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 28^th Chapter.

 

REPARATIONS NOW IN OUR LIFETIME

 

N E W S L E T T E R!

>>>>>  #26  <<<<<

 

MAY  2002

 

 

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WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS, AND WE OWE IT TO OUR CHILDREN TO ESTABLISH AND DEMAND BETTER LIVES FOR THEM AND FOR OURSELVES! 

 

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GIVE POWER AND MEANING TO

THE REPARATIONS MASS MOVEMENT - GIVE OF YOURSELF!

 

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“Take direct action against the U.S. government!”  Dr. Robert Brock

 

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Note from the REPNOW Newsletter Editor:

 

THIRD WORLD CITATION

May 2002

 

”Third World” is a description that’s been around for a very long time.  As to how long, I’m really not sure.  But given the definition of this term and what it entails, it’s time for its demise.

 

The New Merriam – Webster Dictionary defines “Third World” as being:

 

1. a group of nations esp. in Africa and Asia that are not aligned with either the Communist or the non-Communist blocs
2. an aggregate of minority groups within a large predominate culture
3. the aggregate of the underdeveloped nations of the world

 

The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, Third Edition defines “Third World as being:

 

- name applied to the technologically less-advanced, or developing, nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.  The term was originally used to distinguish these countries from the western nations and those that formed the Eastern bloc and usually excludes China.

 

Did you ever wonder why the term “Third World” still exists? 

 

This term is the other side of the tracks, the way the other half lives, the have nots, the underprivileged, the undeveloped, the impoverished, the substandard, the so-called inferior, the people of color!  

 

For those of us who are aware of the disparities and the unequal distribution of wealth, know all too well exactly why there is a term called “Third World.”  And if it were left up to the so-called “predominant culture” this term would be with us forever and with the objective of enabling the rulers of this world to perpetuate White Supremacy on this planet.  

 

Without giving this allusion much thought, we just accept this term, “Third World,” as being a matter of fact.  Well, don’t look now, but “WE” – Black Peoples - assist the powers-that-be in their efforts to sustain Blacks and other people of color of “Third World” significance or rather insignificance.  Then again, maybe we should “look now” and plan to do something about it.

 

Whites hire Blacks for all manner of positions, and some of these jobs come with darn good salaries, too.   And if minorities want to stay employed, they do as they are told no matter the consequencesand no matter who gets hurt in the process - unfortunately, in most cases, Black Folks.  

 

We have some Black School Chancellors and some heads of Education Departments, yet Blacks have the worse systems of education in our communities.  There are even many Black mayors throughout the US, but their cities cannot compare to those in which White Folks live.  Privileged Whites are not graced with the worst ghettoes known to man.  And it would appear that Supreme Justice Clarence Thomas, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Adviser Condalezza Rice are all oblivious to being Black and that they are a part of the makeup of the Third World Citation.  Otherwise, they would be on this Reparations bandwagon.  Then there is the Black African from Ghana, the Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, serving a second term, nonetheless.  For what?  Not for Blacks and not even for his Ghanaians or other Africans.  And let’s not forget our Black Representatives in Congress.  It seems they are too busy tending to the needs of White Folks and Israelis and other foreign countries to be concerned with Blacks in their very own land of “Liberty, Justice, and Freedom.”  And as a matter of fact, in view of the US walk out of the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR), it seems that our Black Representatives, including the Black Caucus (excluding Rep. Cynthia McKinney), are of no real value to those they are supposed to represent.  Where is their voice in Congress to back the present thrust for Reparations?  Where is the same exhibition for this cause that they displayed for former President Clinton and his cause, which has done absolutely nothing for the Black Plight – NOTHING!  Wouldn’t their assistance cause or rather facilitate a more rapid advancement towards progress and fulfillment of Reparations if they would only be more tenacious and assertive in their offices?  And can’t our Representatives get on the case to address and rid this country of the racism and deprivation that exists?  APPARENTLY NOT!   If the White Jews in the United States can scheme and connive to get the Congress and the Senate to spend our tax dollars on people who aren’t even “Jews” but Converted Europeans, albeit IN ANOTHER COUNTRY, why can’t we get this US government to do same for the Black communities in the so-called Good Ol’ US of A?  If this is an impossible task, then it’s time for Black Folks to wake up and seek alternatives that will work in our favor for our prosperity and SELF DETERMINATION.  If we don’t, then prepare to endure continued injustice, suppression, degradation, exclusion, and, yes, of course, Third World Citation.

