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

*********

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]

 

*********

 

APOLOGIZING FOR SLAVERY IS SMALL PRICE

FOR PEACE

 

April 3, 2002

 

Slogging through the slavery reparations debate is an exercise in whiplash.

 

One side of the brain says, "This is ridiculous," summoning all the usual arguments and obstacles to a legal resolution, including: the statute of limitations on a "crime" committed hundreds of years ago; the implausibility of descendants proving their slave heritage; the massive confusion surrounding disbursement of funds - how much, to whom, by whom and how? And the fact that, though abhorrent, slavery was a legal institution during the times targeted in recent lawsuits.

 

Corporations named in lawsuits filed last week for profiting from slavery - Aetna, CSX and FleetBoston - weren't breaking any laws at the time. By what standard can today's stockholders be held accountable for the centuries-old transgressions of dead people?

 

That's the logical side of the brain talking. Then there's the other side that says, "Well, they do have a point."

 

Slavery is so unconscionable that it's hard even to think about. Where do you begin to compensate people who were kidnapped, beaten, tortured, separated from family members and who are now, in fact, dead? But how do you, in good conscience, do nothing to heal the wounds of such an immoral past?

 

Myron Magnet of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research recently wrote what many whites as well as blacks believe: "Instead of looking back and wallowing in victimization, let's just look forward and say that America has turned itself inside out to become a colorblind society of equal opportunity."

 

It is true that America has worked hard to be colorblind, but it's dishonest to say that we are. Yet it's also dishonest to say that only whites are to blame. Certain black "leaders," whose baiting voices dominate any discussion of race, make it hard for whites to feel sympathetic toward perhaps just causes that are purposely divisive vehicles for their self-aggrandizement.

 

Basically, the problem for many whites comes down to three things: Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Johnnie Cochran. As soon as the dastardly dudes of doggerel ride into town, the flavor of fairness turns sour.

 

Their entry is usually the signal for otherwise decent folks to begin talking unattractively about slow boats back to Africa. Which, in turn, is our signal to slam on brakes and acknowledge that reparations is not a black-and-white issue. And I'm not talking about skin pigmentation.

 

To the extent that we, in becoming Americans at some point along the historical continuum, inherit and embrace our nation's heritage, we need to resolve the "peculiar institution" of slavery, as it was once called. But forcing today's corporations to pay for yesterday's legal "crimes," while forcing blacks into the perennial posture of victims-for-eternity, becomes just another form of slavery - forced servitude to the past.

 

This is not a simple issue, and people who insist otherwise are not contributing to a solution. For instance, it is ludicrous to deny that slavery has had a detrimental trickle-down effect on subsequent generations that can't be solved in one, two or three generations. Some extra help is necessary and fair.

 

Observers of the reparations movement theorize that the corporate lawsuits are part of a strategy to force the federal government to create a legislative remedy. Others say that African Americans mostly want the U.S. government to apologize. Skeptics rightly intuit that once the first penny is paid, more will be demanded.

 

What, then, is the solution? This part really is simple: President George W. Bush. Whatever his flaws, it seems clear that the man comes equipped with a good and fair heart.

 

Bush should take command of the slavery reparations issue immediately and bring an end to the debate. Apologize for slavery in a clear and unequivocal voice, create a commission to study slavery and its effects on today's African Americans, as well as on whites weary of being blamed for whatever ails others, and continue the discussion for as long as it takes for Americans of all stripes to say, "Well and done."

 

In so doing, he might help put the corporate compensatory issue in its proper perspective, which is too much too late. As a rich bonus, the president's taking charge would force into repose - or at least appropriate comic relief - those predatory hitchhikers always on the lookout for new vehicles to self-glorification. Without victims, the race-baiting crusaders would be forced into silence - a priceless finale to the tragedy of slavery.

 

By Kathleen Parker

Syndicated writer in South Carolina.

 

Submitted by T’Zirah Baht Yehudah

JELPO@AOL.COM

 

[If President George W. Bush has a “good and fair heart,” he certainly does not exhibit it for Descendants of Slaves.  But I’ll admit that he has a “good and fair heart” for White Jews - actually, there is no question about it.  T.Y., Editor]

 

*********

 

GRANDDAD’S WORDS ECHO IN SLAVERY SUIT

 

March 31, 2002

 

NEW YORK - Deadria Farmer-Paellmann remembers growing up in Brooklyn, listening to her grandfather rail against the government and punctuate his complaints with the refrain: ''And they still owe us our 40 acres and a mule.''

 

That was Lincoln's promise, still unfulfilled, to the slaves after the Emancipation Proclamation.

 

Now, at age 36, Farmer-Paellmann is demanding delivery.

 

On Tuesday, in the US district courthouse in Brooklyn, she filed the first federal class-action lawsuit seeking reparations, not from the government, but from corporations or their predecessors - including FleetBoston, Aetna, and CSX - that profited from the slave trade.

 

Farmer-Paellmann has spent most of her life waiting for this moment, but at first glance, she appears to be an unlikely figure to make history from it. One of six daughters raised by a stay-at-home mother in a rough section of Brooklyn, she is not a prominent activist, a professional historian, or even a lawyer. (She has a law degree, but failed her one stab at the bar exam.)

 

Though some legal analysts doubt her lawsuit will get far, many veterans in the reparations movement are hailing it as a ''landmark case.'' Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a Harvard Law professor who has toiled for years on a similar suit against the government, to be filed later this year, called her work ''an important aspect of the reparations effort.''

 

Arguing her case will be an attorney who might be able to pull it off.

 

Edward Fagan, who practices law in New York and New Jersey, recently won an international group of clients $8 billion in settlements from European corporations that had done business with the Nazis during World War II. Fagan admits it took some convincing for him to take on slave reparations, but now he sees the two cases as ''absolutely parallel.''

 

For Farmer-Paellmann, the suit goes back to that refrain from her late grandfather, a construction company owner named Willie Capers.

 

''When I graduated from Brooklyn College in 1988,'' she said over coffee at a cafe near her East Side Manhattan apartment, ''I started reading a lot of Afrocentric literature. There was an interview where Malcolm X talks about what America owes blacks. He suggested that the country should give us land. I remember thinking, `Here's that 40 acres and a mule coming up again.'''

 

She enrolled in the graduate school of public management at George Washington University, with the idea of learning how to mount a lobbying campaign for reparations. A bit ahead of her time, she could find only one book on the subject.

 

''The problem was it was written for lawyers,'' she recalled. ''I couldn't even read the thing.''

 

So she applied to the New England School of Law in Boston, writing in her Statement of Purpose that she wanted to use her legal training to win slave reparations for African-Americans.

 

There, she took a course called ''racism and law,'' picked reparations as a research project, and, largely by chance, achieved a breakthrough.

 

First, she found a Tulane Law Review article about reparations by Vincene Verdun. ''There was a footnote suggesting that the children of people enslaved might sue the children of those who enslaved them,'' she said. ''So I started examining corporations and private estates as potential targets.''

 

Then, while trying to trace her family's roots, she read the book ''Black Genealogy'' by Charles L. Blockson. ''He suggested researching your roots by looking at insurance records,'' she said. ''It turns out some insurance companies, including Aetna, sold policies for slave property. When I came across that, I remember thinking, `OK, here we go.'''

 

She deepened her research into the corporate angle, finding slave trading, even when the importation of slaves was banned by the United States after 1808, was practiced by the owner of a predecessor bank to FleetBoston.

 

After graduating in 1999, she returned to New York. Reparations was becoming a high-profile issue among black activists, but she found little support for her corporate approach. First, she was not a big name. Second, the prevailing wisdom was that seeking reparations from the government, not from private companies, was the most politically potent strategy.

 

''It didn't surprise me to hear they were dismissive of her concept,'' said Robert Ward, who taught the racism and law class and became Farmer-Paellmann's mentor on the issue. ''To the extent that you look at the federal government as the culprit, you may not want to look at anybody else as culprit.''

 

Her most dramatic finds were some 19th-century documents that showed Aetna had sold insurance policies for slave property - in short, had profited from the slave trade. She had obtained some of the material from Aetna itself, and tried to persuade them to provide restitution voluntarily.

 

When that didn't work, she took action in August 2000 and released the materials to the press.

 

''At this point, I wasn't really interested in filing a lawsuit,'' she said. ''I was doing a media campaign. I thought if I confronted a corporation with information about their involvement in slavery, they might be willing to do something - apologize, make payment, or lobby the government to pay so they wouldn't have to.''

 

Farmer-Paellmann's release made headlines. Aetna issued an apology, though no money. And lawyers started to notice.

 

Ogletree asked her to join a committee that was coordinating legal actions on reparations. Ogletree had his case against the government. He encouraged her to develop one against corporations.

 

But she had no license to practice law. And she was spending much of her time at home with her infant daughter.

 

''I kept getting told this would be a landmark case,'' she recalled. ''The case is built on my research. But I can't participate in it as an attorney. So I asked myself, `How could I make sure I'm a part of it?' I came up with an idea - I could be the plaintiff.''

 

The lawsuit names three corporations and soon will add seven more, according to Fagan, who would not identify the companies. Farmer-Paellmann says she has evidence implicating 60.

 

Some legal scholars think the case will be dismissed before it gets underway. Melvin I. Urofsky, constitutional historian at Virginia Commonwealth University, said, ''I don't think they have a leg to stand on, frankly.''

 

Most courts would have a hard time, he said, recognizing Farmer-Paellmann's standing as a plaintiff in a class-action suit that could involve millions of people. Moreover, few of those complainants could prove they personally were victims of slavery, he says.

 

A more fundamental issue is the status of slavery, Urofsky argues. ''At the time the actions took place,'' he said, ''slavery was legal everywhere in the United States.''

 

To that argument, Fagan replied, ''Death camps were legal in Germany, too.''

 

That didn't stop the Nuremberg court after World War II from hanging Nazis for ''crimes against humanity'' - or Fagan from suing Nazi-abetting corporations 50 years later.

 

In the end, the debate may be moot. Fagan thinks the companies will settle out of court, as the companies in the Holocaust cases did, if just to avoid nasty public relations.

 

''It would be the dumbest thing they could do to put their slave-histories on trial,'' he said. ''They can't afford to win this case.''

 

By Fred Kaplan and Corey Dade, Globe Staff, Globe Correspondent

Globe correspondent Lyle Denniston in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

 

This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 3/31/2002.

Globe Newspaper Company.

 

Submitted by T’Zirah Baht Yehudah

JELPO@AOL.COM

 

[Blacks were taken out of “Africa” to be Slaves and those who benefited from this enslavement must pay Reparations, period.  Resulting from this inhumane captivity, lands, cultures, languages, and names were completely obliterated, and peoples were misguided, miseducated, and mistreated.   As a result the captors have to pay The Debt that is owed for absolute “ethnic cleansing” of the human beings stolen out of Africa.  T.Y., Editor]

 

*********

 

THE NEW AFRIKAN LIBERATION FRONT (NALF)

SUPPORT FOR MILLIONS FOR REPARATIONS RALLY

For Immediate Release

 

May 5, 2002

 

The New Afrikan Liberation Front Supports Millions for Reparations

 

The New Afrikan Liberation Front (NALF) endorses and is in solidarity with the call by the National Black United Front and the December 12^th Movement for the "Millions for Reparations" Rally on August 17, 2002 in Washington, D.C. We call upon the New Afrikan Independence Movement and all New Afrikans to support this historic event. We see the Rally as a continuation of the centuries-old demand of our people for Reparations and a continuation of the work of Callie House, Queen Mother Moore and Omowale Malik el-Shabazz (Malcolm X). Moreover the March continues the spirit and momentum gained from the declaration of the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, which proclaimed the MAAFA (Atlantic Slave Trade) a "crime against humanity." We also acknowledge the hard work and leadership provided by the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (NCOBRA) in raising the issue of Reparations as a priority in our national consciousness in recent decades.

 

Our movement, the New Afrikan Independence Movement, has advocated Reparations for Afrikans in North America for several decades. Most of the discussion on Reparations centers around capital transfers from the american government and private sector to the Afrikan community in North America. While the NALF supports the demands for financial reparations, we also advocate political demands related to the repair of New Afrikan people in the united states from white supremacy, slavery, genocide and institutionalized racism. We have recognized the importance of linking Reparations to the issue for Self-determination. New Afrikans must have the right to choose our relationship with our historical and current oppressor, the united states government. One of the most crucial violations our Ancestors were subjected to was the loss of sovereignty and political freedom. Through a national vote, or plebiscite, We can determine if We wish to establish an independent New Afrikan nation in North America, repatriate to Afrika or some other country, or wish to remain in the united states to fight for "first class citizenship" and to transform america into a multicultural and multiracial democracy.  Without the right to self-determination, Reparations are meaningless.

