geneva, Switzerland representing African
Americans from the U.S. at the invitation of the United Nations Working Group
on Minorities. At this special
informal session, which was the first UN forum for African Americans in history,
the UN experts helped Black leaders from the Americas Region begin to
understand their position.
The
reparations movement is maturing, and as it does, the more refined question of
reparations "for what" emerges. Most people, including white
Americans, believe that reparations are for the horrors of the slave trade, for
the free labor of slavery, for the degradation of segregation, the lynchings,
the racial discrimination, and the many other injustices surrounding the ongoing
Black holocaust. When reparation is
demanded for these things, ample moral argument is established. Most advocates stand on the moral platform.
In
an effort to create a legal argument, a number of reparations organizations
have directed their minds toward the UN World Conference Against Racism. They
reason that if the trans-Atlantic slave trade is declared a crime against
humanity, the way will be opened for the moral arguments to become legal
arguments for reparations. It is
agreed that such a declaration would bring about numerous claims for damage,
especially against governments that have ratified the International Covenant on
the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against
Humanity. (The U.S. Government has
never ratified it.) Those who are watching
the World Conference know that there is great fighting over declaring the
trans-Atlantic slave a crime against humanity.
Although many predict that the final documents will not grant such
recognition, the results will not be known until September.
Another
answer to the question of reparations "for what" does provide a legal
argument for the restoration of human rights and reparations. This is the argument that the Working Group
on Minorities responded to four years ago when it was brought by Mr. Muhammad. He argued that international law protects
the rights of minorities to their language, culture and religion, i.e., their
collective identity. The
identity of African Americans was destroyed with the destruction of the 'mother
tongue' and through forced mixed breeding.
As a result, African Americans do not enjoy collective human
rights. This makes the damage to
African Americans current, affecting all, and ongoing. It is the duty and obligation of the United
Nations to grant human rights to everyone, everywhere, and the experts of the
Working Group on Minorities know this.
It is their profession, and their belief, and they are obliged to take a
stand on behalf of African Americans.
This they did in May of 2001.
Readers
may be asking themselves, how does it benefit African Americans to have their
collective political identity restored as a part of reparations? When African
Americans are internationally recognized, and their human rights as a group are
restored, depending upon the will of the people, different levels of self
determination can be negotiated with the U.S. Government. Under UN protection
and with assistance, this can be accomplished peacefully, without the fear of
reprisal, forcible separation or secession.
African Americans have a human right to live according to their own
collective will, and this human right must be established for reparations to
accomplish what reparations should accomplish.
The
reparations "for what" question comes into its clearest perspective
when viewed from the future. One
hundred years from now the descendants of today's African Americans will look
back. Will they be able to know
themselves as a distinct human family among the many families of the
earth? Today's reparations movement
decides that question.
In
this time of reparations progress, there is great danger that the U.S.
Government will manipulate, co-opt and redirect the reparations movement, so
that the highest potential of the movement will be lost. African
Americans are risen as a new people, in possession of the most profound
knowledge that can be gained from living life: the knowledge of the victory of
the human spirit over the greatest possible adversity. This knowledge is precious to life itself. As a part of their reparations, African
Americans must demand recognition of themselves collectively. They must gain an internationally recognized
political identity and the power over their own future that goes with such
recognition.
********
We
hope you feel the desire to support the work of AFRE. Since we do not
receive
corporate or government funding, we must depend upon the
contributions
of the public. In the month of June we
are in urgent need of
travel funds. Instruction on how to contribute can be found at www.afre-ngo.org.
Contributed by Hakimida@a... [mailto:Hakimida@a...]
*********
Dejoser
*********
FEEDBACK ON
THE CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS (CBC)
MEETING
ON THE DURBAN CONFERENCE
Tuesday, June 19, 2001
Opening Remarks
Tuesday June 19, 2001
Washington, D.C.
Welcome,
and let the spirit of Juneteenth pervade our discussions here today.
I
am pleased to introduce my colleagues who are with us this morning. More will
come throughout the morning.
The
World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) to be held in late August this year in
Durban, South Africa is an important world event. It seeks to focus world attention on examining
the causes of racism as well as providing an opportunity for nations to
formulate practical measures to prevent, and where possible, to eradicate
racism and other discriminatory practices.
What
could be more important than for the family of nations to come together as one
and to seek to end racism in the world today.
The
United States should fulfill its leadership position as a major world power and
attend the conference. We should send a delegation consisting of highly
respected and extremely capable individuals who hold high aspirations and deep
convictions on ending the scourge of racism in the world today.
The
Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) can play a critical role in ensuring that this
current administration fully appreciates the importance of this World Conference
to people of color in this country.
The members of the CBC all represent districts affected by poverty and
race hatred, stricken with over crowding, violence and all the other familiar
ills of modern black urban life.
To
our nations great shame it has had much experience with racism. That experience spans almost every generation of our
nation’s history - from the early years of slavery during the establishment of
our nation, through the apartheid practices of the southern US states and
finally through the Federal Government’s physical destruction of the black
political movement here in this country during the 1960’s and 1970’s.
But our nation’s journey with racism will not end until it
faces the truth of its past. By drawing upon our nation’s history and
forging with it a willingness to confront these horrible truths, our delegation
should be able to make substantive contributions to the World Conference forums
examining the causes of racism, as well as, help formulate strategies to end
racism in the world today.
I
wish to briefly address two important issues which I think should
feature as center points in our discussion today:
From
1490 until about 1870 one of the most elaborate maritime and commercial
ventures arose, a result of which 30-60 million black men, women and children
were enslaved in Africa and carried packed in ships wearing leg irons, in foul
over crowded conditions and transported to the Americas to work on plantations,
in mines or as servants in fine houses. Tragically, many tens of millions of
them did not survive the journey and died en route during the Middle Passage
from disease, cruel treatment and the rigors of sea travel.
Slavery
stretched several hundred years, involved every maritime European nation, every
Atlantic-facing African people (and some others), and every country of the
Americas. On any view, this Slave Trade must rank as one of the greatest crimes
of all time.
Upon
arrival in the Americas black families were broken up, men separated from their
wives, and mothers and fathers permanently separated from their children. These slaves then suffered the further indignity of
losing their African names, as well as, their own histories, cultures and
languages.
Their
combined labors generated fabulous wealth for their white masters and they
provided much of the financial foundation for modern America. Despite
centuries of back breaking labor, black Americans never shared in the wealth
and instead, to this day, remain poorer than whites, enjoy lower standards of
living, suffer lower standards of health care and figure disproportionately in
incarceration levels in our State and Federal prisons.
Incredibly,
this history of slavery is largely unknown to the vast majority of Americans. Our nation has refused to confront the enormity
of this crime and has instead sought to create the myth that slaves were better
off being manacled and brought to the Americas. Nothing is ever said of the
millions of slaves who died, of the destruction of whole African communities by
ill health, violence and separation. And nothing is ever said of the sheer
injustice that nations which committed this crime still to this day refuse to
even apologize for their conduct let alone pay reparations for the damage
caused by their actions.
I
remember only too well when Congressman Tony Hall introduced legislation asking
for the Congress to apologize for slavery. To my horror I overheard other
members on the house floor laughing behind Mr. Hall’s back because he was
foolish enough to introduce the Slavery Bill.
Not surprisingly the bill never got out of committee and was
never voted on.
One
other matter I think important for discussion in Durban is the Federal
Government’s COINTELPRO Program. Important research is revealing that during
the 1960’s and the 1970’s the FBI and other sections of the US military and
intelligence apparatus conducted a secret war against black political groups
and the Native American Movement. To our collective shame we are now learning
that the Federal Government conducted a secret, systematic and at times, savage
use of force and fraud against a small political minority exercising
fundamental freedoms considered sacred by our Constitution.
Many
of our black political leaders were wrongly accused of crimes and imprisoned,
and some were even murdered. The
black political movement in this country was totally destroyed by our own
government. The Native American Movement suffered the same fate.
What I am telling you about didn't happen in Nazi Germany
under Hitler, China under Mao, Chile under Pinochet or Uganda under Idi Amin.
No, it happened here in the United States.
That
this happened to people in this country in the 1960’s and 1970’s is no longer
conjecture. It is a shocking fact that the Federal Government wrongly
imprisoned and even murdered innocent black Americans.
On
this generation of Americans falls the burden of proving to the world that we
really mean it when we say that all men are created free and equal before the
law. The real history of slavery in this country must be publicly recorded
and there must be a reckoning with black America for its sacrifice in building
this nation to what it is today. In addition, our Federal Government should
reveal the truth about the full extent of the COINTELPRO program and make its
records open to public examination.
Contributed
by the Chief Elder
Much love to the Afrikan nation.
Hoteph
Osiris Akkebala
(p.a.i.'n)
*********
GENEVA,
(Reuters) - African rights activists said on Thursday [June 7, 2001] they would
press a world conference against racism to declare slavery and colonialism
"a double Holocaust" and would call for compensation from former
colonial powers.
Compensation
from countries active in the then legal slave trade of the 17th and 19th
centuries, such as France, Britain, Portugal and the United States, could take
the form of aid for development, they said.
Speaking
for African non-governmental organisations, Alioune Tine of Senegal, said the
impact of colonialism was one of the prime causes of Africa's economic
backwardness today.
He told a news conference: "We invite the world
conference to declare without hesitation that slavery and colonialism are a
double Holocaust and crimes against the humanity of African peoples."
International
non-governmental organisations (NGO) are meeting in Geneva to prepare a
common position to take to a United Nations "World Conference against
Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance" to be
held in Durban, South Africa from
August 31-September 7.
Activist Moshe More, also a member of an NGO steering
committee set up for Durban, said compensation would not necessarily mean cash
handouts to countries that suffered most from the slave trade.
A
key element of any reparation was recognition by slave states of the evils of
the trade when millions of Africans were shipped across the Atlantic in
miserable conditions to work in the United States, the Caribbean and South
America.
Rather
than cash payments, compensation could take the form of aid for development,
but without the usual strings and conditions attached when the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) or the World Bank lent money, More said.
But he declined
to be drawn on how much money African states should seek. "We are talking
principles, not figures," he said.
At
the same time in Geneva, representatives of U.N. member states are also seeking
to hammer out a draft text for Durban where the aim is to agree measures to
stamp out racism around the world.
Earlier
this week, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson said recent
race riots in the English town of Oldham gave a warning of what happens when
racism is left to fester.
Robinson,
who will chair the Durban conference, has herself called for slavery to be
labeled a crime against humanity and
the French parliament recently passed a bill condemning the practice in similar
terms.
But
diplomats said other developed countries were unwilling yet to say the same,
for fear that they could be exposed to lawsuits similar to those brought in the
name of Jewish victims of Nazi oppression before and during World War Two.
"We
are prepared for a form of words that acknowledges great wrongs of the past.
But compensation could be impossible in practice and could open up a legal can
of worms," said one European diplomat.
Former
President Bill Clinton admitted the U.S. role in slavery was wrong during an
African tour last year but he stopped short of offering an apology.
Negotiations
on the draft text were due to finish on Friday, but diplomats said they looked
like running into next week.
By Richard Waddington
Contributed by D12M and
universalwoman9@yahoo.com (Shemia)
***
[When White Folks wanted to get rich from the blood, sweat, tears, misery,
oppression, affliction, breeding of Black human beings, and the free labor of
Black Slaves, IT DID NOT
OPEN UP A “LEGAL CAN OF WORMS” nor was it ever a concern. However, it did open up a legacy
for generations of White Folks unto this day! T.Y., Editor]
*********
Hoteph
my Friends,
I
am a National Board Member for NCOBRA and have been out the dispute between the
D.C. Chapter and some Nationalist Leadership members in the organization. There appears to be serious issues in the
D.C. Chapter area with the National NCOBRA Leadership. I pray this
is an indication of our growing pains and not a power struggle. Sometimes I must subdue my passions and
engage within the decisions of the leadership for the best interest of the
body. The frustration with tactics and
disagreement in direction is rearing its ugly head in the leading mass
membership organization in the reparations movement. Is this a struggle between
ideologies with leadership identity using power and control as fuel for
battle???
I
don’t know. I believe we are moving
fast toward our success in winning reparations and the enemy has infiltrated to
divide and subdue the movement. As
an elected representative I must express the will of those I represent. As a Board Member I expect to deal with
these issues. I truly feel N’COBRA is a membership driven organization. We most definitely must hear from the
Membership at this critical time in the development of the organization and the
Reparations Movement.
Free
the mind....
Robert
(aka.. Mawusi)
NCOBRA
Bd. of Directors
So. East Regional Representative
***
[O, My People, we are so close to achieving our
goal. Do not permit the White
powers-that-be to divide us in our fight for Reparations for Descendants of
Slaves in our lifetime. And don’t
allow the desires for greed, power, and fame to cause us to miss this once in a
lifetime opportunity to finally get restitution for the TransAtlantic Slave
Trade, so that we can better ourselves as a Black People to be reckoned
with. Don’t YOU be the culprit
that surfaces to cause our failure in this regard. Don’t sell out, My Brothers and Sister! And don’t be our
stumbling blocks! Work with Reparations
Activists because this restitution will bring about improvements and prosperity
for Black Peoples all over the World.
We have been the tail of the White dominant society long enough, and we
have been used and abused long enough!
Tziona Yisrael, Editor]
*********
Hoteph My Beloved Brothers
And Sisters:
Let
us get one thing straight whether we want to deal with the truth of this matter
or not, reparation is nationalistic in and of itself. Reparation is not an
individual or group thing. It is and
must be an Afrikan thing. Reparation
is not to be treated as if we are seeking a welfare check! It is more than being about "getting
paid." It would be patently dishonest on our part if we turn this noble
cause into a yours and my thing. Reparation must be for what it really means
and that is to repair the wrong that has been caused to the Afrikan Nation by
the act of slavery.
Reparation
must be used so that it can be used to begin to repair the whole of the Afrikan
Nation. Our enslaved Ancestors had
no love for america and most certainly did not desire to assimilate with this
devilish being who had snatched them out of the arms of their mothers and
fathers at the barrel of a gun and the dripping of blood from knives and in the
process they destroyed an entire Nation, from soul to flesh. Oh yes reparation
in and of itself must represent repairment of the Afrikan Nation.