 

I know, you know, and they know that Descendants of Slaves are but pawns up against a corrupt government since its inception.  The Judicial System is made up of laws, lawyers, and judges that are programmed to work against Blacks and our prosperity.  Racial profiling, police brutality, lynchings, deceptive penal system, and institutional racism are all systems in place to sustain our decline and demise.    If our Black Youth are not in jail, on drugs, or dead, they soon will be unless we take charge of our Peoples and make a serious transition regarding our status in the United States and in this world.

 

Since the Sixties, Black Folks have regressed, and although we are not back to square one, we most certainly are not members of a just and equitable society.  And since we are not and since it appears it will never be, then Black Folks have no choice but to consider other options for our welfare and for the betterment of our progeny.  Why should only White Folks talk about establishing a better future for “their children?”  Well, it’s time, Blacks Folks, that we start doing the same. 

 

 

A Third World Citation is only able to exist because those who make up this reference have done nothing to make it null and void.  Third World existence is due to White World Power and Control.  The Native Americans are on Reservations, Descendants of Slaves are without Self Determination, the Aborigines are second-class citizens, and the Palestinians are being wiped out and uprooted all because nothing is done about it.   The United States and Great Britain impose sanctions on countries and in the process kill the innocent, and they veto proposals deemed to aid the oppressed and without compassion and certainly without any remorse.  If we truly want a change in the lives of Blacks (and other victims of Third World Citation), then it’s up to us to make it happen ‘cause White Folks are determined to assassinate or imprison our leaders and destabilize African countries and keep chains somewhere on those of us who inhabit their lands.   This is their best scheme to keep our numbers low and maintain control over our affairs.  Admit it!  We have been victims of their dictatorship and suppression for long enough

 

Once the powers-that-be no longer have control over Black Folks and other people of color, including so-called Sand Niggers (people of Arabic extraction), the sooner we can re-establish ourselves.  However, for Blacks there is but one alternative, and that is to rebuild “Africa.”  

 

There is no question that this idea will be very much dismissed and denounced by the great majority of Blacks.  Why?  Unfortunately for some reason Black Folks seem to believe that we cannot exist without White Folks.   We see what they have done to us, yet we want to hold fast to their philosophies and systems of exploitation, manipulation, and control.   We can do better, and we can do so with morality and decency. 

 

There is but ONE WAY OUT of the hell in which we live in the United States and in other White Societies throughout the world.  That WAY OUT is to ESTABLISH “AFRICA” as an empire replete with industry, economic power, integrity, true justice for all, peace, and a determination to fulfill this objective.   Sounds familiar, right?  Yes, of course; these are supposed to be the icons of America.  What a joke!

 

Think about an African Homeland for Black Peoples; WE CAN DO THIS!  But first, we must DEMAND that the Descendants of the Slavers and Slave Masters pay THE DEBT for the TransAtlantic Slave Trade and for all the human rights atrocities and injustices committed against us and up unto this very day.  Now, it is our turn to become the “SQUEAKY WHEEL” in this world!!!  And it’s now or never!

 

Please see my article entitled, “REALITY AND ACUMEN, IS REPARATIONS, IS EXODUS, IS REPATRIATION, IS FREEDOM, IS SELF DETERMINATION!” found at the very end of this edition of the REPARATIONS NOW IN OUR LIFETIME Newsletter.

 

 

Tziona Yisrael, Editor

REPARATIONS NOW IN OUR LIFETIME Newsletter

www.thelawkeepers.org

(Click on “Repnow”)

 

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PROGRESS IN THE INTERNATIONAL REPARATIONS MOVEMENT

 

May 6, 2002

 

PRESS RELEASE

 

All For Reparations and Emancipation

 

 

In April of 2002 Afro Descendants gained a significant step forward in The international reparations effort.   The 58th Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, passed a resolution that established a Working Group for African Descendants in the Americas.

 

The resolution, 2002/68 Item 8, on the Working Group for African descendants in the Diaspora, passed in the final days of the six-week session.  It provides for two 5-day long Working Groups to be held before March of 2003.

 

These Working Groups will be made up of five independent UN experts from various geographical regions who will meet to study problems faced by Afro Descendants, and gather relevant information from Governments, Nongovernmental Organizations and other relevant sources.  The resolution will go into effect after approval by the Economic and Social Council, which meets in June.

 

This decision is the first official recognition of the collective existence of the descendants of enslaved Africans by the international community.  It offers an opportunity for leaders of Afro Descendant peoples to work in unity, under one internationally recognized identity, in order to gain reparations and restoration.

 

From the beginning of his efforts in 1994, Mr. Silis Muhammad has been urging this type of recognition for Afro Descendants.  He has repeatedly asked for a UN forum in which leaders could discuss the means and modalities of reparations in order to be able to move forward in unity.  Very recently, in his written and oral statements to the Commission on Human Rights, he reiterated his urgent recommendation for the Working Group for Afro Descendants.