 

We also advocate amnesty for all political prisoners, prisoners of war and political exiles. For challenging colonialism, institutionalized racism, and genocide in the united states, dozens of New Afrikan men and women, and allies of our movement, have been held in captivity or forced into exile. Reparations must include amnesty for the captive and exiled freedom fighters.

 

We also call for a national assembly or congress of Afrikan organizations and institutions in North America to establish a Reparations platform and agenda and serve as the vehicle to speak for our people and determine the administration of collective reparations in the interests of the New Afrikan nation. A representative body, and not a small group selected by our oppressors, must determine how financial reparations are to be administered and distributed.

 

Finally Our Ancestors have taught us that nothing valuable comes without struggle. New Afrikan people must be willing to engage in vigilant action to achieve Reparations. Unless We are organized, determined and conscious of our power as a people, We will not receive meaningful Reparations to repair our communities and nation. Let the "Millions for Reparations" Rally be another step towards organizing our people into a mighty force to win Reparations, Self-determination, and Amnesty for our political prisoners and exiles.

 

Free the Land!

 

(Statement issued on behalf of the New Afrikan Liberation Front by Herman Ferguson, NALF Administrator) Iyaluua@aol.com

 

Contact Person:  Herman Ferguson

                              Iyaluua@aol.com

                              Phone: (718) 949-5153

 

Submitted by SendMeYourNews <sendmeyournews@theblacklist.net>

 

http://www.theMarcusGarveyBBS.com

NEWS, EVENTS, FORUMS and more..

TheBlackList  - "The New Negro World"

Satisfying the African Need to Know

 

[Leaving the lands of our captors is not open to discussion.  Relocation out of these lands with Reparations is absolutely necessary for those of us who wish to be rid of White control and influence over our lives.  T.Y., Editor]

 

*********

A REPARATIONS – YES  ANNOUNCEMENT!

 

NOW IS THE TIME TO UNIFY

OUR MINDS..OUR HEARTS

&

OUR SOULS

COMMUNITY by COMMUNITY

CHURCH by CHURCH

BUSINESS by BUSINESS

ORGANIZATION by ORGANIZATION

CITY by CITY, STATE by STATE

AND YES

COMPUTER by COMPUTER!

TO PROMOTE GENDER UNIFICATION and TO PRODUCE AN UNWAVERING

MOBILIZED LINK OF HUMAN

CONCERN, ACTION, POWER and RECOURSE

To Disable the MANY Social, Economic, Moral and Political,

confrontational adversities effecting our entire earthly existence.

Therefore:

MARK YOUR CALENDAR TODAY!

As of January 1, 2002 you will be able to log onto the web site:

>>>>>>4thepeople.com<<<<<<

To register to receive your

“I'm For Reparations” Membership Card

This card is only the beginning in our efforts to create a sense of

"Real Unity"

in our struggle for reparations because it shall also represent our collective involvement to work to combat any and all other issues,

that we face as a race of people!

Please Note:

After January 1, 2002, be sure to check the web site on a regular basis

because it will also provide you with updates on all the special offerings

that you will be entitled too, once you have activated your membership card.

Message Sponsored by:

UIMSC

Unity International Multi-Service Corporation

Home of the

REPARATIONS-YES MOVEMENT!

Host of the 2003 Million Dollar March for Reparations

The International Petition for Reparations

&

>>>>>>4thepeople. Com<<<<<<

The Web site is dedicated to serving and being of service to the people!

 

Submitted by MzWayMaker@AOL.COM

 

*********

 

A HELPFUL CRITIQUE OF THE MARCH 26,

REPARATIONS LAWSUIT

***

 

THE BROOKLYN SLAVERY CLASS ACTION:

More Than Just A Political Gambit

 

April 9, 2002

 

On March 26, a group of lawyers filed a lawsuit in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, that comprises one of the largest class actions ever filed in America.  The case asks for relief for every descendant of African slaves brought to the United States. It was filed against three corporations - Aetna, CSX, and FleetBoston - but more names are promised. It seeks both injunctive relief (that is, a court order asking the companies to do, or refrain from doing, certain things) and damages.

 

It would be easy to dismiss this lawsuit as an exercise in political grandstanding. But that would be a mistake, for two reasons.

 

Experienced Class Action Attorneys, and Sharp Litigation Strategy

 

First, although the lawyers who have brought this suit are not as famous as some others who have threatened to bring a slavery reparations suit, such as Charles Ogletree of Harvard Law School and Johnnie Cochrane, they are not novices either. One of the lawyers who signed the complaint is Ed Fagan, who was instrumental in forcing German industry to pay a $6 billion settlement for profit from Nazi-era slave labor (a settlement I discussed in an earlier column). People thought Fagan was crazy when he filed against Volkswagen and Deutsche Bank-but his strategy worked.

 

The second reason is strategic. Even if the lawsuit filed last month is deficient in some important ways-and I think it is-it will prepare the way for the next lawsuit. Ogletree's Reparations Assessment Group (RAG) is probably preparing to file their own lawsuit in the coming year, which may look reasonable and moderate in comparison.

 

RAG's theory of liability is likely to be somewhat different from Fagan's in the Brooklyn class action. In an opinion piece published in the New York Times on the Sunday after Fagan's suit was filed, Ogletree suggested that a better reparations strategy would be to sue not private companies, but the federal government.

 

The suit Ogletree proposes would require either Congress's consent to be sued, or a brave judge willing to overturn Cato v. United States, which holds that the United States cannot be sued in tort for slavery. Still, one can imagine that the RAG's claim against the government might look reasonable when compared to the current suit against corporate America. And outrage over a loss in the Brooklyn suit, even after slavery's terrible harms have been persuasively argued there, might spur Congressional action.

 

The Plaintiffs' Claims in the Brooklyn Class Action: A Property Law Basis

 

The current complaint the class action plaintiffs have filed in Brooklyn is based on a simple thesis (copied from Fagan's German slave suits): labor is property, and wrongdoers who hold property produced by slaves should give it up.

 

There is an additional count in the complaint entitled "Human Rights Violations," but as I will argue below, that does not really describe a separate cause of action for which current African Americans have standing to sue. Accordingly, I will assume that this count was included to help the lawyers to defeat the formidable statute of limitations arguments that may jeopardize their ability to assert the property claims.

 

What are the property claims? They are, in themselves, pretty familiar to anyone who has studied private law: conversion (which consists of taking of another's property wrongfully), unjust enrichment (which means just what it says), and a demand for an accounting (that is, a request that the disposition of property be traced).

 

To take Aetna as an example, the argument appears to be that because Aetna sold insurance on the life of a slave, it profited from the slave labor of that slave. Therefore, Aetna was "unjustly enriched" or it "converted the value of [the slave's] labor and its derivative profits."

 

The German Slave Labor Cases Provide a Favorable But Uncertain Precedent

 

This is, in essence, what the lawyers in the German slave labor cases argued. It is important to recall that the vast majority of the class members on whose behalf Germany paid $6 billion were not Jewish, and were not the subject of Nazi extermination policies. They were Poles, Ukrainians and other citizens of vanquished lands who were impressed into working for Germany without pay.

 

The Holocaust slavery cases never went to trial and they were never subjected to appellate review. But a handful of federal judges permitted them to survive motions to dismiss that were filed by German defendants who were confident that there was no law behind the suits-just politics.

 

If the German slavery suits were able to survive dismissal attempts drafted by some of New York's finest law firms, what are the survival chances of the current African American slavery lawsuit?

 

The problem any comparison with the German slavery cases is that because they settled so quickly, it is not clear what they stand for. A quick settlement was compelled partly out of a need to ensure that as much money could be distributed to living survivors before they began to die from old age. But the German slavery cases left many questions unanswered.

 

Questions that Linger After The German Slavery Labor Settlement

 

First of all, it seemed easy to assume that the class of plaintiffs in the German slavery cases could and should be certified under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. There seemed to be no point to asking about the adequacy of class-wide treatment, since the wrong for which they sued-stolen labor-was common to all. And there have, in the past, been class actions involving property torts, such as class actions relating to fraud by credit card companies who overcharge their customers. One could even imagine a class action for conversion or unjust enrichment.

 

What makes the African American slavery case more difficult to certify as a class than the German slave case is simply that the plaintiff class is very hard to define. The plaintiff class seem to be suing on their own behalf, not as representatives of their ancestors (except, perhaps on the human rights claim). But if that is the case, there are very tricky questions about who would have been the proper beneficiary of the property that was taken away during slavery.

 

The German slave cases never really had to deal with this problem directly: The suit was on behalf of all living survivors, and the settlement built a mechanism into its scheme by which the children of claimants who died in the interim could inherit the claims of their parents. In any event, in the African American slavery actions, the question of whether common issues of fact "predominate" among the claims of the putative beneficiaries of property stolen before 1865 might pose a problem that even the most charitable judge may not ignore.

 

Serious Statute of Limitations Issues for the African American Slavery Class Action

 

Another question cut off by the settlement in the German slave suit related to the real meaning of "equitable tolling."  Every judge that looked at the German slave cases was faced with the same problem: given the short statute of limitations for intentional tort, quasi-contract, and the like, how could the slaves of 1945 make a claim in 1998?

 

One plausible answer was that a special patchwork of treaties tolled any civil actions until the unification of Germany in 1991. But even then, none of the suits would have been able to make it under most state statute of limitations for a claim for damages based on unjust enrichment. However, as one district court judge pointed out, the claims were saved (maybe) by the fact that in addition to suing for unjust enrichment, the plaintiffs were suing under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), which has a statute of limitations of ten years and concerns torts relating to personal injury, not property.

 

The current African American slave suit will have a hard arguing that the statute of limitations for conversion, unjust enrichment, and the like should be "equitably tolled" (that is, extended for reasons of fairness to the plaintiffs) since Emancipation. Equitable tolling is generally triggered by the actions of the defendant, and it is hard to see how the corporations named in the suit could have prevented the filing of a complaint before now.

 

That is why, I suspect, the complaint described "human rights violations" as a separate claim in law. There is some evidence that in international law, "crimes against humanity" and "human rights violations" have no statute of limitations. This may be so-but what does that have to do with a case filed under New York's tort and contract law?

 

The Difficulty of Making the African American Slavery Class Action An ATCA Case

 

Of course, the federal courts in New York should apply international law, where appropriate. The ATCA, although federal law, incorporates international legal norms, and the Alien Tort Claims Act was used by the federal courts to save the German slave cases.  However, it will be very hard for the plaintiffs to argue that their class action is really a claim under the ATCA - and not the set of common law property tort claims it strongly appears to be.

 

Remember, if the lawsuits are about property, then they are being brought on behalf of living plaintiffs for property that is currently unjustly held by others. In contrast, the ATCA concerns itself with crimes against humanity, such as genocide and torture.

 

No one-to my knowledge-has yet argued that taking property away from the heirs of those who were subjected to torture and genocide is a crime against humanity. It is not even clear to me that a court would hold that taking property (such as a watch) away while someone is tortured is, in itself, a crime against humanity (it might be theft or conversion, but they are not covered by the ATCA).

 

Property Violations, Human Rights Violations, or Both?  An Unclear Complaint

 

Before they were settled, the German slave labor cases ran together two very distinct claims-property theft and human rights violations. I am not sure if a court, if pressed, would have treated them as interchangeable; due to the settlement, however, we will never know. This very issue, however, may have to be settled in the African American slavery lawsuit.

 

If the African American slavery lawsuit is about genocide or torture, then the current complaint is extremely obscure and badly framed. First of all, if it is really about the crimes against humanity inflicted by Aetna, CSX, and FleetBoston against Africans and their descendants until Emancipation, then it is hard to see why the corporations are being sued.

 

The companies' alleged relationship to the actual crimes is somewhat attenuated. They may still be shown to have some form of responsibility, but the case against them is really that they profited from slavery, not that they were slave traders or slaveholders.

 

Secondly, it is not clear that the descendants of victims of crimes against humanity have standing (that is, the legal right) to sue for those crimes, even assuming that the corporations are the proper defendants (and, for purposes of this argument, have existed continuously since before 1865).  Again, as far as I know, no court has ruled on this point.

 

The slaves in the German suit were alive and were suing in their own name for violations of human rights committed against them. For a court to allow an ATCA claim to be made by African Americans today for crimes against humanity in the 19th Century and before, the whole ATCA will have to be remade, in effect, by a willing trial judge.

 

Difficult Challenges For A Provocative Suit, and For Its Judge

 

These are only the largest of the challenges that will face Ed Fagan and his team as they try to protect their complaint from dismissal. Their goal, I suspect, is to last long enough to try and arrange some sort of settlement, which is what happened in the German slave cases.

 

How one feels about such a strategy depends, I suppose, on how one feels about the underlying politics of the claims.  One thing must be admitted, however: Settlements in cases like these-cases based on difficult, untested theories-produce their own form of "shadow" law. No one really knows what the German slave cases stood for, in the end, and if the African American slave cases are allowed to settle without a thorough review of their claims, the confusion will only be compounded.