Reparation has
nothing to do with an agenda it has to do with what is naturally right and that
right has the voices of our enslaved Ancestors screaming GO HOME, TAKE ME HOME,
AND IF WE CAN NOT HEAR THEIR PLEA THEN WE HAVE YET TO FREE OUR SOUL FROM THE
SHACKLES IT IS ENTANGLED IN BY THE EVIL ACT OF OUR OPPRESSORS.(please not
screaming)
If
reparation is not an Afrikan Nationalist issue then what is it? Do I hear you
saying that it is (reparation) for what ever you so desire it to be used for?
Do I hear us to say that the Ancestors would if they could, would embrace you
for using their suffering so that we can advance our privileges under the
authority of this american fool and in the process advance our desire to
assimilate with this secondary statue of a human being? Do I hear us
opposing the use of reparation for the creation of the 55th state to the
Afrikan Union, qualified and prepared to move out from that position to resurrect
with dignity and reunite the Afrikan Nation?
Yes,
we are divided on a very sacred and noble issue, reparation, and how we handle
this issue will determine the tomorrow's condition of the Afrikan Nation. We
either can be hailed as great Afrikan visionaries or flawed and corrupted
Afrikan american capitalist. So tell me my brothers and sisters which will it
be!!! Also I do not think we should reveal our ideas of how we see us
extracting good out of the hands of evil, not on the wide world web. Only the
wise and the unselfish will be able to understand what has just been
written.
It
Is The Black Fool Who Say I Have Lost Nothing In Afrika!!-osiris A fool is verified by the action taken,
after which it become a statement of fact.-osiris May the gods our Ancient Afrikan Ancestors guide us and protect
us from all hurt, harm and danger.
Much love to the Afrikan
Nation.
Hoteph Osiris Akkebala
Chief Elder
(p.a.i.'n)
Contributed by
ahna58@hotmail.com (Ahna Tafari)
*********
WINNING THE HEARTS, MINDS, AND
SUPPORT
OF OUR PEOPLE
FOR AFRICAN REPARATIONS AND
LIBERATON
Observations and Recommendations for the National
Coalition of Blacks
for Reparations in America
May 2001
Submitted by
Odinga Howard Hamilton
Wautella ibn Yusuf
Kibibi Tyehimba
Productive Work is the Only thing that Works
To
successfully achieve Reparations for Africans-Americans, it is crucial that we
approach our struggle in four stages. Each stage must be addressed at the
appropriate time in our development, although sometimes these stages overlap,
we should be clear of the main focus given the stage we are in. Failure to recognize this fact could
jeopardize the entire effort. The
four major stages of the struggle to win Reparations are:
a. Build a
Strong Reparations Organization -
Recruit and retain a committed, capable, well informed and disciplined core
membership, i.e. N'COBRA and other community based organizations.
b. Create
and Sustain a Mass Black Following: If Reparations are due for slavery and
the injustices against Black People, Africans in America should first recognize
the injustices, the worthiness of African Reparations, and be willing to give
our support before thinking others should.
c. Gain Significant National and Global
Support: America is concerned with maintaining its false, noble
international image; we should challenge it, e.g. Civil Rights Movement. We should create and sustain strategic
alliances.
d.
Win Reparations!: Through the application of massive internal
and external pressure, followed by well-planned attacks using litigation,
legislation, and lobbying, we will win Reparations.
History
has proven we must be prepared to wage our battle on many fronts at the same
time (local, national, international, litigation, legislation, etc.). At the
present time, the most realistic, practicable, and expeditious route to moving
us closer to our goal of Reparations is in the Legislative arena. However, to achieve success we must
simultaneously direct our energy toward the mandate of our National By-Laws,
which is to educate, organize, and mobilize a national constituency and form
coalitions with other organizations who have the same goal. Ultimately, the
final battlefronts in our struggles for Reparations must be waged in the Courts
and the Legislature.
The
class action lawsuit will be conducted in the State and Federal Courts of the
United States - District Courts, U.S. Courts of Appeal and finally the Supreme
Court. For most of the last 30 years all three levels of the Federal
courts have been appointed by Republican Presidents and can fairly be
characterized as reactionary to out right racist. This is especially the case with the Supreme Court - the last
arbiter of a lawsuit for Reparations.
Progressive political analysts would agree that this is the most
reactionary Supreme Court since the Taney Court rendered the Dread Scott
decision in which they stated black people have no rights which white people
are bound to respect. The present
Supreme Court is rapidly moving to create a Second Reconstruction. We should anticipate the Federal Courts
being further "stacked" by the present conservative president. We must be mindful Federal judges are given
a lifetime tenure to insulate them from public and political pressure. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect the
present character of the courts to continue for the next 30 years.
To
date, lack of sufficient funding has hampered the N'COBRA Legal Committee’s
efforts to fight on the legal battlefield. It is estimated a minimum of
$200,000 must be on hand before any lawsuits can be filed. However, recently there have been other
black attorneys who’ve expressed an interest in engaging in the battle for
Reparations. The recently formed Reparations
Coordinating Committee (RCC), on which representatives of N'COBRA sit, includes
Atty. Randall Robinson and several other high profiled, nationally known
attorneys who’ve indicated they have the funds and the intent to file a
Reparations lawsuit. Despite the
intent of the RCC there is still discussion about the N'COBRA Legal Committee
continuing on with its efforts. I
believe it is time for us to ask ourselves some critical questions:
a. Until we are
able to significantly increase membership, which also translates into working
capital, do we have immediate access to any other sources of funding to finance
the N'COBRA Legal Committee’s efforts?
b. If other
funding sources are not readily available, in light of the RCCs efforts,
N'COBRAs current level of membership, and the resulting inflow of
contributions, is it more expedient to support the efforts of the RCC, which
has the will and the financial resources available to move forward?
c. How can the
N'COBRA Legal Committee members work closely with the RCC particularly at the
present time, to ensure the ultimate goal of Reparations remains in the
forefront, and demonstrate to the supporters of Reparations, the movement is
progressing, getting stronger, and deserving of our support?
d. If N'COBRA is intended to be a Coalition of
Blacks for Reparations, is it not in the best interest of our people to
consolidate the lawsuits and fight as a unified front?
e. Ultimately,
if we are unable to forge a unified legal strategy, with other African
Americans working toward the same goal, can we realistically hope to rise to
the more difficult and complicated task of determining the most efficient and
effective methods of distributing Reparations Settlements, once we achieve our
goal?
Congressman John
Conyers, the sponsor of HR-40, has stated that the final resolution of this
issue will be in the Congress of the United States. We agree.
The
Legislative arena is designed to be more responsive to and reflect the will of
the masses. The Congress is where we can best translate
our organizing efforts into House and Senate votes in support of the passage of
HR-40. Therefore, we must organize a
strong, well disciplined, mobilized, committed, vociferous, and determined
lobby group in every critical congressional district to leverage political
support and votes for our cause. We
have to be prepared to "creatively irritate" the system when and
where it is necessary to get this country's attention and bring about
positive results.
The
more thoroughly we organize the less "irritation" we will have to
cause. It is the Good Ole American Way
that the squeaky wheel gets greased! Support
for Jewish Reparations was and still is supported by the U.S. Legislative and
Executive Branches, as evidenced by the 1998 creation of the President Advisory
Commission on Holocaust assets for the purpose of finding Holocaust-era assets
located in the U.S. U.S. District
Courts are ruling in favor of the Jewish plaintiffs in class action suits
claiming reparation settlement. U.S.
Tax Laws have been established to exempt reparation assets from federal income
taxes. Japanese American apology
and Reparations were organized in the U.S. Legislature. Much of the Native American, Eskimo, and
Aleut Reparations were organized and administered through the U.S.
Legislature. Legislative
resolutions have also been implemented in several other countries. The Rosewood, Florida apology and
Reparations to African Americans were organized and administered by the State
of Florida Legislature. The
Reparations Study Commission to investigate the Tulsa Oklahoma bombing of the
Black community was appointed and is being administered by the State of
Oklahoma Legislature. The U.S.
boycott of South Africa and aiding the eventual end of Apartheid was organized
in the U.S. Legislature after organized constituency groups such as
(Randall Robinson & Trans-Africa) "turned up the heat."
1. It is important that we align with other
groups, throughout the country, with Reparations on or near the top of their
agendas, if we expect to realize our common goals. Whether
Reparations is addressed by the Courts or the Congress, a "unified
constituency" will be critical in determining the structure of the
Reparations apparatus, and how concretely it speaks to the needs of our
people. We must remember N'COBRA is a
coalition of Blacks for Reparations, not a coalition of Black Nationalists for
Reparations. Since the Black community
is comprised of people from all walks of life, we should expect a wide range of
opinions and approaches to Reparations.
As Paul Robeson taught us, the battlefront is everywhere; there is no
covered rear. We should encourage
people to join us and support the cause in whatever ways they can. The cause for Reparations is a just
one. All Black people in America are
due Reparations, whether they realize it or not, and regardless of their
present state of mind.
2. Our
approach to other groups should be open and inclusive. Assuming there will soon
be a national debate on African American Reparations, we must rapidly
"make our case" to all potential supporters. The African American community must be
organized. The national and
international leadership of Africans, Caribbean, Hispanics, Native Americans,
and other social and political groups must be approached and secured as
supporters for our long overdue debt.
3. The existence of a vigilant, well organized,
mass base will determine whether we achieve true justice and adequate
restitution. Although there may be conflicting views on
which approach is more likely to bring success, we should agree an informed,
mobilized mass base is necessary for the success of either a lawsuit or
congressional legislation. Collectively,
we must plow the ground and plant the seeds, so that we might eventually reap
the harvest.
The
DC Chapter of N'COBRA proposes the following for consideration:
1. Commit more of N'COBRA's National Budget to
following the directive of the National By-Laws: building a constituency
(educating, organizing, and mobilizing the masses), and building coalitions
with other organizations. A highly organized, vociferous, mass
constituency is essential to the success of either a lawsuit or congressional
resolution of the issue. We should
concentrate on organizing our people on a mass scale, from the
"bottom-up." Our people
must be "forged" into a "mighty army" who fully believe in
our goal, and who will not be denied.
We must build the commitment and fervor that is reminiscent of the 60's
Civil Rights Movement. An informed,
organized, mobilized mass movement is much stronger than an organization that
is financed and directed by a few "big money donations."
2. Create a broader tiered membership
structure. In addition to the basic $10
annual membership fee, a tiered membership structure should be adopted which
encourages capable individuals to give the maximum amount possible. Each tier
should offer the donor varying levels of recognition, voting and/or other privileges,
etc. If adopted the change in fee
structure should be strongly publicized in a manner that demonstrates to
potential donors that their contributions move us all closer to our ultimate
goal of Reparations. Hopefully, this
approach will significantly increase our National Treasury.
3. Maximize output of local N'COBRA
committees. Initially, emphasis should be placed on
the Membership, Information and Education, and Legislative Committees. This approach will a) provide the
"workers" and "financial supporters", b) ensure the
membership is sufficiently informed on all the issues, c) create a continual
source of information for local chapter media and outreach efforts, d) provide
immediate projects on which the members can focus energy, and e) increase
local, state, and eventually national political support for HR-40.
4. Appoint a full time Executive Director and
a full time Clerical Assistant. The
salaries for these positions could be realized if a portion of the N'COBRA
membership would commit to monthly pledges of $10 to $100 a month for not more
than two years. These two administrators perform critical
tasks until a sufficient membership is organized to supplement the national
staff. (The organization should remain
primarily voluntary, but it is critical to have a full time Executive
Director.)
5. Adopt a National 800 Phone Number. This will greatly enhance communication between the
National, and Regional offices.
6. Investigate the feasibility of
teleconferencing or Internet video conferencing National Board Meetings. Transportation and lodging depletes this
organization’s limited resources. Use
of this media would greatly conserve limited time and money, and enable the
Board to respond to critical issues in a timely manner, as meetings could be
conducted more often if necessary.
Modify the National constitution and By-Laws accordingly.
7. Develop DC N'COBRA Chapter to its maximum
potential. Washington, DC is the
center of national and international politics, with a majority Black
population. Strategically, all N'COBRA
chapters should be able to rely on the DC chapter to provide maximum support of
initiatives requiring mass mobilization, lobbying, etc. The DC Chapter must realize its significance
and be encouraged to rise to the occasion.
Contributed by Rhazard988, N’COBRA and WAUTELLA
*********
2000
Statement of Attorney AbuBakr
May
22 – 26, 2000
Sixth session of the Working Group on Minorities Agenda
Item 3(b) Examining possible solutions to problems involving minorities Agenda
Item 3(c) Recommending further measures, as appropriate Greetings Mr. Chairman and members of the Working Group on Minorities,
I
am grateful for the opportunity to speak a second time before the Working Group
on Minorities. My name is Harriett AbuBakr. I am a descendant of slaves
in the United States of America. I speak as an Attorney, and founding member of
the National Commission for Reparations. My concern is with Agenda item 3
(b) examining possible solutions to problems involving minorities, and also
Agenda item 3 (c) further measures for the protection of persons belonging to
minorities which could act as examples or be replicated.
Article
1.1 of the Declaration on the Rights of Minorities says that, "States
shall protect the existence and the national or ethnic, cultural, religious and
linguistic identity of minorities within their respective territories and shall
encourage conditions for the promotion of that identity."
Professor
Edie in his commentary on the Declaration tells us that the first requirement
of Article 1.1 is to protect the right to existence in its physical sense and
the fourth requirement is to protect the identity. We African-Americans,
from the 400-year experience of plantation slavery, know that physical
existence has little value without identity. Therefore we are grateful that the
Declaration on the Rights of Minorities recognizes the importance of identity.
Our
experience is an example for the civilized world of a holocaust wherein
identity is exterminated. Within our
experience is the example of the means that a State can use to forcibly,
intentionally and permanently sever a people from their identity. Within
our experience is the example of how a people in such a deprived condition by
their very nature, and against terrible opposition, will seek without rest to
find their lost identity. Within our experience is the example of how a
State systematically, for the benefit of the majority, can obstruct the
attempts of a people to identify themselves. Within our experience is
the example of what extraordinary damage can be sustained when a people's
identity is lost and the identity of the majority is forced upon them.
