by Joseph Debro

If you think that BMW is a ride, please do not tell anyone. The Bay Area Black Builders are selling white hard hats, with the Black logo “BMW.”

The Black Man Working campaign is underway. The proceeds will be used to fuel our campaign to place a Black man in every business endeavor in our community.

It is no longer acceptable to take money out of our community without putting some back. We will make this an uncomfortable business environment for those who do not return community benefits as we define them.

It does not matter that yours is a family business. It does not matter that you have attempted to or you have met the goals set by the politicians.

The Bay Area Black Builders will define community benefits. We demand jobs for Black men to work in our community. If you take our money and make a profit, our community must receive some benefits other than the product you sell.

The Black communities are poor across this country because we allow others to export our meager wealth and import labor into an environment with a labor surplus. Convenience stores, check cashing and payday loan offices, gas stations, auto insurance companies all take from us.

We make no demands. We allow our schools to under-educate our children. We participate in the rationing of scarce educational dollars away from our own communities.

Crimes of desperation are high in our communities because of the frustration of the undereducated, the untrained and the unemployed. There are no hard numbers counting the unemployed in the Black communities. Foundations and governments are afraid to fund that count.

There are hard numbers counting the crimes committed and the Black men incarcerated. Our men are being slowly emasculated. No training, no work, no contracts and no money. Too many of our Black men must depend upon our women for money. Mother’s Day each month is a big day in the lives of too many Black men.

Criminal activity is the only open avenue left for the untrained and uneducated high school dropout. Our men are the raw material for the prison industrial complex and what White people call the criminal justice system.

The so-called criminal justice system is a system of White people who live well off the criminal activities of the Black men who are not working. The police, the lawyers, the judges, the probation and parole officers and last but not least the correctional officers all depend upon Black men not working.

The pensions of these vultures are bankrupting our governments. Most if not all of this class retire after 20 years. They then draw full salaries plus health benefits, while they work on other jobs. This creates an unknown pension liability. An officer in San Francisco retired recently with a pension north of $300,000 per year.

The police, the lawyers, the judges, the probation and parole officers and last but not least the correctional officers all live well off the crimes of desperation committed by Black men who are not working.

A BMW provides money in the pockets of our mothers, our children, our churches and our schools. He provides guidance for his children. He has options for his life and he creates options for his children. He becomes a productive member of our community, rather than a dependent on the state. The more BMWs we create the less fodder for the criminal injustice system.

A BMW (Black Man Working) for a Black construction company, Liberty Builders, owned by Bay View publisher Willie Ratcliff – prior to the 1998 lockout of Blacks from construction in San Francisco. – Photo: David Alston, Mahogany Archives

Some of us are less forgiving than others. When construction work was abundant, unions imported labor from other jurisdictions rather than train our unemployed. I want reparations for that act.

The PLA (project labor agreement) is now being used to keep Black contractors out of public works. No Black contractors, no BMW.

Joseph Debro is president of Bay Area Black Builders. He is also president of the Visitacion Valley Community Development Corp., co-founder of the National Association of Minority Contractors, a general engineering contractor and a bio-chemical engineer. He can be reached at transbay@netzero.com.

Letter to the editor from a young jobseeker: Stepping out of darkness

by Donald Earl Harris aka Focuz

It has come to my attention as an African-American male in San Francisco and the Bay area that African-Americans are not having the opportunity to work in the construction of San Francisco nor is the City allowing funds to be utilized to train and educate the African male youth in the construction field.

Also, other businesses are biased against African-American males. Those who have a prison record are not allowed to work in the labor field or for certain companies and to me that is discrimination.

Also, the Chronicle and the Examiner never take a survey or do any research on the lack of African-American males getting into union construction, custodial or hotel employment.

The Asian community does not hire African-Americans – even those businesses that are in Black communities, or should I say so-called Black communities. I am not racist but Asians, Latinos, Hindus, Arabs, Jews and other communities do not allow African-Americans to work in their businesses.

The Chronicle and the Examiner do not publish anything about African-Americans getting discriminated in the work force in San Francisco. We are getting angry at the City for the way they fund and allow other outside construction companies to come and work in our community.

If you take some time and watch my show, Focuz Speakz Freely, on Comcast Cable Channel 29 at 4 p.m. on Thursdays, you would understand what it means when they say, “There are no Blacks working in San Francisco,” concerning construction or the development of San Francisco.

The mayor and his party have lied to the African-American community about allowing us to be in charge of any of the building that is being done in the African-American communities and other communities in San Francisco. They have for many years in San Francisco misguided our young people towards this field of work without training, especially African-American males.

I would like to go further on this issue. Some of us are having meetings about these issues, which are causing a lot of anger among African-American contractors and those who need training to be carpenters and plumbers in the construction field.

Other contractors and workers are tearing up our streets and rebuilding our buildings, but we are not participating in those jobs. They are only using whites, Hispanics, Asians and others who are not African-American.

Donald Harris can be reached at michael21harris@yahoo.com.

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• Students protest fee hikes: an interview wit’ journalist Dave Id of Indy Bay Media

Public Defender Jeff Adachi explains the consequences for defendants of a 29-year SFPD Crime Lab employee who, police say, stole and used cocaine evidence. Dozens of current cases are being dismissed, but people arrested prior to 2008 may never be able to get a fair trial, since all drug evidence has since been destroyed. – Photo: Lea Suzuki, SF Chronicle

Adachi called for an independent investigation one day after San Francisco police halted all drug testing at the lab amid allegations that Deborah Madden, a 29-year employee at the lab, stole and tampered with cocaine evidence on numerous occasions. Police also revealed Madden had a 2008 domestic violence conviction and is currently facing a weapons charge.

Approximately 20 public defender clients saw their felony drug cases dismissed Wednesday morning alone. Those arrested prior to 2008 may never be able to get a fair trial, since all drug evidence has since been destroyed, Adachi said.

Police and prosecutors never disclosed Madden’s arrests to the Public Defender’s Office while continuing to call her as an expert witness at trials.

“We have clients who are serving time behind bars based solely on Ms. Madden’s credibility,” Adachi said.

“This strikes right at the heart of justice in San Francisco,” said Public Defender Jeff Adachi.

Also on Tuesday, San Francisco police released a November audit by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors showing the laboratory lacks a secure chain of custody for evidence, fails to keep detailed case records and does not meet standards of cleanliness.

The San Francisco Police Department Crime Lab occupies 13,500 square feet of this building, Building 606, at the Hunters Point Shipyard. Outfitted with expensive, state-of-the-art equipment, including a $300,000 microscope, it was called by then Deputy Chief Richard Holder at its dedication “the best crime lab in the U.S.” – Photo: Lea Suzuki, SF Chronicle

• In 1994, the crime lab came under scrutiny because a police lab technician allegedly certified evidence as illegal drugs without performing the required chemicals tests.

• In 1996, the Civil Grand Jury issued a scathing report urging the lab to seek funds to hire additional staff and replace obsolete equipment in order to produce results that meet quality assurance standards.

Despite the crime lab’s history of misconduct and insufficient testing, police have refused to turn over any previous audits or documentation showing how lab workers achieved results in specific cases involving drugs or DNA, Adachi said.

“There must be a review from someone other than the police or district attorney’s office to ensure the lab is operating with transparency,” Adachi said. “This strikes right at the heart of justice in San Francisco.”

Tamara Aparton can be reached at Tamara.Aparton@sfgov.org.

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“Fuck the po-po’s … Gotta make sure any nigga ready for combat, / And pick up where the Black Panthers stopped at.” – “Freedomland” by The Show

Lance Madison is surrounded by State Police and NOPD SWAT members on Sept. 4, 2005, who accused him of shooting at police. He was arrested but later released. His brother, Ronald, was fatally shot on the Danziger Bridge. On Feb. 24, retired Lt. Michael Lohman pled guilty to the coverup of the shooting of six unarmed people. – Photo: Alex Brandon, Times-Picayune

Rather than being a matter of mutual dislike solely between the city’s working class communities of color and the boys in blue, wariness with the police force crosses many class and race boundaries. Sure, there’s your typical correlation set between income level, whiteness, residential address and the likelihood that one “trusts” the police, but unlike other major metropolitan areas where the vast majority of whites and the vast majority of middle class residents identify with the badge of authority, in the Greater New Orleans region this isn’t the case at all.

Why? It’s a long story that I can’t delve into here entirely, but here’s an attempt. It has a lot to do with the takeover of city government, including the police department, by Black elites in the 1980s; subsequent white flight into the burbs – Jefferson, St. Bernard, St. Tammany parishes; the redrawing of patronage and corruption networks that cut many formerly enfranchised white elites out of the game; empowerment of a new cohort of white and Black “businessmen”; and of course the maintenance of the city’s (now majority) Black working class as a super-exploited and hyper-marginalized pool of reserve labor.

By the 1980s the city’s white elite, still in control of the banks, factories, real estate and other significant pools of capital, were being forced to work with the new Black comprador regime in City Hall. This arrangement would ultimately produce a bureaucratic corps of Black middle class civil servants and a small but politically potent group of Black capitalists and political operatives. And of course it would pave the way for massive profits and accumulation of power among the white business elites willing to play by the new post-Apartheid rules.

Meanwhile the white middle class, long having a monopoly on the city’s white collar jobs, badges of authority and official titles, was feeling threatened by the sudden darkening of the police force – one symbol among many that stoked their fears of losing privilege and power in all public spheres. In this way many whites and many middle class citizens came to distrust the NOPD, even though they lost nothing in the end except their direct control over the public purse and state apparatus.

After much internal strife and Civil Rights Movement agitation, the NOPD was transformed from a highly corrupt, all-white force, to a still highly-corrupt and newly “diverse” force of Black and white men who, in the formulation of Max Weber, claimed a monopoly on the “legitimate use of violence within a given territory.” This claim of legitimacy would never stick so well in New Orleans though.

After all, it was in the 1980s that some officers would also claim a major share of the city’s drug trade and other vice crimes, at levels exceeding any past examples of the force’s corruption. It was precisely this racial transition to a police force with Black officers, commanders and chiefs that produced the now complex and unpredictable lines of distrust between the NOPD and the citizenry at large. Ok, enough said, ‘cause this history is far too complex to fully interrogate here.

Ronald Madison was murdered by NOPD on the Danziger Bridge on Sept. 4, 2005. – Photo: www.thewe.cc

With a legendary record of corruption and violence, one that escalated against working class Blacks in the 1980s and 1990s, it would be difficult to argue that the NOPD hasn’t been at war with the city’s impoverished Black communities. Murders, set ups, drug rings, arms and drug dealing, prostitution, protection rackets, assaults, trumped charges, false imprisonment … the NOPD has done it all around public housing and throughout the heavily Black and low income 9th Ward and Central City.

In addition to participating in organized crime, it has been the department’s penchant for treating all working class Black New Orleanians as “thugs” to be roughed up and disrespected that has engendered so much suspicion and built up so much resistance against the force. So it’s no surprise the vast majority of people don’t trust the po-po and steer clear of them when possible.

In Uptown, where the city is majority white and middle class, the story’s different. The NOPD are never seen beating and pillaging off of St. Charles Avenue or around the University – unless it’s a “thug” or other suspicious pedestrian who happened to wander too far down around Audubon.

And up there, citizen’s distrust of the police is manifested differently, for very different reasons. It ain’t “fuck the po-leece!” Rather, it’s the fondness for privatized security that reveals the white middle class’s turn away from the NOPD. It’s not that these enfranchised citizens fear or despise the police for the violence the department directs at some race and class segments of the population – for the NOPD don’t beat up on white Uptowners or allow cocaine to be sold to their children.

Rather, it’s a proprietary thing: Uptowners distrust the police precisely because the force is so deeply embedded in the city’s vast and dark underworld of drugs, vice and violence. And can such a corrupt force really be relied on to protect, during those times of crisis, the wealth of the propertied class?