 

Mr. Muhammad, who has known for some months that this Working Group could be established in 2002, is very pleased that it has now been established.  He views it as a response, at least in part, to his many requests for such a mechanism.

 

All For Reparations and Emancipation is pleased to announce this progress. We invite you to visit www.afre-ngo.org or e-mail Hakimida@aol.com for more information.

 

Submitted by TheBlackList@topica.com

 

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REPARATIONS LAWSUIT FACES CHALLENGES

 

April 5, 2002

 

Two weeks ago, attorney Roger Wareham and a group of plaintiffs filed the first class action lawsuit in a federal court on behalf of all 35 million African American descendants of slaves. While the purposes of the lawsuit are clear as they target three major corporations, including FleetBoston, Aetna and CSX, the coordination of this first shot across the bow with other attorneys and activists who have been planning similar tactics is rather vague.

 

"We have been in contact with Professor Charles Ogletree who is part of the Reparations Coordinating Committee," said attorney Jomo Thomas, during an appearance on a Chicago radio station last Friday. This comment was corroborated by his partner, Mr. Wareham, when asked if there was consultation with other lawyers.

 

Consultation, however, doesn't necessarily mean consensus or agreement, and there was some indication of separate agendas when attorney Michael Hausfeld remarked to Gil Noble on "Like It Is" last Sunday that the first lawsuit may have been a bit "precipitous."  Noble did not follow up on this remark. Hausfeld has been successful in representing Jewish Holocaust victims in their claims for reparations.

 

Hausfeld said that he is working with the Reparations Coordinating Committee that includes attorney Johnnie Cochran, author Randall Robinson, Dr. Manning Marable, Professor Ogletree, and number of other notables. In a recent op-ed article to the New York Times, Ogletree broached the separate lawsuit tactic. "This lawsuit," he said of the one filed in Brooklyn by Wareham and other plaintiffs, "is limited to FleetBoston, Aetna, CSX and other to-be-named companies. The broader reparations movement seeks to explore the historical role that other private institutions and government played during slavery and the era of legal racial discrimination that followed. The goal of these historical investigations is to bring American society to a new reckoning with how our past affects the current conditions of African-Americans and to make America a better place by helping the truly disadvantaged.

 

"The Reparations Coordinating Committee, of which I am a co-chairman," Ogletree continued, "will proceed with its own plans to file wide-ranging reparations lawsuits late this autumn. The committee is a group of lawyers, academics, public officials and activists that has conducted extensive research and begun to identify parties to sue and claims to be raised."

 

"I think the first lawsuit is doomed to fail since it is too broad and doesn't have a plaintiff who can be a reliable test case, showing direct connections to a company that benefited from the enslavement of a plaintiff relative," said a local attorney who asked that his name not be used. "This case will be thrown out and it will set a bad precedent for future cases."

 

Several responses from the company facing the initial lawsuit have conjectured similar results, adding that the courtroom is the wrong venue to seek relief. "If the courtroom is the wrong venue," said Wareham, "then we are willing to settle out of court, if they prefer."

 

But the courtroom seems to be the remaining option for those who have been exasperated in other arenas, said Ogletree. "Litigation is required to promote this discussion because political accountability has not been forthcoming. In each Congressional session since 1989, representative John Conyers has introduced a bill to study slavery reparations and it has quickly died each time."

 

Councilman Charles Barron is also preparing a reparations bill to be introduced in the City Council, which is similar to ones in motion in New Hampshire and Vermont.

 

"There are a number of actions in motion on this issue," said Dr. Conrad Worrill, a veteran activist and currently leading the campaign for a major reparations march this summer in Washington, D.C., "and I think it's important that we get on the same page. Nevertheless, I don't think any of these efforts are in contradiction. We are all moving in a similar way toward justice and in our demand for reparations for the enslavement of our ancestors."

 

By Herb Boyd

TBWT National Editor

editors@tbwt.net

The Black World Today

 

Submitted by JELPO@AOL.COM

 

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REPARATIONS UPDATE!

A Newsletter

 

April 5, 2002

 

Get Your Reparations Update! Newsletter…

 

The Reparations Mobilization Coalition (www.murchisoncenter.org/joshua/reparations) has just printed its first issue of its newsletter: "Reparations Update!" ...and one can receive it in the mail (either a bulk of copies or just one) by simply emailing your name and address to: <reparationsnow@tbwt.com>.

 

Of course, donations to help cover the mailing costs are gladly accepted.