Because
of our experience with plantation slavery, we know how human dignity is
attached to identity. We are a
people, living within the United States as a minority. Without identity we have
no legal/political status or recognition internationally, no respect from the
majority population domestically, and no dignity among our fellow human beings.
We
believe we can assist the Working Group on Minorities in defining the crime of
destruction of identity and understanding its consequences upon civilization as
a whole. Silis Muhammad refers to our current condition as civil death. We
want to be restored from civil death so that we might live again in dignity,
with respect. We believe we can help the Working Group on Minorities to
develop measures that might serve as a solution for us and as an example for
the civilized world.
African-Americans
have been seeking an identity as a people since emancipation from slavery more
than 100 years ago. Since that
time the majority population has called us niggers, negroes, colored, Black and
African-American. They have forced upon us the Christian religion, the English
language and the Anglo-American culture.
Simultaneously,
numbers of our people have searched far and wide trying to find an identity
that would better fit our nature. Among the more prominent identities that
we have claimed are Nubian Islamic Hebrews, Kemetic People, Hebrew Israelites,
Moors, Israelite Lawkeepers, Kushites and Asiatic Blackmen and women.
Politically our leaders have given us the United Negro Improvement Association,
Simbionese Liberation Army, Pan African Nationalists, Black United Front, Afrikan
People's Socialist Party, National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People, Uhuru Movement, Black Panther Party for Self Defense, Republic of New
Afrika, Black Radical Congress, New Black Panther Party and so on. Our leaders
have borrowed from the cultures of other identities as well as inventing the
Afrocentric and Rastafarian cultures. I am among those who have chosen the
family of Shabazz, the religion of Islam and the Government and culture of the
Lost Found Nation of Islam.
As
you can see, we are fractured into many pieces as a people. We have searched
and cried for collective identity while the U.S. Government has systematically
sought to keep any of our leaders from gaining too much influence. The U.S. Government has defamed the best of our
leaders and placed them in jail. While defaming or destroying our leaders, the
U.S. Government has put forth leaders of its own choice through use of the
media. The U.S. Government held us captive in plantation slavery, and it
captures us still through manipulation, both of our will and of those who would
help us around the world. Ours is a situation where conflict is certain if we
are unable to bring an end to our captivity.
For
some time Silis Muhammad has prayed that a forum for African-Americans be
established at UN Headquarters. He
has said that within a UN protected forum African-Americans can establish a
council or governing body amongst themselves, and within this council they can
begin the process of reclaiming or choosing our legal/political being and
status as a people. Surely the Working
Group on Minorities can now see the reason behind Mr. Muhammad's prayer.
Silis
Muhammad has also prayed that the UN place a reparation sanction upon the
United States. The demand for
reparation is becoming widespread among African-Americans. UN involvement
and protection is essential to us as we become ever more vulnerable to U.S.
Government manipulation of our will.
I
am here to ask the Working Group on Minorities to recognize us as a people and
a minority in need of special assistance. We have suffered from the loss of that very thing the Declaration on
the Rights of Minorities seeks to protect: identity. If our condition is not
of concern to the UN, then how can the minorities and peoples of the earth find
their protection in law that the UN creates? I am here to join Silis
Muhammad in his prayer for the appointment of an expert to engage in dialogue
with the United States on the subject of reparations. The National
Commission for Reparations asks the Working Group on Minorities to consider his
prayer and make a favorable recommendation to the Sub-Commission on behalf of
so-called African-Americans.
Thank
you Mr. Chairman.
Contributed by Yehudah
Benyamin Ben Yisrael
*********
Peace Brothers and Sisters,
Are you doing the work in your
community to help win Reparations Now In Our Lifetime???? There are many things you
can do. Make sure your membership in
N’COBRA is current. Participate in your
local N’COBRA Chapter. Start a
Chapter, if there isn’t one in your area.
Plan to attend the N’COBRA National Conference in Baton Rouge, Louisiana
on June 22-24, 2001 at Southern University. And
inform others about the Reparations Movement.
Robert
For
further information contact Rhazard988@AOL.COM
*********
…let's
work together to heighten this righteous call for justice.
Peace and
Power,
Ukali
*********
JOIN THE BLACK REPARATIONS MOVEMENT TODAY !
IT IS A WIN, WIN CASE FOR US!
Oscar L. Beard
*********
The
Reparations Movement’s goals are as follows:
-
Obtain Reparations from all countries that prospered from Black Slave
Labor
Schedule
Conferences, Marches, and Protests until the White Society apologizes and
compensates
Descendants of the Slave Trade
- Speak at the
United Nations on Reparations for Survivors of the Slave Trade in order
to gain
International Support of all or most countries
-
Demonstrate in front of the UN in Geneva for World Attention
-
Establish an International Fund for Descendants of Slaves
- Target Companies
that existed during the days of Slavery for Reparations, and if they
do not comply,
then list them as “Unworthy” for Black patronage
-
Seek support for Reparations from Companies that prosper off of Black
Clients
-
Seek Celebrity support for Reparations
-
Involve the Media
-
Make “Reparations” the buzz word for 2000
-
Etc., etc., and by “any means necessary” within the Law
*********
IN SUPPORT OF REPARATIONS!
WAKE
UP!
STAND UP!
STEP UP!
and DO SOMETHING IN SUPPORT OF REPARATIONS!
OR
THERE CAN BE NO REAL - PEACE!
Ahna Tafari
*********
Reparations for Slavery (A Flowchart)
Contact: randall@udayton.edu (Vernellia Randall)
Race, Racism and the Law
http://www.udayton.edu/~race/
Vernellia
R. Randall
Professor
of Law
Phone:
(937) 229-3378
*********
REPARATIONS BATTLE INTENSIFYING
CALL FOR SLAVERY PAYBACK HITS U.N.
NEW
YORK -- African demands for slave-era reparations from the former colonial
powers are threatening to paralyze an upcoming U.N. conference on racism.
Most European governments
reject the call for restitution and are seeking to tone down the African
Groups’ suggested language of apology, which dominated a recent meeting to
prepare for the World Conference Against Racism to be held in Durban, South
Africa, from Aug. 31 to Sept. 8.
Many
poor nations are hoping to use the Durban conference to win increased funding from
wealthy industrialized countries for development, saying that the slave
trade devastated their countries, and that those who benefited from the
practice should make amends.
The rift has grown so intractable that several
diplomats in New York and Geneva warn that the issue could pit North against
South and white against black in a graphic confrontation that benefits no one.
"We
want something forward-looking and practical," said a British official. "Something that will
reinvigorate the existing international mechanisms and promote tolerance. It´s
frustrating that the agenda is being narrowed."
U.N.
High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, whose term was extended for
one year Thursday by the U.N. General Assembly, has declined to take a position
on the matter, her aides say.
But
at a news conference last week, she called for "a collective
recognition of the terrible exploitation and violations of human rights and
crimes against humanity of the past."
"To
deal with the future, you have to close [the chapter] on the past," Mrs.
Robinson said. "We think that the conference will not have dealt with all
the problems of racism if it does not do that."
A
proposal submitted by the African Group and joined by Cuba, among others, calls
slavery a crime against humanity and calls for former slave-trading nations to
make unspecified restitution.
But
Western European nations -- including several directly involved in centuries of
slave trading -- reject any mention of crimes against humanity, saying that is
a modern legal term that cannot be applied retroactively to events that began
in the mid-1600s.
Many
European and North American diplomats and historians also note that African
leaders themselves participated in the slave trade, capturing tribal rivals and civilians and selling
them to Arab and European slave traders.
At
the preparatory committee meetings in Geneva that concluded last week, several
nongovernmental advocacy groups demanded compensation, such as aid for
development, but without the strings attached by the International Monetary
Fund and similar world lenders.
Several
of the African Group´s 53 members share that view, while others, including
South Africa, are more moderate in their goals.
"The
member states of the United Nations must be creative in looking at ways and
means," said Jeanette Ndhlovu,
South Africa´s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, who stresses the need
for negotiation and national solutions, not sweeping declarations.
"Slavery
was abhorrent, a crime against humanity, and it caused a lot of suffering, including underdevelopment, where it took
place," she said.
Northern
nations say they acknowledge and regret their role in the trafficking of human
beings.
A
loose group of Western European states – informally including the United
States and Israel, among others – say that to focus on issues
that are hundreds of years old detracts from viable efforts to overcome
contemporary racism, xenophobia and related prejudices.
"Our
goal is that countries could get together and share their experience about what
works," said a State Department official.
"Everyone
recognizes that racism is an impediment to human rights. The U.S. is definitely
interested in that kind of approach, but whether we´ll be able to, we´re not
sure yet. This is an intense period of diplomacy."
A
group of 21 diplomats, representing
four broad geographic regions, is meeting in Geneva for the next two weeks to
clean up the text of a proposed Durban document and, officials say, to try to
find common ground on the questions of reparations and responsibility.
Another
international preparatory meeting has been scheduled for mid-July to allow diplomats one last chance to resolve knots
in the text before the Durban conference.
Failure
to resolve the impasse would be tragic, said the ambassador of a nation that
was not directly involved with either side of the slave trade. "There is too much important work to do,
forward-looking and practical work, to allow this [issue] to derail the
conference."
The
working draft of the anti-racism declaration calls for the "provision of
effective remedies, recourse,
redress, [compensatory] and other measures at the national, regional and
international levels."
The
definition, or even inclusion, of the word "compensatory" is disputed
by some participants.
"That
could mean almost anything," said the State Department official, who declined
to be identified. "We´re not
big on that one. That´s no secret."
The
Durban conference -- formally called the World Conference Against Racism, Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance -- is expected to produce a
declaration of principles regarding racism, as well as a program of action
to eliminate prejudice.
Both
documents are likely to be drafted by consensus and will not be legally
binding.
One
Western official suggested last week that the focus on compensation was only in
part about increased financial assistance. Another motive, she suggested, was to divert attention from internal
human rights abuses -- the treatment of indigenous populations and refugees,
anti-Semitism, caste systems and self-determination, to name but a few.
"Some
people are happy to bang on about colonialism, but if you broaden the
discussion to self-determination, it´s a whole different kettle of fish," she
said. "Essentially it´s about shaping the debate that makes it more
comfortable for people to overlook their own problems."
But
several former colonial powers are clearly uncomfortable with the turn the
conference has taken.
"I
don´t think anyone will boycott the conference," said the British
official. "But I do think you will be able to tell a lot by looking at the
size and [rank] of the delegations."
By Betsy Pisik
www.washtimes.com
Contributed by
AlArkam@webtv.net (AlArkam@webtv.net)
[Black Slaves
built a “wealthy” World for the White Privileged, therefore, we, Descendants of Slaves, want something
“forward-looking and practical" such as Reparations for the TransAtlantic
Enslavement, forced migration, and ethnic cleansing of Blacks out of Africa,
Mr. British Official! T.Y., Editor]
*********
*****MARK YOUR
CALENDAR OF EVENTS*****
Muhammad
Mosque of Islam in Boston, Massachusetts invites you to attend weekly meetings each Sunday at the
Dillaway located at:
183 Roxbury Street
Roxbury, Massachusetts
(Next to the Timilty School, in Roxbury)
Meetings start at 2:00 PM, but on
the last Sunday of the month we start at 1:00 PM.
For more
information and to schedule free
lectures on Reparations at your church, school, business or organization,
feel welcome to telephone Minister Malik Al-Arkam at (617) 770-2017.
*********
FREE THE MIND... FREE THE PEOPLE... FREE THE LAND
THE NATIONAL COALITION
OF BLACKS FOR
REPARATIONS IN AMERICA (N’COBRA)
*********
THE REPARATIONS EDUCATION AND
MOBILIZATION CONFERENCE
SCHEDULED FOR JUNE 29/30, 2001 WAS
POSTPONED!
*********
THE LEGACY OF THE BLACK POWER MOVEMENT
AND
THE UNITED NATIONS WORLD CONFERENCE AGAINST RACISM
The December 12th Movement, based in New York, and The National Black United Front (NBUF) are co-sponsoring a Black Power conference in support of the United Nations World Conference Against Racism.
The United Nations World Conference Against Racism will be held in Durbin, South Africa from August 31, 2001 - September 7, 2001.
By Dr. Conrad W. Worrill
***
YOU MUST BE IN SOUTH AFRICA NEXT
AUGUST 2001!
To All Concerned
African People:
The United Nations' World Conference against Racism begins August 31, 2001 in Durban, South Africa. The December 12th Movement International Secretariat is seeking you to be a part of the Delegation of 400 African people to South Africa in support of two crucial issues:
1) Declaration of the Trans-Atlantic
Slave Trade as a Crime against
Humanity
2)
Reparations for Africans in the Diaspora and on the Continent.
Malcolm X said that we must put our situation on the international
agenda, in the international arena.
We must be there in a massive
presence to defend our human rights.
Join us, if you want
to go to Durban in support of these issues. The application is included in the
text of this message, as well as an attached document in .rtf format.
Costs:
We estimate that the total cost for the trip (the Conference is from August 31,
to September 7), i.e., travel, lodging and meals, will be approximately $2500. If you are planning to go
we need a deposit of $250.00 immediately.
We, along with the National Black United Front, are working with a Black Travel
Agency based in Chicago which has already made airline travel arrangements to
and reserved blocks of hotel rooms in Durban. Your check or money order should
be made out to AARCO TRAVEL AND TOURS
and should be sent to the:
December 12th Movement
456 Nostrand Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11216
For more information on the World Conference against Racism and the struggle to
defend the human rights of African people, contact us at:
Telephone #718-398-1766
Fax #623-1855
E-mail: Error! Bookmark not defined.
IF YOU WISH TO GO TO SOUTH AFRICA,
PLEASE FILL OUT THE FORM BELOW.
APPLICATION FORM FOR THE DURBAN 400
NAME:
ADDRESS
PHONE :
FAX:
E-MAIL:
ORGANIZATIONAL AFFILIATION (if any):
YES: I want to be a member of the Durban 400. Enclosed is my check in the
amount of $_______________.