 

For that reason alone, it might be worthwhile if the judge facing the complaint filed last month in Brooklyn were to really study the legal claims upon which it is based, and write a decision which really evaluates those claims, and then resists any move to settlement before that decision can be appealed. Simply forcing a settlement prior to a careful legal ruling might do future plaintiffs and defendants in important cases like these a disservice.

 

By  Anthony J. Sebok  

tsebok@findlaw.com

 

Anthony J. Sebok, a FindLaw columnist, is a Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, where he teaches Torts, among other subjects. Professor Sebok has written several columns on mass tort litigation for FindLaw.

 

Submitted by BRC-REP

 

[There should be efforts to form an International Fund in behalf of Africa and all Descendants of Slaves.  After being held captives for centuries Descendants of Slaves should be given the choice and RIGHT TO FREEDOM to live in a country tolerant of all Peoples.  T.Y., Editor]

*********

 

LAWYERS vs. REPARATIONS

 

May 3, 2002

 

PRESS RELEASE IMMEDIATELY

 

Recent Reparations news is heartening. The release of the information in California, where corporations who insured chattel slaves were forced to search their archives and bring forth the damaging information; to New Jersey where a former NAACP and federal worker under Bill Clinton filed an "unjust enrichment" suit against U.S. President, George Bush’s Grandfather's former company for continuing to engage in the evil institution after it was banned by the U.S.  Constitution. Then of course, there is the tight, well known case by former N'COBRA Intern, Deadria Farmer.

 

But the case that may well be the "straw that breaks the camels back,"- releasing true reparations to Black people is the one by N'COBRA founder, Dr. Imari Obadele. This is an "Equal Protection" case that has been working its way up through the federal courts for some five years now. Dr. Obadele, as is General Rashid, are members of the Board of Directors of N'COBRA (The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America).

 

IMARI OBABELE & GENERAL RASHID CASE NOT ACCEPTED BY N'COBRA

 

All of the cases named above, and others not named are characterized by at least two aspects:

 

 #1. They are filed as Reparations cases for the abuse, misuse and enslavement of Black people.

 

#2. They are all filed by individuals or organizations that are REPRESENTED by lawyers.

 

However, there are at least two cases under preparation that are expected to blow the question "out of the water." The one being prepared by Johnny Cochran, Randall Robinson, Charles Olgletree, Alexander Pires & etc. And the case, 13 years in the making, by N'COBRA's "Legal Strategies Commission."

 

N'COBRA's so-called strategy is a strange one. The Coalition (The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America) have raised tens of thousands of dollars, that has been passed on to it's Legal Strategies Commission, in preparation of it's reparations lawsuit. Only to be told each year that several hundred of thousands of dollars more would be needed before a suit would/should be filed. Moreover, N'COBRA was legally advised that we should not enjoin the Deadria Farmer suit, nor should be enjoin Dr. Obadele's and General Rashids' Equal Protection case. Sadly, N'COBRA's Board of Directors accepted the advise in both instances.

 

Maybe the strangest Reparations lawsuit, if they move forward as publicized, will be the one by Randall Robinson, Johnny Cochran & Co. As for as the public has been informed, theirs will be a Reparations lawsuit filed by the lawyers, not on behalf of a client, but by the lawyers, themselves. To many, this is highly unusual. But to date, it appears that the usual work of a lawyer for a clients is absent contemplation of their suit. The "strangeness" of their suit is compounded by the fact that one of the lawyers is the now famous, some would term, infamous, attorney, Alexander Pires is one of the principal lawyers in the case.  Mr. Pires happens to be under a cloud of discontent by many Black Farmers because of the Consent Decree he agreed to with the government to settle the suit by Black Farmers (see archived articles at http://www.encobra.com). His Consent Decree effectively did for the government, what the government could not achieve in court. That is, it disqualified many farmers who had lost land. Many who did qualify, did not receive enough to even begin to reclaim lost farms.

 

We strongly advise all who are serious about the Great Issue to do at least two things:

 

(1)    Look into the suit by Dr. Imari Obadele and General Rashid. Their suit is filed under the exact same statutes of the laws that were passed by the House of Representatives to pay the Japanese their reparations. In short, the suit is saying that if you deny Black people redress under the same law, you are not providing "equal protection" to all people governed by the U. S. Constitution. The fact that at least two or three judges have had the chance to dismiss the case, but haven't, tells us all that there is substance here. We suggest that individuals and organizations nationwide, look into enjoining the Dr. Obadele and Rashid suit. Or look into filing under the same statute. The question is, why is the law on the book if it cannot be applied to all folk in the U. S.?

(2)    The second thing we suggest all who are concerned about reparations, should do, is join N'COBRA and plan to attend our 13th annual Reparations Convention:

 

Detroit, June 21, 22 &23 (go to http://www.encobra.com) for the details. Here is a national organization that spearhead the modern evolvement of the issue, an all volunteer Coalition, that allows all who will, an opportunity to get in on the Great Issue, not as an informed, articulate bystander, but as a participate.

 

The Convention this year will be a thorough mix of all Black people in America. For the first time, there may be a caucus in Detroit that isn't sanctioned by the leadership of N'COBRA. But it is a caucus that is very much a part of N'COBRA and will not tolerate being characterized as anything other; It will be led by H. Khalif Khalifah. And we will meet under the banner of a formation that spun off from N'COBRA's Media Workshop at our 12th convention last June in Baton Rouge, LA. More information can be obtained about SMRT (The Strategic Media Response Team) at http://www.kbabooks.com . Anyone who REGISTERS to attend N'COBRA's Reparations Convention will be welcome to attend our meeting. Call (434) 658-4934 if you intend to be in Detroit in June. If you don't register for any reason, please send your $10 membership fee to the National Headquarters in D. C. With proof of your membership, SMRT will keep you in our plans.

 

TWO GRAVE MISTAKES WE COULD MAKE ABOUT REPARATIONS

 

Two grave mistakes Black people are subject to make, even with all the great news about possible redress for our experience, individually and as a people, are:

 

1. Think that because of the notoriety the case is now receiving, the obtainment of our reparations is a fait accompli (smile). This is erroneous thinking, mainly because, most all of the cases, Dr. Obadele's is a marked exception, are filed or being contemplated by folk who have no serious understanding, or belief in the requirement that "Self-Determination" is a vital part of the demand for reparations.

 

2. The second "grave mistake" we could make, is to wait TOO LONG before putting forth contrasting information about the Great Issue. For example, when someone flatly declares that "cash money will not be a part of the package." Or that reparations will only be paid to "the poorest of the poor." Or that no cash should be paid to individuals, but should be placed in a fund to underwrite the cost for some of the obvious maladies that haunt us, individually and as a people, those who KNOW what Reparations is truly about, are compelled to put forth the correct information. Or, more gently, "contrasting information."

 

After all, reparations will never do what it is intended to do, UNLESS it is reparations, indeed. This means the broadest possible consensus should be arrived at, by the total Black community, before flat declarations can be taken seriously. And the last time we looked, almost to the Black man and woman "on the ground," to use a common phase currently being used to describe such, the Black man and woman want to be paid - CASH IN ADDITION TO OTHER REMEDIES.

 

We will close here with a definition of reparations: "Reparations is a payment for a debt owed. The act of repairing a wrong or injury; to atone for a wrongdoing; to make amends; to make one whole again; the payment of damages; to repair a nation; compensation in money, land, materials and services for damages.

 

SMRT Commentary

By H. Khalif Khalifah

Southampton County, VA

 

Board Member of N'COBRA and Publishing Consultant in Southampton County, Virginia

http://www.kbabooks.com

 

Submitted by J0nBlaz@aol.com

 

*********

 

 

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 from 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 this new century

   -  Etc., etc., and by “any means necessary” within the Law

 

*********

REPARATIONS YES - MOVEMENT

Announces Historical Nation-Wide Petition Campaign

 

The Reparations - Yes International Petition

Drive Web Site is Up and Running!

 

The International Reparations Petition

located online at:

>>>unity4theworld.com<<<

has reopened!

Please pass the word

&

Remember the goal is

No Less Than

150 Thousand signatures per state!

 

Please visit www.unity4theworld.com and sign the petition Today!

Remember we are trying to secure 50 Thousand signatures from each state and foreign country, every signature counts, including yours!

CONTACT:

Ms. Clara Peoples

503-287-7532

Ms. Lisa Clay

503-284-6152

www.unity4theworld.com

www.nabvets.com

 

JoeWynn.Nabvets@verizon.net

 

Dr. Saharra Bledsoe

202 783-3705

MzWayMaker@aol.com

 

*********

 

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 HEARING IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

 

May 2, 2002

 

Peace! Allow me to introduce myself, my name Jerome Graham-Bey. I represent the Federation Moorish Science Temple of America, Inc.

 

We are hosting our fourth reparations “Hearing” on the west side of the Capital building in Washington D.C. at 12 to 4:00 P.M. on July 25, 2002, and we are inviting you or your representative. We must educate the public until our people understand what happened to them. Because our people are damaged and don’t know it. The consciousness of what had happened to them as a people is the most important part of reparations. We must be reborn again as a people, so come out and contribute and learn more about ourselves. We will be on top in a blink of an eye.   Come and learn the truth about who you are, and what we need to do together as a people. This is a process that will take some time!

 

We are beating drums again! We had a delay 9/11, but don’t forget what had happen to us as a people and what is still going on. Let us demonstrate and we will be at the 8/17/02 reparations march, too!!!

 

Grand Sheik Jerome Graham-Bey

ponticon@aol.com

 

Submitted by TheBlackList@topica.com

 

*********

 

EXAMPLE OF THE BROADENING

OF THE REPARATIONS MOVEMENT

 

April 8, 2002

 

The Reparations Movement in the US and thruout the African Diaspora is growing exponentially. This is a good thing... that can get out of the control of the true and principled Reparationists if let alone to evolve uncoordinated.

 

That's why a Reparations Manifesto that groups and individual activists sign on to is key at this moment.

 

Check out this example of the positive broadening of the Reparations Struggle:

 

http://www.savannahnow.com/stories/032202/LOCReparations.shtml

 

In Struggle,

 

Sam Anderson

 

Submitted by BRC-REP

 

*********

 

REPARATIONS NOW!

A NEW YORK CITY-WIDE RALLY

SCHEDULED FOR MAY 15, 2002

Wednesday at 6 P.M.

 

 

PRESS RELEASE  

 

Millions Demand Reparations  

New York Organizing Committee  

456 Nostrand Avenue  

Brooklyn, NY 11216  

Phone (718) 398-1766 fax (718) 623-1855  

 

 

REPARATIONS NOW!  

City-Wide Unity Rally  

Wednesday, May 15, 2002 6 P.M.  

Harlem, NY 

 

The demand for Reparations for the descendants of enslaved Africans is reaching a feverish pitch around the country! In every urban center, NYC, Atlanta, Birmingham, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Washington, DC, Newark, Detroit, Boston and Philadelphia. All points North, South, East and West.  Black people are united in the struggle for REPARATIONS NOW!  

 

New York City is leading the way!  Black leaders from every sector of the community - from the streets to the pulpit and from study hall to City Hall  - everyone is coming on board!

 

All will come together on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 at 6 P.M. for the REPARATIONS NOW CITYWIDE UNITY RALLY!

 

The Rally will be held at the following Place:

 

Harriet Tubman School

127th Street & Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd.

Harlem, NY.  

 

Invited speakers include:

 

Viola Plummer, National Chairperson, Millions for Reparation National Rally; Deadria Farmer-Paellman, lead plaintiff in the first class action lawsuit for Reparations; Attorney Roger S, Wareham, lead  attorney on Reparations lawsuit; Omowale Clay, New York City Millions for  Reparations Coordinator, City Councilmen Charles Baron, Leroy Comrie, and  Bill Perkins; State Assemblyman Roger Green; grassroots community organizers representing all five boroughs of NYC; Reverend Al Sharpton, James Mtume,  KISS talk show host; Abubadika Sonny Carson of Committee to Honor Black  Heroes; Camile Yarborough; Poet George Tait; Bob Law; US Congressmen Charlie  Rangel, Major Owens and Gregory Meeks; renown attorney Johnnie Cochran;  Alton Maddox of the United African Movement; Betty Dopson of the Committee to Eliminate Media Offensive to Black People (CEMOTAP) and many more!  

 

For more information please call the Millions for Reparations New York: 

Phone (718) 398-1766 fax (718) 623-1855  

 

Submitted by BRC-REPARATIONS: Black Radical Congress - Reparations Caucus

Questions/Problems: send email to <brc-reparations-owner@egroups.com>

 

*********

*****MARK YOUR CALENDAR OF EVENTS*****

 

HERITAGE POWER SUNDAYS

 

Reclaiming Our Sacred Heritage Every (Sun)Day Preparation for Reparations

 

Place:

176-03 Jamaica Ave.