That said, it’s still not uncommon to see off-duty NOPD being hired to guard posh Uptown social events, and it can hardly be said that the main directive of the NOPD, when they’re not brutalizing the poor for kicks or profits of their own, is to maintain a social order that sanctifies and defends the accumulation of private property and wealth in those Uptown mansions. (It might be necessary here to note too that some of that Uptown wealth constitutes the foundation of the city’s vast dark underworld of drugs, vice and violence. After all, is it not true that, as Balzac has been paraphrased, “Behind every great fortune there is a great crime!”)

This war between New Orleanians and their police department is being waged on several fronts right now. The most active front concerns the police murders and shootings that took place in the days following Hurricane Katrina.

The feds have been investigating the slayings of Ronald Madison, James Brissette, Henry Glover and Matthew McDonald – several among many shot by the police during Katrina’s aftermath. In the case of Madison and Brissette – both of whom were killed by the NOPD on Sept. 4 on the Danziger Bridge in a hail of bullets from a team of officers that wounded four additional citizens –former Lt. Michael Lohman has pled guilty in federal court to a count of conspiring to obstruct justice.

Seven New Orleans police officers made a show of force on Jan. 6, 2007, as they walked with their attorneys between lines of hundreds of police supporters to turn themselves in at Central Lockup. Each officer faced at least one charge of murder or attempted murder in the Sept. 4, 2005, shootings on the Danziger Bridge in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina – and all were exonerated. – Photo: Ellis Lucia, Times-Picayune

It was a chilling display for anyone who thought Madison’s and Brissette’s families had been wronged. Indeed, it was a chilling display for anyone ever wronged by the NOPD, and that’s a very long list.

Lohman’s plea reopens the possibility of indictments that will lead to convictions of the officers who actually pulled the trigger on Madison and Brissette and who may have perpetrated other crimes during those hot and sweaty days after Katrina. Those were days in which cops were encouraged by their commanding officers and partners not to write up incident reports, instead merely to state “miscellaneous” and “NAT” (necessary action taken), according to “Former NOPD supervisor admits Katrina cover-up” in the Feb. 25 Times-Picayune.

NOPD Chief Warren Riley reacted to Lohman’s plea by calling it “a shock to me and the entire department.” The city’s traditionally police-friendly newspaper, the Times-Picayune, rightly judged the significance of the plea with a headline on Feb. 25 reading, “Retired officer’s guilty plea in Danziger Bridge case a blow to a struggling NOPD.”

This and other “blows” against the NOPD come after years of popular agitation for federal intervention and stepped up local resistance against police brutality and corruption, much of it stemming from the wild abuses that were so apparent in the aftermath of Katrina. Among the most instrumental in pressing for justice have been the victim’s families who have tenaciously hung on and pushed forward even while internal NOPD investigations and local and state courts dismiss their claims of civil rights violations.

Beyond the Katrina murders in which family and friends have braved out intimidation and obfuscation by local authorities, families of those murdered and brutalized after the chaos of 2005 have put more pressure on the department. The family of Adolph Grimes III, for example, continues to support an ongoing federal probe into his slaying at the hands of nine plain clothes officers in early 2009.

Another means by which New Orleanians have been fighting back against police brutality and impunity has been through artistic subversion. After Katrina, a slew of songs were dished out by rappers like Lil’ Wayne and Juvenile, through the 2 Cent project featuring Mack Maine, The Show, Dee-1, K. Gates, Young A, Nutt tha Kid and Dizzy, through Dizzy’s own solo projects, the 504 Boyz and many others, in which the NOPD’s brutal attacks on storm survivors were recalled and condemned.

Admonitions of police abuses such as Lil’ Wayne’s resonated with popular experiences during the storm and affirmed ongoing forms of resistance to NOPD predation: “nigga shot dead in the middle of the street, / I ain’t no thief, / I’m just tryin’ to eat, / man fuck the po-lice, / and President Georgia (Bush)!”

As the feds were just beginning to look into Madison’s slaying, Dee-1 rapped on “Freedomland”: “Maybe I’ll go to jail if I say this, / But the po-lice is crooked like teeth without braces, / Racist, hypocritical, and I ain’t too political, / But dawg, this is pitiful.”

On the same track Mack Maine lamented: “They even shot one of my people that was innocent, / That said he wasn’t have’n it, / Look what they did to Ronald Madison, / Rest in peace to Ronald Madison.”

It should come as no surprise that the police state has struck back against many an emcee. Just yesterday Juvenile was busted by the St. Bernard Sheriff’s Department for possession of marijuana. The cops, according to news reports, turned up at a house that served as a recording studio for Juvie and his friends after a neighbor smelled the smoke and called in.

Juvie and crew were subsequently searched and arrested by a narcotics squad. Never mind that Juvenile is a major economic provider for New Orleans, being one of its most high profile artists, and that possession of marijuana is a victimless crime. The cops found a few buds as sufficient cause to put him in cuffs and parade him off to jail. It brings to my mind a triplet rhyme off his 1999 album “Tha G Code”: “It’s niggas like you that be givin’ niggas like me up / I’m tryin’ ta figure if you work for tha police or what / You plobly hangin’ ‘round a nigga ‘cause you need a buck.”

That album’s title and cover was telling. The cover featured Juvenile crouching in a driveway of the Magnolia, one of New Orleans’ public housing developments torn down after Katrina in the name of “poverty de-concentration.” Evidence markers litter the ground. An NOPD SWAT vehicle is parked nearby and a horse-mounted NOPD officer looks on.

“Tha G Code” alluded to across the album’s tracks refers to a gangsta code of norms and honor, which includes not talking to or dealing with the police, who are not just depicted as the enemy of local outlaws, but as persecutors of the entire community. The po-lice appear on Juvenile’s albums as just another powerful gang presence terrorizing the streets.

The “Reclaim the Streets” party in the French Quarter protested the imprisonment of Lil Wayne and Lil Boosie on charges of marijuana possession and “attempted weapons possession.”

Right up there with Juvie, he’s one of New Orleans’ most popular bards. His croon can be heard just about everywhere in the N.O., for just as dis-like of the police crosses many racial and class boundaries, so does appreciation of Weezie F. His unflinching treatment of the NOPD in many songs again reflects popular sentiments and resistance to the force, especially among his Black working class fans.

“Free Lil’ Wayne” mixtapes are a hot commodity these days in rap’s vast bootleg submarkets. There was even a “Reclaim the Streets” party in the French Quarter in November last year at which revelers hung banners demanding Weezie’s liberation, as well as the freedom of Baton Rouge rapper Lil’ Boosie, who has been imprisoned on marijuana charges.

The partygoers posted this explanation on their blog, “New Orleans Reclaim the Streets,” afterwards: “This was a lively rolling New Orleans street party highlighting the imprisonment of hometown hero Lil Wayne and Baton Rouge’s Lil Boosie as examples of how the police and prison industrial complex do not work. There are a thousand reasons to love the best rapper alive; besides inspiring and keeping a much-needed focus on New Orleans, Lil Wayne (along with Atlanta’s Gorilla Zoe) was also instrumental in breaking Goblin Awareness into the hip-hop mainstream. He and Boosie have brought happiness, hope and strength through music to people around the world. Think about it: how does putting them in prison make anyone safer? Furthermore, why is marijuana illegal? Why do we allow people to tell us what is or isn’t permitted? And Weezie’s arrest was bullshit … ‘attempted weapons possession?’ What does that even mean? … Where was the NRA or other mainstream so-called ‘rights’ groups to stick up for him?”

All of this is occurring in the context of a major struggle over the shape and powers of the New Orleans Independent Police Monitor. The NOPD and the powerful Fraternal Order of Police have been waging war against this office which they fear could bring more than a few of their own to justice.

This war against even the concept of an independent police investigative watch dog has been so effective as to delay the establishment of the office for seven years since it was approved by voters in 2001. So far they and other powerful conservative authoritarian forces have managed to de-fang the position of Independent Police Monitor, so much so that the office’s powers are limited to merely reviewing completed investigations carried out by the NOPD’s own Public Integrity Bureau.

Darwin Bond-Graham, a writer, historian and ethnographer with a special interest in racist economic policies related to housing, can be reached at darwin@riseup.net or through his blog, http://darwinbondgraham.blogspot.com/.

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• New Year’s resolution: Stop shooting young Black men

• Thursday, March 11, 7 p.m., at the Black Dot Café, 1195 Pine St., West Oakland;

• Wednesday and Thursday, March 17 and 18, 7 p.m., in the Richard Oakes Room on the T-Level of the Cesar Chavez Student Union, San Francisco State University; and

• Thursday, March 25, 7 p.m., at the Kaos Network, 4343 Leimert Blvd, Los Angeles

by Siraj Fowler

Journalist Siraj Fowler, along with Minister of Information JR and filmmaker Angela Carroll were the media contingent of the media-medical team that was sent to Haiti by the Prisoners of Conscience Committee, the Haiti Relief Emergency Relief Fund, the SF Bay View newspaper and Block Report Radio. Here he is in front of the collapsed Palace on the first of the three National Days of Prayer. – Photo: Minister of Information JR

Day One: Delmas

The first area I visited in Haiti upon touching down was Delmas. The houses in Delmas received a lot of structural damage during the quake. There were many two-story houses and complexes collapsed in on themselves.

I could only imagine the mindset of the people forced to live in a halfway demolished home where their loved ones were both injured and killed. The medical team unloaded their medicine at a mission house that gave medical care to injured Haitians living in a soccer field turned into a tent city. Not only were the Haitian people living in tents, but the mission house residents were also sleeping outside in fear of another aftershock.

This is what a lot of Delmas looks like. It is going to be years before all of the debris is removed from Port au Prince. Contrary to popular belief, not a single U.S. or U.N. soldier could be seen picking up so much as a rock to begin this process. – Photo: Minister of Information JR

The cultural exchange gave the Haitian youth confidence that we weren’t there to exploit them like many other journalists had done in the aftermath of the devastation. How would you feel after losing nearly everyone you loved and almost immediately having a camera shoved in your face? The media team made it clear that we were freedom fighters/relief workers first in our list of priorities to help the Haitian people.

“[H]e who remains thoroughly dutiful and chooses to do good deeds spontaneously, then surely Allah is Appreciative and rewards every good deed done. Surely, Allah is All-Knowing.” Al-Qur’an 2:158

Day Two: Downtown Port au Prince

My second day in Haiti marked the first of the three National Days of Prayer in remembrance of the earthquake. The media team and I met with freedom fighter Rea Dol, who selflessly agreed to give us a tour of the damage done to Haiti’s metropolitan area.

Our translator Gadi (left) and Rea Dol toured us through downtown Port au Prince, showing us the breadth of the devastation in the Haitian capital. – Photo: Minister of Information JR

Our first stop was at a local multiplex mall that had been shaken to its foundation. The closer I got to the entrance of the mall, the more the smell of dead bodies trapped inside became unbearable. It’s hard to fathom the strength of spirit required to keep one’s peace of mind while living in a city turned demolition zone/cemetery.

The earthquake spared few buildings, turning both schools and churches into disaster zones. We came upon a library that was still burning inside a month after the quake. Even the prison suffered structural damage that allowed many inmates to escape.

We finally reached the capital palace, the Haitian “White House,” to bear witness to a massive prayer service being held just outside the gates of the palace. There were beautiful Black people dressed in their best for as far as the eye could see!

As we walked through the crowd, the Haitian people resembled our family members and friends in the U.S. The people looked you in your eyes, staring into your soul as though they were searching for your true intentions for being there.

Rea Dol was not merely our tour guide but also the director of SOPUDEP school and orphanage. She took us to her school, where the earthquake caused serious damage to classrooms and desks. Rea told us that she released her students early from school merely 30 minutes before the earthquake hit. She lost some good teachers and many children but was spared the grief of watching them die at her school.