 

The intent of this newsletter is to report on the actions, events, and ideas within the national and international Reparations Movement. It is also one of the ways we can connect grassroots Brothas & Sistas to the fundamentals of the Reparations demands.  If you have any reparations news or announcements (two month lead time), feel free to email them to the Reparations Mobilization Coalition. And if you have friends who don't have access to emailing, they can send their Reparations news and announcements to:

 

The Reparations Mobilization Coalition

122 W. 27th Street 10th Floor

NY, NY 10001

 

Reparations Update! is YOUR communications vehicle. We look forward to your input and assistance in distributing the newsletter.

 

In struggle,

 

Sam Anderson, Muntu Matsimela, Yolanda McBride, Brotha Chaka for the RMC Newsletter Crew

 

Submitted by BRC-REP

 

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PAYING OUT ISN’T THE SAME AS OWNING UP

 

April 7, 2002

 

Late last month, lawyers filed suit in U.S. Federal Court in Brooklyn against three major U.S. corporations -- CSX, FleetBoston Financial and Aetna -- for profiting from slavery. The class-action suit seeks damages for centuries of forced labor, which, by one estimate, could amount to a numbing $1.4 trillion. A thousand more corporations may be named as defendants. The intended beneficiaries, it is said, will be the 35 million African Americans who are descended from slaves.

The appeal of such a claim is clear, the virtues of accountability self-evident. Less obvious but well worth weighing, however, are the perils. The case promises or threatens (depending on one's point of view) to open a wide and wrenching debate that may ultimately turn not on evidence but on the complex relationship between history and justice. It pits the past against the present, collective responsibility against that of the individual, national identity against racial identity, and the demand for dollars against the realization that slavery defies quantification.

 

At times, it seems America has made a veritable market of past sins, becoming the First National Bank of Reparations & Restitution. The slavery issue, 139 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, is only the most recent in a long line of such appeals. The United States has paid reparations to Japanese Americans interned during World War II, to Native Americans whose lands were stolen outright, to Pacific Islanders whose paradise was nuked, and to those knowingly exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. New York paid some $8 million to inmates injured or killed in the 1971 Attica prison uprising. We are hounded by our moral debts. But no case is more emotionally charged than that of slavery.

 

Certainly, other nations have faced demands for reparations: Japan, from South Korea's "comfort women," pressed into prostitution six decades ago; Germany, from slave laborers under the Third Reich; South Africa, from those who suffered under apartheid. But Americans live in a world where atrocities are routinely submitted to lawyers and accountants, where the beads on the abacus slide back and forth -- one for a nation plundered, one for a race enslaved -- until a balance is struck. It is a fiction that ties the ghost of the transgressor to the ghost of the victim by divvying up the ill-gotten gains. Contrition is commoditized. But holding ourselves literally accountable in a pecuniary sense alone may be to let ourselves off too cheaply. Paying out does not mean owning up. In fact, by satisfying the claims of the past, we may inadvertently risk silencing them.

The danger is that over time we may come to see such payments almost as a form of eminent domain, a legal taking or compensation at fair market value. The dilemma is how to provide relief to victims of oppression or atrocities without turning history itself into a kind of moral toll road, a pay-as-you-go scheme that instead of expiation for the past creates precedent for the future, anticipating and routinizing the unspeakable. History becomes The Great Indemnifier.

Reparations are not pollution credits to be purchased in advance. The weight of crimes against humanity ought to create something more meaningful than a windfall to actuaries, lawyers and distant descendants. Reparations should be a way of facing up to the past, not of turning our back on it.  Slavery opened with the buying and selling of human beings. There is something vaguely grotesque about suggesting that it should end with the drafting of another check.

It is not the payments that are overdue, but the debate itself. The current discourse may force us to confront a past that in our romanticized history is always eclipsed by an image of America as a freedom-loving land. That Aetna's predecessors wrote policies for slaveholders but excluded coverage for slaves' suicides, lynchings and owner abuse speaks not only to the horrors of slavery but to the knowledge of those horrors beyond the plantation.

The bottom line to slavery is that there is no bottom line, no way to calculate such an abomination. Any attempt to do so risks trivialization. Besides, what is at stake is more than dollars and cents. The nation is called to bear witness. It is not only the past that demands redress but the present. The issue is how to remember the past without being sucked back into it. "It would be a good thing," wrote the noted German dramatist Christian Friedrich Hebbel, "if man concerned himself more with the history of his nature than with the history of his deeds."