_____________________________________________________________
NAME
*********
October 19/20, 2001
PHILOSOPHY BORN OF STRUGGLE CONFERENCE ON
RACE, REPARATIONS, AND RESTITUTION
Place: Brown University
CONTACT:
J. Everet Green
HUMANITAS
3000
37
Old Oregon Road
Cortlandt
Manor
New
York, New York 10567
*********
Convenes in
Atlanta November 28 – December 2, 2001 at the Georgia International Convention Center.
"A set of goals and objectives have been outlined," he said. "We hope to identify, analyze and discuss the critical crises and issues facing Black people. We also hope to provide some sort of leadership and skill development training to enhance our collective capacity to engage the struggle for liberation."
"Our agenda also includes discussion of meaningful definitions of liberation and reconstruction, intensifying the global movement for reparations and working towards the convening of an International Black Arts and Cultural Festival,"
For
more information, call 1-866-ATL-SOBW or visit www.TBWT.com
*********
"Power never conceded without a demand, it never did
and never will - where there is no struggle, there is no progress." F. Douglas
BECOME A MEMEBER OF N'COBRA. Visit us at
www.N’COBRA.com, write the national headquarters at:
P.O.
Box 62622
Washington.
D.C. 20029-2622
E-mail
me for further information about the WCAR
at onajemuid4@cs.com or write:
Onaje Mu'id
P.O. Box 8003
Englewood,
NJ 07631.
*Onaje Mu'id is a
human rights activist with the International Commissioner of N'COBRA and
Policy Chair of the National Black Alcoholisms and Addiction Council-New York
Chapter and Ndundu member of the Council of Independent Black Institutions.
*********
BOOK LISTINGS
The book listing on Reparations and Black History can be found in REPNOW Newsletters 1 - 5.
*********
WE SHALL WIN THIS WAR!
Imari A.
Obadele
*********
“Without Sanctuary”
The
web address for Without Sanctuary” is listed in the REPNOW Newsletter #13.
Please
pass this information on to others for it is out of…
AMERICA'S SHAME: CONTEMPT & THE LYNCHINGS
James
Allen’s photos on the lynchings of Blacks in America
*********
E-mail Addresses
& WebSites On Reparations, Black Issues, and Current Events:
UNFORTUNATELY FOR SOME REASON, I KEPT GETTING “Error! Bookmark not defined” FOR ALL THE WEBSITES THAT WERE LISTED,
SO I HAD TO ELIMINATE THEM FROM THIS NEWSLETTER. However, please see the
complete listing of WebSites in the REPNOW Issue #13. If someone knows how to remedy this problem,
so that I can retain the Website addresses, please advise.
Tziona Yisrael, Editor
*********
Hotep,
I am Gregory
Carey, Founder and President of Reparations
Central, an online reparations searchable database. We would like for you
to view our website that is in the development stage at
http://www.reparationscentral.com
We are also attempting to unify and centralize the
reparations movement. We are looking for other organizations that are doing
reparations work to put on our website. Also, we are asking every organization
to consider putting an audio/video presentation on our website. This website is
the hub of the reparations movement worldwide. We need your support and help to make this reparations clearinghouse a
successful venture.
In Struggle,
Aluta Continua
Asante Sana
*********
HOW CAN I SUPPORT THE REPARATIONS MASS MOVEMENT?
1.) I suggest that you approach the city in
which you reside for reparations, support for reparations, or information as to
how to obtain reparations. Your
strategy may be a model we all may benefit from at the local level.
2.) Next,
demonstrate your willingness to join others in the struggle for reparations.
3.) I would hope that you join or start an
N’COBRA chapter in your locale area (if there is none) and become an active and
energetic member/reparations information resource, for your Afrikan brothers
and sisters.
Submitted by R. Hazard, N’COBRA
*********
"Together We shall Win REPARATIONS NOW!!!"
Free Your Mind
- Join N’COBRA.... Free The People.... Free The Land...
Robert Hazard
S.E. Regional Rep. N’COBRA
*********
"If you
are thinking one year ahead, sow a seed.
if you
thinking ten years ahead, plant a tree.
If you
thinking one hundred years ahead ...
educate the
people."
Compliments of
Shakira A. Ali
*********
Up You Mighty Race; We Can
Accomplish What We Will!!!!
I Remain to
Serve,
Senghor Baye
*********
Interesting
Information of Significance and FYI:
New York Times Article,
June 4, 2001:
By Tamar Lewin
It has been more than a century since Gen. William
Tecumseh Sherman ordered that the coastlands confiscated in the Civil War be
divided into 40-acre plots and
distributed to thousands of former slaves.
After Abraham
Lincoln's assassination, Andrew Johnson rescinded the order and took back
the land that had been distributed. Since then, the idea of compensating
African-Americans for the sins of two and a half centuries of slavery
has hovered in the background, far from reality. But now the movement for reparations is gaining steam.
As a political
matter, reparations has been a nonstarter: every year since 1989, Representative
John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, has introduced legislation calling for
a comprehensive study of reparations, and every year the legislation has
stalled.
But as a
social and legal movement, the call for reparations has taken on substantial
force this year. Black professionals
and scholars are taking up a cause that used to engage mostly working-class
blacks. And beyond the longstanding efforts to seek government restitution,
there is a new focus on winning reparations from corporate targets that once
profited from slavery.
The
new momentum is apparent on many fronts:
A California
law that took effect this year requires every insurance company licensed in the
state to research its past business, and that of its predecessor companies, and
report to the state whether it ever sold policies insuring slave owners against
the loss of their slave property, and if so to whom.
A team of
prominent African-American lawyers has announced plans to file lawsuits early
next year seeking damages from the federal government and companies that
profited from slavery. The team is
part of the Reparations Coordinating Committee, led by Charles Ogletree, a
professor at Harvard Law School, and Randall N. Robinson, the founder of
TransAfrica, a lobbying group.
In March, the
Oklahoma Commission to Study the Race Riots of 1921 recommended that survivors
and their descendants be paid reparations for the uprising in which thousands of whites stormed a prosperous
black neighborhood, destroying homes and businesses and killing at least 40
people.
Aetna formally
apologized in March 2000 for having written policies for slave owners on the
lives of their slaves. Three months
later The Hartford Courant, which had run a front-page article about Aetna's
apology, made a front- page apology of its own, for having run advertisements
for the sale and capture of slaves.
Advocates of
reparations are fighting to make compensation for slavery an official theme of
the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in August, and hoping to win a declaration that
slavery is a crime against humanity for which reparations should be paid.
Last month,
The Philadelphia Inquirer published two full-page editorials urging the
creation of a national reparations commission.
The idea of
reparations raises tangled questions about who should pay the money and who
should receive it — and, more
profoundly, about the relative merits of affirmative action and restitution.
The Reparations
Coordinating Committee's litigation is unlikely to get into such particulars.
The first task, lawyers say, is to establish a legal wrong that must be
remedied.
"The
history of slavery in America has never been fully addressed in a public
forum," Mr. Ogletree said. "Litigation will show what slavery meant,
how it was profitable and how the issue of white privilege is still with us.
Litigation is a place to start, because it focuses attention on the
issue."
Some blacks
still dismiss the reparations movement as a digression from the issues that
matter. "If the government got
the money from the tooth fairy or Santa Claus, that'd be great," said Walter
E. Williams, chairman of the economics department at George Mason
University. "But the government has to take the money from citizens,
and there are no citizens alive today who were responsible for slavery. The
problems that black people face are not going to be solved by white people, and
they're not going to be solved by money. The resources that are going into the
fight for reparations would be far more valuably spent making sure that black
kids have a credible education."
Reparations
remain a divisive idea, opposed by the vast majority of whites but widely
supported by African-Americans.
"There is now no major black organization that does not support
reparations," said Mr. Robinson, whose book "The Debt: What
America Owes to Blacks" is a steady seller in black bookstores.
The legal
argument, he said, is compelling: "When government participates in a
crime against humanity, and benefits from it, then that government is under the
law obliged to make the victims whole. That's recognized as a principle of
law."
Certainly,
reparations payments have become an increasingly familiar concept. The United States government has paid reparations to
Japanese-Americans interned in World War II, and to several Indian tribes.
Holocaust survivors who were used as forced laborers have won reparations from
European countries. Mexican braceros who worked in the United States during
World War II have filed a class- action lawsuit for reparations.
Stuart E. Eizenstat,
who as a senior official in the Clinton administration negotiated settlements
under which Holocaust victims would receive $8 billion in reparations from the
governments of Germany, France and Austria and from Swiss banks, said that he viewed those cases as different from
the African-American claims, because Holocaust reparations are going largely to
surviving victims, while slavery reparations would go to descendants
generations removed.
"For slavery
qua slavery, I think the appropriate remedy is affirmative government action
in general, rather than reparations," said Mr. Eizenstat, who is now
in private life. "And if 100 years from now the great-great- grandson of a
Holocaust laborer asked for reparations, I don't think that would be
appropriate, unless there was some specific property that had been confiscated
that they wanted to recover."
Those
campaigning for reparations say that they are prepared to prove that African-
Americans today continue to suffer from the legacy of slavery — and, after
slavery, another century of legal discrimination.
"We are not
raising claims that you should pay us because you did something to us 150 years
ago," said Adjoa Aiyetoro, a legal consultant to the National Coalition
of Blacks for Reparations in America, which is preparing its own lawsuit
against the federal government and working with the coordinating committee. "We
are saying that we are injured today by the vestiges of slavery, which took
away income and property that was rightfully ours."
Part of the new
momentum in the reparations movement comes from efforts to win restitution not
just from the federal government, but also from companies that profited from
slavery. "I started doing research about the possibility of a lawsuit
against the government," said Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, a lawyer.
"But I turned to corporations, after finding how difficult it would be to
win a claim against the government, given sovereign immunity, the statute of
limitations, and an opinion by a relatively liberal court rejecting the idea. If
you can show a company made immoral gains by profiting from slavery, you can
file an action for unjust enrichment."
Historians say
that slavery was so central to the economy in the early days of America that
almost every business benefited from it. "The entire economy of this country was based on slavery, North as
well as South," said Eric Foner, a professor of history at Columbia
University. "New York had a stranglehold on the cotton trade, which
made up half the total value of U.S. exports in 1850. Brooks Brothers
supplied a lot of clothing to plantation owners. Merchants, manufacturers,
everyone felt the economic ripples."
Government
benefited, too, often using slaves to build public works. Slaves helped build
the United States Capitol — and their owners received $5 a month for their
labor.
Ms.
Farmer-Paellmann, who found the documents about Aetna's slave policies, is
pursuing other companies that profited from slavery. Among her discoveries was
a 1906 history of the New York Life Insurance Company, which explained that "among
the first 1,000 policies issued, 339 were upon the lives of negro slaves in
Maryland and Virginia."
Spurred by the
California legislation, New York Life is now reviewing its archives, to find
out to what extent the company may have sold insurance to slave owners.
Although no
lawsuits have been filed, some old-line companies have reportedly begun to
worry about their exposure. Owen
Pell, a New York lawyer who represented several companies in Holocaust-related
litigation, has spoken informally with several companies about the possibility
and potential shape of claims relating to African slavery.
Ultimately,
insurance companies may not be the most important defendants. The ripest
potential defendants, some lawyers say, may be municipal governments, which do
not have the same sovereign immunity as the federal government, and tobacco
companies or railroads — even those that declared bankruptcy after the
Civil War, since the old bankruptcy code did not wipe out any debts or
liabilities that were not specifically declared.
Often the
connection to slavery is mentioned in company histories: a history of the Arkwright
Manufacturing Company, now owned by the Dutch company Océ, describes how James
DeWolf, a slave trader, "invested his slaving profits in the textile
mills" Arkwright operated in Rhode Island.
To be sure, it is
a long stretch from a 19th- century slave trader to a 21st-century Dutch
company that makes copying machines, and Océ officials seemed baffled by any
possible connection to the slave trade. "This is the first I've heard of
it," said Karen Fitt, a company spokeswoman.
Still, Ms.
Farmer-Paellmann says, companies built on the profits from slavery may become
strong advocates for reparations from the government, as opposed to the private
sector.
"My
interest in this is to get these corporations, once they are aware of their own
connections, to be our chief lobbyists in Washington for other forms of
restitution," she said. "Apologies aren't enough."
If the idea of paying
reparations for slavery makes Americans uneasy, Mr. Ogletree of Harvard said,
it is probably partly because, for most whites, it is a new idea, based on a
history they do not understand. "The uneasiness that some express about
reparations is the same uneasiness that we had about integration, about women's
right to choose," he said. "We've gained some important mainstream
viability, but these things take time."
By
Tamar Lewin
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/04/national/04SLAV.html
Contributed by BRC-REPARATIONS:
Black Radical Congress - Reparations Caucus
[There is no
question of who should pay Reparations.
If the US government and other countries supported and reaped the
benefits of the Slave Trade, then that’s who should pay Reparations for this merciless
and cruel enslavement of Black Peoples that literally destroyed nations and
cultures, and eliminated the self determination of Blacks all over Africa and
the World. T.Y., Editor]
***
To the Editor:
Re "Calls
for Slavery Restitution Getting Louder" (news article, June 4):
It may be true,
as Randall N. Robinson, an advocate of reparations, suggests, that the
United States government participated in a crime against humanity when it sanctioned
slavery. But it is also true that the United States government and its people
acted decisively to end slavery, at the great cost of civil war.
If we are to pay
reparations to the heirs of slaves, must we not also pay reparations to the
heirs of those who lost their lives ending slavery?
ALAN MILES
New York, June 4, 2001
***
To the Editor:
Re "Calls
for Slavery Restitution Getting Louder" (news article, June 4):
In the Jewish
tradition, repentance is never complete without the sharing of wealth to create
justice.
In 1952, Germany
agreed to pay $845 million in money and goods to Israel, of which $110 million
went to Jewish organizations for the resettlement and rehabilitation of Jewish
survivors of the Holocaust. Some viewed the agreement as an insult to the
memory of six million murdered Jews, but the moral currency of Israel and the
Jewish people received a tremendous boost.
Most supporters
of reparations for African-Americans advocate similar institution-building
payments that would uplift all Americans. On this issue, our country is long
overdue on both repentance and justice.