Rising above the smell of death and the sight of destruction was the sound of praise. Amidst crushed buildings and fallen telephone poles, the Haitian people stood tall in solidarity despite a country in pain.

“And We will certainly reward you after disciplining you with something of fear and hunger and some loss of substance and of lives and of fruits. Give good tidings to the patiently persevering;” Al-Qur’an 2:155

Day Three: Cite Soleil

Cite Soleil is known as the most dangerous city in Haiti. The youth in Delmas called Cite Soleil “a country within a country.” The people of Cite Soleil are known for fighting with and killing U.N. officers that do too much. Within the city there exists extreme poverty the likes of which many Americans only see on television during a “Save the Children” ad.

This is one of the tent camps in Cite Soleil where we delivered water with Jean Ristil of the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund. - Photo: Minister of Information JR

Once again Rea Dol took us into the heart of the city were many foreigners were afraid to go. On the way into the city, we picked up Jean Ristil, a HERF (Haiti Emergency Relief Fund) worker and local resident. Jean helped us load about 60 bags of water, each filled with about fifty individual size bags, into our pickup truck for distribution.

Nothing could have prepared me for the conditions these people were living in. Many families lived in shantytown style homes with four walls and no running water or plumbing. Some of the neighborhood children were running around naked because their parents could only afford to either feed or clothe them … not both.

We entered a tent community of at least a couple thousand people who were living in tents prior to the earthquake due to a serious lack of concern from the local and international governments. In fact, the U.S. government is stationed right outside of this starving tent community, while the food, supplies and clothes everyone sent to Haiti go to waste at the international airport … just sitting there rotting.

With HERF’s help, the media team assisted Rea in distributing water to several prayer services and families throughout Cite Soleil. Adults and children alike walked up as we handed out individual bags of clean water to a starving community of human beings. We didn’t have to drop the water out of helicopters or planes like the Haitians were wild animals; they were extremely polite and civil even in the face of famine.

Dr. Chris Zamani led the medical contingent of the crew that Minister of Information JR brought to Haiti to provide free healthcare to the people. Here, Dr. Chris is treating one of the youngstas in Cite Soleil with a badly fractured leg. – Photo: Siraj Fowler

Many of the people were suffering from malnutrition and health conditions resulting from a lack of exposure to proper healthcare. The doctor had to see so many patients back to back that I began to get tired of recording it, but I couldn’t get tired if Dr. Chris and team were still helping the people.

It was in Cite Soleil that I really felt the true purpose of my experience as a Muslim and a journalist: to tell the truth about the real conditions a proud and G’d-fearing people are living in.

“We will put you to trial until We make manifest those among you who strive their utmost, and those who persevere in patience, and We will bring to light your reports.” Al-Qur’an 47:31

I encourage anyone who wants to donate anything to relief efforts that really do get to the Haitian people, please visit haitiaction.net and sfbayview.com. Mention the Haiti delegation on your checks and in emails. For more information on upcoming Haiti speaking events and documentary showings, contact me at siraj6449@gmail.com.

The first Haiti Report Back speaking event will be held Thursday, March 11, 7 p.m., at the Black Dot Café, 1195 Pine St. in West Oakland. Look forward to seeing all supporters of the Haitian struggle there. It is a fundraiser, so cash, checks and medical supplies are appreciated.

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• Pierre Labossiere on Haiti: ‘This is criminal’
• Earthquake in Haiti: Under Aristide, Haitians were prepared for disaster
• How to show your solidarity with heroic Haiti: resources, where to send donations
• The earthquake takes Port au Prince back to the Stone Age
• Three in a million: Voices from the Haitian camps

With their “Games Over” banner flying, Indigenous people celebrate the end of the Winter Olympics. Their rallying cry, “No Olympics on Stolen Native Land,” reverberated throughout Canada and the Indigenous world. – Photo: No 2010

For the first time there is no natural snow in the host Olympic city, which sits on un-surrendered Indigenous territories. More than 20,000 tickets had to be refunded after the cancellation of many events because of no snow. A Georgian luger’s name now stands alongside Harriet Nahanee and millions of other life forms that were killed for the Olympics. The bad outcome can be seen as a small taste to what awaits any investors, companies or civilian invaders* who enter Indigenous territories.

Why we must fight: Indigenous objectives

We fight for land and freedom. The struggle for our lands and way of life remains the exact same as when Crazy Horse, Geronimo, Tecumseh and Tupac Amaru were alive. The only thing different is the minds.

The physical reality is that another group of humans are still imposing their beliefs and will on our Indigenous peoples and lands at gunpoint. Our lands are occupied by invaders, raped for profit, war, entertainment and human comfort. The invaders have not stolen our land. The land is still here – under concrete or not, it remains – and as long as we remain, we will fight to expel all invaders who destroy or seek to destroy it.

The invasion and continued occupation of our Indigenous lands is not simply just another issue, it is the root cause of all problems. This occupation of our lands must be the focus of education and discussion.

If you are Native, we need to constantly ask ourselves how do we get the invaders to de-occupy our lands and rid our Mother Earth of these evil parasites. If you are a supporter, you must ask yourself whose Indigenous territory you are illegally occupying and how can you help with the de-occupation of Native lands by invaders?

That should be our focus. If you say you want to help the problems, then address the root cause of what is actually causing the problems, which is this fake man-made colonial system of existence. This is not Canada, America, Mexico or any other fake European neo-colonial country. Just as our allies worldwide are fighting to expel civilian, industrial and military colonialists from their lands, so are we.

They fear the unity of Indigenous peoples so much, they denied representatives from dozens of Indigenous nations permission to attend the Indigenous Peoples Assembly hosted by the Secwepemc Nation in so-called British Columbia, kkkanada, and the 2010 convergence, all because of a fake line drawn to divide our people. No matter what they attempt, we cannot be stopped.

Our thoughts and prayers helped to make sure there was no snow and the Olympics were a sloppy failure at best. A message to the world was sent: We do not want mining, resorts, dams, power lines, highways, railways, cities, deep sea ports, fish farms, garbage dumps, industrial parks or any invasion, military or civilian, in our lands which cause massive destruction to our territories.

While kkkanada tried to show the world they are our friends, the Okanagan Nation set up a roadblock to defend their lands from logging destruction.

Only an hour away from Whistler, an Olympic venue, sits a new village, Sutikalh, established almost 10 years ago in the mountains of the St’at’imc Nation, to stop a $550-million ski resort from being built in some of the last untouched pristine alpine valleys.

In the Tahltan Nation, a camp has been established to stop Shell Oil from drilling into their sacred lands, the headwaters of three of the biggest salmon bearing rivers left in the world.

The Secwepemc continue their decade-long fight with Sun Peaks ski resort, stopping mining in the headwaters of the Adams River watershed, which is home to the largest sockeye salmon spawning grounds in the Western Hemisphere, as well as protecting sacred burial grounds from trans-Canada highway and CP railway expansions.

The Wet’suwet’en are fighting to stop two major pipelines from being built through their territory, as well protecting their lands from mining and logging.

The Haudenosaunee people, a six nation confederacy of the Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Tuscarora and Mohawk, are relentlessly confronting encroachment, destruction and occupation of their lands.

Algonquins of Barrie Lake are fighting to stop logging in their territory and save their water and way of life.

Dene Nation is fighting the largest industrial project in the history of humanity and the most destructive process known to man-kind, the tar sands.

Mayan people are fighting kkkanadian mining companies, while villages are being destroyed and Indigenous peoples assassinated daily.

In Grassy Narrows, Anishinabe have been fighting logging for years, halting their operations. In Northern Ontario, Anishinabe are also fighting mining from destroying the still pristine boreal forest.

Indigenous peoples in the Amazon are also fighting kkkanadian mining and oil exploration, having major clashes resulting in the massacre of over 30 Indigenous people. Indigenous peoples are fighting back, with 24 police officers impaled and killed with Indigenous spears. Awajun and Wampis peoples detained five employees from the Canadian mining company IAMGOLD, which did not have any authorization to enter their territory.

Lakota, Indigenous people in South Dakota in the so-called united states are continuing the fight for their sacred Black Hills and to stop a kkkanadian mining company from drilling uranium in the heart of Mother Earth.

Indigenous land fighters coast to coast were targeted and harassed by the integrated Olympic security unit – which has unified all military and police forces throughout kkkanada – for years prior to the Olympics. The head of Olympics security is Bud Mercer, the notorious redneck Indian hater who was an ERT (emergency response team) member that tried to blow up Indian people with a land mine. The explosion kicked off a shoot-out which saw the police, including Mercer, shoot an excess of 77,000 rounds of ammunition trying to kill Secwepemc people in their own ceremonial grounds, Gustafsen Lake, in 1995. This was the largest RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) operation in kkkanadian history.

Indigenous peoples from the nations of the St’at’imc, Squamish, Secwepemc, Haida, Helsik, Mohawk, Tuscarora, Onondoga, Halkomelem, Mi’kmaq, Ktunaxa, Cree, Anishinabe, Kwakiutl, Tsimshian, as well as Indigenous peoples from Oaxaca and other areas of so-called Mexico and countless supporters have been the target of their billion dollar Olympic security budget in an effort to intimidate and scare Indigenous peoples from fighting for our lands.

Fear tactics are of no use. We are over 500 years deep into this resistance. We only continue to get stronger. We will never surrender or fall for their threats, lies or rumors. The man-made empires of the world are collapsing before our eyes. The fall of the white-man’s world is imminent.

We do not seek pity or recognition from the white-man. It is us who have the power of recognition and there is only one thing we recognize, that this man-made system is an enemy of all life and we will never stop fighting until it is rid from our beautiful lands. Our land is not for sale!

We stand in solidartiy with the people and lands the Olympics will be invading next, London and Sochi. We know the resistance will grow. We stand in full alliance with the Indigenous people of Tabasco fighting for their lands and against a massive 2010 colonial celebration in the South.

To the brothers and sisters of the Tuhoe Nation, we send our war cry of unity to all of you fighting and being forced into the illegal white-man’s court. You will be freed.

Drop all charges against JR Valrey. [Charges were dropped Feb. 22. – ed.] To Gloria Arenas and Jacobo Silva, we are elated to hear of your release from behind enemy lines. We demand the same for Leonard Peltier, John Graham, the prisoners in Atenco and Oaxaca, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Russell Maroon Shoats, the Move 9, Mapuche Warriors and all those they fear. We look forward to meeting with you on the battlefield in unity against our collective enemies.

Indigenous peoples, our warriors of fighting age are the majority once again. We send our militant embrace to the Zapatistas, the Mapuche, Dineh, Kuna, Seminole, Nuxalk, Gitksan, Taino, Maori, Nasa, the warriors of West Papau, Indigenous peoples of the Philippines, and all Indigenous peoples of the world fighting the enemies of the Earth. Let us unite with the plants, animals, wind, sun, air, water and all creation in a warrior’s alliance to fight for life.

We are Earth’s army. We will not stop until we win. We will never surrender. Warriors Unite.

*Settlers is not a correct term. It is very passive, giving the impression that the occupation of our Indigenous lands is OK, that the invaders’ occupation here is settled, done and agreed upon. But it is not. Current day civilian invaders could still right the wrongs, support Indigenous autonomy. Join the Go Back to Europe Movement. Start a chapter in the area you occupy.

More on the Indigenous land struggle

First Nations

St’at’imc – Sutikalh

Brown Creeks Protection for Our Watershed (Facebook)

First Nations

The Native Youth Movement Society of Warriors defends the un-surrendered mountains of the Northwest. For more information, including videos, visit http://nativeyouthmovement.org/.

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Hundreds of Cuban doctors and Cuban-trained Haitian doctors had long been working in Haiti. Since the earthquake, they’ve been joined by hundreds more … “doctors, not soldiers!” in the words of Fidel Castro.