 

Directions:  Take the F. to 179 or E. train to Parson

 

Salvation Service Begins: 1:00 P.M. -3:00 P.M.

 

Dr. Rosalind Jeffries, Sis. Kheper-a Merat May 12, 2002, Fathers' Day Celebration June 9, 2002 Dr. Ben Jochannan, Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, With Your Heritage Minister, Rev. Menelik Harris, M. Div. Teachers like: Dr. Ben Jochannan, Leonard Jeffries, Rosaline Jeffries, Gil Noble, Julius Garvey, Marcus Garvey Jr., Runoko Rashidi, James Smalls, Elombe Braith, Camille Yarbrough, Bernard White, Rev. Al Sharpton, Atty. Alton Maddox, Atty. Ron Daniels, Rev. Dennis Dillon, Min. Akbar Muhammad, Molefe Asante, African &amp; Caribbean Ambassadors...

 

Also, for African Americaribbean Ceremonies Heritagesunday@Hotmail.com At the Afrikan Poetry Theatre, Inc./Free Admission

 

Place:

176-03 Jamaica Ave.

 

Directions:  Take the F. to 179 or E. train to Parson

 

CONTACT:  John W. Branch, Director / Call: (718) 523-3312/   Jwatusi@aol.com

 

Submitted by heritagesunday@hotmail.com (mene harris)

 

*********

 

SUNDAY REPARATIONS MEETINGS

 

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 P.M., 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.

 

*********

May 15, 2002

Wednesday

 

REPARATIONS NOW!

A NEW YORK CITY-WIDE RALLY

SCHEDULED FOR MAY 15, 2002

 

 

All will come together on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 at 6 P.M. for the REPARATIONS NOW CITYWIDE UNITY RALLY!

 

The Rally will be held at the following Place:

 

Harriet Tubman School

127th Street & Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd.

Harlem, NY.  

 

CONTACT:

Millions Demand Reparations  

New York Organizing Committee  

456 Nostrand Avenue  

Brooklyn, NY 11216  

Phone (718) 398-1766 fax (718) 623-1855

 

For more detailed information, please see article on this Rally above. 

 

*********

May 25, 2002

INTERNATIONAL AFRICAN LIBERATION DAY

 

Our first Town Hall Reparations meeting

 

Stay tuned for further details.

 

CONTACT:  ebontek@earthlink.net (Sam Anderson)

 

*********

July 5 – 7, 2002

 

SANKOFA RECLAMATION GATHERING OF BLACK AFRIKANS

 

Those whose Soul And Spirit is coming alive again with the uncompromising love for Self and Afrika, You it is that is invited to the Sankofa Reclamation Gathering of Black Afrikans with redeemed Soul and a determine Spirit to see, work and make Afrika and Black Afrikans proud and godly again. The gathering will take place on July 5,6,7, in Detroit, those of you who desire more information about this Black Nationalist Pan – Afrikan Soulful - Spiritual gathering.

 

CONTACT:  Brother Kofimensah@prodigy.net

 

 

*********

July 25, 2002

Thursday

12:00 – 4 P.M.

 

REPARATIONS HEARING IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

 

We are hosting our fourth reparations Hearing on the west side of the Capital building in Washington D.C. at 12 to 4:00 P.M. on July 25, 2002.

 

Come and learn the truth about who you are and what we need to do together as a people. This is a process that will take some time!

 

Let us demonstrate, and we will also be at the 8/17/02 Reparations March, too!!!

 

Grand Sheik Jerome Graham-Bey

 

CONTACT:  ponticon@aol.com

 

Submitted by TheBlackList@topica.com

 

Please see article for additional information.

 

*********

August 9-13, 2002

Start on a Friday

 

AFRICAN AND AFRICAN DESCENDANT FOLLOW-UP TO

THE U.N. WORLD CONFERENCE AGAINST RACISM

A CALL TO THE BARBADOS CONFERENCE 9^th – 13^th AUGUST 2002

CONGRESS AGAINST RACISM (BARBADOS) INC.

 

The Caribbean caucus, which includes Barbados accepted the proposal for an immediate follow-up to Durban. It is with this understanding of our duty therefore that the Congress Against Racism (Barbados) Inc., (formerly the Barbados N.G.O Committee For The U.N. World Conference Against Racism) on behalf of the Caribbean Caucus hereby sends out a call to all member organizations of the "African And African descendants Caucus" and to all other African and African Descendant N.G.O’s that share our commitment to the Durban Declaration And Programme Of Action, to attend an "African And African Descendant N.G.O. Follow-up Conference" in the Island of Barbados between Friday 9th and Wednesday 13th August 2002.

The conference will be held at:

 

The "Sherbourne Conference Centre" 

Two Mile Hill

St. Michael, Barbados

 

Conference participants would be expected to finance their airline passages to Barbados, and their accommodation in Barbados.  However, our Conference Organizing Committee will be arranging special discounted airline and hotel rates.  There will also be a modest conference registration fee.

 

The relevant contact information for the conference secretariat is as follows:

Congress Against Racism (Barbados) Inc.

Pan-African Conference Secretariat

Thomas Daniel Building, 2^nd Floor

Hincks Street

Bridgetown, Barbados

Tel: (246)  228-8757/8/9 / Fax: (246) 228-8817

 

*********

August 17, 2002

Saturday

 

NATIONAL  REPARATIONS  MARCH

 

The Millions for Reparations March, Protest, and Demonstration demanding reparations from the United States Government will be held in its Capital City, Washington, D.C. on August 17, 2002. This date, August 17th, is significant because it marks the 115th anniversary of the birth of one of our great ancestors and leaders, the Honorable Marcus Garvey.

The call for this march by the Durban 400 is picking up steam in the African Community throughout America. Thousands of African people in America are beginning to get prepared to participate in the march and are actively mobilizing to encourage our people to be present and accounted for in Washington, D.C. on August 17, 2002.

 

Dr. Worrill is the National Chairman of the National Black United Front / NBUF located at:

 

12817 S. Ashland Ave.

Fl. 1, Calumet Park, Ill. 60827

 

Telephone #708-389-9929

Fax 708-389-9819

E-Mail:  nbufchi @allways.net, Web site: nbufront.org)

 

Please see full details in The REPNOW Newsletter #24.

 

*********

 

REPARATIONS YES - MOVEMENT

Announces Historical Nation-Wide Petition Campaign

 

The Reparations - Yes International Petition

Drive Web Site is Up and Running!

Please visit www.unity4theworld.com and sign the petition Today!

Remember we are trying to secure 50 Thousand signatures from each state and foreign country, every signature counts, including yours!

CONTACT:

Ms. Clara Peoples

503-287-7532

Ms. Lisa Clay

503-284-6152

www.unity4theworld.com

www.nabvets.com

 

JoeWynn.Nabvets@verizon.net

 

Dr. Saharra Bledsoe

202 783-3705

MzWayMaker@AOL.COM

 

*********

 

FREE THE MIND... FREE THE PEOPLE... FREE THE LAND

 

THE  NATIONAL  COALITION  OF  BLACKS  FOR

 

 

*********

BLACK PURDUE STUDENTS

WANT CARTOONIST DROPPED FROM CAMPUS PAPER

 

April 2002

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) -- Some black students want Purdue University's student newspaper to drop a nationally syndicated cartoonist because of an editorial cartoon criticizing the idea of slavery reparations.

The students held a news conference Monday to call for The Exponent to drop Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Pat Oliphant, saying his April 4, cartoon in The Exponent was racist and divisive.

"We don't contest Oliphant's right to produce cartoons, but we are enraged that (Exponent editor) Dave Stephens chose to run it," Robert Nibbs III, a black student at Purdue, said at the news conference.

Nibbs, who said the cartoon runs counter to Purdue's efforts to create a more diverse, inclusive campus climate, also called on The Exponent to diversify its staff and host diversity training.

Oliphant's April 4, cartoon used an Abraham Lincoln character to criticize demands by some blacks for cash reparations for slavery. The panel suggests that those demands are extreme because blacks are now citizens with full civil rights, voting privileges and beneficiaries of affirmative action. It also implied that black actors won the best actor and best actress Academy Awards this year because of their race.

Sue Roush, managing editor of Universal Press Syndicate, which circulates Oliphant's work, said this was the first complaint about this cartoon that she knew about.

"He's been called racist before, but over the years he has defended every special interest group on the planet practically," Roush said. "He's an equal opportunity offender. He's not a racist."

Stephens, The Exponent's editor-in-chief, publicly apologized Monday for having run the strip, which he called "offensive, hurtful and prejudicial." But he said Oliphant, a Washington Post cartoonist who is syndicated internationally, will not be dropped. Stephens, who is white, said he planned to convene a series of focus groups this fall to make his staff and the rest of the Purdue community more sensitive and aware of racial issues.

Student body president Brenda Shea, who is white, said Purdue's student government leaders were shocked and disappointed by the cartoon. "We hope The Exponent takes a second look at how they review material that is published from now on," she said.

An open letter from the Black Graduate Association, Purdue Black Student Union and Purdue Student Government also criticized The Exponent for publishing an opinion piece about the Academy Awards as a news story headlined, "Race Issues Tarnish Oscars." Stephens also apologized for that story, blaming it on an oversight. Opinion pieces are supposed to appear with an identifying logo.

 

http://pc99.detnews.com/aaec/story/details.hbs?myrec=125

 

If I may interject:

 

Whitefolks... the ruling class will find all kinds of ways to equate Black Reparations with Extortion. They will also continue to contort and/or eliminate history to justify their denial of the Reparations Reality smacking them in the face worldwide.

 

In Struggle,

 

S. E. Anderson

 

Submitted by BRC-REP

 

[Pat Oliphant may or may not be racist, but for sure he is NOT sensitive to the feelings of the oppressed and afflicted who know nothing but degradation imposed by the powers-that-be.  T.Y., Editor]

 

*********

 

BOOK LISTINGS

 

The book listing on Reparations and Black History can be found in REPNOW Newsletters 1 - 5.

 

Check this out:

 

BLACK REPARATIONS:  American Slavery & Its Vestiges

 

Published by DC Metro Chapter of N'COBRA

 

THE NEW REPARATION BOOK IS AVAIABLE FOR YOU AND YOURS!!!

 

This is an N'COBRA Fundraising Project. 

 

We have received many requests for this book over the Internet and by phone.  We are thankful for the great interest it has created.  Most importantly, we are thankful for all the praise we have received from those who have read it!  Independent Africans School children and university students have purchased copies to write papers!  Several professors have asked to use the "Black Reparations:  American Slavery & Its Vestiges" in their classes!

 

…this publication is, "Black voices of reparations from the community" or "street reparations 101."   Scholars, politicians and news commentators have their voice and venues to state their perspective, and we need ours.  This text is written by Black People for Black People primarily. 

 

You have heard about it, now you can get it! Print the order form and mail in your order today!

 

Read this complete email to see the many subjects this work address.  You will find the complete table of content and preface!

 

***

Help us build the Reparations Movement by ordering copies of this book for family and friends.

 

_____Yes, I want one copy of Black Reparations for $15.00, plus $3.00 shipping and handling - total $18.00

 

 

_____Yes, I want three copies of Black Reparations for $39.00

           ($13.00 per copy), plus $4.25 shipping and handling - total $43.25

 

Payments must accompany orders.  Allow 3-4 weeks for delivery.

 

My check or money order for $_______ is enclosed.

 

 

Name____________________________________________

 

Organization______________________________________

 

Address__________________________________________

 

City/State/Zip_____________________________________

 

Phone___________________  E-mail __________________

 

 

Call (202) 466-1622  or e-mail DcNcobra@ aol.com

 

Make your check payable and return to:

 

DC N'COBRA

P.O. Box 716

Washington, DC 20044-0716

 

Discount and Wholesale prices are available upon request.

 

[I haven’t read BLACK REPARATIONS:  American Slavery & Its Vestiges, YET, but I shall.  However, I urge “Newcomers” in the fight for Reparations to go out and purchase THE BLACK HOLOCAUST FOR BEGINNERS by S.E. Anderson, as well.   If you have never read a book about the TransAtlantic Slave Trade, then this is the book for you.  It’s very informative and very well written.  And I highly recommend it for everyone desirous of knowing the facts about the Blacks who were stolen out of Africa.  T.Y., Editor]

 

***

KHALIFAH'S BOOKSELLERS & ASSOCIATES

Producers & Disseminators of the Literature that is Finally Freeing Afrikan People:

"Those at Home and those abroad!"

www.KBAbooks.com

 

*********

 

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

 

http://www.journale.com/withoutsanctuary

 

*********

FOTO DOCUMENTATION OF US LYNCHINGS – “WITHOUT SANCTUARY”

 

February 25, 2002

 

Sistas & Brothas,

 

This newly reconstructed site (more interactive...more info than last year) was passed on thru Sista Deadria Farmer-Paellmann <paellmann@rcn.com>, one of our top Reparations lawyers investigating the corporate crimes against African humanity within the enslavement process (and its post-emancipation economic terrorism).