JEFFREY DEKRO
Philadelphia, June 5, 2001
The writer is president of the Shefa Fund, a foundation that organizes
Jewish institutional investments in community development.
***
To
the Editor:
While the issue
of reparations to African-Americans deserves investigation and resolution, I
resist the characterization offered by Prof. Charles Ogletree, who said
that if the idea of paying reparations for slavery makes Americans uneasy, it
is probably because for most whites, it is a new idea, based on a history they
do not understand (news article, June 4).
As an Italian-American who traces her roots in this country to the
arrival of grandparents from Naples in the early 20th-century wave of
immigration, I may not understand the history that Professor Ogletree refers
to, but I certainly understand mine. None of my ancestors were involved in
slavery. As we sort through this divisive issue, let's not forget who the
profiteers were.
PEGGY DE STEFANO
Bakersfield, Calif., June 4, 2001
*********
June 20, 2001
What a
week. Just six days before Timothy
McVeigh is executed in Oklahoma, African American State Representative Henri
Brooks is burned in effigy in front of the State Capitol Building in
Nashville by some hothead who claims to be a candidate for governor under the
U.S. Patriot Party. Why?
If you caught
any of the news coverage of the heretical bonfire you might think Brooks was
McVeigh's counterpart. Fortunately the non-event was more like a hair singeing
and the dummy (the one on-fire) was extinguished quickly.
What awful
crime did Ms. Brooks commit to justify her likeness being burned at high noon
down at the OK Corral? Some believe what she did was unforgivable,
reprehensible and oh, so un-American. Her actions were so reckless, a Memphis
woman went so far as to promise to spit on Ms. Brooks next time they meet.
Are
you ready? Ms. Brooks refused to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance before
the state legislature session began.
Well Nellie, pass me the smelling salts!
Can you
believe it? An African American woman taking a stand (or a seat) against a
ceremony which to her represents "those colonies that formerly enslaved
our ancestors". To all the criticisms, Ms. Brooks answered that she
hasn't recited the pledge of allegiance since the third grade.
Apparently
House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh was so concerned about the negative influence
Brooks's actions might have on the visiting children present in he chambers,
that he asked her to leave.
God forbid
children should witness an adult respectfully questioning ceremony. Personally,
I would love for my child to learn that challenging authority is a right we all
possess. Ms. Brooks didn't run around
the room hollering or making rude noises. She didn't interfere with anyone
else's right. She simply sat. For her (and millions of other Americans) the
Pledge of Allegiance is a bitter pill to swallow--especially when you get to
that "and liberty and justice for all" part. I have a hard time
choking that one down myself.
But whether
you are for Ms. Brooks or against her, the bitter reaction to her bravado is
something that warrants attention. It wasn't so long ago that black
people who publicly spoke out against--or just looked the wrong way at--a white
person could be hanged in the town-square.
To many, the flag and the pledge are clearly symbols of an oppressive
White America. I guess you could say
Ms. Brooks was guilty of "sassin masta" and got what she had
coming--a symbolic lynching.
A few days
after her image was burned, I watched nightly news coverage of the tailgate
party held near the prison the afternoon of McVeigh's execution. Righteous citizens were heard screaming the
count-down to his final breath. I was numbed by the hysteria and had to remind
myself that this wasn't one of those prime-time re-enactment shows. This was
live news coverage of a picnic in the prison parking lot. Fellow humans whoopin
and a hollerin for death.
It was reminiscent
of the days when "upstanding" men and women would pack up picnic
baskets with potato salad and head to the town center for a good old fashion
hanging.
The disturbing prison parking lot scene reminded me of eerie photographs in a
book by James Allen called "Without Sanctuary". This
haunting book features actual picture postcards of not so long ago lynchings
that were sent to family members as souvenirs.
As I watched the news, I wondered what these justice-hungry witnesses would bring home from McVeigh's execution. Perhaps key chains with little Timothy dolls strapped to a gurney? Or maybe T-shirts which read "Mom and Dad went to an Execution and all I got was this Lousy T-shirt".
And what about
picnic food? What kind of salad goes with an execution? Potato salad is so last century. Perhaps a
Ceasar or mixed greens with Dijon vinagarette?
Fortunately,
the bonfire dishonoring Ms. Brooks in Nashville wasn't even big enough for a
weenie roast.
When will such
bizarre events become distasteful enough for us to lose our ravenous appetite
for violence? Sadly, this week's scheduled execution indicates the answer is
probably not any time soon.
By Molly Secours
Molly Secours is an counselor, writer, speaker and racial dialog facilitator in Nashville, TN. She can be reached at mollmaud@earthlink.net or msecours@oasiscenter.org
"Only
when we cease to scream with activity
can
we hear the gentle murmur of peace within."
M.Secours
PO Box 681
Mt. Juliet TN 37122
mollmaud@earthlink.net
msecours@oasiscenter.org
615.444.6655
http://www.steveconn.com/molly
[Ms. Secours is a very supportive White Sister who again gets kudos for her courage in speaking out for Reparations (in the past) and for equity for the oppressed! T.Y., Editor]
*********
WHY THE-POWERS-THAT-BE OWE US…BIG TIME!
June 22, 2001
No, this is
not an anti-semitic article or an unjustified attack on anyone. It is an
attempt to clarify what's going on with African American demands for
reparations for slavery and its aftermath: the attacks from David Horowitz, Elie Weisel and The Holocaust
Corporation. This article also examines why Philip Roth in his latest
novel, THE HUMAN STAIN, likens African Americans to apes
and why John Entine is bringing up that old cliché that African American
athletes are what they are and excel because of their genetic breeding
(something akin to Hitler's attack on African Americans after the German
Olympics of 1930s). And, why is it that the U.S. media is taking a hands-off
approach to these dastardly and inhumane racial slurs?
Why are such
writers as Roth, Weisel, Entine and other Jews suddenly turning into racists? Or have they always been racists but until now been
afraid to come out in the public with it? Do they think that by attacking
African Americans that the other white supremacists will forget about them and
focus on African Americans, Farrakhan, Latinos and Arabs and let them alone? Perhaps.
On the other
hand, there are Jewish writers such as Anthony Lewis, Steve Kowit and Naom
Chomsky who want nothing to do with this new Nazism of some of their fellow
Jews. Shelby Foote, who passed himself off as a plain white southerner, has
now made it plain that he is a Jew, which is fine; but I, and I'm sure others,
were shocked when he likened the Ku Klux Klan to the French Resistance of WW
II!!
Scott Simon of
NPR recently inferred that though Daniel Boone and others, who were
anti-Mexican racists and the spiritual children of Cortez at the Alamo, should
be admired because they followed their principles and their orders; doesn't this sound like the Jews should have
admired the SS troops who killed them because they believed in their
principles?!!
Have these men
such as Roth, Horowitz, Simon, Entine and Weisel lost their minds, or are they
just echoing a long felt feeling that may have pervaded many Jews that blacks,
schvartza, were and still are inferior to God's "chosen" people? Perhaps the rise of white supremacists has allowed
these men to join the other white men in condemning and attacking African
Americans.
Before
we go further, let me explain, I am not African American and the hue of my skin
is white.
First, let us
understand that over 5 times as many African Americans died in the American
slave trade as died in the holocaust.
But let it also be known that among those millions executed, many were not
Jews but were Poles, Russians, other Slavic peoples and French,
Catholics, Protestants and atheists. However, the Holocaust Corporation,
as I and many Jews call it, has decided that the holocaust that happened
against Africans who were the forefathers of our present African Americans, the
indigenous Americans, also called the Native Americans, Amer-Indians, etc., and
the driving out of 8 million Palestinians from their homes and their continued
brutality at the hands of Israel, should not be called holocausts because the
Jewish Holocaust Corporation has deemed only Jews could suffer a holocaust.
Not only that,
but if anyone raises a question about this Holocaust Corporation or against Israel
or any Jewish writer, they are called anti-semites. This is another distortion of the language and of
truth. Thus, not only has this Holocaust Corporation usurped the term
holocaust for themselves exclusively, but they also have stolen the
linguistic definition of semitic. ACTUALLY, SEMITIC IS A LANGUAGE GROUP, NOT A
RACIAL GROUP, IN FACT, IF THERE IS AN ORIGINAL GROUP, IT'S THE ABYSSINIANS WHO
WERE SPEAKING AMHERIC BEFORE THERE WAS A HEBREW LANGUAGE; AT THAT TIME THERE
WERE THE ARAMAIC SPEAKERS, WHO WERE ARABS AND PEOPLE LIKE ABRAHAM, AND THEN
LATER JEWS. THEN, AT ABOUT THE SAME TIME, CAME ARABIC AND HEBREW------ THESE
ARE THE SEMITIC LANGUAGES. ONCE AGAIN, SEMITIC IS NOT A RACIAL GROUP; IT
IS A LANGUAGE FAMILY MADE UP OF ARAMAIC, AMHERIC, ARABIC AND HEBREW. IT IS NOT A TERM FOR JEWS ALONE.
Also, for the
sake of accuracy, Abraham spoke Aramaic, not Hebrew. So much for Hebrew being
God's language!
Now we come to
David Horowitz and his recent ad in the Brown University Student Newspaper in
which he gave his reasons for denying reparations to African Americans. In his
allegations, he did not address any of the real reasons that African
Americans sought reparations, namely, the destruction of large families who
were brought to America as slaves and then split up, the deaths of so many
during the passage to America, the years of slavery and brutality visited upon
African Americans, then, the aftermath of slavery which was harmful
discrimination that went on, and continues to this day in the workplace, in social
areas, in the media and in educational testing and in educational and
professional profiling against African Americans (through red-lining of loans,
through racial profiling by police, through discrimination in court decisions,
etc.).
If Jewish survivors
of the Hitlerian holocaust should be compensated, Japanese Americans
compensated, Native Americans compensated, why not African Americans whose
suffering was much longer, more devastating, and more cruel than the other
ethnic groups who were compensated? Horowitz never answers this question in
his attacks on African Americans and their quest for compensation. Incidentally,
though he cries about the holocaust, Horowitz never sheds one tear for the
suffering of the Palestinians whose land was taken for his holocaust survivors
to create Israel. Weisel, Roth, Horowitz all use double standards in
their moral judgements; thus, from their writings, it appears that they believe
that anyone who is not a Jew should be seen as inferior (except for the white
supremacists who scare the hell out of most decent Jews, and maybe even Weisel
and company).
But, since
most of the media is owned by Zionist leaning owners, these media monsters of
venom and hatred, like Horowitz, Weisel and other pro-Zionist columnists will
continue to have their way with little opposition allowed in the mass media
because of the Zionist control the media. Sarnoff of NBC, Paley of CBS, Goldensohn of ABC and Friendly of NPR,
and the families that own and control The NY Times and The Washington Post
were, and are, strongly pro-Zionist, and in most cases were of Ashkenazim
backgrounds (so they had little cultural understanding for the Sephardic Jews
or Arabs who actually populated the Middle East and Palestine for the past 3000
years).
Why is it that
Elie Weisel, who won a Nobel Prize for his humanitarian work has been at the
forefront of stopping African Americans and Palestinians from claiming their
just place as holocaust victims? The
phrase, "Never Again," that is the motto of the Holocaust Museum
is supposed to be for mankind, but somehow, it pertains only to Jews and
to the holocaust corporation and its supporters. So we ask, how hollow is
"Never Again" if it applies only to one ethnic group, when suffering
is more widespread and allegedly this museum was to be a boon to mankind, not
just for those who suffered in the holocaust.
But then again,
history is strange. Often the poor whites in the south were more cruel to the
blacks than the wealthier whites, because these poor whites identified with the
richer and more prominent whites and they felt they were carrying out their
wishes because of the southern rhetoric used by so many of the wealthier
southern whites. This does not excuse the wealthier whites, even to this
day. Sadly enough, Ted Turner had a message at Thanksgiving some years back
at the Atlanta Airport to the effect that he missed the days of "My Old
Kentucky Home" and he has had the music from GONE WITH THE WIND played as
a memento to the old South, two insults and hurts to African Americans.
Look at Scott
Simon, never allowing such articulate experts on the Middle East such as Edward
Said or myself on his NPR weekend programs because we speak with no accent,
don't lose our temper, don't shout and are effective at conveying the Arab,
Palestinian and Islamic message about unfairness in the Middle East. Scott and I belonged to the Watergate Health Club
and we often spoke, but though I requested it, he would never invite me on
his programs though he knew of my status as a professor, former Director of The
Islamic Center of Washington, DC and a scholar on the Middle East.
It is the same
when you turn on PBS programs: it has become the Shelby Foote and Ken Burns'
view of history assisted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.. A friend of mine saw the
documentary about Gen. Stonewall Jackson, and his response was that it was so
overloaded with sentiment that he almost forgot (though he's black) that
Jackson was fighting to defend slavery!
It is clear that
NPR and PBS are not for all of us, but for a chosen few, such as Scott Simon,
Shelby Foote, Ken Burns, and Daniel Shorr. Where are the African Americans,
the Arab Americans, the Latino Americans, the Native Americans on the daily and
weekly shows? Certainly we have many trained in journalism and broadcasting,
but we cannot break the monopoly; not even for commentary or those little
ditties that complain about the world of pots and pans and about "How I
lost my virginity at 17, " etc. etc. ad nauseum, when there are more
important issues to deal with in racism in jazz, racism in politics, racism in
education and testing, and so much more--but these weaklings chuckle it off as,
"we need a little humor"--which is true, but then again, they are
supposed to be "news" not entertainment. Also, why is it that they
don't have an African American speaking about racism in Africa, or an Arab also
reporting on the problems between Palestinians and Israel? (Why do 90% of these
reporters "just happen" to be Jewish?) Certainly, there must be some
other qualified, educated broadcasters in America.
Whether it be
Salon.com, which features Horowitz and his ilk, NBC, Harper's, The NY Times,
NPR, it's all the same, politics by Scott Simon and Daniel Shorr on weekends,
the "freedom of speech" often of hatemongers or politicians from the
far right, followed by some tepid "centerists" allowed to allegedly
"balance things out."--while those of us who could truly balance
things out are kept off the air. As one commentator put it, "the elitists
in the U.S. media see blacks and Arabs as the same, it's just that the Arabs
are "sand-niggers," and the blacks are "jungle-niggers." If
they didn't see us this way, why would they treat our people and our concerns
as badly as they do?