The U.S., Haiti’s wealthiest northern neighbor, is a country which has had an outsized history of political, military and economic intervention, rushed in armed troops, like the 82nd Airborne – young men with weapons and war training – to a land facing a natural disaster from earthquake.

Cuba, although its next largest neighbor, is a country of modest means, with a GDP closer to African states than European ones. It sent 500 doctors, equipped with medical supplies, who helped to mobilize nearly 400 Haitian doctors, all graduates of their Latin American Medical School. The Haitians, like students from all over the world, trained for free in this Cuban medical school, now had the opportunity and chance to help their people.

Fidel Castro, a fervent writer since leaving office, wrote within days of the Jan. 12 earthquake:

“Hour after hour, day and night, the Cuban health professionals have worked nonstop in the few facilities that were able to stand, in tents and out in the parks and open air spaces, since the population fears new aftershocks. Cuban doctors worked to find and help their Haitian colleagues who lived in earthquake ravaged neighborhoods.”

Seven young Cuban-trained women doctors from the U.S. – two are from Oakland and the others from New York and Houston – just returned from a month in Haiti, where each of them treated 100-150 patients a day and slept a few hours a night on the ground, along with the people they served. To learn more about the Cuban medical school that trains doctors from all over the world who promise to return home to serve the poor, visit IFCONews.org.

In a pithy end to his essay, Fidel summed it up thus: “We send doctors, not soldiers!”

Source: “Fidel Castro on Haiti: Cuba Sends Doctors, Not Soldiers!” Labour & Trade Union Review, February 2010, pages 3-4. [London, England]

© Copyright 2010 Mumia Abu-Jamal. Read Mumia’s brand new book, “Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A.,” available from City Lights Publishing, www.citylights.com or (415) 362-8193. Keep updated at www.freemumia.com. For Mumia’s commentaries, visit www.prisonradio.org. For recent interviews with Mumia, visit www.blockreportradio.com. Encourage the media to publish and broadcast Mumia’s commentaries and interviews. Send our brotha some love and light at: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM 8335, SCI-Greene, 175 Progress Dr., Waynesburg PA 15370.

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When this commentary was published in the first issue of Correo del Orinoco English Edition, Venezuela’s first and only English-language weekly newspaper, this cartoon illustrated it.

Many people mistakenly believe that corporations were given the same rights – not just privileges – as persons in this Supreme Court decision, but nothing could be further from the truth. The reason my nation is such a dysfunctional system now is not because of a Supreme Court decision, nor a law passed by Congress, nor a referendum of the people: It’s because of a single statement, one sentence, spoken by a Supreme Court chief justice before the hearing even began.

The founders of the U.S. did not like corporations and for the first few decades of the existence of this nation, corporations were only given limited “privileges” and not “rights.” But after the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1868 – which extended equal protection under the law to all male citizens of the U.S regardless of race – attorneys for the corporations recognized the opportunity that had been gifted to them and started to scheme for corporate personhood.

After many assaults against common law, finally a perfect test case came up before the Supreme Court, the previously referenced case. The case was brought before the Supremes because the SPRR – the Halliburton of the 19th century – objected to the fact the state of California would not allow it to deduct mortgage costs on its vast holdings from its before tax income as could private citizens.

The Supreme Court did not even try that case to grant corporate personhood. The reason corporations now have 14th Amendment protections is because of a statement made by Chief Justice Waite: “The Court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a state to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.”

This one sentence changed the frame of North American politics in a very corrupt way. 1886 is when the “noble experiment” of representative republicanism died. Despite some populist stabs at “anti-trust” laws and labor unionism, today we find that the U.S. system of government is “by and for” the corporations.

On Thursday, Jan. 21, 2010, a (little noticed) U.S. Supreme Court decision took our critically ill republic that has been on life support and effectively murdered it.

Our elections have been compromised and the presidential candidates have been chosen for us by the tyranny of the oligarchy for many decades, and we the people of the U.S. are allowed to cast our votes to give us the appearance that we have a voice in our nation. But now with the decision in the recent United Citizens v. Federal Elections Commission even any appearance of representation for the people has been overturned.

In this decision, the Supreme Court removed limits from corporate campaign expenditures stating that even limiting these contributions in the first place put restrictions on a corporation’s First Amendment rights to free speech.

Corporations have long held sway over our government, and the soft fascism of corporate control has been running things behind the scenes.

However, the decision in United Citizens v. Federal Elections Commission that expanded a mouth-less and mindless corporation’s freedom of speech has effectively gagged 300 million more of us that don’t have billions of dollars to buy the votes of our politicians who are just extensions of such crime cartels as Goldman Sachs anyway.

I believe that United Citizens v. FEC will go down in the history books as one of the most important – and most destructive – Supreme Court decisions in U.S. history and we should just drop all pretense at democracy and call our leaders President Goldman and VP Sachs.

Cindy Sheehan is a peace activist and founder of Peace of the Action, an anti-war organization that promotes profound structural change in the U.S. This commentary originally appeared in the first issue of Correo del Orinoco English Edition, Venezuela’s first and only English-language weekly newspaper. Keep up with Cindy at Cindy Sheehan’s Soap Box.

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Nyese Joshua – Photo: Carol Harvey

This question was profoundly answered on Thursday, Feb. 18, when San Francisco was graced with Ms. Wilma Subra, whose credentials as a chemist, microbiologist, MacArthur Genius Award recipient, board member of EARTHWORKS and work with grassroots groups put her in the leadership of the environmental justice movement. Ms. Subra came to San Francisco via the Environmental Protection Agency’s Technical Assistance Services for Communities. After years of struggling with the mayor, the Supervisors, the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the Navy, the EPA and other public agencies and officials, finally those engaged in this struggle for environmental justice were told about this program funded through the EPA.

When her advice was requested, Ms. Subra had only about 11 days to review the 4,000-plus pages of the “Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Shipyard Phase II Development Plan Project Draft Environmental Impact Report” from the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency. She presented her comments and review to a captivated audience of some 200 persons. The entire presentation can be found at

www.realasponse.com/wilma.mp3

Here are just a few excerpts:

“The draft EIR provided limited information regarding the adequacy of oversight and enforcement requirements outlined in the site’s Early Transfer Cooperative Agreement and Administrative Orders on Consent, as well as the RODs [Records of Decision] and remedial designs for each parcel at Candlestick Point and HPS [Hunters Point Shipyard] Phase II. “

• “The draft EIR states that ‘relatively few individuals would be exposed to the potential contaminated materials during the initial construction’ phase of redevelopment.”
• “However, ‘during later periods of construction … an increasingly greater number of people could be affected by construction activities involving the disturbance of contaminated soils or groundwater.’”
• “This could be a particular issue in the residential portions of HPS Phase II where construction in contaminated soils may occur near occupied residential units.”
• “The draft EIR did not evaluate and assess cumulative human health and environmental exposure impacts from hydrocarbons, volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds, PCBs, pesticides, heavy metals, asbestos and radionuclides.”
• “The draft EIR did not identify a mechanism to disseminate information on institutional controls and exposure avoidance to new occupants, construction workers, and shoppers, visitors and other workers on site.”

For a clear, easy to understand description of what BVHP is up against, watch the slide show, at www.realasponse.com/wilma.ppt, presented by Wilma Subra, whose advice to the community is facilitated by EPA’s TASC program.

Why do I have to dry my eyes because in the face of all this information the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in San Francisco says FULL SPEED AHEAD with the process of early transfer – transfer before cleanup is complete – of the Shipyard from the Navy to the City and Lennar.

However, for the purposes of enlightening and encouraging you, the reader, to take immediate action with regard to joining this struggle to insist that San Francisco’s “political powers that be” stand up for their constituency, as well as insisting that the EPA in San Francisco live up to its name – specifically “Protection,” its middle name – and protect the future of San Franciscans by not continuing to support the theory of early transfer.

When the Titanic was facing its ultimate fate, the captain was forewarned as to the imminent danger facing his ship, but he made the decision to continue full speed ahead. Well, this is not that time and space and San Francisco is not in the hands of one captain in a position to hold back imperative information from the thousands who will be affected by decisions made in City Hall, Congress and the Pentagon.

No, San Francisco thankfully has Wilma Subra and a slew of organizations and informed community participants prepared to visit the captain at the wheel and say, “Hold on!” Our lives, our children and our future are worth more than a few promised millions of dollars in the name of so-called development which we may never see in any case.

The dirt is in the details. Dirty early transfer, dirty development, dirty politics is not the answer to any of the conditions that plague Bayview Hunters Point or San Francisco as a whole. With the economy in the state that it is in, we the people have to step up to the peddlers of political wiles and demand creative thinking to increase our city’s long term economic outlook.

Ms. Subra came to us as an uninvested economic and political adviser. Now it is our call, our time to get involved to say no to the dirty onslaught upon BVHP and San Francisco.

If you are interested in learning more, you may email me at nyesej@yahoo.com. You are invited to attend the Town Hall meetings every Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. They’re held at 195 Kiska Road in Hunters Point, San Francisco.

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“What happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? / Or fester like a sore and then run?” – Langston Hughes

Dr. Ahimsa Sumchai was backed by Cynthia McKinney and Cindy Sheehan at a large gathering in the Bay View’s back yard on Oct. 6, 2007, during the good doctor’s campaign for mayor of San Francisco. – Photo: John Morton

The 10 year, $950 billion plan would allow the federal government a greater role in regulating the private health care industry to control premium hikes. The plan does not offer a government run public option but creates state health exchanges that allow states to offer consumers a shopping place for coverage. Abortion activists have been appeased by revisions within the plan that allow states to decide whether to provide abortion services.

The White House summit was successful in bringing key players in the health care debate to the table. There was consensus only in recognition of the need for change of the current system. The president exercised strength and dominance in providing irrefutable evidence that his plan will ultimately lower health insurance rates for most consumers.

There has been great media debate centered on the costs of uncompensated care for the uninsured. Currently the federal government ultimately pays about 75 percent of the estimated $6 billion a year spent in providing primary, specialty and emergency care services to the uninsured in our nation. The question remains, is the national health reform effort a dream deferred?

Perhaps even more historic than the White House summit was the Congressional hearing carried live on C-Span Wednesday, Feb. 25, on repealing the antitrust exemption the health insurance industry has enjoyed in our nation. This exemption has allowed insurers to act in “collusion” to increase rates, to act as a monopoly within states to block competition and to lobby elected officials to engage in legislative malpractice.

The Republican opposition to expansion of coverage to meet the needs of 30 million uninsured Americans is based in the belief, expressed in a CNN interview by economist Ben Stein, that Republicans contribute a greater percent to the U.S. tax base. While the Republicans have failed to produce a comprehensive plan to counter the Democrats, the idea of offering a refundable tax credit up to $5,700 for families to purchase health insurance is circulating.

The House health care plan includes a requirement that individuals over a certain income level obtain coverage or face financial penalties of either a flat fee or a percentage of their income. The penalty for failing to get health insurance would increase to 2.5 percent of an individual’s annual income or a flat fee of $695. Both progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans have failed to eagerly embrace the White House plan.

WellPoint Inc., the nation’s largest health insurer, announced plans to increase insurance premium rates by 39 percent in California on 700,000 individual policy holders. State Attorney General Jerry Brown announced intent to investigate rate hikes of health insurers and, on Feb. 22, Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner accused WellPoint subsidiary Anthem Blue Cross of 700 violations of law including failure to pay claims, consumer fraud and “belligerent” failure to cooperate with regulators in the state insurance commissioner’s office. Obama called the WellPoint rate hike a “preview of coming attractions if national health reform fails.”

“Maybe it just sags / like a heavy load.”

Bay View Health and Environmental Science Editor Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai can be reached at (415) 835-4763 or asumchai@sfbayview.com.