Some argue that too much time has elapsed, that those who would pay are innocent and those who would receive were never slaves. The suit does reach back to 1619, the year the first Dutch ship landed with slaves at Jamestown, a year before the Pilgrims set sail. But dates are deceptive. Slavery may be distant, but it is not remote -- not in the consciousness of many African Americans who see it as the proximate cause of present inequities.

The relevance of time itself is also at issue. Slavery is of biblical proportion, creating human dislocations that have the half-life of plutonium. It cannot be buried out of sight without endangering the groundwater of future generations. That is the nature of trauma. Today, racism, the legacy of slavery, weighs upon the offspring of the slave but also of the master. Even $1.4 trillion would be a bargain if it could rid us of that curse.

But this lawsuit, if successful, rather than healing old wounds, may only aggravate them. The financial burden would fall not on "faceless" U.S. corporations but on individual Americans, black and white. Millions of African Americans today are employed by Aetna, CSX, Fleet and other corporations to be added to the list. Minority employees throughout industry would share the cost of reparations, as would countless black shareholders and pensioners, as well as universities and the economy at large. Even gross discrimination does not justify indiscriminate punishment. If history is replete with crimes against humanity, it also has its share of misguided quests for justice that promoted nothing but fresh resentment and more suffering.

Today, white America's stereotypes of blacks are imploding and African Americans have every reason to have hope for the future. Before them they see black Oscar winners, world-class athletes, a Supreme Court justice, the secretary of state, the national security adviser, celebrated musicians and scholars, esteemed poets and authors, top editors, publishers and entertainment giants, and the swelling ranks of mid- and senior-level black executives -- including Aetna's executive vice president and chief of health operations, Ronald A. Williams, and others at the very firms targeted in the suit.

In focusing on the past, the case also threatens to divert precious resources -- money, time and emotional reserves -- away from contemporary affronts to equality. Better such minds and war chests should go to drawing attention to inner-city schools, disparate prison sentences, racial profiling and the appointment of public officials insensitive to civil rights. This may all be the toxic residue of slavery, but reparations will not set it right.

One is reminded of the ancient Greek, Philoctetes, a legendary archer who was bitten by a snake and whose wound would not heal. His fellow warriors, no longer able to stomach the sight of the injury, marooned him on the isle of Lemnos. Years later, a prophet told the Greeks that without Philoctetes's bow, they would never take Troy. So Odysseus and his men returned for him.

The injury done to African Americans also has never fully healed, and has led to isolation and societal fragmentation. It has been perhaps the largest single impediment to realizing our national dreams and ambitions. Those who champion this suit doubtless see it as a belated reaching out to those left behind. Reparations are meant to bring some relief to the aggrieved and some glint of redemption for the oppressor. Justice asserts (no matter how tardily) that we are answerable to one another. It may well profit us all to face the evidence to emerge from such a suit, not as an indictment, but as a tool of reconciliation. "It is the mission of history," wrote Jose Ortega y Gasset, "to make our fellow beings acceptable to us." Coming to terms with yesterday's barbarity provides an ongoing test of today's humanity. The case may be dismissed but not the cause.

"But where does the madness end?" ask those who oppose reparations for actions committed so long ago. It is more than a rhetorical question. It raises the legitimate fear that we will slide further down a slippery slope into an abyss of litigation and liability. How do we temper right with reason?

For the Australians, the answer was to proclaim an annual National Sorry Day. Now, each May 26, they reflect on state crimes committed against the Aborigines. In America we face a Hobson's choice, as if we must bankrupt ourselves to remain morally solvent.

But at what point can we close the book on past transgressions? The Holocaust? The Inquisition? The Crusades? Like a giant skein of yarn, our sins unravel before us, rolling across the floor, yard after yard, out the door, across the lawn, and all the way back to The Garden itself -- back to the very first Sorry Day.

By Ted Gup

Ted Gup is the Shirley Wormser Professor of Journalism at Case Western Reserve University and a writer who holds a law degree.

The Washington Post Company

Submitted by alarkam@webtv.net

***

If I may interject…

 

Professor Ted Gup's article on Reparations is very ambivalent.  While claiming to be concerned about achieving racial justice, the author repeatedly casts doubts on the viability of Reparations.  He fails to mention even once the international legal battle for Reparations for all African-Americans which has been unfolding inside the United Nations for several years.  The goals of that struggle go far beyond monetary restitution.  African-Americans throughout this Hemisphere are still suffering from the lingering effects of plantation slavery, ethnocide and forced assimilation.  We must be recognized as a unique people inside the realm of international law and be restored to our own language and culture.  We must also gain the right to build our own government and economy on some of this Earth that we can call our own.