FREEDOM OF
SPEECH Ah, that's an interesting idea, one that's preached about continually in
the media when they want to have their position heard--but if you disagree with
the editorial position of a television on newspapers outlet--you'll rarely, if
ever, be heard from. Yes, you may
have freedom to speak your mind, but you certainly won't get heard through the
major media because they won't put you on the air or allow your material to be
printed in their pages. The problem is much like that in ANIMAL FARM by George
Orwell: "Some are more equal than others." This group, that
includes people like Horowitz, Weisel, Abraham Fox of the B'nai Brith, Roth,
Entine, are "more equal " than the rest of us.
As one scholar
put it, "Do you think The NY Times would ever run an anti-holocaust
compensation ad? But you know they'd
run one that was against compensation for African Americans." Do
you think they'd run an ad showing Israeli atrocities against Palestinian
children and their funerals? Let's get serious; freedom of speech is a
ploy to protect those who are in power against those who disagree with them;
it keeps them in power over the rest of us who have no major media power. Major
media power is what gives you political power in the world.
The Lutherans
point out that there are "sins of commission and sins of omission."
These major media outlets and their lackeys, the Horowitz'es, Weisels, etc.
commit, and the rest are excluded--thus, they are guilty of the sin of
omission by not allowing our voices to be published or heard. Thus, they
are the ones who are destroying the true intent of the U.S. Constitution and
Bill of Rights that speaks of "Freedom of Speech"; just as the
southerners have always ignored the Bill of Rights and basic Christianity when
it came to blacks by not allowing them to be seen as a full human being!
The other
problem we face in the U.S. at this time is that there aren't many Helen
Thomas's or Mike Wallace's or Lowell Bermann's around--most of the current crop of "journalists"
don't have the guts to really go after injustices-they'd rather be invited to a
politician's dinner table, as is the case with so many Washington
correspondents, play tennis with the President, as was the case with several tv
correspondents, or be invited "down to the ranch" as is going on now
with the Bush administration.
Martin Luther
King, Schwerner, Goodman and all those black and white martyrs must be turning
over in their graves at this time with this new racism that is flourishing in
America. It is not just from those
who speak with racist tones, but also those who keep the true voices out of
circulation in the mass media--why weren't there more real jazz musicians on
Ken Burns' show, why Stanley Crouch (as commentator?) and not Ahmad Jamal or
Oscar Peterson or Ishmael Reed--why so much of that Gatesian type musician, Wynton
Marsalis; every good trumpet player knows that Wynton is fantastic technically,
but that he can't even blow in the same room as Wallace Roney on trumpet or his
brother Branford on sax. So whether it's politics unmasked, or politics as
covered in cultural shows by exclusion, it is the same. Thus, it was just
that the U.S. was kicked off the UN Human Rights Commission and even kicked off
the UN Narcotics Control Commission (because we've been remiss in both areas).
I have often
been embarrassed when America has chided and criticized other nations for their
racial and human rights violations--because,
though we may not be as bad as some, we are no angels in our behavior
toward our minorities and we often turn one minority against another in order
to allow the ruling group to stay in power; this is often done through
the media. We have also now shown a proper representation in our media of
important stories or ethnic groups. In the present situation, the rights of
African Americans to have compensation for their years of suffering, past and
present, has been given short shrift by the media and the media and many of its
leading spokesmen have even spoken against these just reparations. It is
doubly sad that so many of these spokesmen are Jewish. They use Hitler's
methods against African Americans and against Palestinians and excuse it by
saying, "we've suffered--don't tell me about your suffering because it's
not as bad." Bah, humbug.
As
they used to say in the 60s, IT IS TIME.
By Sam Hamod
Guest Columnist
http://www.tbwt.com/content/article.asp?articleid=936
***
[European Jews have their good reason to attack
so-called African Americans. And the
reason is that some of us are biologically descended from the Biblical
Israelites, and this poses a problem for the lie they have spun. They want us to be fun-loving Christians
and keep the hell out of the Land of Israel. They also know that they can’t
cover up Deuteronomy 28th Chapter which tells the whole Truth about
the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. And for
sure, the Most High GOD of Abraham and Moses is still the owner of the Land of
Israel. Oh, by the way, it is our Human
Right to return to our culture and serve Our GOD of Israel, and they know that
Reparations and WCAR will aid in this cause.
And their hope is that in disseminating false information about Blacks
being inferior to Whites would discredit Black Hebrew Israelites from being the
real McCoys! While they are fighting
the All-Mighty GOD in every way they possibly can, they don’t see it yet, but
the handwriting is on the wall!]
*********
FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO THINK YOU ARE
PRIVILEGED CITIZENS UNDER THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION WITH VOTING RIGHTS,
CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION:
Forget about what I said in the last issue on “VOTING
RIGHTS OF AFRICAN AMERICANS SOON TO EXPIRE,” or should you? I had it all wrong, or did I? In any case, considering the racism,
discrimination, death sentences, and social injustices we face, y’all
second-class, privileged so-called citizens – don’t care how you slice it! The proof is in the pudding! Y’all still fighting for Civil Rights and
against discrimination and Racism, and you’ll have this fight as long as Blacks
remain in the United States. Don’t
delude yo’self.
I may or may not stand corrected on the “Voting
Rights” information in REPNOW Newsletter #17.
I continue to receive information suggesting that y’alls voting rights
are still up in the air. Now, ain’t
that some kindda pride and dignity for ya!
From the information that follows (also taken from the Web) and
from the article on Congresswoman Kinney, I’ll let you be the judge:
VOTING RIGHTS ACT
CLARIFICATION STATEMENT
The Department of Justice has received numerous
inquiries concerning a rumor that has been intermittently circulating around
the nation for many months. According to this rumor, the Voting Rights Act will expire in 2007, and as a
result African Americans are in danger of losing the right to vote in that
year.
The rumor is
false. The voting rights of
African Americans are guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the
Voting Rights Act, and those guarantees are permanent and do not expire. Here is a summary of relevant provisions of
the Voting Rights Act: The 15th amendment to the Constitution and
the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibit racial discrimination in voting.
Under the 15th amendment and the Voting Rights Act no one may be denied the
right to vote because of his or her race or color.
These
prohibitions against racial discrimination in voting are permanent; they do not
expire.
The
Voting Rights Act of 1965 was enacted at a time when for decades in some areas
of the South blacks had not been permitted to vote, and blacks who attempted to
register to vote or to organize or assist others to attempt to register to vote
risked losing their jobs,
their homes, even their lives.
To
combat this situation Congress included in the Voting Rights Act -- in addition
to permanent provisions banning racial discrimination -- special provisions
containing extraordinary remedies that applied in certain areas of the nation
for a limited time
period.
Among
these extraordinary remedies are--the authorization of the U.S. Attorney
General to send federal registrars (examiners) to register voters, in counties
where the local registrar refuses to register blacks. [Section 6, 42 U.S.C. §
1973d] the authorization of the U.S. Attorney General to send federal observers
to monitor elections, to make sure that blacks who are eligible to vote are
actually permitted to vote, and that their votes are actually counted. [Section 8, 42 U.S.C. § 1973f] the
requirement that specially covered jurisdictions gain the approval of the U.S.
Attorney General before implementing new voting practices or procedures, to
make sure that any voting changes that they make are not racially
discriminatory. [Section 5, 42 U.S.C. §
1973c]
These
special provisions containing extraordinary remedies were intended to be of
limited duration. They were originally scheduled to expire in 1970, but they
were extended in 1970, and again in 1975 and 1982. They are now scheduled to expire in 2007, if not further
extended.
Even
if the special provisions are allowed to expire, they can be reinstated by
court order if there is a renewal of discriminatory practices.
The
basic prohibition against discrimination in voting contained in the 15th
amendment and in the Voting Rights Act does not expire in 2007 -- it does not
expire at all; it is permanent.
Contributed by Chawviv2@home.com
***
CONGRESSWOMAN CYNTHIA MCkINNEY’S STATEMENT
ON U.S.
HUMAN RIGHTS
June 2001
INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS SUBCOMMITTEE OF
THE HOUSE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS COMMITTEE. RANKING MEMBER CYNTHIA MCKINNEY'S
HEARING STATEMENT
Oppressors at the Rein:
Has the UN Commission on Human Rights Lost its Course? A
Review of its Mission, Operations, and Structure.
Thank you Madam Chair:
We are here today to question whether or not the United
Nations Commission on Human Rights has lost its course.
Too many times I have found myself, bound by conscience, to speak out
against the United Nations and the countries that set its policies. Too many times, those policies with which I have been forced
to disagree have sadly been set by Washington, DC.
The fact that Argentina and France have both issued subpoenas for the
attendance in court of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for the U.S.
role in the murder and disappearance of their citizens is only a harbinger of
things to come.
As a matter of policy, our government seems to have
routinely done to the poor and people of color abroad what it has done to the
poor and people of color at home.
We know too little about decisions that were made in the name of the
United States, decisions that were made for me and for you, yet are now shaken
off as merely responses to the exigencies of the Cold War.
Decisions that in some instances led to the overthrow of
elected governments, but in all instances to U.S. support of heinous
dictatorships with U.S. taxpayer dollars: like in Indonesia, South Korea,
Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Ghana, and Congo/Zaire.
The Pan-African News Agency cites a report on an
alleged plan by the U.S. and other European countries to dump 29 million tons
of toxic waste in 11 African countries. The
materials to be dumped included industrial and chemical wastes, pesticide
sludge, radioactive wastes, as well as other hazardous wastes.
I ask you, how can this country dump toxic waste on
the poor and consider itself to be a champion of human rights across the globe?
On the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency website is a
document uncovered by Professor Thomas J. Nagy which discusses how allied
forces could block Iraqi efforts to purify its contaminated drinking water and
so lead to the full degradation of the Iraqi water treatment system within six
months. Attacking
the Iraqi public drinking water supply flagrantly targets civilians and is a
violation of the Geneva Convention and of the fundamental laws of civilized
nations.
In contravention of even our own laws, U.S. weapons are used
around the world in human rights abuses as states suppress their own people or
their neighbors. Only a few days ago Dick Cheney
stated that Israel should stop using U.S.-built F-16 warplanes against
Palestinian targets.
In its conduct of foreign policy, my government has not always taken the
high road.
The actions launched against Henry Kissinger suggest that other countries
will no longer tolerate the failure of the United States to consider human
rights in its actions abroad.
But human rights is not only about foreign policy.
Human rights is about domestic policy, too.
When we in this country talk about human rights, those words
are usually intoned with an outward vision. We speak of human rights around the
world.
However, today, for just a few moments, I want to talk about human rights
at home.
On too many occasions, blacks in the United States
have felt compelled to step outside of the political and judicial system in
this country and appeal to the global community for the protection of their
human rights.
On too many occasions, the United States has failed to protect the human
rights of black Americans.
And until this issue is addressed and addressed appropriately, when we
speak to others about the failures in their human rights, they see hypocrisy dripping from our lips as we berate them
about the treatment of their citizens.
In 1947, at the dawn of the United Nations' organization, W.E.B. Du Bois registered
the UN's first such complaint in an address entitled, "Petition on Behalf of
Negroes." Julian
Bond, Chairman of the Board of the NAACP, along with dozens of civil rights
groups and activists during the UN's Jubilee Conference recognized the need still
to petition on behalf of black suffering in the U.S. today.
And then again in 1951 Paul Robeson returned to the United Nations with the first call for reparations
entitled "We Call
Genocide," which demanded compensatory
damages over the slave trade.
In 1967, in response to approximately 150 uprisings--some chose to call
them riots--in this country, the United States Government called on a national
commission to conduct a study to determine the cause of this phenomenon and how
to prevent it from continuing. The resulting report is popularly known as the "Kerner Report," which stated that the cause of
these uprisings was white racism, racism being defined as a belief that race is
the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences
produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.
One of the recommendations resulting from this report was that the United
States government needed highly trained intelligence officers to counter the
effects and stop the continuance of these uprisings.
In the FBI's own words, its counterintelligence program, then known as COINTELPRO, had as a
goal, "to expose, disrupt,
misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of black
organizations and to prevent black leaders from "gaining
respectability."
Why is it that today, in 2001, I can read a headline that states, "Citizens Group Sues Pentagon for the Release of
Surveillance Files on the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.?"
What does our Pentagon have to hide?
Madam Chair, let me be clear when I say this: racism
in this country is a human rights issue.
It is an issue that has permeated every crack and
crevice of our society from our playgrounds to the highest levels of our
government.
Today, black federal employees have filed discrimination lawsuits against
the Departments of Agriculture, Energy, State, Treasury, and EPA. Swift and
commendable action on the part of then-Secretary of Education Richard Riley,
prevented a full-blown
demonstration on the part of that Department's black employees.
If blacks inside the U.S. government receive such
treatment, how do you think blacks outside the government are treated?
I'll tell you.
Our Department of Justice admits that blacks are more likely
than whites to be pulled over by police, imprisoned, and put to death. And though blacks and whites have
about the same rate of drug use, blacks are more likely to be arrested than
whites and are more likely to receive longer prison sentences than whites.
Can we ignore the fact that this country continues to counter the world
trend against the death penalty, executing 85
prisoners in 2000, many of whom were mentally
impaired as well as those who were under the age of 18 at the time they
committed a crime? Twenty-six of
those who were executed were black men.
We began this year by executing a retarded black woman.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the American
Convention on Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child all
have provisions that prohibit anyone under 18 years old at the time of the
crime being sentenced to death, and yet we
continue to stand in direct and clear violation of these international
treaties.
Government studies on health disparities confirm
that blacks are less likely to receive surgery, transplants, and prescription
drugs than whites.
Physicians are less likely to prescribe appropriate treatment for blacks
than for whites and black scientists, physicians, and institutions that might
prevent or change this are shut out of the funding stream.
A black baby boy born today in Harlem has less chance of
reaching age 65 than a baby born in Bangladesh.