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The struggle for Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State, the first such program in the country, took a five-month student strike, from November 1968 through March 1969, and many clashes with police. – Photo: Gordon Peters, SF Chronicle

Over 125 youth, parents, teachers and supporters packed the Board of Education meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 23, to urge the board to vote in favor of the Ethnic Studies resolution. This resolution would continue and expand an Ethnic Studies pilot program for the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) to take place in five high schools next year.

The board’s unanimous vote marks a victory for a several-year campaign to have SFUSD prioritize curriculum that explores the history of people of color, which often is marginalized in mainstream history textbooks. In a city with a powerful history of winning Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University and in a district with a student population that is 90 percent students of color, this move was a long time coming. But we want to recognize every member of the Board of Education for making the right choice, particularly Commissioners Fewer, Kim and Maufus, who co-authored the resolution.

According to the resolution, Ethnic Studies “steers youth away from truancy and the juvenile justice system by making their educational experience more personal and relevant. It fosters strong ties between students and their families, neighborhoods, and schools, thus encouraging a sense of civic engagement and social responsibility.”

Students organized in large numbers to appear at the meeting to say that Ethnic Studies makes school more relevant and empowering for them. Over 60 high school and college students as well as teachers testified in front of the Board of Education about the benefits of the classes.

The dean of San Francisco State’s College of Ethnic Studies also testified that the university will provide students who take Ethnic Studies at SFUSD up to six units of college credit that may be used for general education requirements. This year is the 40th anniversary of the creation of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State.

Coleman leaders voted to push for Ethnic Studies as part of our Coleman’s “College and Career for All” A-G policy implementation campaign because students have a right to learn about their history and be engaged in meaningful learning that validates their own life experiences! We are especially excited that the board will be looking into getting the classes certified as A-G courses in the future.

The vote was a strong statement of district priorities; we recognize that investing $250,000 in a new equity-centered class in the midst of a tremendous budget crisis is politically challenging. No one is happy about impending layoffs, but we want to challenge the idea that we must choose between saving teachers or teaching Ethnic Studies.

Congratulations to the other organizations who put in so much work: POWER, Filipino Community Center, Pinoy Education Partnership, Chinatown Community Development Center and HOMEY. We again want to recognize all seven board members – Commissioners Kim, Fewer, Maufus, Yee, Wynns, Norton and Mendoza – for their leadership. But more importantly, we need to celebrate the incredible, brilliant and powerful youth who did the work, told their stories, and got organized to fight for the kind of schools that will help them be successful.

To learn more and get involved in the work of Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, visit www.colemanadvocates.org. SFUSD contributed to this story.

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In Haiti, people are scavenging building materials to use or sell. Because neither the people nor the government have the resources for relief or recovery, Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ debt cancellation bill calls for any new aid to Haiti to come in the form of grants rather than loans. – Photo: AFP

A longtime advocate for Haiti, Congresswoman Waters introduced the Debt Relief for Earthquake Recovery in Haiti Act (H.R. 4573) shortly after the devastating earthquake struck Haiti.

“Haiti faces enormous challenges now, and the burden of paying off foreign debt would prevent the nation from taking necessary steps to help its people at this perilous time. I introduced H.R. 4573 so that Haiti can use its limited resources to make both immediate and long-term investments in essential humanitarian relief, reconstruction and development efforts,” said Congresswoman Waters.

H.R. 4573 requires the Secretary of the Treasury to instruct the U.S. executive directors at the World Bank, the IMF, the IDB and other multilateral development institutions to use the voice, vote and influence of the United States to do the following:

1. cancel immediately and completely all debt owed by Haiti to these institutions;

2. suspend Haiti’s debt service payments to the institutions until the debt is canceled completely; and

3. provide additional assistance to Haiti in the form of grants so that Haiti does not accumulate additional debt.

On Feb. 21, 2004, eight days before he was forced out of office and out of Haiti by U.S. Marines, President Jean Bertrand Aristide speaks at a press conference flanked by his wife, Mildred, and Congresswoman Maxine Waters. The Presidential Palace, where they are standing, collapsed in the Jan. 12 earthquake. – Photo: Pablo Aneli, AP

The subcommittee also passed a Manager’s Amendment to Congresswoman Waters’ legislation offered by Subcommittee Chairman Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., and drafted in conjunction with Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass. The Manager’s Amendment adds a provision directing the U.S. executive director to the IMF to advocate that some of the excess profits from the sale of IMF gold, which Congress approved last year, be used to provide debt relief and grants to Haiti. The amendment also adds updated statistics on Haiti’s debts to the bill’s findings and makes other technical changes.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, owes $828 million to multilateral development institutions according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. This includes $447 million to the IDB, $284 million to the IMF, $39 million to the World Bank and $58 million to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialized agency of the United Nations.

Congresswoman Waters has previously helped Haiti and other poor countries obtain debt relief and just last year was instrumental in encouraging the World Bank and the IMF to cancel $1.2 billion of Haiti’s debt.

Congresswoman Waters said, “Haiti had been making progress since suffering extensive damage caused by a series of hurricanes in 2008. The government of Haiti successfully developed and implemented a comprehensive Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, under the direction of the IMF and the World Bank, in order to qualify for debt relief, and last year’s debt cancellation helped to move Haiti in the right direction. We must help Haiti continue to move forward despite the considerable obstacles it now faces, and this is only possible with additional debt cancellation.”

Congresswoman Waters traveled to Haiti this weekend, her second trip there since the earthquake, in order to assess relief and reconstruction activities. She is particularly concerned about the need to provide shelter to hundreds of thousands of Haitians whose homes were destroyed. Many Haitians are living outdoors in makeshift camps, but the rainy season will arrive soon putting them at greater risk. Congresswoman Waters has called on the international community to distribute durable tents to Haitians to help meet their immediate needs for shelter, and on her upcoming trip she will monitor the progress of efforts to provide tents.

Michael Levin, communications director for Congresswoman Waters, can be reached at Michael.Levin@mail.house.gov.

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Ugandan President Yoweri K. Museveni

What if a person is selective in their condemnation of such crimes? What are we to make of a person who condemns such crimes in one African country but ignores them in a neighboring country? What are we to make of a person who calls on the world, correctly, to help put out a huge fire which is devouring innocent victims, while ignoring an even bigger conflagration in the next building?

Wouldn’t we have to question either the sanity or the motives of such a person? There would have to be answers for such behavior.

Certainly, such a person cannot be “attacking” the type of crimes outlined above out of a pure and genuine sense of moral outrage alone. This wouldn’t be possible. A person truly horrified by the nature and extent of such crimes against humanity wouldn’t exercise selective condemnation.

Regrettably, this is the context in which condemnation of crimes by John Prendergast, who runs an outfit called Enough, needs to be placed. There is a huge fire in the Sudan and the primary arsonist is President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. An even bigger arsonist is the formerly U.S.-backed Ugandan President Yoweri K. Museveni.

How is it that Prendergast can tirelessly campaign to have Bashir indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and yet turn a blind eye to the Ugandan arsonist whose crimes, by many accounts, exceed even Bashir’s horrors?

Certainly Prendergast can’t argue that his organization doesn’t have the resources to campaign against both arsonists?

Only a callous and pitiless denier would maintain that crimes against humanity haven’t been committed in the Sudan by militias allied with the Bashir government in Khartoum, as well as crimes by the various and numerous rebel groups in the Darfur region.

Poster: FreeUganda.Wordpress.com

He creates the impression, correctly and effectively, that countless innocent Africans have perished due to Bashir’s tyranny. At the same time, by not directing similar outrage against the Ugandan arsonist Museveni, whether by design or otherwise, those who are unfamiliar with the continent may get the wrong impression that Museveni has not orchestrated an even greater holocaust.

After all, Enough’s stated mission is to “end genocide and crimes against humanity.” And, since Prendergast and Enough have yet to conduct any campaign against Museveni, the less-informed might understandably conclude that Museveni’s not associated with any genocide – when in fact he has been a principal architect.

A simple Google search will confirm that the evidence is out there about Museveni’s holocaust against Uganda’s ethnic Acholis and against innocent Congolese who stood in the way of his imperial vision and quest for Congo’s gold, coltan, diamond and timber.

The first is the detailed findings of a 2005 World Health Organization report that shows that about 52,000 Ugandans were starved to death – or allowed to die from treatable diseases – in concentration camps operated by Museveni’s government for nearly 20 years in the northern part of Uganda, the ancestral home of Acholis. One million Acholis may have been liquidated.

Where are the press releases and campaigns by Prendergast condemning these atrocities? Where are the calls by Prendergast to International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo to pursue Gen. Museveni? Where are the YouTube postings by Enough calling for the Obama administration to take action against Museveni’s regime?

Another damning report is the 2005 ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – the highest international arena for resolving disputes between nations – which found Uganda liable for crimes against humanity when its army occupied Congo’s Ituri region between 1998 and 2003.

John Prendergast

Had Prendergast and his cohorts launched a similar campaign to expose Museveni’s crimes – as he, laudably has campaigned to expose Bashir’s and the Lord’s Resistance Army’s Joseph Kony’s – the ICC’s Ocampo might have taken action against Uganda’s arsonist by now.

As it is, we are left to ponder about Prendergast’s motives. Are we to conclude that to Prendergast the blood of Museveni’s victims – Ugandans and Congolese – is somehow less valuable than those of Al-Bashir’s victims?

Are there other nefarious agendas in play?

This is a question that only Prendergast can answer.

This story originally appeared at http://www.blackstarnews.com/news/135/ARTICLE/6322/2010-03-02.html. Black Star News Publisher and Editor-in chief Milton Allimadi can be reached at Milton@blackstarnews.com.

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It is time for a revolution. Government does not work for regular people. It appears to work quite well for big corporations, banks, insurance companies, military contractors, lobbyists, and for the rich and powerful. But it does not work for people.

The 1776 Declaration of Independence stated that when a long train of abuses by those in power evidences a design to reduce the rights of people to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is the people’s right – in fact, their duty – to engage in a revolution.

Martin Luther King Jr. said 43 years ago next month that it was time for a radical revolution of values in the United States. He preached “a true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.” It is clearer than ever that now is the time for radical change.

Look at what our current system has brought us and ask if it is time for a revolution:

Over 2.8 million people lost their homes in 2009 to foreclosure or bank repossessions – nearly 8,000 each day – higher numbers than the last two years when millions of others also lost their homes.

At the same time, the government bailed out Bank of America, Citigroup, AIG, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the auto industry and enacted the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) with $1.7 trillion of our money.

Wall Street then awarded itself over $20 billion in bonuses in 2009 alone, an average bonus on top of pay of $123,000.

At the same time, over 17 million people are jobless right now. Millions more are working part time when they want and need to be working full time.

Yet the current system allows one single U.S. senator to stop unemployment and Medicare benefits being paid to millions.

There are now 35 registered lobbyists in Washington, D.C., for every single member of the Senate and House of Representatives – at last count 13,739 in 2009. There are eight lobbyists for every member of Congress working on the health care fiasco alone.

At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that corporations now have a constitutional right to interfere with elections by pouring money into races.

The Department of Justice gave a get-out-of-jail-free card to its own lawyers who authorized illegal torture.

At the same time another department of government, the Pentagon, is prosecuting Navy SEALS for punching an Iraqi suspect.

Cartoon: Khalil Bendib, bendib.com

In fact, the U.S. spends $700 billion directly on the military per year, half the military spending of the entire world – much more than Europe, China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea and Venezuela combined.

The government and private companies have dramatically increased surveillance of people through cameras on public streets and private places, airport searches, phone intercepts, access to personal computers, and compilation of records from credit card purchases, computer views of sites, and travel.

The number of people in jails and prisons in the U.S. has risen sevenfold since 1970 to over 2.3 million. The U.S. puts a higher percentage of our people in jail than any other country in the world.

The tea party people are mad at the Republicans, who they accuse of selling them out to big business. Democrats are working their way past depression to anger because their party, despite majorities in the House and Senate, has not made significant advances for immigrants or women or unions or African Americans or environmentalists or gays and lesbians or civil libertarians or people dedicated to health care or human rights or jobs or housing or economic justice.