 

As-Salaam-Alaikum,

Minister Malik Al-Arkam

www.afre-ngo.org

 

[How right you are, my Brother!  T.Y. Editor]

 

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RANDALL ROBINSON SAYS THE NATION SHOULD COMPENSATE

THE DESCENDANTS OF SLAVES

 

April 5, 2002

 

Randall Robinson says.....

 

TAMPA -- Slavery was carried out with the complicity of the U.S. government, and that is the strongest argument in support of reparations for the descendants of slaves, author and activist Randall Robinson said Thursday. "Think of it as restitution, American compassion," said Robinson, who spoke at the University of South Florida. "(It will) lift the floor of the dispossessed, the shutout and the hopeless."

 

Robinson was the keynote speaker at the Institute on Black Life's annual symposium on race. He is the author of several books, including the bestseller The Debt -- What America Owes to Blacks, and his most recent work, The Reckoning -- What Blacks Owe to Each Other.

 

Robinson, the past president of the Washington-based TransAfrica and TransAfrica Forum, is known for his efforts to help end apartheid in South Africa and to spur the U.S. government to change its policies toward Haiti.

 

During his hour long speech Thursday, he spoke little of current affairs. Instead, he focused on how black Americans have been deprived of their history.

 

Black History Month has always troubled him, he said, because it leads black Americans to believe that their story started with slavery. "For most of us, we assume that is all the story we have to tell," he said.  "They didn't tell us our story, because our story is empowering.  Instead, they told a story that didn't fit us."

 

He used a visit to Washington, D.C., with his young daughter as an example of how blacks are overlooked in U.S. history. As they walked along the National Mall, Robinson and his daughter noticed that there were few blacks strolling near the nation's great monuments.

 

"We're not at the mall, because there is nothing there to do with any of us," he said. "Why are we unremarked in this place . . . that tells American stories?"

 

In the Capitol, along with the art that lines the walls, the statues and the marble frieze that documents the history of America, there is "no Tubman, no Douglas, no Sojourner Truth," he said. "It's as if slavery never happened."

 

But the Capitol's sandstone was mined in Virginia by slaves, Robinson said, and the bronze statue named "Freedom" that sits atop the building was cast by slaves. "The important buildings and institutions found their beginnings on the backs of uncompensated blacks," he said.

 

http://www.sptimes.com/2002/04/05/TampaBay/Author__America_owes_.shtml

 

By TAMARA LUSH, Times Staff Writer

St. Petersburg Times

Submitted by TheBlackList@topica.com

 

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THE  BLACK REPARATIONS FUND

HAS BEEN GROSSLY EMBEZZLED

 

April 13, 2002

 

Reparations is a legal wealth in the holds of these United States, entitled to U.S. Black slave descendants. On the part of Black People, there has been a great deal of passivity, silence and indifference about this wealth - mostly due to many Blacks being unfamiliar with the legal terms and practice of Reparations, and some due to the learned Blacks being frightened that White folks will get mad at them if they ask for their money. Nevertheless, this silence enables non-Blacks to have a field day spending this money - this Black folks' money!

 

Billions of Black People's Reparations dollars are being donated annually to support a welfare state in the middle east. Black folks have not consented to their wealth being spent like this - particularly in lieu of the fact that this donation does not benefit U.S. Blacks at all (But perhaps the embezzlers feel that Black folks’ silence gives consent). Billions of Black People's Reparations dollars are being spent to finance wars that are not Black folks’ fights. Billions of Black People's Reparations dollars are being spent to expand companies and corporations that Black folks don't own, and is producing big-time profits that Black folks aren't receiving or benefiting from.

 

It is preposterous for Black folks to remain in hardship, crisis and SILENCE, while non-Black embezzlers lavish themselves with Black folks’ money. Poor Black People are SILENCING away the wealth that would make them not be poor any more. Middle class Black folks are SILENCING away an income that can get them off America's Black upper echelon welfare programs (i.e., minority business loans, grants-with strings attached, etc.) and away from the constant control, will, and manipulation of tricky funding resources. Rich Black folks are SILENCING away a process that would free them and their wealth from the jurisdiction, will and command of others.

 

It is ridiculous in this day and time for Black People to let their own wealth bypass themselves, and be used as donations for alien causes. Somebody has been embezzling the Black Reparations Fund, which is why it has taken Black People so long to receive their money.  The wealth of America is YOUR legal property!

 

By Attorney Dr. Robert L. Brock

President, The Self-Determination Committee

Website: http://www.directblackaction.com

 

[AND unfortunately, the wealth of America maintains the IMPOVERISHMENT and REPRESSION of Descendants of Slaves.]

 

"I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more if

they had known they were slaves."