I watch every year as the Congressional Black Caucus
shrinks while important sections of the Voting Rights Act will soon expire. And
quite frankly, after crippling Supreme Court decisions, there is not much left
of affirmative action to mend.
From August 31st to September 7th of this year, the United Nations will
host the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and
Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa. The
United States and Britain don't want to talk about slavery and its vestiges.
Africans and African Americans do.
Even as Britain's streets light up with Asian rage, Britain
and the United States would rather not talk about racism.
Recently, Human Rights Watch stated that the United States'
being voted out of the UN Commission on Human Rights is a sign that
"people are watching the U.S. very closely."
It is my belief that people are indeed watching and we
certainly cannot and will not continue to command respect across the world on
the issue of human rights if we do not attend to our human rights issues here
at home.
Bobby Kennedy said that we used to be a force for good in the world.
And, indeed we were. What has gone wrong?
On the Memorial of D-Day, June 6th, when we helped bring freedom to
Europe, we have been thrown off the UN Human Rights Commission.
I hope this panel today can help to tell me what has gone wrong
and what we can do to return our international standing.
Thank you Madam Chair.
Contributed by BlackPower@listbot.com (Black Power)
and 112213.3531@compuserve.com
(aajamu)
***
[The USA - “Proponents of Human Rights,” so says President Bush - is in
fact the Proponents of the worst atrocities ever committed against Blacks out
of Africa. The World is awakening to
the facts concerning the real culprit and oppressors of pain and suffering, and
that’s what’s gone right, Madame Congresswoman. Giving the
US the boot off the UN Human Rights Commission was justified, as they say in
political circles, “The Right Thing To Do!”
The Congresswoman has made some fabulous and worthwhile points, and
others should follow her lead. Anyone
who has visited or lived in any one of the big cities in the ghetto, knows that
the United States sustains impoverishment and degradation of Blacks and other
people of color. Take a good look at
Native American Reservations.
Are other Black Congressional Representatives as savvy as Congresswoman
McKinney? They are? Then where is the filibuster?! Let them bring all these issues up front and
center stage, especially our right to justice served for Reparations! Oh yes, looks like the issue on “Voting
Rights” is just that – still an “unsettled issue.” What a fraud! Tziona
Yisrael, Editor]
*********
Free The Mind... Free The People... Free The Land...
Robert Hazard
Board Member
*********
INTERESTING TIDBITS:
June 19, 2001
The
Zionism and racism debate is back, this time in the preparations for the United
Nations World Conference Against Racism to be held at the end of August in the
South African seaside city of Durban.
Asian
and Middle East delegates preparing for the conference have revived language
similar to that contained in a 1975 U.N. resolution, which said that "Zionism
is a form of racism and racial discrimination." The delegates, angered by
recent violence between Israeli troops and Palestinians, inserted the language
after the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights moderated harsh criticism of
Israel that was contained in a declaration made by the regional preparatory
meeting held in Tehran earlier this year.
The
1975 resolution, which was adopted by the General Assembly, eroded U.S. support
for the U.N. until 1991, when it was repealed.
"This
would be back to the 1960s and 1970s and the old fashioned anti-Israel ways of
using every forum to isolate and delegitimize Israel," said Abraham
Foxman, president of the Anti-Defamation League.
The
new dispute would put the Bush administration in a difficult position, once
again endangering support in Congress for paying U.S. arrears to the U.N. and
calling into question whether U.S. representatives would attend the conference
in South Africa. The United States skipped two earlier conferences on racism
because of disputes over Zionism.
Secretary
of State Colin L. Powell met yesterday with Mary Robinson, the U.N. high
commissioner on human rights, but it wasn't immediately clear what they said
about the resolution.
Bush
administration officials hope the controversial language can be eliminated in
the next round of preparatory talks in Geneva next month.
The
Bush administration is also fighting other language that could make the U.N.
meeting in Durban an explosive one. The United States is opposed to a
resolution that would buttress claims by African Americans and African nations
for reparations from countries that had been involved in the slave trade in the
1700s and early 1800s.
An
administration official complained that the African delegates who back the
reparations clause said nothing about modern-day slavery in Sudan or about the
involvement of Africans in slave trading in earlier times.
By
Steven Mufson
For viewing the entire
article, please go to:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/world/A16180-2001Jun19.html
Contributed by
AlArkam@webtv.net
[Is
Israel a 51st State, and the US government chooses to keep this
information hidden? T.Y., Editor]
*********
NAACP SHOULD SUPPORT INDEPENDENT BLACK
WRITERS
Greetings Brethren:
When
will the NAACP support Independent Black writers? Since the NAACP and other national Civil Rights Organizations
WILL NOT support the historical writings of Lonnie DeWitt or Carl Patton and
true Christians who do they support? Is the NAACP a front for White and
Jewish Racists who only want to continue the economic exploitation of Black and
oppressed people?
Therefore who are
the Negroes who support the national Civil Rights Organizations?
Peace
and Love,
Carl
Patton, FreedomJournal where we believe in God and not Uncle Toms.
***
THE SLAUGHTER
Brother Carl,
Thank you so very
much for your insightful e-mail regarding "The Slaughter" and the
NAACP. A few years ago (1998), I contacted the NAACP regarding the same
subject. A copy of my letter is included for your review. Like
you, I am VERY displeased with the NAACP's lack of support for authors like you
and me and for the "ordinary" black person.
FROM THE DESK OF LONNIE
F. DEWITT, Author of iN tHE cAR
P.O. BOX 22765
SACRAMENTO, CA 95822-0765
Telephone & Fax:
(916) 422-4246
(E-mail Address:
lonnie@inthecar)
(Web Site:
http://www.inthecar.com)
October 5, 1998
Mr. Kweisi Mfume, President
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE
ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE (NAACP)
4805 Mount Hope Drive
Baltimore, MD 21215-3287
Dear Mr. Mfume:
I
am certain that Americans of all colors truly appreciate your proactive
position in addressing the alleged atrocity at Camp Van Dorn, Mississippi,
which occurred in 1943. I am no exception. As a black military
veteran of more than twenty-three years, I am literally paralyzed to believe
that our government was involved in this horrendous massacre and subsequent
cover-up! Clearly, I wish that this entire revelation were simply
concocted by the active imagination of a gifted fiction writer; however, I fear
the worst.
Mr.
Mfume, the seriousness of Mr. Carroll Case's allegations (given the magnitude
of implications) - addressed in his book, "The Slaughter: An
American Atrocity" - clearly warrants an immediate federal
investigation to determine either their validity or falsity. I am,
however, extremely disappointed in the NAACP's passive (and, in fact, inactive)
approach to many of today's social issues that adversely affect people of
color. While I clearly do not intend
for my personal issue to be one of a black-white thing, I simply cannot help
but observe how the NAACP literally jumped on Mr. Case's (who just happens to
be white) bandwagon even before his book was released!
On
the other hand, I (a black man) have written several letters and e-mails to the
NAACP addressing some very serious issues that adversely impact black peace
officers in the State of California yet, the NAACP only managed to send a luke
warm response. Just like Mr. Case, I also wrote a book
titled "iN tHE cAR." Just like Mr. Case, I
also included irrefutable evidence of blatant institutional racism.
Granted, my issues do not even compete with those alleged by Mr. Case. Unlike
Mr. Case, however, the NAACP did not take that extra step for Mr. DeWitt.
I
failed to hear a national cry or uproar of disapproval when I proved the
existence of white extremist groups - wearing badges - within the California
Department of Corrections.
One of the groups openly solicit the membership - of other white peace officers
and white inmates - into the Ku Klux Klan, using the medallion that I scanned
(and currently have physical possession) onto a page of my book. Another
group - known as S.P.O.N.G.E. (an acronym for the Society for the
Prevention Of Niggers Getting Everything) consists of white correctional
staff at the California Institute for Men in Chino, California. Black
peace officers are trapped in an atmosphere of institutional racism and
indifference that occasionally erupts into physical violence.
Each
business day, black peace officers face a hostile working environment that is
perpetuated and openly affirmed by the sheer arrogance and systematic indifference
given to racial sensitivity issues by managers within the California Department
of Corrections. Black peace officers are at risk simply because of
their skin color. These peace officers frequently find themselves being
systematically targeted by a racist institution that - by design - offers no
sanctuary. Where is the outcry, NAACP? Where is the concern?
Sincerely,
Lonnie F. DeWitt
Cc: Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, Congressional
Black Caucus African-American Parole Association, National Urban League,
Legislative Black Caucus, American Civil Liberties Union, and
others
Lonnie F. DeWitt
Author of "iN tHE
cAR"
http://www.inthecar.com/
(916)
422-4246
Brother
Carl,
PS:
By the way, I NEVER did receive a reply from the NAACP! Though, we both
know THAT is NOT surprising!
One
Love,
Lonnie F. DeWitt
Author of "iN tHE
cAR"
http://www.inthecar.com/
(916)
422-4246
***
Girlhome: Please
Note: A lot of in depth work has
already been done on this topic, and a book has been published [The
Slaughter: An American Atrocity
by Carroll Case].
The
Slaughter Home Page
(www.theslaughter.com) and there was scheduled to be a documentary on
the History channel which has been cancelled on a couple of occasions.
For
some reason, the powers-that-be do not want the world to know about this.
A Call to Arms in Search for Truth We need your help!
By
now many of you may be aware of allegations contained in a recently published
book entitled, "The Slaughter: An American
Atrocity," by author Carroll Case. This book represents
thirteen years of research that indicates more than 1,200 unarmed black
soldiers were killed on Camp Van Dorn, a remote military base in rural Mississippi,
during 1943.
On
June 30, 1943, the NAACP, under the leadership of Walter White, Roy Wilkins and
Thurgood Marshall, intervened on behalf of the black soldiers who were
stationed at Camp Van Dorn.
Determined to be an advocate for the men, they boldly notified the War
Department, sending letters and affidavits from several members of the 364th
who felt they were trapped in an environment of racism and violence and were in
a no-win situation.
Facing
the prospect of dying for their country, many began to ask the question: why
should we go abroad to fight for freedoms that our own people don't even have
at home?
Today,
under the direction of President Kweisi Mfume, the NAACP is continuing the
critical work begun in 1943 to search for the truth. In newspaper
articles, letters to our national headquarters and press releases, the United
States Army denies such an incident ever occurred. In an October 29, 1998 letter to President Mfume, the
Secretary of the Army says, "We have examined a sizeable portion of these
records, and we have found nothing that supports Mr. Case's allegations. In
fact, the information on hand appears to contradict Mr. Case's account of the
events at Camp Van Dorn in 1943."
While
the NAACP would like to believe the Army's response, we are reminded of several
tragedies in the history of African Americans in this country. Therefore, in a response back to the Department of
Defense, the NAACP has pledged its support and assistance to identify veterans
or the descendants of veterans who served in the 364th Infantry and to obtain
their account of events.
We
need your help to do this. We need you to spread the word amongst the members
of your family who have served in the military during the World War II era. Tell them about the allegations in Mr. Case's book.
Tell them about the Army's response. Ask them to recount any memories they may
have of such an event. Find out if they served in the 364th Infantry unit.
And if so, get them to come forward and help the NAACP and the United States Army
discover the truth surrounding this horrible situation.
Please
forward any inquiries on this matter to NAACP Armed Services and
Veterans
Affairs, National Headquarters, (410) 358-8900.
Contributed
by Girlhome, CALPatton, urban-leaders@nul.org
*********
FROM THE DESK OF
T'Zirah B. Yehuda…
[JUST
SOMETHING ELSE TO THINK ABOUT.]
In the coming
years of the 21st century identity, self discovery, and self determination will
become an issue of even more importance for people of color more than they
realize. Black academicians, the so-called black
intellegencia, the black middle class, and the poor among us will come together
in unprecedented numbers as we continue to build coalitions and bridge
generation and gender gaps only to return looking back at history to research
our beginnings.
What
we will discover will be the how and why our minds, bodies, and souls were
captured in the first place. For there is a purpose and reason for all
things. We will take a hard and honest
look at the even more sinister plot for this captivity in the first place.
For
many years black peoples have lived within the larger part of American and
other societies (captives). We have
aspired for acceptance through various methods of acculturation whether through
notoriety both negative and positive, education or crossing over by marriage or
choice. This should have given us
the idea that we were part of the larger extended family of humanity. But in reality we are not treated as
such. We as a people are given overt
and covert hints of how we are viewed as a people which is base and somewhat
lower then other groups of humanity unable to garner even public support or
sympathy for justice.
These
attitudes are demonstrated whenever there is a cry from black people in America
for recognition of wrongs committed against us. Blacks cannot fathom what the larger problem is. They know
something is there lurking, an answer for all this misery. We need only take a severe look at history
to find the answer for ourselves, and it started even longer ago than
slavery. But because of this period
of time which was referred to as "The peculiar Institution" we
witness the ways in which this captivity was carried out and the forces behind
the undertaking.
At
a 1998 Y.O.U. (Yisraelite Organizations of Unity) convention in Chicago
professor M.E.R. Mathivhva a Lemba from South Africa in his presentation told
of the wars (ethnic cleansing) between
the Hutus and Tutsi's of Ruwanda was based on ethnic reprisals. Mathivhva
continued that one group was influenced by the Catholic Church which exploited
both groups for land and influence.
One group was from a monarchal family (Tutsi) and the other Hebrews
(Hutus).
This story is but
one in modern time which was used in the past and has been repeated in many
countries since successfully although now it may take other forms such as
economic development the religious approach is still a viable one.
In
Christopher Taylor’s book, M. I. L. K. HONEY and MONEY, he documents the tremendous
influence Christian missionary work had and its influences on the hearts,
minds, and souls of Black Peoples on the African continent especially in Rwanda
and Burundi. Since this history is fairly recent we have
only to look back several years to see this influence at work.
"Recent
research on sub-Saharan Africa shows that Christian missionaries acted as the
sometimes unwitting: culture brokers:
(Geertz 1973) of European capitalist culture (Auge 1975; van Binsberge
1979; Roberts 1989; Comaroff 1985)/ Rwanda, in its passage from a gift economy
to a commodity economy, was no exception to this general pattern. Catholic missionaries offered Rwandans a
first-hand model of commodity practices and concepts. Such as wage labor,
private property, contract, egalitarianism, and individualism. Most important on the question of
misfortune, the missionary experience exposed Rwandans to the notion of
essential human inadequacy: an image of the self divided between a
material, corruptible aspect-the body- and an immortal soul constantly in
struggle with the body as the instigator of sins that accumulate and have to be
confessed.