Democrats also think their party is selling out to big business.

Forty-three years ago next month, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached in Riverside Church in New York City that “a time comes when silence is betrayal.” He went on to condemn the Vietnam War and the system which created it and the other injustices clearly apparent.

“We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing oriented’ society to a ‘person oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

It is time.

Bill Quigley is legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He can be reached at Quigley77@gmail.com.

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Hopes were high in June 2007 when a new Berkeley Housing Authority Commission was sworn in and Tia Ingram became permanent director at a monthly salary of $8,100 to $10,700, more than many tenants make in a year. The new board, appointed by Mayor Tom Bates, replaced the previous board, composed of the City Council plus two tenants. HUD was then threatening BHA with receivership. Commissioners being sworn in are, from left, Wise Allen, Michael McBride, Adolph Moody, Marjorie Cox, Dorothy Hunt and Melissa Male. Then newly appointed Chair Carole Norris is not pictured. – Photo: Judith Scherr, Berkeley Daily Planet

In May 2007, long-time Berkeley resident and Oxford Street homeowner Carole Norris was appointed to a four-year term as the chairperson of the BHA’s Board of Commissioners and remains so today. Norris is also listed as a vice president of ICF International in its San Francisco office, according to electiontrack.com’s report of a $1,200 political contribution made to state Assembly member Nancy Skinner on March 15, 2008.

A February 2008 Becky O’Malley editorial from the Berkeley Daily Planet mentions a letter signed by Norris on ICF letterhead suggesting that developers contribute as much as $3,600 to Nancy Skinner’s campaign. “This appears to be more than just a personal preference,” wrote O’Malley.

In addition, the Berkeley Daily Planet reported that Polly Quick of ICF International also made a political contribution to a Mr. L.A. Woods while he was running for a Berkeley City Council seat in 2008.

District 14 Assembly member Nancy Skinner represents Berkeley, and Berkeley’s public housing tenants may be reluctant to file a corruption complaint against the BHA and its board, including Norris or 3×3 committee members with BHA oversight, because of these political ties and contributions.

The conflict of interest section in ICF’s code of ethics states: “Employees shall avoid conflicts of interest, both in fact and in appearance, between his or her obligations to the Company and personal affairs. No employee is to have such an economic interest in or other relationship (including being a director or officer) with any person or firm with which the Company does business or competes, that would influence, or might reasonably be regarded as likely to influence, the employee in his or her actions on behalf of the Company.”

ICF’s Housing and Community Development (HCD) team offers consulting services on affordable housing, community development and low-income neighborhood revitalization projects. Indeed, the company brags that it designed and facilitated a group discussion among 18 San Francisco Bay Area jurisdictions, known as the Bay Area Neighborhood Revitalization Strategy Area Clinic.

This includes strategy on revitalizing public housing, even though revitalization can displace low-income tenants and whole communities.

ICF lists Carole Norris as the contact person for the HCD team, even though she both works for ICF and serves as commission chair for the Berkeley Housing Authority. And that’s not all.

On Jan. 5, 2010, ICF announced it received a $9.9 million HUD contract, the fourth consecutive contract awarded to ICF Macro, an ICF International subsidiary, to provide HUD with estimates of the type and cost of errors associated with income certification and rent calculation for HUD’s housing assistance programs.

The BHA provides HUD assisted programs to the poor, and ICF’s Norris is directly involved in the policies and operations of those programs, while she is simultaneously a vice president with ICF International. This appears to be a clear conflict of interest.

On Dec. 31, 2009, BHA applied to HUD to dispose of most of its public housing. On Dec. 15, 2008, a year earlier, Norris had directed BHA board members to vote on initiating the disposal process.

Many of Berkeley’s African-American families may be evicted or displaced from their long time homes in the near future as a result. HUD is expected to approve the plan 100 days after the Dec. 31 application date.

In addition, the minutes of a Nov. 23, 2009, 3×3 Committee meeting report a discussion on how the BHA could get kickbacks from a non-profit housing developer after it sells its public housing. The minutes were recently released online by the City Manager’s Office.

Present at the meeting at the Berkeley Central Library were Mayor Tom Bates, Councilmember Darryl Moore, BHA Chair Carole Norris, BHA Commissioner Adolph Moody, BHA Executive Director Tia Ingram, City Manager Phil Kamlarz and BHA consultants Scott Jepson and Eric Novak – 3×3 member Jesse Arreguin was absent.

The 3×3 Committee is a blend of two City Council members, the mayor and three BHA commissioners, who jointly oversee the policies and activities of the Berkeley Housing Authority. Their next meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. March 2, 2010, at the North Berkeley Senior Center.

During the Nov. 23 meeting, a discussion on how to raise more revenue noted major differences in what the BHA collects from its LIPH (low-income public housing) program compared to what private landlords can make from the Section 8 program. With Project-Based Section 8 funding, the operator could use the difference between the costs of operation and payment from Section 8 to fund the debt service to renovate the units. There is a million dollar gap in their proposals to date, and more loans and revenues are being sought to finance the scheme.

In the Nov. 23 meeting, Mayor Bates asked if a for-profit or non-profit developer would take over the public housing units, and consultant Eric Novak indicated a non-profit developer is more likely. Scott Jepson stated, “After the loan is paid back, perhaps the developer could split some of the revenue from the Project-Based Section 8 with the BHA.”

Scott Jepson of the EJP Consulting Group and Eric Novak of the Praxis Consulting Group are highly paid BHA consultants directly involved in steering the BHA through the process of grabbing Berkeley’s public housing from the poor.

A non-profit developer might benefit from kickbacks to the BHA, but kickback schemes are illegal, and a number of people have been arrested and prosecuted for kickback schemes involving the nation’s public housing agencies.

The minutes also reveal that Berkeley Councilman Moore expressed concern that these actions will be seen as a way for Berkeley to get rid of its people of color, and he stated that families of color should be moved in after the buildings are renovated. Moore asked how much could a developer generate for the BHA, and Novak said $145,000 per year.

Moore noted that even if the current public housing tenants are given a Section 8 voucher to move, unless they have a security deposit and good credit, they cannot really move, but he ended up supporting the efforts to get rid of Berkeley’s precious public housing despite his concerns because he said HUD is underpaying Berkeley to provide public housing.

To allay committee members’ concerns at the Nov. 23 meeting, Norris stated that application being filed with HUD to dispose of the public housing just opens the door but does not require actual disposal even if HUD approves the application. Once again, ICF’s Norris is deeply involved in HUD’s housing assisted programs and policies at the BHA, while she is pushing hard to privatize and sell off Berkeley’s public housing.

Mayor Tom Bates said the BHA has done a great job and he was very pleased with Norris as chair and the rest of the board, according to the minutes.

ICF’s code of ethics and conflict of interest policies loom as the elephant in the room. The BHA wants to bail out of the public housing business and it may already be deeply involved in discussions with a local non-profit developer in an effort to take Berkeley’s public housing away from the poor. Getting kickbacks would make the deal even sweeter.

Public housing tenant Keith Carlisle recently stated, “We believe that a conflict of interest exists. Ms. Carole Norris, chair of the board of the Berkeley Housing Authority, works for ICF consultants. We understand that this company is a paid consulting firm hired by the City of Berkeley for advice. Part of this company’s mission is helping to provide ‘affordable housing strategies.’ We don’t feel that Ms. Norris has our best interests in mind. She is a major advocate for privatizing our family homes.”

Long-time public housing and Section 8 tenants appeared at the Jan. 19 Berkeley City Council meeting to protest these allegedly illegal activities. They also demanded the resignation of Carole Norris and BHA Executive Director Tia Ingram.

In addition, over 20 public housing tenants in Berkeley signed a statement to HUD saying that through their organization, Residents Awareness in Action, they want to operate their housing themselves.

Public housing houses poor people on Social Security, General Assistance, SSI and Cal-Works and others with no income at all. The tenants are concerned that if their public housing is privatized and sold to a non-profit developer, they may be evicted because non-profit developers have minimum income requirements that disqualify many poor people.

Berkeley’s public housing residents oppose the sale of their housing and invite the public to join them Saturday mornings from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. at Intercity Services, 3269 Adeline St., Berkeley, for their weekly meetings in an effort to save their homes. Contact saveberkeleypublichousing@gmail.com.

Lynda Carson may be reached at tenantsrule@yahoo.com.

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Frank Greene, left, and Roy Clay were interviewed in the Palo Alto City Council chambers on Jan. 23, 2009. They were honored as two of the 50 most influential Black technologists in Silicon Valley. – Photo: Veronica Weber, Palo Alto Online

Congresswoman Barbara Lee is expected to speak, as will Fr. Paul Locatelli, S.J., chancellor of Santa Clara University; Albert Dotson Jr., Esq., national chairman of 100 Black Men of America; William Kindricks, board member of 100 Black Men of Silicon Valley; Debra Watkins, executive director, California Alliance of African American Educators; James Hill III of the Frank Greene Scholars Program; Robert Johnson, Sire Archon, Gamma Chi Boule; Jennifer Andaluz, senior fellow, American Leadership Forum, Silicon Valley; Howard Gray, Greene’s long time squash partner; Arthur J. Greene, M.D.,Greene’s brother; and Frank S. Greene III, his son. Hugh Burroughs will serve as master of ceremonies.

Greene was a co-founder in 1993 and general partner of NewVista Capital. The firm has funded over 26 start-up information technology companies founded and headed by people of color and women. He was the founding CEO of Technology Development and ZeroOne, both software companies. Technology Development Corp. went public in 1985, and ZeroOne Systems Inc. was sold to Sterling Software.

He earned his doctorate in electrical engineering from Santa Clara University. He was assistant chair of the Electrical Engineering Department at Stanford University in the late 1960s. He taught electrical engineering and computer science at five universities: Howard, Santa Clara, Stanford, Northwestern and Washington University at St. Louis.

Fifth grader Redeat Adane bravely explained her science project to the judges during the Dr. Frank S. Greene Scholars Science Fair held at Cypress Semiconductor Jan. 30, 2010. “Greene,” wrote the San Jose Mercury News, “was a Silicon Valley engineer and visionary who worked hard to get African-American students interested in science and technology, and this year’s eighth annual fair was the continuation of the remarkable legacy Greene left when he died the day after Christmas. The Dr. Frank S. Greene Scholars Program serves as an incubator to innovation.” – Photo: Pauline Lubens, Mercury News

Greene joined the ranks of other Silicon Valley giants like Robert Noyce, David Packard, William Hewlett and the Varian brothers as one of 63 inductees into the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame, conferred by the Silicon Valley Engineering Council.

Greene said his technology career grew out of being in the right place at the right time. He developed high-speed semiconductor computer-memory systems at Fairchild Semiconductor Research and Development Labs in the 1960s. Greene held the patent for the integrated circuit that made Fairchild a semiconductor leader in the late 1960s.

“Success in life is not about ‘me’ but about what you can do to help others,” he told the Palo Alto Weekly earlier this year when he was honored as one of the 50 most important African-Americans in technology in an exhibit at Palo Alto City Hall. Greene grew up in the highly segregated St. Louis of the 1950s, where “making it through life was a civil-rights activity in itself,” he said.

Hattie Carwell is senior scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy and can be reached through Facebook. The Bay View contributed to this story.

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Africans with disabilities

In Zimbabwe, disabled babies are commonly believed to be the result of witchcraft. In extreme cases, families kill them – to remove the “curse” from their family.

Born in the idyllic town of Victoria Falls, one of the seven natural wonders of the world, Prudence Mabhena had a different fate. Her parents, a handsome tour guide and the village beauty, had been picture-perfect newlyweds. When Prudence was born, it was clear something wasn’t right. Her arms and legs were severely twisted, stunted and useless.