 

Pass it on to teachers, relatives, friends in denial, young folks....

 

In Struggle,

Sam Anderson

 

***

 

Greetings,

I thought the following might interest you.

 

Be well,

Deadria

 

 

Searching through America's past for the last 25 years, collector James Allen uncovered an extraordinary visual legacy: photographs and postcards taken as souvenirs at lynchings throughout America.  With essays by Hilton Als, Leon Litwack, Congressman John Lewis and James Allen, these photographs have been published as a book, "Without Sanctuary" by Twin Palms Publishers. Please be aware before entering the site that much of the material is very disturbing.

 

We welcome your comments and input through the forum section.

 

http://www.journale.com/withoutsanctuary

 

Submitted by brc-reparations@yahoogroups.com

 

*********

 

See a wide range of E-mail Addresses & WebSites on REPARATIONS in the REPNOW Issue #13. 

 

*********

 

A WISE LIBERATION MOVEMENT USES A

BROAD RANGE OF TACTICS

 

Minister Malik Al-Arkam

Boston Representative of the

Honorable Silis Muhammad

www.afre-ngo.org

 

*********

JOIN THE BLACK REPARATIONS MOVEMENT TODAY !

IT IS A WIN, WIN CASE FOR US!

Oscar L. Beard

 

*********

 

Stay strong in the struggle; we will win!

 

Dejoser

 

**********

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

 

*********

NEW NIC RELATED ADDRESS:  N’COBRA_INT_COMM@HOTMAIL.COM

January 27, 2002

ALL ELECTRONIC N’COBRA INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION RELATED BUSINESS WILL BE CONDUCTED THROUGH THIS NEW EMAIL ADDRESS AS OF JANUARY 27, 2002.

ncobra_int_comm@hotmail.com

ALL PERSONAL MATTERS FOR ONAJE MUID WILL REMAIN ON onajemuid@hotmail.com

PLEASE ADJUST ALL YOUR EMAIL  RECORDS ACCORDINGLY.

 

THANK YOU,

ONAJE MU'ID, N’COBRA

 

*********

JOIN N’COBRA AND THE MILLIONS FOR

THE AUGUST 17, 2002

REPARATIONS MARCH

 

On the way to participate in the historic Millions for Reparations March on August 17, 2002, join N`COBRA immediately. By joining N`COBRA, our collective organizational power will intensify our demand for reparations.

THEY OWE US!

By Dr. Conrad W. Worrill

Dr. Worrill is the National Chairman of the National Black United Front National Chairman of the National Black United Front

12817 S. Ashland Ave., Fl. 1

Calumet Park, Ill. 60827

708-389-9929, Fax 708-389-9819, E-Mail: nbufchi@allways.net,

 

Submitted by [BRC-REP]

*********

 

"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."

 

A Manchurian Proverb

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:

 

THOUGHTS ON OUR WAR AGAINST TERRORISM

Congresswoman Cynthia A. McKinney

March 28, 2002

 

t r u t h o u t | Statement

 

 

Authorities tell us that the world changed on September 11. As a result, university professors must watch what they say in class or be turned in to the "speech" police.  Elected officials must censor themselves or be censured by the media. Citizens now report behavior of suspicious-looking people to the police. Laws now exist that erode our civil liberties. Americans now accept these infringements as necessary to win America's New War.

 

America, the world's only superpower, is stifled in its ability to defend human rights and democracy abroad because it has failed the fundamental test at home. Our combination of money and military might, and our willingness to use them, did not make us a superpower.  We are the most powerful nation on the face of the planet because we have combined raw power with American ideals such as dignity, freedom, justice, and peace. These ideas and ideals are admired around the world and are more important, in my view, to our position of global strength than our ability to shoot a missile down a chimney. We might be feared because of our military, but we are loved because of our ideals.

 

Sadly, we have put American goodwill at risk around the world because of an imbalance in our foreign policy that is palpable to even the most disinterested observer.

 

In 1994, after an act of terrorism killed two sitting presidents, the Clinton Administration purposely failed to prevent the genocide of one million Rwandans in order to install favorable regimes in the region.  In 1999 Madeleine Albright OK'd a Sierra Leone peace plan that positioned Foday Sankoh as Chairman of the Commission for the Management of Strategic Resources, a position that placed him answerable only to the President despite the fact that his terrorist organization raped little girls and chopped off their hands as it financed its way to power with illegal diamond sales. Jonas Savimbi, recently killed on the battlefield, helped the US protect the minority rule of racists in South Africa and his organization continues to rampage across southern Africa in Angola, Namibia, parts of Congo-Kinshasha, and Rwanda without restriction, financed by illegal diamond sales. The continued plunder of Africa's rich resources without penalty and sadly with the knowledge and support of powerful people in the US, serves as the foundation of the particular terrorism that victimizes Africans. And now, as Africans grapple with the fundamental right to control their own resources and despite United Nations reports making no such links, Bush Administration experts seem prepared to link African diamonds with anti-US terrorism, "necessitating" tightened US control over Africa's resources.

 

And so, with no concern at all for the effects on others of US-supported terrorism, the US, with its bombs and military, embarks on a worldwide crusade against terrorism that Bush says likely will last as many as twenty years. The list of targeted countries is long with Afghanistan, Somalia, Tanzania, Kenya, Sudan, the Philippines, and Iraq offering the starters.

 

But what of the fact that Henry Kissinger and the current new US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, both once lobbied Washington, DC on behalf of a US oil company, Unocal, and a softer policy toward the Taliban?   Whose war is this really?

 

In November 2000, Republicans stole from America our most precious right of all: the right to free and fair elections. In an organized manner, Florida Governor Jeb Bush and his Secretary of State Katherine Harris, created a list of convicted felons--57,700 to be exact--to "scrub" from the state's voter rolls. The names were created from Florida records and from lists provided by 11 other states, the largest list coming from Texas. We now know that most of the people on that list were innocent of crimes. The list was a phony. And worse, the majority of these rightful voters were people of color and likely Democratic voters. Of the thousands who ultimately lost their vote through this scrub of voters, 80% are African-American. Had they voted, the course of history would have changed: Harris declared Bush the victor by only 537 votes.  President Carter has said that the Carter Center would not certify the US 2000 Presidential elections had they had been asked to do so.

 

Consequently, an Administration of questionable legitimacy has been given unprecedented power to fight America's new war against terrorism.

 

Before September 11, two million Americans found themselves behind bars: 80% of them people of color. Millions of Americans are sleeping on the streets of American cities. All over America, unarmed black men are targeted by rogue police officers, who shoot first and ask questions later. While 52% of all black men feel they have been victims of racial profiling, the Supreme Court declines to hear an important case on racial profiling. The Bush Administration "disses" the World Conference Against Racism and the people around the world who care about eliminating racism. In February 2001, The United States Commission on National Security, including Newt Gingrich, recommended that the National Homeland Security Agency be established with a hefty price tag. Most people chuckled at the suggestion.

 

After September 11, we have OK'd the targeting and profiling of certain groups of people in America while not arresting in any way the racial profiling and discrimination that existed prior to September 11. Mass arrests, detention without charge, military tribunals, and infringements on due process rights are now realities in America. Even more alarming are the calls in some circles to allow the use of torture and other brutal methods in pursuit of "justice." Sadly, US administration of justice will be conducted by an Administration incapable of it.  Interestingly, prominent officials explain to us that September 11 happened because we are free. And "they" hate us because we are free.

 

Moreover, persons close to this Administration are poised to make huge profits off America's new war. Former President Bush sits on the board of the Carlyle Group. The Los Angeles Times reports that on a single day last month, Carlyle earned $237 million selling shares in United Defense Industries, the Army's fifth-largest contractor. The stock offering was well timed: Carlyle officials say they decided to take the company public only after the Sept. 11 attacks. The stock sale cashed in on increased congressional support for hefty defense spending, including one of United Defense's cornerstone weapon programs.

 

Now is the time for our elected officials to be held accountable. Now is the time for the media to be held accountable. Why aren't the hard questions being asked? We know there were numerous warnings of the events to come on September 11. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, delivered one such warning. Those engaged in unusual stock trades immediately before September 11, knew enough to make millions of dollars from United and American airlines, certain insurance and brokerage firms' stocks. What did this Administration know, and when did it know it about the events of September 11? Who else knew and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York who were needlessly murdered?

 

September 11, erased the line between "over there" and "over here." The American people can longer afford to be detached from the world, as our actions abroad will have a direct impact on our lives at home. In Washington, DC, decisions affecting home and abroad are made and too many of us leave the responsibility of protecting our freedoms to other people whose interests are not our own. From Durban to Kabul to Atlanta to Washington, what our government does in our name is important. It is now also clear that our future, our security, and our rights depend on our vigilance.

 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/03.29G.McKinney.War.htm

 

Submitted by Djehuti Sundaka <AHuguley@ix.netcom.com>

 

*********

BLACKS HAVE A PERSONAL PROBLEM TO OVERCOME

 

April 23, 2002

 

You know my brothers and sisters, we as a unique Race have many secondary problems that affect us and these problems have had such a devastating affect upon us to the point we have lost sight on our primary problem which is our lack of ability to initiate action, intense enough to bring a resolution to our secondary problem that is causing our debilitating condition. it is our primary problem that  re-enforce with effectiveness the secondary problems that cause the present condition we suffer as a Black Afrikan Nation.  So let us look at some of the primary problems that have us in this pitiful state we are in as a people.

 

1. First of all we do not have the capacity of will to face squarely the truth about our condition and its cause.

 

2. We love to attack criticism instead of approaching it with reason, absent of uncontrolled emotion and pitiful ego.

 

3. We, instead of acknowledging our flaws, we choose to pretend to ignore them, with the use of pretended ignorance of them.

 

4. We seem to be satisfied in just intellectualizing about out secondary problems instead of actual making move to eliminate them.

 

5. We attempt to operate in the fraternity syndrome, which promote confrontational division habits among us, on ideological, religious and organizational grounds, so that we may attempt to justify such irrational behavior, while using  a oath of being, Right Or Wrong We Stand.

 

6. We refuse to accept the fact that we being descendants of an effective conditioning by slavery and colonialism and in such an environment, direct or indirect, has in fact shaped our thought processes, which in turn dictates our passive tolerable behavior toward the descendants of our oppressors. 

 

My brothers and sisters with these restraints and until we grow strong and become bravely honest with ourselves to acknowledge that they are there, until such time, we will remain in the posture we as a Black Afrikan Nation find ourselves in. Yes my brothers and sisters we have a personal problem to overcome and that problem stares at us from a matter of factual mirror and the mirror of our mind.  For us to remain in denial about our inflicted behavior, which is highlighted through both our Soulful and Spiritual degeneration of ability to know that which we need to know, such becomes the shackles to this day remain to be our most inflicting personal problem in light of preventing us from returning back to our Black Afrikan Salvation. 

 

The Black Afrikan will never enjoy freedom, independence and justice again, not as long as we labor under the impressionable illusion that we, each of us can remain set in our way in terms of how we view the world or is told the way we must view it and not allow sound reasoning based upon empirical data, backed up with endurable logic be our guide to knowing what is true and real for us as a United Nation.  It is our true soul through the spirit of our action that is qualified to make the Black Afrikan and Afrika whole again, it can and will be, as it was before so shall it be again.

 

Such a proclamation about Time depends most certainly upon our concerted united Action, though we may be many we must become as ONE IN OUR EFFORT!!  Now it is the weak in mind and the defeated of the true Afrikan Spirit whowill misinterpreted what has just been stated to you.  Those whose Soul And Spirit is coming alive again with the uncompromising love for Self and Afrika, You it is that is invited to the Sankofa Reclamation Gathering of Black Afrikans with redeemed Soul and a determine Spirit to see, work and make Afrika and Black Afrikans proud and godly again. The gathering will take place on July 5,6,7, in Detroit, those of you who desire more information about this Black Nationalist Pan – Afrikan Soulful - Spiritual gathering, please contact brother Kofimensah@prodigy.net

 

It Is The Black Fool Who Say I Have Lost Nothing In Afrika!!

 

It Is In Order To Give Respect With Honor To The Honorable Marcus Garvey.