Catholicism
reinforced the individualistic tendencies of capitalism by insisting that the
struggle with fleshly desire was a personal one; salvation was an individual
achievement gained at the expense of a life-long struggle with an egotistical,
desiring body."
"Nothing
remains of the Tutsi monarchy and the former condition of Tutsi dominance. Rwanda's Hutu majority managed to use the
ties it developed with the Catholic Church to advance itself politically and
economically. Today Rwanda's Hutu
government remembers the debt it owes the Catholic Church, whose privileged
status, temporal power, and success in discouraging heterodoxy seems likely to
persist".
"Milk,
Honey, and Money: Changing Concepts in
Rwandan Healing
Christopher
C. Taylor (1992)
ISBN 1-56098-104-0
Smithonian Institution Press
Washington and London
By T'Zirah B. Yehudah
Copyright 2001 T'zirah B.Yehuda
***
REGARDING
MAWUSI’S (RHAZARD) NATION BUILDING:
My Dear Brother Mawusi,
First,
let me tell you that I am not a sister just of words and not substance for I
too wish that the nations of dispersed Africans find nationhood, and I stand
ready to assist organizations who are interested in the self determination and
compensation efforts for black peoples in the Diaspora.
I
will continue to send suggestions and ideas which will give direction and focus
to any endeavors made by these organizations which state as their mission and
appear to address issues for black people.
As you say there is much to be done and I might add there is must to
be learned too on the road to nationhood.
The key here is
NATION. Like the Native Americans,
blacks are from many tribes of Afrikans though from a common nation. Identity subject matter must be considered
and recognized as a topic foci.
Blacks
within the Diaspora have been indoctrinated and have adopted many forms of
identities through various forms of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc., yet we
don't examine their origins to Europeans and Arabs beginnings. If we are to examine nationhood, we must
take a closer look at these subjects to see how this has hampered our progress
in the past, present and future.
Religion or belief systems govern how we
think and the day to day behaviors which dictate our existence. These are
also aspects which will determine nationhood for without these directions we
will wander, be prey to the continued dictates and dogmas, thereby perpetuating
our present dilemma. If we are
serious about nationhood we cannot and must not continue using those systems
which have failed to allow us self determination and respect in the past.
HISTORY
and etymology (The study of the origin of words), should be a great part of
conference topics and how not having knowledge of these play a role in the
misdirection and miseducation of our
peoples.
We
must summon the scholars within the Medical, Academic, and Judicial arenas so
that those who profess to have black interest at heart can make a serious and
public commitment to our efforts at self determination.
As
in the past, all serious changes give the masses notice, and then efforts move
forward. There will be those who
just want to look at history being made, those who change history, and those
who work against it.
Those
of us who are serious and committed WILL strive for change, but we must know
who and where our detractors come from so that we are aware of them.
I
feel that efforts at education begin at learning the needs within individual
communities. First, self education. This
involves knowing what is taking place or not taking place within our
perspective communities. Asking hard
questions. Who or what agency or person serve OUR best interests. Find out who they are and have a discussion
about self determination and identity.
Most of our people are making attempts at learning about our past
histories. Is the community aware of
H.R. 40?
Last
summer at an African American Festival I educated the community about a slave
ship which was found in 1973 by a black scuba diver, Moe Molinar. This ship is
the first ship found that was involved in the slave trade. This venue was welcomed by the community and
the effect of black people opening up to their slave history gave them the
courage to ask questions. Copies of
H.R. 40 was passed out along with other literature about the slave trade. Because black people were reminded of a past
which needed redress they were able to address present day issues without
discomfort.
Today's
efforts to quiet black peoples are the same used in my generation. Keep those fun loving comedic programs and
movies going, invite them to our society balls, give them just enough money to
keep them busy.
The
Christian churches which preached that blacks were cursed therefore enslaved
because of it are now making us "intermediaries" and drawing
Christians ever closer to European Judaism by accepting that Jesus was a Jew
therefore Christians must now protect the Jew against all. Now you see crosses with the Jewish star if
David firmly implanted within it to signify this new alliance.
Peoples
AND religions are uniting peoples as ever before and this is what this self
determination movement is up against.
Religion is preached to keep peoples part of a whole in order to
guarantee the one world government planned
This
is SERIOUS BUSINESS! Nationhood means giving up the Old and embracing the New. We must
learn just what these New things are!
So, brother what will be these new things which will unite us all
because the old things have failed us!
Don't
despair the questioning I know what you are doing...we do have to unite and
come together, but we need an agenda with which to work from and the comments,
suggestions, above serve to do just this.
I'm hoping that when others see these comments they are inspired to do
the same.
T'Zirah
*********
LAST BUT
NOT LEAST:
WHEN RHAZARD SPEAKS, HE GETS OUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION:
HIS
EFFORTS TOWARDS NATION
BUILDING
AND HIS CONCERNS ON OTHER ISSUES!
Hoteph and Great
Ancestral Blessings from the Creator to yo'll.
It is Monday June 11, 9:30 P.M., and I am letting you all know I am back
from my sojourn around Florida. It was a very successful journey capped off
with the most enlightening and pleasurable conversations with Chief Elder
Osiris and Brother James in Orlando today.
We talked and taught and learned about each other for about 3 hours. We agreed to take our places as
responsible Black men along side each other (with many more similar mindsets to
come and be identified) and carry out missions to build a nation state
mentality in our folks as we simultaneously build a nation of citizens with
privileges and rights determined by a pure collective Black Afrikan mind
concept.
Repatriation
and Reparations are vital to the cause.
Devine Intervention for the creation of a Self Determined Nation State
of Afrikans Populated From Around The Diaspora is in motion and offers you the
opportunity to build with us our reunification with our ancestral lineage and
homeland. The nature of this task calls and mandates for only the
righteously serious, dedicated, fearless, committed, pure with intent soldier
amongst us to offer assistance.
"Many are called." Only
a few are moved by the spirit to step up and take on the roles needed as the
models of Black Nationalist Unification in this movement. The arrogant, weak
minded, co-opted, alternative thinkers and doers need not step forward. Chief Elder and Brother James are two of the
many to hear the call and are qualified to respond. It should be taken as an honor to apprentice with them. This
Brother’s writings need to be read and discussed after we pray for clarity in
earnest thought to inculcate the message.
"Therefore,
I hereby declare to Chief Elder Osiris, Brother James, you and my spirit guides
My unrelenting effort and unwavering commitment to building the 55th Black
Afrikan Nation State. I shall work with
others of like minds and shall be held accountable to selected Black Afrikan
Nationalists scattered around the world for my sincerity. This I
say without duress or force or without choice."
I promise more to come. I am going to set up a unique email address in the near future
just for this effort. I shall use my
"chosen name" and some numbers as my special email address. Be on the look out for
<<Mawusi.....@aol.com
Free the mind..... Free the nation....
Mawusi.... me, Robert Mawusi..... IT’S NATION
BUILDING TIME.................. YAh....
[My Brother, you don’t realize just how much truth
you have denoted! Before it’s all over
with, you will have more exiled Blacks helping you build this “Nation” than you
can shake a stick at. The United
States is a sinking ship, and people are starting to realize that a good life
and peace of mind are more important than greed, power, and sex! T.Y. Editor]
***
FROM: RHazard988
RE: Calls
for Slavery Restitution Getting Louder
<<When one
takes into consideration that up until recently most of the history europeans
and "america" same people, taught was and in some cases still is
false and racist in nature.
I dig yah miss
sister lady soldier. You are right to
recognize and to teach. "It is HIS
- STORY" being "taught".
Some of us know consciously it "is false and racist in
nature." Others don’t. We are
doing righteous education of "OUR - STORY" at levels never before
imagined in this country. We have
researched, produced, and distributed our material after seeking out the rich
home grown resources of our ancestors glorious past. We are about to battle the false and racist nature to a stand
still.
Beware
though. He is next going to attack us
openly with more overt violence and not try to rationalize to the White public
the disgrace of his actions. We must
prepare ourselves for the violence coming.
We must train our selves and others in the ways of self-defense with and
without weapons. We must strike back against anyone who attacks us as
individuals or as a collective group.
With the "Ballot or the Bullet" and in the media, as
well.
The
White Militia is ready and has been getting prepared for the race war they say
is coming. We, too, must get prepared for the race
war they are bringing our way. They
will kill and maim us when we try to practice self determination and declare
ourselves a Nation State. Or
"Forget our place" or support black businesses or "move on
up." The Declaration of Nation
State within the borders of the usa would be considered a threat to the
security of the country. That
justifies intervention/war for white folks.
Just a caution to the wise.
Be prepared.
Free the mind... Free the spirit... Free the Afrikan in
you.... Free the land.....
Mawusi....
(aka Robert)
***
Mawusi’s
(Rhazard) Response to “Calls for Reparations Getting Louder:
<<Hoteph
My Brothers And Sisters:
I cannot for the
life of me see what is all of the rambling about reparation needing a legal
foot to stand on and all of the various scenarios about who it is we must
approach for restitutions for the most barbarous act ever to be perpetrated
against humanity.................................
It Is The Black Fool Who Say
I Have Lost Nothing In Afrika!!
A
fool verifies himself by one action,
after which it becomes a statement of fact.
Much love to the Afrikan
Nation.
Hoteph
Osiris Akkebala
Chief Elder
(p.a.i.'n)
***
Please
Go to Peace within you my Friend. It is
not for you to "see the rambling" of others. If you go looking, it will turn out to be a
frustrating confusion for you. I think
it is time for enlightened activists to stop reacting to the "Johnny Come
Latelies" with their efforts to get on the reparations bandwagon. NCOBRA,
P.A.I.N., and other organizations have made reparations and nationalism popular
words today. The concept isn’t as clear
to most who use it, still. So Be
It.
I
am coming to you for the purpose of focusing a discussion on the establishment
of a strategy to create a United Afrikan Diaspora Peoples Nation State. How do we make that happen???? That is the key point of my visit with you.
With that in mind. I found the need to
not be concerned with those who do not share that vision. I want to work and play with conscious Brothers
and Sisters who have a focus on NATION STATE STATUS. I believe there are enough of us to layout
the route of travel to get to our state.
I know we must help those who want to journey with us. But, we cannot wait for those who are not
ready. Yelling at them, encouraging
them, and having dialogue with them is loving them.
The
hard actuality is that if we don’t keep moving, we won’t get there
ourselves. We must show tough love. Let some fend for themselves while we mark the trail. Self Determination and collective work
and responsibility will get us a nation state without reparations. Cooperative Economics will fund it. Some just don’t and won’t get it. I say cut them loose for now and keep on
pushing.
The
beacon of our nation will draw them to the light. We cannot
hold the water without the container.
Let’s ingather conscious workers to build the container. While others
who are awakening on the outskirts seek the water on the way in. Once we have the container
established. We can go back for the
others at the water anytime we determine.
I
said all that to suggest that "We stop responding to all new travelers
crossing our paths." Let others do
that. We have more uplifting work to
do.
Free the spirit.... Free the mind...... Free the
time..... There is work to do.... It is Nation Building Time!
"If you who
are wise enough to understand what has just been written, then act on
it!!" Your words will calm the spirit...... PEACE.....
Alafia......
Mawusi
[And may the All-Mighty GOD
of Hosts be with you!!!]
***
1 Afrika
Hoteph..
I
returned form my weekend sojourn around Florida and had to immediately go back
out for an extended visit. Upon my
return there was a package awaiting me containing audio tapes from the NUBIAN
Agenda. I cannot read the return address and do not know from whence they
came. If you sent me the tapes, Asante
Sana. Please identify yourself so I may
thank you directly.
I
had the opportunity to hear some of the tapes and was impressed with most of
what I heard. Some information was not new. I was most taken with the "Law
of Responsibility." I pray that natural law becomes more known and
practiced. I will forward the law from
that tape in the near future. As the
tape stated, "An idea whose time has come is unstoppable." Referring to reestablishing the greatness of
the Nubian Empire, please be on the lookout for info describing the First Law
of Responsibility.
Free
the mind..... Mawusi.....
***
FROM: RHazard988@aol.com
TO: NgoneA@webtv.net
wrote:
<<Take care of
yourself and I will stay in contact, please do the same.
Peace
Alfia Brother Mawusi,
Thank
You. I have been anxiously awaiting to
hear the good news. It is wonderful news, and I am honored to be a part of
and serve in whatever capacity will benefit this timely and historical movement
towards "True Freedom."
Take
care of yourself, and I will stay in contact, please do the same.
Peace
Ngone
Hear the Drum Beat of the
Diaspora
55th Afrikan Nation
"Up You Mighty Race"
*********
Many thanks to
everyone who has submitted support and information for publication to help make
OUR Reparations Newsletter the success it is.
IF YOUR ORGANIZATION IS PLANNING A REPARATIONS RALLY, CONFERENCE, OR MARCH, PLEASE:
E-MAIL Afraqueen@AOL.COM TO POST YOUR
SCHEDULED EVENT.
For previous
postings on REPARATIONS NOW IN OUR LIFE TIME and Newsletters, please go to the
following link and click on
“Newsletter”:
www.thelawkeepers.org
This REPNOW
Newsletter is The LawKeepers’ contribution to our cause. For information about
our determination and direction, please feel free to visit our WebSite and
Delphi Forum:
www.thelawkeepers.org
Yehudah Benyamin Yisrael, President
(yehudah@thelawkeepers.org / jwright@blackomahaonline.com /
Yehudah74@hotmail.com)
Yehudah Yacob, Vice President (MilzAhead@AOL.COM)
Tziona Yisrael, Executive Secretary (Afraqueen@AOL.COM)
(We Exalt and
Sanctify the GOD of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and profess the Laws HE gave to
HIS Prophet Moses.)
Wisdom
is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting, get
understanding, Proverb 4:7 / Deuteronomy 28th Chapter: The African Slave Trade