Prudence’s paternal grandmother directed her daughter-in-law to refrain from breastfeeding, i.e., kill the baby. Prudence’s mother disobeyed and was ostracized and cast out. She brought Prudence to her mother’s rural home and, when Prudence turned 4, left her to her grandmother’s care.

In Zimbabwe, treatment of the disabled sinks beneath discrimination. Not only is there a void of protective legislation – no Africans with Disabilities Act – and disabled-friendly infrastructure, such as elevators and ramps, disabled people are given a wide berth and treated as if contagious. If permitted to live, the disabled are often left to die.

In Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city, there is a place that transcends this: King George VI School and Centre for Children with Physical Disabilities (KG6). Privately funded, KG6 struggles on the brink of destitution. Yet, hundreds of children blossom under the care of director Inez Hussey. Prudence lives there now, and she teaches. But first, she had to pass through hell.

A working farmer, Prudence’s grandmother couldn’t school the little girl. So she went to KG6. But soon, Prudence’s father lost his ability to pay the tuition. Prudence is forced to move in with her father. By now, her legs – useless and twisted – have been amputated.

Prudence’s father is remarried with kids. He and his new wife – Prudence’s stepmother* – refuse to care for her, even to touch her. For two years, Prudence lives like an animal. Without someone to take her to the bathroom, she sits in her own urine and feces. Without a wheelchair, she can only crawl, and she eats from the floor – when fed. Every day, Prudence drags herself to the mango tree in the backyard, sings and tells herself that her nightmare will end soon.

Finally, Prudence is awarded a scholarship to KG6.

A new life … and Liyana

At age 9, Prudence arrives at KG6 dehumanized and untrusting. She receives a wheelchair donated by a charitable Swede. She cleans up, goes to school and becomes “human” again. Happy, she begins singing in earnest.

Prudence’s voice is so resonant and beautiful that the school administrators suggest she try out for the school choir. Within a week, she’s not only a member of the choir, she’s leading it. She has bloomed at the school and she’s thriving. She also joins Inkonjane, an a capella group. Through the group she has the opportunity to sing in Switzerland.

Back in Zimbabwe, Prudence and some fellow students and musicians start an Afro-fusion band called Liyana (“it’s raining” in Ndebele). All eight of its members are disabled. Marvelous Mbulo has muscular dystrophy. Farai Mabhande shares Prudence’s disorder and plays the keyboard with twisted fingers. Prudence, the band’s only woman, cannot hold a microphone, so it’s mounted to a metal stand that reaches under her chin. With just a head, torso, and tiny arms, Prudence weighs no more than 50 lbs. But the sound that pours out of her is rich enough to fill a stadium, and it is haunting.

All eight members of Prudence’s band Liyana are disabled. – Photo: Errol Webber

Arrest, prison, blackouts and hunger

From the outset, this was a special film. The film would never have come to fruition without unusual courage on the part of the crew. Director Roger Ross Williams and his crew shot “Music by Prudence” over the course of several months and several trips to Zimbabwe. In doing so, they risked arrest, imprisonment, torture, deportation and potentially worse.

Journalism is officially illegal in Zimbabwe. But as evidenced by the 2008 imprisonment of New York Times journalist Barry Bearak, factual journalism can land its proponents in prison.

The principal portion of the shoot for “Music by Prudence” took place against this violent, anti-journalistic backdrop. President Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s longtime dictator, had not received a majority vote in the country’s 2008 presidential election. In the lead-up to the runoff, the leading party unleashed horrifying violence against opposition supporters, and they pulled out. The “Music by Prudence” crew was subject to intense scrutiny.

“Every night, we didn’t know whether we’d be raided and jailed or deported. [The authorities] knew who we were. Zimbabwe’s central intelligence agency was keeping tabs on us. They’d go to my stringer’s house and say, ‘Make sure they don’t shoot anything having to do with the election,’” said Williams.

On top of the stealth, Bulawayo, like the rest of the country, suffered from drastic shortages. Water stoppages and electrical blackouts are common, day-to-day worries. Even food is in short supply: With none in the supermarkets, one has to buy it on the black market. Inflation is so high that during the course of the shoot, Zimbabwe currency became worthless.

During most of the shoot, the crew lived in a wealthy low-density suburban community. But even that community was not immune to lack of water and power and rampant theft. There’d been a wave of armed robberies, which put everyone on edge.

Narrated by Prudence

“Music by Prudence” is about a resilient young woman. Cleverly, the story is also told by her – in a gentle and matter-of-fact tone. A compelling character, the 21-year-old (then 19-20) has a lovely face and a surprisingly playful manner and speaks in a soft voice with a British lilt. She is charismatic, engaging, strong and confident and the camera loves her. Gone is the shell of a girl that arrived at KG6.

Prudence now teaches music at the school. She collects a salary, room and board – which makes her one of Zimbabwe’s rare employed citizens. Surprisingly, she also choreographs dances from her wheelchair and teaches dance to the deaf.

Typically, people with her disability do not live long. But so far, Prudence has been healthy and hopes for a thriving career. Prudence finds strength in her adopted family: the members of her band. Having been similarly rejected by their families and their culture, they all share a similar trauma.

Eventually, Williams plans to release a director’s cut containing extra footage. He’s optimistic that the Oscar nomination for “Music by Prudence” will raise awareness for KG6 and increase donations. Tax-deductible donations can be made through MusicbyPrudence.com.

*In a great irony, Prudence’s stepmother suffered a stroke and is now paralyzed. She uses Prudence’s former wheelchair.

Synopsis of ‘Music by Prudence’

Sunrise over the bush. A fresh morning star spilling vitality over scrambling, dry rocks.

The African plain: supple and green. Clouds – celestial rapids – racing over an otherwise halcyon sky.

The members of Prudence’s band Liyana are like family. Rejected by their birth families because of their disabilities, “Together they find strength,” notes film director-producer Roger Ross Williams. – Photo: Errol Webber

Her voice is stirring, but also still, in contrast to the rushing sky. It’s the voice of a leader, someone in a place of power and wisdom and uncommon peace. Then into the picture rolls its owner: a young African woman in a wheelchair. Her arms are twisted and useless. Without legs, she has never walked. The source of this commanding, compelling music is a head and a torso, and not much more.

Meet Prudence Mabhena, 21, the hero of our tale.

Prudence lives in Zimbabwe, and for a long time almost no one knew about that hauntingly beautiful voice. No one knew the strong, resilient woman who owned it. They were unable to overlook her body: crippled and deformed with a debilitating condition called arthrogryphosis.

When Prudence was born, her paternal grandmother wanted her dead. In Zimbabwe, disabled children are believed to be the result of witchcraft. In extreme cases, families kill them – to remove the “curse” from their family.

Prudence’s mother kept her and fed her. Cast out of her husband’s (Prudence’s father’s) home, she brought the baby to her own mother’s rural home. Four years later, she left.

“Music by Prudence” traces the path of this little girl, and her remarkable transcendence from a world of hatred and superstition into one of music, love and possibility.

The child was raised by Rachel Ncube, her maternal grandmother. Grandmother Ncube taught her to sing. A working farmer, she would strap the little girl to her back as she worked the fields. But when Prudence turned 7, she knew she couldn’t school her. So she sent her to live with her father and his new family.

There, Prudence fell prey to neglect and isolation. Her stepmother refused to touch her and called her a worthless, helpless “ant.” She was despondent enough to attempt suicide – twice.

There is a haven away from this pain: King George VI School and Centre for Children with Physical Disabilities (KG6). Privately funded, KG6 struggles on the brink of destitution. Yet every year, hundreds of disabled children blossom and thrive.

Prudence gets a scholarship to KG6, and her new life begins.

Bulawayo provides the film’s colorful backdrop. Like the rest of the country, Zimbabwe’s second largest city is largely dysfunctional. Water stoppages and electrical blackouts are daily events. The supermarkets have no food, so residents are forced to use the black market for necessities. Inflation and crime run rampant.

Prudence Mabhena – Photo: Errol Webber

Roger Ross Williams, director-producer

Roger Ross Williams is a member of a Gullah family from South Carolina. He is a working television news, documentary and entertainment producer, director and writer who has lived and worked in New York City for the past 25 years. As a television news and documentary director and producer he has worked for ABC News, NBC News, MSNBC, BBC, CNN and PBS.

Williams has produced entertainment shows for ABC, CBS, Comedy Central, Food Network, Sundance Channel, TLC, VH1 and Michael Moore’s Emmy Award winning series TV Nation. He has directed prime-time reality shows for ABC and CBS and produced a documentary series for Discovery Networks and a lifestyle series for Scripts Networks. He has won numerous awards including a NAMIC Vision Award for his television special “Moroccan Style” and the National Headliner for Best Human Interest Feature for his documentary “New York Underground.”

Of “Music by Prudence,” he says: “You quickly forget [Prudence is] disabled because she’s such an amazing, dynamic person. … charismatic and brilliant and engaging. …

“Because I’m African-American, … it gave me an intimacy with the subjects … and there’s a certain connection that gets made. … There’s [still] a divide because I’m African-American and they’re African. …

“My everyday cinematographer [Errol Webber] was a young Jamaican kid who had just graduated from film school. It was important that I have an African-American cameraman who was young. [The band members] saw him as their peer. Most of the time, it was just me and Erroll.

“Africa’s a beautiful place. Africans are such beautiful people and so close to the earth. Where Prudence comes from — near Victoria Falls — is breathtaking.

“I spent a lot of time [at Prudence’s grandmother’s rural home], sleeping in a hut. There’s no water. There’s no electricity. I had literally gone back to my roots. I loved every minute of being there — sitting by the fire, singing songs. It was a spiritually enlightening experience. It was easy to capture that.

Roger Ross Williams – Photo: Marc Yankus

“I had to gain [Prudence’s] trust. Because of what Prudence has been through, it takes time for her to trust people.

“I talked to her, treated her with respect as a person and an artist. I was honest with her about the filmmaking process. I explained that she would need to open up.

“[She talked about her suicide attempts] during our first interview. She’d never told anyone before. She cried and I cried.

“The process of being interviewed: you become self-reflective; it’s like being in therapy. She couldn’t wait to tell her story. Nobody had ever heard her story before — or asked.

“Afterwards, I went to the place where I was staying. I cried and cried and cried. I was just devastated. I was so moved by her strength — her ability to get beyond the moment when she was at her lowest. I was determined to get her story out there and tell it to the world.

“She finds strength in the members of her band, such as her friend Marvelous. They’re all in it together. They’re a family. They understand each other; they’ve all been through the same trauma. They’ve all been rejected by their families and their cultures. They’ve persevered. Together they find strength.

“Prudence has this unique ability to laugh and still find joy around her. She’s this positive and joyful person. She has this inner strength and an innate, inner light. She’s funny and edgy, and she makes fun of herself. …

“She wants to have a career in music. She wants to leave Zimbabwe and come to America and have a career as a working musician. That’s her dream. I think things like an Academy Award nomination — a win — would help her realize her dream. She’s such a talent and the world needs to see. She can have a career. There’s a circuit of world musicians that perform. She could be part of that community. It could change her life.

“I shot hundreds and hundreds of hours of footage. So much it was ridiculous. A lot of it is concert footage shot on multiple cameras.

“There’s a wealth of material that I plan to release in the director’s cut. There were a lot of scenes that we had to edit out because of the constraints of making a short. Buy the DVD, people!” Look for it in fall 2010 or later, at www.musicbyprudence.com.

After the film was finished, Prudence told Roger, “I want you to win an Oscar!” When they were nominated, he called Prudence, who was shocked and overwhelmed. “It’s unimaginable,” he said, “that a girl left in a hut to die is now celebrated in the world for her talent. I hope everyone gets to see this movie and to see her and know her the way that I do.”

To learn more about the film and the filmmakers, visit www.musicbyprudence.com. And give the filmmakers your feedback by emailing rrw@ithembaproductions.com.