 

Complete Love To The Afrikan Nation

 

Hoteph

Osiris

The Sankofa Reclamation Movement

The Pan - Afrikan Inter'National Movement

o_akkebala@msn.com

 

Submitted by Digest for TheBlackList@topica.com, issue 1055

*********

 

AFRICA’S CLASS STRUGGLE AND

FULL RESTITUTION FOR THE CRIMES AGAINST AFRICANS

 

April 26, 2002

 

"No reparations without repatriation" this is what our good brother, comrade in the struggle for Africa and young ancestor Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) always said when asked about the role of reparations.  He said this because he understood through his study and work that the restitution of the state of the African woman and man cannot be achieved without the full capacity to reintegrate into the African society, culture and the proper association with the source of African life, the land of Africa itself.  Hence any scheme that fails to grasp the fact that the Africans dispersed physically through the slave trade, and Africans still at home who have been alienated from the land by force of arms and associated methods, can only be made whole again by correcting these crimes against humanity, which means that the land of Africa must return to the control and use of the African peoples.  To recover the land Africans must wage a war against those who have placed us in this abysmal position, we must combat and overcome the enemies of human progress, who while primarily of European stock, also includes many African collaborators, Asian fellow travelers and even a minority segment of Native Americans who have betrayed the interest of their people and ancestors and wholeheartedly thrown their lot in with the oppressors and exploiters.  To put it bluntly we Africans must engage in an uncompromising class struggle that uses every political means (including the force of arms) if we want justice, liberty and a quality of life suited for human beings.  Dr. Kwame Nkrumah has some excellent advice on the nature of the class struggle in Africa (following quotes from his book "Class Struggle in Africa"):

 

"All peoples of African descent, whether they live in North or South America, the Caribbean, or any other part of the world are Africans and belong to the African nation." p. 87

 

"The total liberation and the unification of Africa under an All-African socialist government must be the primary objective of all Black revolutionaries throughout the world.  It is an objective which, when achieved, will bring about the fulfilment of the aspirations of Africans and the people of African descent everywhere.  It will at the same time advance the triumph of the international socialist revolution, and the onward progress towards world communism, under which, every society is ordered on the principle of - from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." p. 88

 

"In Africa where so many different kinds of political, social and economic conditions exist it is not an easy task to generalise on political and socio-economic patterns.  Remnants of communalism and feudalism still remain and in parts of the continent ways of life have changed very little from traditional times.  In other areas a high level of industrialization and urbanization has been achieved.  Yet in spite of Africa's socio-economic and political diversity it is possible to discern certain common political, social and economic conditions and problems.  These derive from traditional past, common aspirations, and from shared experience under imperialism, colonialism and neocolonialism.  There is no part of the continent which has not known oppression and exploitation, and no part which remains outside the processes of the African Revolution."  p. 9

 

"In Africa, where economic development is uneven, a wide variety of highly sophisticated political systems were in existence over many centuries before the colonial period began.  It is here, in the so-called developing world of Africa, and in Asia and Latin America, where the class struggle and the progress towards ending the exploitation of man by man have already entered into the stage of decisive revolutionary change."

 

"The political maturity of the African masses may to some extent be traced to economic and social patterns of traditional times.  Under communalism, for example, all lands and means of production belong to the community.  There was people's ownership.  Labour was the need and habit of all.  When a certain piece of land was allocated to an individual for his personal use, he was not free to do as he liked with it since it still belonged to the community. Chiefs were strictly controlled by counselors and were removable."   p. 13

 

"Class struggle is a fundamental theme of recorded history.  In every non-socialist society there are two main categories of class, the ruling class or classes, and the subject class or classes.  The ruling class possesses the major instruments of economic production and distribution, and the means of establishing its political domination, while the subject class serves the interests of the ruling class, and is politically, economically and socially dominated by it.  There is conflict between the ruling class and the exploited class.  The nature and cause of the conflict is influenced by the development of productive forces.  That is, in any given class formation, whether it be feudalism, capitalism, or any other type of society, the institutions and ideas associated with it arise from the level of productive forces and the mode of production.  The moment private ownership of the means of production appears, and capitalists start exploiting workers the capitalists become a bourgeois class, the exploited workers a working class.  For in the final analysis, a class is nothing more than the sum total of individuals bound together by certain interests which as a class they try to preserve and protect." p.  17

 

"There is a close connection between socio-political development, the struggle between social classes and the history of ideologies.  In general, intellectual movements closely reflect the trends of economic developments.  In communal society, where there are virtually no class divisions, man's productive activities on outlook and culture is less discernible.  Account must be taken of the psychology of conflicting classes."  p. 23

 

"Each historical situation develops its own dynamics.  The close links between class and race developed in Africa alongside capitalist exploitation.   Slavery, the master-servant relationship, and cheap labour were basic to it. The classic example is South Africa, where Africans experience a double exploitation - both on the ground of colour and of class.  Similar conditions exist in the USA, the Caribbean, in Latin America, and in other parts of the world where the nature of the development of productive forces has resulted in a racists class structure.  In these areas, even shades of colour count - the degree of blackness being a yardstick by which social status is measured."

 

"While a racist social structure is not inherent in the colonial situation, it is inseparable from capitalist economic development.  For race is inextricably linked with class exploitation; in a racist-capitalist power structure, capitalist exploitation and race oppression are complementary; the removal of one ensures the removal of the other."

 

"In the modern world, the race struggle has become a part of the class struggle.  In other words, wherever there is a race problem it has become linked with the class struggle."

p. 27

 

"Slavery and the master-servant relationship were therefore the cause, rather than the result of, racism.  The position was crystallized and reinforced with the discovery of gold and diamonds in South Africa, and the employment of cheap African labour in the mines.  As time passed, and it was thought necessary to justify the exploitation and oppression of African workers, the myth of racial inferiority was developed and spread."

 

"In the era of neocolonialism, "under-development" is still attributed not to exploitation but to inferiority, and racial overtones remain closely interwoven with the class struggle."

 

"It is only the ending of capitalism, colonialism, imperialism and neocolonialism and the attainment of world communism that can provide the conditions under which the race question can finally be abolished and eliminated." p.  29

 

Africans of the world unite for our common interest, our common experiences, our common heritage and future, and our beloved land.  Whether we are fighting as an oppressed and exploited immigrant community in places such as Holland, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Germany, UK, France, Portugal; or fighting against the unwanted absorption into the UK orbit as "citizens" in still colonized areas of the world such as Monserrat, or suffering in American states such as Brazil, Canada (remember the racist comments of the mayor of Toronto about Africans and the homicidal, maniacal behavior of the Canadian units in Somalia), and the USA where-- to use the words of Rep. McKinney, "Each day millions of Americans suffer poverty, hunger, the sting of discrimination . . . arbitrary arrest, racial profiling, and brutality from rogue police . . . inadequate health care, drug abuse, and unemployment. For the millions of poor Americans, ours is not a just society."  From " Cynthia McKinney, Peace Rally Remarks April 20, 2002"; we have a common fight, a common foe, and a common solution. We must build Pan-Africanism, which means we must do all we can to assure that the new African Union leads to a full fledged union government that is in the hands of the African people and works in the interest of the African peoples.

 

Roy Walker

rwalker949@aol.com

 

[A New African Union will be a reality.  It just takes, among other things, Reparations, diligence, sincerity, and determination to make it happen.  T.Y., Editor]

 

*********

 

WHEN PALESTINIANS HAVE NO HOPE

March 30, 2002

The measure of the failure of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is this: The Palestinians are stronger today than they ever have been. It is strange to think that these bedraggled people, living in squalid refugee camps under the gun muzzles of Israeli tanks, could be gaining in strength, but it is a fact. The dynamic of this awful conflict has changed dramatically in a single year. The Palestinian strength grows from evidence that an entire generation is ready to die for the cause. And another generation is ready to follow, for the Palestinian birth rate and population under 5 years old are twice that of Israel.

Warfare by collective immolation is not something that can be defeated by a conventional army. When Benjamin Netanyahu, Sharon's critic on the right, calls for "complete military victory," he can only be thinking of re-occupation of all the West Bank and Gaza, the bankrupt policy Israel abandoned a decade ago. The Bush administration has much to answer for in the Middle East collapse. Bush blamed Clinton for being too involved in the Middle East, and so decided to do nothing. Sept. 11 is no excuse for the failure, for Bush did little before that date to deal with the Palestinian powder keg.

Carte blanche was given to Sharon to "fight terrorism," with the results we see today. Obsessed with Iraq, Bush failed to see that the real threat to U.S. security lay in the festering Palestinian problem and its potential to radicalize the entire Middle East.

The most perverse result of Bush fecklessness and Sharon's intransigence has been the creation of a generation of Palestinian martyrs. Israelis, like most people, don't want to die. Dealing with people who want to die, who regard dying as better than living, is not easy.

Short of killing them all, the only solution is to help them want to live, which Sharon has no desire to do.

All nations worry about fanaticism these days - America more than most. But the Palestinian bombers are not just fanatics. The Sept. 11 bombers were recruits to al-Qaeda, brain-washed Muslim killers with only dim understanding of why they were doing what they were programmed to do.

The Palestinian martyrs are everybody - girls from nice families, middle-aged fathers, peaceful bus drivers, young people living at home and unconnected to radical fundamentalism or international cells such as al-Qaeda. They appear willing to die for a simple reason: their lives are hopeless.

Most people grow up with hope. Young Israelis, like young Americans or - because of Sept. 11 - even young Afghans, grow up with hopes for an education, a job, a house, a family. Hope is what life is all about. Try to imagine what it is like to have no hope. For Americans, the only point of reference would be slavery. Slaves could not own property, marry, travel, earn money, learn to read or write, become free. Slaves had no hope. They worked until they dropped. Slavery created America's great tragedy, the civil war. Cousin fought against cousin to give slaves hope. The Palestinian generation of martyrs has no hope. I have been in their camps, seen how they live. Young Palestinians are born, raised and die in those camps. The camps are their prisons. Is it any surprise they regard death as liberation? Who wouldn't?

The camps bred Intifada I, which began in 1986 and led to the Oslo peace process. Israel's great leader of the time, Yitzhak Rabin, murdered by a Jewish fanatic, understood the hopelessness of the Palestinians. Oslo, directed by Clinton, got close to success at Camp David in July 2000. But it failed. Each side today blames the other for the failure. Robert Malley, at Camp David as a member of Clinton's National Security Council staff, spreads the blame equally. He writes: "The mutual and deeply entrenched suspicion meant that Barak would conceal his final proposals, the "endgame," until Arafat had moved, and that Arafat would not move until he could see the endgame."

But all was not lost. The two sides met again in January 2001, in Taba, Egypt, and says Malley, "produced more progress and more hope." But it was too late. Sharon, who for the Palestinians symbolizes the end of hope, set off Intifada II on Sept. 28, 2000, by visiting the Temple Mount. "For Barak to have allowed Sharon to go there," writes Avishai Margalit, Schulman professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, "escorted by hundreds of armed Israeli policemen, showed the worst possible political judgment."

For Sharon it worked to perfection. Palestinians were soon dying by the hundreds and Israelis by the dozens. Sharon easily beat Barak in elections a year ago by promising to restore the security he himself had destroyed.

Sharon's failure can be seen in what his year in office has brought. For Israelis, there is no security anywhere, not on streets or buses, in cafes or malls. Death is everywhere. A generation of Palestinians without hope is robbing Israelis of their hope. Only through creation of a viable Palestinian state, where young Arabs can learn that living is better than dying, will the killing stop.

http://athena.tbwt.com/content/article.asp?articleid=338

By James O.  Goldsborough  

San Diego Union-Tribune

 

***

 

James Goldsborough correctly illustrates how long-term Israeli injustices have actually strengthened the Palestinian liberation movement.  However, he does not address the root of the Middle East problem.  The Israelis acquired another people's land through deceit and violence more than half a century ago.  The Jewish people are not originally from the Middle East--they are originally form Lithuania, in Europe.  Nor are the Jewish people descended from Prophet Abraham.  See the 8th Chapter of St. John in the Bible (verses 32-44), where Jesus denied that they were the Seed of Abraham.  Nor were the Jewish people ever enslaved in Egypt for 400 years.  The late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat exposed that lie in an interview with Walter Cronkite.  The only people who fulfilled the prophecy about Abraham's Seed being in bondage in a strange land for 400 years are the African-Americans.  Our foreparents were first brought to America in chains on April lst 1555 in a slave ship which Captain John Hawkins had the gall to call "Jesus."