Mama Harriett Tubman

 

"The only protection against injustice in man is power....physical,

financial, and scientific."

Marcus "Mosiah" Garvey

http://www.menofrespect.org

 

Submitted by TheBlackList

 

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BERRY URGES BLACKS TO CONTINUE

REPARATIONS MOVEMENT

Reparations are part of the unfinished business of the civil rights movement, said Mary Frances Berry, guest lecturer in the first installment of Beach Institute's 2002 series on reparations.

"In fact, no matter how we look at it, at this hour the civil rights movement was very successful," she said. "I know that in a place that Clarence Thomas came from it's kind of hard to say that. But, the civil rights movement was successful."

After the laughter subsided, Berry spoke to the packed sanctuary Thursday night on how the nation has backslided in civil rights, the historical beginnings of the reparations movement, and where the movement is headed today.

Listening to the distinguished academician, lawyer, and chairperson of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is, in many ways, like chatting with an old friend. In her brief lecture at Second African Baptist Church, Berry skillfully wove together history, humor and hard-hitting facts.

"New attention in this kind of climate has been turned to the demand for reparations. The title of this (series) you have is 'Forty Acres and a Mule.' Well, I have to tell you I'd like 40 acres, but I'd like it to be oceanfront property. And you can forget the mule," she said to much laughter and applause.

The unfinished business Berry spoke of has two elements, she said. One is making sure the law really stands for equality and justice. The other part is the economic agenda.

The nation -- when headed by President Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush -- tried to create what it assumed were solutions to economic inequality between blacks and whites. Those strategies -- more education and targeted programs -- have failed, Berry said.

"The effort is under way all across this country to work on (reparations). There are scholars and activists trying to make a case," she said.

Lawyers have argued the theory of unjust enrichment.

"Whites and their descendants were unjustly enriched and blacks and their descendants were unjustly impoverished by the exploitation of black labor," she said.

Some also argue there should be housing and health care, but not cash given, as a form of reparations.

Berry highlighted the work of Robert Brock of the Self Determination Committee in Washington, D.C., in the 1960s. He filed a class action lawsuit in Los Angeles asking for reparations and damages. The government did not answer his petition and it was ultimately lost in court.

Berry cited a New York woman who went to law school to figure out a way to make a case for reparations. She uncovered records showing insurance giant Aetna had written life insurance policies on slaves where the beneficiaries were the slave masters.

"So, anywhere you sort of lift up the cover, you will find these connections, because they are there," Berry said.

But many white Americans, she said, reject the notion of reparations for blacks on several fronts. They will say they personally didn't own slaves and neither did their parents, Berry said. Other common arguments are, "How can you establish who gets paid?" and "What about the Union soldiers who fought in the war, after all they freed these African Americans?"

"Well, the answer to that is most of us can figure out our ancestry if we want to. We can trace people. In my family we can do it. We know who the slaves were and we can go all the way back to the plantation," Berry said.  Union soldiers all got pensions, bounties, old-age benefits, and jobs, she said.

"Then they say, 'What about the immigrants who came after slavery was over?' Well they benefited from the infrastructure that was there before, because America benefited from slave labor," she said.

Some opponents, Berry added, say reparations have already been paid -- pointing to the welfare system.

"Well, welfare benefits go to everyone. And there are more whites on welfare, or were before Bill Clinton ended welfare, than blacks," she said. "Then they say, 'Well you all have racial preferences, and affirmative action has given you all of the best jobs in America.'

"Well we know what the answer to that is, don't you?"

In fact, Berry says evidence opponents have themselves produced says racial preferences may not have reached the vast majority of African Americans.

"This may mean that those who seek reparations have more work to do to prove the case, but that's all right, I don't really think that's the problem," she said.

In fact, Berry is currently working on a book that offers the federal government's own records as proof that the reparations movement began in earnest in 1897.

To answer opponent's assertions that, "We would be for (reparations) if these people were alive," Berry says, "Well they were alive then. And the people then weren't for it."

But, said Berry, the movement didn't die.

"The movement that you see today for reparations is merely an outgrowth of all that work," she said. "When we talk about reparations today -- however the issue is decided -- all we are really doing in a sense is being true to the memory of those who struggled, and who went to jail and worked hard for this cause, and the old ex-slaves who died in poverty and got nothing."

 

By Hermione Malone
Savannah Morning News

The Beach Institute's 2002 lecture series on reparations and the economics of race continues at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Beach Institute.

All remaining lectures will be held there as well, each beginning at 3 p.m.