 

Submitted by Minister Malik Al-Arkam      

www.afre-ngo.org.

alarkam@webtv.net

 

Visit The Black World Today @ http://athena.tbwt.com

 

[If Blacks are not afforded JUSTICE for the captivity, degradation, and humiliation we endure, I can see the dilemma of the Palestinians alive and kickin’ in the United States and in all countries that stole Blacks out of Africa.  T.Y., Editor]

 

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DEBATING  REPARATIONS

WITH  HOROWITZ  AND  OGLETREE

 

May 1, 2002

 

Reparations for American blacks was a sideline issue for most African Americans until the publication of Randall Robinson's The Debt. The book helped bring the reparations debate to a larger audience, introducing the wider black community and general American population to a notion long discussed at black nationalist meetings.  Others began taking action. Deadria Farmer-Paelmman, a legal activist, conducted extensive research finding that Aetna issued policies on slaves in the 1850s; she has since filed suit against the insurance giant and other corporations, requesting that they compensate African Americans for "stolen labor" and "illicit profits." Another group, headed by Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree and lawyer Johnnie Cochran, is still formulating strategy for gaining some form of reparations through the courts, while Congressman John Conyers has long argued for legislative action on the subject.

 

A backlash was inevitable. Just as reparations ideas began proliferating, David Horowitz, a neo-conservative intellectual provocateur, began railing against the issue, taking out ads in college newspapers declaring reparations to be "racist" and unfair. Reaction to the ads set off a chain of high-profile rifts at colleges across the country, as students academics and intellectuals squared off on race, reparations and free speech.

 

I spoke with both Horowitz and Ogletree on the reparations debate, asking each the same series of questions. Below are their very different answers.

 

David Horowitz is president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture and editor of frontpagemag.com.

 

What do you think about the reparations movement?

 

I think that people need to remind themselves that it was a fringe leftist movement for over 40 years. This was not embraced by any significant civil rights leader between 1969 and 1989. No respectable civil rights leader embraced or endorsed this, from 1969 when James Foreman announced this. This was the first time that reparations were proclaimed as a demand. For 20 years, no civil rights leader proclaimed this. When the Japanese got their reparations in 1988, this triggered the John Conyers bill a year later. I don't think that until Randall Robinson's book, The Debt, that reparations was embraced by the mainstream black organizations. There was a reason that it was a fringe movement. That is because it is so destructive and such an absurd idea, because there are no slaves alive. It has already isolated the black community.

 

Why did you decide to get involved in opposing this movement?

 

I was familiar with the characters who were pushing reparations. They were fringe black leftist. Whenever I encountered it they were fringe leftist, not Jesse Jackson or Mfume, but obscure leftists. But then in May of 2000, I saw a story about how the Chicago City Council had passed a bill modeled on the Conyers bill that passed 46-1, which is absurd on the face of it. There is nothing that gets voted on 46-1. The one guy that voted against it said, all of my constituencies are white ethnics, whose ancestors came to this country after slavery was over and they won't understand this.

 

What do you say to those people who are for reparations?

 

This will hurt the black community. This will pit, or set the black community, or that part of the black community that supports reparations, against every other ethnic group. When you are trying to achieve something, you try to build as broad a coalition as you can, especially if you are a minority. Reparations for people who are black, which is what this is about, has the smallest base of support that something can have. It narrows a base of support tremendously. The reparations movement is making black people look like whiners, hucksters and shakedown artist.

 

If you look at reparations, there are two aspects to it. One is to get recognition of the black past in this country. Of the suffering of black people in this country and its history. They want America to deal with slavery and so forth. The second half of this argument is to get money for inner-city projects, black education and other things. They want a fund for black causes. The money part is much easier to get by saying there is a problem here, and as American citizens we ought to help. That is how a lot of social programs are funded. In that way, you are not saying that you are all racists and you have all been involved in slavery. You are saying that every American should want to help people who are falling behind and suffering. You want money for education and programs, you ask for it. You can bring up historic injustices. But with reparations, you have to identify a guilty party and make them pay.

 

So, with the Holocaust Jews, the Germans felt really guilty and they just committed one of the world's greatest crimes. The problem with reparations is that most people in America today do not feel guilty in the way that Germans felt guilty. It is too far in the past, and their ancestors were not even here then. It does not make sense. If you want to get money for good causes, ask for money for good causes, or even demand it, but don't call it reparations. If you want to get people to honor and understand black history in this country, let's build an African American history museum on the mall [in Washington]. JC Watts and John Lewis have a bill for this, which I will help raise money for.  This is a worthy idea. From a political point of view, all of the goals of the reparations movement can be achieved by taking a more positive approach. Randall Robinson is an American hater. You read his book, and all that comes through is hatred of America. The only country that he praises in the book is communist Cuba.

 

Is reparations racist?

 

Randall Robinson is a racist. Reparations, as formulated, is racist. Not the idea of reparations, but the argument is racist. That is because all black people will be paid on the basis of their skin color. Not on the basis of what has happened to them. Not only will it be on the basis of skin color, it will be on the basis of the one-drop rule. One of the crimes of slavery was that slave owners had their own way with black women, because they owned them. Who is black anymore, who is not involved? There is a lot of white slaveowner blood within the black community.

 

Another reason it is racist is that it does not give any credit to non-black people for the good that they have done, like ending slavery, which they did not start. Slavery existed in Africa for a thousand years, before the first white person set foot there. The point is that if you look at America, you will see that once America was created in 1776, it took 89 years to end slavery, the slave trade and slavery in the Western Hemisphere. America led the anti-slavery movement, which ended 89 years after America was founded.

 

There are a lot of white people who over hundreds of years have fought to liberate blacks. They have given them the same citizenship that they have. Not only is this a one-sided view of history, but it makes blacks focus on the past instead of today. This is important, because this is 2002. When I turn on my television, I see a black woman speaking who is running our national security policy. If I am not seeing Condoleezza Rice, I am looking at Colin Powell negotiating in the Middle East. This is of huge historical significance. These are not token people. The reparations movement would have been an important and progressive movement in the 19th century, but in the 21st century, it is blinding those who listen to it, and preventing them from seeing a moment of great triumph for black America, today. Power in Washington, celebrity and status in Hollywood. Black people have the best claim on being Americans. They were here before everyone else. If you don't find a way to identify with American history and you think negatively about your own country, you are making yourself homeless. There is no need to do this. America has done a lot of tremendous things. Black people should insist on their American heritage. Now, 2002, is not the time to give up on America.

 

What about reparations from corporations?

 

Let me explain this. Let us take Aetna, the insurance company. Slaves were insured because they were property. If you look at the policies of Aetna, the clauses in the policies said we will not pay if the slaves were lynched or overworked. Aetna insurance today has nothing to do with Aetna of 150 years ago. The people, who are suing the corporations, they are arguing as if the company is a pot of gold. If you look at Enron, at one time, they were the seventh-largest company in the world. Today Enron is zero. When you sue Aetna, you are suing living employees, directors, stockholders and their customers, many of whom are black.  Nobody you are suing has anything to do with slavery. Aetna has already given $34 million to black causes. Now you are going to kick them in the teeth. You are now tarring their image by saying they were involved with slavery. What the reparations lawyers are doing is taking away allies of the black community - a company that has given the black community $34 million - and making them adversaries. Is that something positive?

 

Do blacks need reparations?

 

Well, I think it is wrong to talk about blacks in a group. Fifty percent of the black community is middle class. In cities like Atlanta, the city establishment is black. If 70 percent of black America is poor, it would make sense. But only 26 percent of black America is living below the poverty line. If you are looking at that statistic, they are all single-parent families. That is the reason they are poor. A crusade for marriage would do more to improve the lot of inner-city blacks than any reparations. You also have to remember that $1.5 trillion has gone into the inner city in the past 30 years. What the discussion needs to be is, what will work in the inner city?

 

What do you think about those who are for reparations?

 

I try to understand emotionally the feelings behind it, but I think that it is politically very misguided. When you see those poor southern blacks who have been scammed by people on the reparations.... The victim mentality is a crippling mentality. There is a danger of having a collective pity party. The danger is that you become immobilized, or that you put all of your energies into campaigns that cannot succeed. If you want money for programs, ask for it. If you want a reckoning with the moral arguments about slavery let's work together to build a museum on the mall.

 

How is this the same or different in regards to reparations for the Jews and Japanese?

 

In both cases, the victims were still alive. That is a big difference. I am for reparations for slaves and the children of former slaves. But all of the victims of US slavery are dead, so you cannot pay them. Not all Jews got reparations. I am a Jew, and I did not get reparations. Jews got reparations if they were direct victims of the Nazis. Then the German government could make you whole. Not all of the Japanese received reparations. Only those that were relocated, on the West Coast. The point is that you had to be a direct victim.

 

What do you think of Charles Ogletree and his fight for reparations?

 

I don't think much of Charles Ogletree. Ogletree is a prestigious black professor at Harvard. The people who will be hurt by reparations are the people who are living in Roxbury. They will suffer because Ogletree is pissing off natural supporters of the black community. I actually chuckle that they will sue USA Today and Harvard. I do not like it when Ogletree speaks and says that all of the disparities in America are the result of white racism, slavery, segregation and de facto discrimination. Who in the black community would like to release all of the black felons in maximum-security prisons? Would this help black people? There is a crime problem in the black community, that really hurts black people, but suing Aetna and Harvard will not help those people. The reparations movement is derailing the civil rights movement.

 

What do you want to be remembered for in this reparations fight?

 

It is not a fight that I wanted to undertake. People will never believe this. I had no idea that this would cause the ruckus that it did. What I would like to accomplish is to get people to see that there are two sides to these issues that are legitimate, and that people need to think things through before they go running around breaking things. I got into this because I saw that no one was able to criticize reparations and so people were going ahead with a very destructive movement. People do not want to criticize black leadership because they do not want to be called racists, and if they are black they don't want to be called Oreos or be trashed. When you have a movement that cannot handle criticism, you know it will run into a wall sooner or later.

 

Charles Ogletree is a professor of law at Harvard University.

 

What do you think about the reparations movement?

 

Reparations is the most significant race issue of the 21st century. It is an issue whose time has come. It contains historical fact, an analysis of slavery and it covers many issues of social science, which will reveal the disturbing issues of racial disparity. Issues such as health care, education, housing, employment and the criminal justice system. It is a growing grassroots movement and it is currently being discussed and debated at every level in our society. It is a healthy and necessary discussion that is needed in America today.

 

Why did you decide to get involved in it?

 

I have been interested in reparations since I was a student at Stanford University in the 1970s. I met Queen Mother Moore, the matriarch of the reparations movement, and she made it clear that in the 20th century we need to move beyond the African plea for self-rule and the African American effort to promote civil rights, to engage in the debate of reparations for slavery for the descendents of African slaves. More recently, my work with Randall Robinson on TransAfrica's board confirmed in my mind that there were valid reasons, that there were legal arguments to pursue reparations. I discussed the matter with a lot of lawyers, scholars and activists and I was persuaded that it was an effort I should support and offer whatever I could that was possible.

 

What do you say to those people who are against reparations?

 

I am not surprised that people are against reparations. It is an understandable position. The easiest way to look at this is to ask three questions. Was slavery morally objectionable in our society? There is little doubt that people will disagree with that. Given the fact that Africans played a central role in building this country, is it responsible to suggest that slaves who built this country should be entitled to compensation? What is the only viable and sensible mechanism to meet the objectives of remedying the past harms of slavery? My analysis would suggest the civil rights era, affirmative action and integration have benefited a small percentage of African Americans. The argument for reparations is to make sure that any remedy for the past sins of slavery and segregation goes to the poorest of the poor, the most deserving of reparations. By focusing on the most despised and oppressed, and marginalized segments of the African American community, we can solve the American problems of disparities in education, health care, employment, housing and criminal justice practices.

 

Some opponents say that the fight for reparations is racist. Is it?

 

No. This is a comment that does not deserve a response. This is anti-intellectual and anti-factual. Slavery in America was based on race and it was racist. People say this out of ignorance and a lack of an appreciation to solve this remedy. Was it racist for the American Government to give reparations to Japanese who were placed in internment camps? Was it racist to give benefits and some form of sovereignty to American Indians? The argument represents race-baiting by people who do not have a clear and cogent critique of the reparations movement.

 

What about reparations from US Corporations?

 

There clearly is growing evidence of the corporate role in promoting and assisting slavery. These same entities will be the subject to the same legal steps in the reparations effort. The evidence against many of the corporation is quite compelling and irrefutable.

 

Do blacks need reparations?

 

Yes. We see the same level of disparity on the basis of race in the 21^st century that slaves and freed slaves during the period of Jim Crow laws experienced. The fact that these problems have persisted 140 years after slavery suggests that we have not done our job to adequately rid our society of the vestiges and badges of slavery.

 

How is this the same or different in regards to reparations for the Jews and Japanese?

 

It is similar in that in both cases governments accepted responsibility for conduct that targeted people on the basis of race and national origin and treated them unjustly. The difference is that, unlike the Jewish and Japanese victims, the African slaves were denied the reparations they were promised, and so due to government delay, they were deceased before they could receive them. The claims are no less valid with the passage of time.

 

What do you think of David Horowitz and his role against reparations?