David Blight, professor of history and black studies at Amherst College

Lee Baker, director of undergraduate studies and associate professor of cultural anthropology and African and African-American studies at Duke University

William "Sandy" Darity, professor of economics at the University of North Carolina and research professor of public policy studies at Duke University

Robert Westley, associate professor of law at Tulane University

For more information, contact the Beach Institute at 234-8000 or visit http://www.kingtisdell.org.

Submitted by JELPO@AOL.COM

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UNITED STATES TO RECEIVE FIRST ON-LAND

MIDDLE PASSAGE MONUMENT

August 2, 1999

 

On Friday, July 16, 1999, Homeward Bound Foundation president Wayne James announced that the United States will receive the first of the six on-land Middle passage Monuments scheduled to be erected between the years 2000 and 2005 in the six regions of the world where the transatlantic slave trade occurred, namely Africa, the Caribbean, Central America, Europe, North America and South America. Plans are to unveil the U.S. monument on July 3, 2000, exactly one year after the original Middle Passage Monument was lowered onto the door of the Atlantic Ocean, 427 kilometers off New York's harbor, facing Africa.

"The purpose of the ocean monument is to serve as a gravestone on the world's largest graveyard, the Atlantic Ocean's infamous Middle Passage, where estimated millions of African people died en route to the transatlantic slave trade between the 15th and 19th centuries, their bones forming a trail from Africa to the Americas. The purpose of the on-land monuments is to encourage the global, collective healing from the slave trade and its aftermath of racism," said Wayne James.

Five other on-land monuments will be placed annually following the North American Middle Passage Monument: South America in 2001, the Caribbean in 2002, Europe in 2003, Central America in 2004, and Africa in 2005.

The following 10 criteria were considered in choosing the United States over Canada and Mexico for the North America monument:

1) The historic significance of the proposed site-country in the slave trade between the 15th and 19th centuries.

2) The presence of African- and/or African Diaspora-related activities and facilities in the proposed site-country (ex. museums, university degree programs, libraries, festivals).

3) The African and/or African Diaspora population in the proposed site-country.

4) The political stability of the proposed site-country.

5) The governmental interest in the Middle Passage Monument.

6) The proposed site-community’s interest in the Middle Passage Monument (ex. signed petitions, letters of support from community organizations and individuals, academic papers).

7) The presence of civil rights laws and/or policies protecting the interests of all minority groups, regardless of race, nationality, color, gender, sexual orientation, and religion).

8) The tourism-related infrastructure of the proposed site-country.

9) The overall appropriateness of the proposed site-country.

10) The overall appropriateness of the specific site.

"There were significant arguments in favor of each country," said Wayne James. " The 12 –member panel, after much consideration, concluded that the United States was in the best position to embrace the Monument Project, setting the standard for the other recipient regions to follow. The order in which the various regions were designated to receive their respective monuments was determined by drawing lots, the first region drawn receiving the first monument and the last receiving the last," James said.

 

At the suggestion of the HBF, the Congressional Black Caucus, led by Congresswomen Donna Christian-Christiansen and Cynthia McKinney, is in the process of securing federal land in the following cities as potential sites for the Middle Passage Monument: Washington, DC; Savannah, GA; New York, NY; Charleston, SC; and Alexandria, VA. The HBF is also considering state/municipal sites in Newport, RI; Boston, MA; New York; NY; Newark, NJ; Philadelphia, PA; Baltimore, MD; Washington, DC; Alexandria, VA; Charleston, SC; Savannah, GA; and New Orleans, LA.

 

Designed by a multi-racial team of seven metal artists on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the on-land monuments will feature a cubism-inspired, 50-foot arch made of brushed aluminum. The three-part arch symbolizes the need for the past, present, and future to converge in order for cultural identity and pride to be realized. A 100-foot, granite walkway, each foot representing an estimated million African people who perished during the transatlantic slave trade, will be inscribed with the history of Africa and the Diaspora, ancient and modern, hieroglyphics, symbols, significant dates, events, names, and places. "Our goal is to create a monument which all serve as a symbolic pilgrimage, physically, culturally, and spiritually, back to Africa," James said. "The on-land monument will encourage discourse, education, understanding, and healing from the atrocities of the slave trade," James concluded.

 

Submitted by JELPO@AOL.COM

 

[I would prefer to see these monuments AFTER Reparations has been paid.  I’d hate for folks to think that these images and the cost for their formations would in any way compensate for the barbaric and cruel crime against Black Humanity during the TransAtlantic Slave Trade when Blacks were forcibly migrated to lands of captivity and now when our descendants still endure pain and suffering generated from this heinous past.  T.Y., Editor]

 

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APOLOGIZING FOR SLAVERY IS SMALL PRICE

FOR PEACE

 

April 3, 2002