 

His silly ideas and public posturing has actually placed the reparations debate back in the mainstream dialogue in America. Now, by trying to sell books that attack reparation supporters he has generated more public dialogue, more understanding and more support for an idea that was once thought of as being extreme. He has contributed to a deeper understanding of reparations based on the simplistic notions he promotes.

 

What do you want to be remembered for in this reparations fight?

 

Nothing. I have no personal agenda or expectation of being remembered in this reparations battle. What I do hope will happen is an American appreciation of the enormous courage, and convictions of African slaves who gave their blood, sweat and tears to build this country but never had the opportunity to live the American dream.

 

http://www.africana.com/DailyArticles/index_20020501.htm

 

By Lee Hubbard superle@hotmail.com

 

Lee Hubbard can be reached at superle@hotmail.com for questions and comments.

 

[Horowitz’s most frightening nightmare is that the dialogue for the right to Reparations will reveal that so-called White Jews were extensively involved in the enslavement of Blacks out of Africa.  T.Y., Editor]

 

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Same Ol’ Same Ol’ Reparations Opponent’s Litany…

 

THE REPARATIONS RACKET

AMERICA HAS ALREADY MADE AMENDS FOR SLAVERY

 

March 29, 2002

 

“America must finally acknowledge the horrors that slavery wrought,” we keep hearing as the latest variation on professional victimhood from groups now agitating for reparations for slavery. Never mind that library shelves groan under the weight of books, journals, and articles on slavery, that African-American museums dot the American landscape, and that the horrors of slavery are grist for the mill of countless university courses and movies.

 

You’d think from listening to these people that after the Civil Rights Act the American government just left black people to sink or swim. Somehow, these victimologists consider it irrelevant that the 1960s witnessed a battery of “reparations” for blacks that continues in full force today—the expansion of welfare, affirmative action, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, and so on. Sure, these policies have had mixed legacies (at best), but the fact remains that the nation instituted them in full awareness of the effects of slavery, segregation, and residual racism upon a group with a tragic history.

 

Yet the prime movers behind a recent suit brought against three corporations whose earlier incarnations may have benefited from slavery a century or more ago defend their initiative as a way of gaining the first “restitution” for blacks’ pain. Going beyond previous efforts to elicit reparations from government, this lawsuit takes its cue from Jesse Jackson’s strategy of shaking down private corporations. The assumption, based on Jackson’s successful racket, is that the companies will pusillanimously settle out of court rather than risk getting tarred as “racists” in a trial. 

 

This effort makes little sense as history or policy. After all, no one today had anything to do with slavery, either as victim or perpetrator. Moreover, it’s all but certain that, even if the firms give out these new “reparations,” 20 years later a new contingent would be agitating for more money, believing that crying victim is the essence of authentic “black leadership.”

 

Real civil rights will mean standing down this misguided manipulation and devoting our efforts to the less glamorous efforts of fostering concrete change for people who need help. If the firms do try to settle out of court, shareholders should fight fire with fire by filing suit on the grounds that the companies are wasting corporate assets needlessly. Then perhaps companies might to the right thing instead of the easy thing.

 

To be sure, the reparations crowd seeks to put the money in an unspecified fund that would support housing, education, and health care for blacks. But more money would solve none of these problems, and if the past is any indication, any funds given to the usual suspects in municipal and social service bureaucracies would rarely reach the people they were intended for, and would just perpetuate the same old problems. What ails the black community today is the very illusion that holds the reparations gang in thrall—that serious black achievement is impossible except under ideal conditions, that white neglect must be at the root of any black-white disparity, and that only the actions of whites can significantly improve the conditions of blacks.

 

Submitted by JELPO@AOL.COM

 

[I’m starting to really understand just how White folks will lie, connive, and distort the facts for their own selfish purposes and for our ruin.  And all because they don’t want to see Black folks with RESTITUTION for Slavery and for the gross disparities we endure.  Plain and simple, they don’t want to see us rise above this HELL!  They want to see us remain so-called inferior human beings and subsist on paychecks that keep us impoverished in order that they remain the wealthy and privileged.   I AM MAD AS HELL, AND I CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE!!!  T.Y., Editor]

*********

 

REPARATIONS CEREMONIAL AND

RESOLUTION IN NEW YORK COUNCIL

 

May 1, 2002

 

The New York City Council Meeting of April 24th began with a special ceremonial, recognizing Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, Mary Lacey Madison and Andre Carrington for their courage in challenging the enduring injury of slavery by bringing a lawsuit against FleetBoston, CSX and AETNA Inc.  These corporations allegedly used and/or profited from slave labor and have continued to benefit from it to this day.

 

Victor Robles read the Proclamation, which was signed by Majority Whip Leroy Comrie, Councilman Charles Barron, and Deputy Majority Leader Bill Perkins.

 

After the reading Ms. Madison, who is 91 years old, said, "I'm glad that so many of you are here today and I hope this happens in our time. We should not have to wait any longer."

 

Ms. Paellmann, whose amazing amount of research into these corporations was instrumental in this lawsuit being filed, followed her. She said, "On behalf of our ancestors who have come before us, who have slaved in this city, I thank you. It is indeed an honor to be recognized at this point, the first salvo I would say, in this particular struggle for reparations. I thank Councilman Charles Barron, too, who has been a tremendous force in the struggle for reparations and in fighting the vestiges of slavery in New York City and around the country."

 

Mr. Carrington concluded by stating, "I am honored to be a part of this momentous and historical event."

 

There was also a special acknowledgement of lead attorney Roger Wareham and Viola Plummer of the December 12th Movement who were also in attendance. They have each done a great deal to ensure that before the eyes of the world the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and Slavery is declared a crime against humanity, making this suit possible.

 

RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF THE SUIT

 

That same day, Councilman Barron submitted a Resolution calling upon the City Council to support these plaintiffs in this class action suit.  The Resolution reads:

 

Whereas, Over eight million Africans and their descendants were enslaved in the United States from 1619 to 1865; and

 

Whereas, By the end of the Trans?Atlantic Slave Trade, somewhere between eight and twelve million Africans had arrived in the New World to be sold off as slaves; and

 

Whereas, Historians estimate that one slave perished for every individual who survived capture and transport to the New World, meaning that as many as twelve million perished in addition to those who lived only to lead the dreadful life of a slave; and

 

Whereas, Not only did slavery result in the extinguishing of millions of Africans, but eviscerated whole cultures, languages, and religions, and wrenched from its victims and descendants their history, memories and families; and

 

Whereas, In addition to the South, many enslaved Africans arrived in the Dutch colonial city of New Amsterdam that later became New York City, where such slaves were integral in building many structures such as Trinity Church, the City streets and the wall from which Wall Street takes its name and which protected the colony from military strikes; and

 

Whereas, These slaves lived cheek to jowl in attics, hallways, and beneath porches, and in death they were banished to the Negro Burial Ground one mile outside the City, which holds between ten and twenty thousand bodies; and

 

Whereas, About twenty percent of these buried bodies were children who died from malnutrition, and most of the adult bodies showed signs of death by hard labor; and,

 

Whereas, Slavery was outlawed in 1865, yet continued on a smaller scale de facto until as recently as the 1950's; and

 

Whereas, Even for those who were "freed" their lives remained locked in quasi-servitude due to legal, economic, and psychic restraints that effectively blocked their economic, political and social advancement; and

 

Whereas, Slavery fueled the prosperity of the young nation by providing as much as forty million dollars in unpaid labor, which some estimate to have appreciated to a current value of more than one trillion dollars; and

 

Whereas, A class action suit has been brought in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York by descendants of slaves, seeking restitution for the atrocities of slavery and the cruel aftermath it has engendered; and

 

Whereas, The plaintiffs in this brave and noble class action are represented by Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, Mary Lacey Madison, and Andre Carrington; and

 

Whereas, The defendants in the action are corporate entities that have allegedly used and/or profited from slave labor and have retained the benefits and use of those profits and products derived from that slave labor; and

 

Whereas, Defendant corporations allegedly knew that the plaintiff class was subject to physical and mental abuse and inhumane treatment; and

 

Whereas, FleetBoston, a named defendant in the lawsuit, is alleged to have financed some of the business of slave trading; and

 

Whereas, CSX, another named defendant, is alleged to have operated numerous railroad lines that were constructed or run by slave labor; and

 

Whereas, AETNA Inc., also named in the lawsuit, is alleged to have insured slave owners against the loss of their human chattel; and

 

Whereas, There are alleged to be many other corporations that have participated in and profited from slavery; and

 

Whereas, The United Nations has pronounced the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to be a crime against humanity; and

 

Whereas, A crime has been committed, a people has been injured by this crime, and compensation for these injuries are due; now, therefore, be it

 

RESOLVED, That the City Council declares its support for plaintiffs Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, Mary Lacey Madison, Andre Carrington and all others similarly situated, in their efforts to seek restitution in a federal class action suit brought against the corporations that are alleged to have participated in and directly profited from the abhorrent institution of slavery.

 

For more information about the lawsuit, call (718) 941-1931.

 

REPARATIONS CEREMONIAL AND RESOLUTION IN NEW YORK COUNCIL

By Donna Lamb

 

Donna Lamb is Communications Director for Caucasians United for Reparations and Emancipation. She can be reached at dlamb@gis.net.

 

 

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EVIDENCE FOR REPARATIONS

IN CALIFORNIA FROM CA STATE INSURANCE DEPARTMENT

 

May 2, 2002

 

As you may know, yesterday, California's State Insurance Department released their report on insurance companies doing business in that state that wrote marine and life insurance policies on the lives of enslaved Africans. These policies helped to finance the enslavement of our Africans in the United States and other parts of the Americas.

The report and its accompanying databases of "slave" and "slaveholders names" give a heart wrenching picture of the capacities in which enslaved Africans were exploited for the economic gain of others.

 

The information can be found at the following link:

http://www.insurance.ca.gov/docs/FS-SEIR.htm

Also yesterday, a slavery reparations lawsuit was filed in New Jersey federal court against three New York companies by the Corporate Reparations Team.

 

Here is a link to an article that addresses the report and the lawsuit:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/showcase/chi-0205020280ma y02.story?coll=chi%2Dnews%2Dhed

 

Be well,

Deadria Farmer-Paellmann <paellmann@rcn.com>

 

Information provided by ebontek@earthlink.net

 

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REPARATIONS FOR SLAVERY, ANOTHER

ILLEGITIMATE OFFSPRING OF

HAS-BEEN CIVIL RIGHTS “LEADER” JESSE JACKSON,

HAVE HIT THE NEWS

 

"And so, my fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you – ask

what you can do for your country."

—President John F. Kennedy

 

 

The fading and desperate Jackson, who for over 30 years has built a lucrative career on the backs of black Americans, has paved the way for some of his "offspring" to push for reparations, a plot that if hatched will destroy the black community and divide our whole country. Among Jackson's chief "descendants" are trial lawyer Johnnie Cochran, Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, and Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., who, among others, have banded together on this unholy crusade.

 

Masterfully, they have performed the two tasks on Jackson's lifetime "To Do" list:

 

Indict contemporary white America for something of which it is not guilty.  Demand money, and lots of it.  I can almost see a single tear roll down Jackson's cheek.

 

For blacks who live in the most opportunity-rich country in human history to demand money for the sins of 140 years ago is absolutely shameful. For white Americans or any Americans – many of whose ancestors weren't even in this country at the time of slavery – to pay reparations is a deep injustice.  A closer look at reparations shows it to be a divisive and evil plot. It is only the latest in a long list of ploys by the modern-day black civil rights movement to control the black community and divide the races. First of all, very few whites even owned black slaves, yet the reparations movement indicts all whites by virtue of their skin color. If this isn't racist, what is?

 

Second, the debt of slavery has already been paid through a major war. For all those in failing public schools, I am referring to the Civil War, where many, many whites died so blacks could be free.

 

Third, blacks benefited enormously from American slavery. I have often said that I thank God that my ancestors were taken to America in boats. Had this not happened, I could be in South Africa right now with Nelson Mandela, and really be in trouble.

 

America has granted every wish of black Americans. It has made government the head of the black family; it has integrated the schools and neighborhoods; it has given blacks welfare and affirmative action; it has even apologized through Bill Clinton. There is simply nothing else that America can or should do. Blacks should feel fortunate to be citizens of this country. We are blessed, not enslaved, and those who say otherwise are enslaved only by their own hatred.

 

As President Kennedy might say if he were alive today, "When will blacks seek to give back to this great land instead of seeking for ways to loot it?"

 

The effect of reparations would be among the most devastating the country and the black community have ever experienced. There would be hell to pay – we would see an unparalleled backlash. Whites and blacks would be divided like never before. But you don't hear Jesse Jackson ever talk about this inevitable catastrophe – and he's supposed to be a leader with the well-being of black Americans first in his mind.

 

This shows that Jackson and his "children" are not striving for blacks' well-being, but for personal gain. I don't believe for a minute that average blacks would actually