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Click to enlarge, print and distribute. The Bay View thanks the organizers and urges everyone who can to turn out.

Now it turns out that of the $255 MILLION the Red Cross collected for the relief effort, only $80 MILLION of it actually made its way to Haiti. That leaves $175 MILLION of YOUR donations unaccounted for.

The obvious question is: Where did it go?

Well, according to the website for the Red Cross, quote, “On those rare occasions when donations exceed Red Cross expenses for a specific disaster, contributions are used to prepare for and serve victims of OTHER disasters.

“Your gift enables the Red Cross to provide shelter, food, emotional support and other assistance to victims of all disasters.”

This photo from the top of the American Red Cross homepage is apparently supposed to convey that the Red Cross cares about Haitians. If they really care, why did a huge proportion of the 300,000 dead die from preventable causes? Preventable deaths are still happening daily, especially among small children and old folks, and if no shelter is provided, the death toll will skyrocket during the rainy season, which is just beginning. Doesn’t the Red Cross provide tents to other disaster survivors? That $175 million the Red Cross thinks Haiti doesn’t need would provide a lot of tents – plus food, water and medical care, all of it desperately needed. Thousands of Haitians have still received no aid at all since the Jan. 12 earthquake. - Photo: www.redcross.org

1) In 1989, the Red Cross raised $50 MILLION for the victims of the San Francisco earthquake. But it’s estimated that only $10 MILLION of it was turned over to the actual victims.

2) After September 11th, the Red Cross raised $543 MILLION for the family members of people who died in the attacks. But they held back more than HALF of that money, which eventually led to the dismissal of their president.

3) In 2004, the Red Cross raised $3.21 BILLION to aid the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami. But they’re still holding onto $500 MILLION of it.

4) And in 2005, the Red Cross raised $1.1 BILLION to aid the victims of Hurricane Katrina. But they kept $200 MILLION of it to, quote, “prepare for future disasters.”

(The Red Cross is a great organization, and the money they raise will eventually be used to help someone in crisis . . . at least we hope. But they’re not nearly as forthcoming as you would hope or expect, considering it’s YOUR donations that keep them in business.)

(And it’s worth mentioning that the Red Cross got $100 MILLION in bailout funds, and that PRESIDENT OBAMA capped the salaries of Red Cross execs at $500,000 a year. Because they’d been earning almost $1 MILLION a year.)

Visit EsterGoldberg.typepad.com, where this story first appeared. Instead of donating to help Haiti through the Red Cross, donate to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund, an organization you can trust to help the people most in need. Go online to HaitiAction.net or make your check payable to HERF/EBSC and mail it to EBSC, 2362 Bancroft Way, Berkeley CA 94704. It’s tax deductible.

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Dr. Chris Zamani led the medical contingent of the crew that the Minister of Information JR brought to Haiti to administer free healthcare to the people. The two worked together years ago as political organizers. Here, Dr. Chris was treating one of the youngstas in Cite Soleil whose leg had been badly fractured. Cite Soleil and the other Haitian neighborhoods in greatest need are avoided by most aid agencies to punish the people there for believing in Haitian sovereignty and self-determination, personified by deposed President Jean Bertrand Aristide. When you donate to Haiti, you can ensure your contribution reaches them by giving to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund. Go online to HaitiAction.net or mail your tax-deductible check, with HERF/EBSC on the memo line, to East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, 2362 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94704. – Photo: Siraj Fowler

Why is this? It is simple; when it comes down to the bottom line, individuals, communities and even nations must give their consent to be controlled. Those that refuse to be exploited at the hands of others and are willing to stop at nothing to make this determination a reality will never be oppressed.

This is the example that Haiti gave to the world in 1804 as 500,000 African slaves organized themselves to defeat Napolean’s army in a massive successful slave revolt that established the Haitian republic. As a result of this act of collective determination, the Haitian people were made to pay reparations to the French slave owners for “depriving” them of their property and profits.

Since that time, the forces of imperialism, represented largely by the U.S., French and Canadian governments and the United Nations, have never failed to make an example of Haiti by showing the world what happens when a group of Black people organize to liberate themselves from oppression. Haiti has been subjected to numerous invasions, occupations, military coups and brutal dictatorships which have had one overwhelming result: the impoverishment of the majority of the population.

Nonetheless Haitians remain a proud, stoic and determined people in spite of 200 years of attempts to destroy their spirit of liberation. It is important to understand this background before one can really understand the dynamics that are playing out in the post-earthquake environment in Haiti.

The Haiti Emergency Relief Fund (HERF), the Prisoners of Conscience Committee and the SF Bay View were able to send a medical team consisting of one doctor (myself) and three nurses. Three media trained personnel were also a part of the team. The HERF medical team provided a modest amount of medical aid in two locations within the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince.

This is a view right outside of the Palace in Port au Prince during the first of the three-day National Days of Prayer. In the tropical heat, many don't have anywhere to go – their homes destroyed – and no access to food on a consistent basis or clean water. – Photo: Minister of Information JR

In Delmas we stayed in a house run by American missionaries that was adjacent to a large open space where a tent city had been established in the aftermath of the earthquake. There were about 1,300 people living in this tent city at the time we were there. Most of the tents were high quality large canvas tents that had been donated by an international organization, although there were still many makeshift tents made from tree branches and bedsheets.

Inside the missionary house there was a well stocked pharmacy with a wide variety of medications, medical supplies and surgical equipment. There were at least a half dozen nurses as well as other international volunteers working in agriculture that were based at the house.

We saw patients in an outside tent and were dealing mostly with wound problems such as wound infections and wounds that were not healing but had areas of dead skin and muscle. These wound complications had developed after people had received amputations in unsterile conditions for crush injuries sustained during the earthquake. Occasionally we also treated some sexual infections, tuberculosis and intestinal worms. We thought that these conditions represented some of the worst – and then we went to Cite Soleil.

Cite Soleil is a poor slum area within the capital that was surrounded on three sides by military bases. There were many differences that we witnessed from the situation in Delmas, where we had been in previous days.

In Cite Soleil we saw many tent cities composed of makeshift tents constructed out of sheets, tarps and plastic garbage bags. There were no large canvas tents. We did not see any water tanker trucks nor did we witness the presence of any international aid workers. Absent were the missionaries and the foreign agricultural workers.

There was no home we could stop by to get medical supplies, no well stocked pharmacy, no designated area to provide medical care. In fact we pulled over to the side of the road, pulled out our two crates of medicine, and after sitting on a brick on a street corner we were open for business.

Within 5 minutes we were surrounded by people, mostly parents and grandparents bringing their young children in to be seen by a doctor. Ninety percent of the patients here were between 15 months and 7 years of age, and all except for one came with concerns about sickness that had nothing to do with the earthquake.

Here in Cite Soleil we were seeing conditions such as intestinal worms, malnutrition, dehydration, fungal skin infections, viral diarrhea and bacterial eye infections. These were conditions related to poor sanitation, lack of access to clean water, not enough nutritious food and overcrowding. These were diseases of poverty.

I highlight the differences between these two areas of the city where we provided medical care because there was no legitimate reason for the disparity that we witnessed in the distribution of aid. Already upon arrival at the airport one can see tons and tons of supplies sitting idle along the runway. These supplies included water, food, medicine, tarps, tents, fuel and other critical supplies that were in need all around the city and the nation.

While millions of well meaning individuals around the world had donated money totaling hundreds of millions toward humanitarian relief, the only item that was well distributed on the ground in Port-au-Prince were soldiers and their weapons. The other thing that was well distributed was misinformation.

This is one of the congested shanty-town tent cities where people live in Haiti. This was near the Palace on the one month anniversary of the Haitian earthquake of 2010. As you can see in the background, there are buildings that fell off of their foundation as well as rubble everywhere. – Photo: Minister of Information JR

We never witnessed any act of aggression; to the contrary, the people demonstrated many times their willingness to share what little they had with others around them. There were rumors going around that there were too many doctors there, which may have been true in the few places that the U.S. military decided to set up places for people to get medical help, but in most places not only was there no excess of doctors but there were no doctors at all.

Haiti for me is thus a tale of two disasters on multiple different levels. First it is a tale of an earthquake that happened and what we were being told that was in stark contrast to the truth. It is a false tale of a nation devastated that had turned into an orgy of desperation-fueled violence, all despite the valiant efforts of the U.S. military-missionary apparatus who had swooped in to distribute millions of dollars in aid to all without fear or favor.

Then there was the real tale of a nation devastated, where millions of people are struggling to survive through cooperation and prayer while the U.S. military has established an occupation of their country and where missionaries hand out food, water and medicine to a few people in need while taking pictures of themselves smiling with a naked child within their embrace amidst a sea of poverty. Where hundreds of millions of dollars are unaccounted for and tons of relief supplies sit stockpiled at an airport under the watchful eye of soldiers.

This is also a tale of two disasters in that some areas of the city received much attention and a modest level of assistance from the international community, while other areas of the city remained invisible under a calculated blanket of neglect – these largely being areas that supported Jean Bertrand Aristide. Aristide was the poor people’s president who was kidnapped in a 2004 military coup supported by the Haitian elite and the CIA who opposed his policies aimed at empowering Haiti’s poor majority.

Yes, Haiti … a tale of two disasters, and two opposing examples – one set by a people determined to free themselves from the yolk of slavery, exploitation and oppression and the other example set by the imperialists as a warning of what will happen to those that dare to grasp their own destiny and establish freedom for their descendants by any means necessary.

Dr. Chris Zamani can be reached at czamani@hotmail.com.

Haiti: Rising from the Ashes (Extended Preview) from MerKaBa Films on Vimeo.

Haiti: Rising from the Ashes documents the coalition efforts of a Haitian and Black group from America team sponsored by the Prisoners Of Conscience Committee and HERF. The team is comprised of medical personnel, journalists, and filmmakers providing aid despite the blocking efforts of the United States, French, Canadian, and Brazilian military. Duration: 13min extended preview. Feature Film due to be released June 2010.

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Photo: Wanda Sabir

A large group of young people and other patrons filled the hallway when I entered. I saw a few friends. Someone came out while I was in the Sargent Johnson Gallery looking at the exhibit, “Cultural Odyssey at 30,” to tell us that the play begins in the hall.

Idris Ackamoor, theatre founder, dressed in white with gold accents, blew into a conch shell, sort of like a Pied Piper of the Fillmore, and led patrons up the stairs into an adventure that went on beyond anywhere Alice’s Wanderings took her – the girl should try African Diaspora ancestral memories for themes – but we followed him anyway because it was Idris and we trusted him (smile).

The audience had been divided into groups, but as I’d been in the gallery, I missed this part so I went with the youth up the stairs, past the studios and a frowning man with a rifle, whom I avoided – he looked like he’d shoot – into a loading dock converted into a theatre space – it looked like a slave dungeon – the part where one kisses Africa good-by, the plank just ahead.

Idris continues the soundtrack from a loft space, while a woman, a captured African – a recalcitrant one at that – walks into the space from behind. We can hear her head constraint ringing. For many in the audience, this is the first time we’ve seen this kind of torturous device outside history books or gallery exhibits.

What ensues could be called a dance, but to see this heavy object locked around her neck, spirally up over her head, certainly lets those assembled know this is not a typical theatre experience – we are going to hell. I am on the front row, so I can see. The kid who was there traded places with me and kindly gave me his pillow when I asked (the plank was hard and hurt my hip).

Underneath the deck where Idris sat with instruments and a screen, where projected images enhanced the experience, was a ladder leading up and a dark cavernous chilly expanse. We don’t know what’s down there and frankly, I am not interested in exploring.

Except for Idris’ music and Rhodessa Jones’ occasional lines when she joins Joanna Haigood, there is no verbal discourse. Just two ladders, the dark recesses at the end of the steep ramp where the enslaved woman rolls down the pier in the head restraint (yes!) are the only sites and sounds we see and hear initially.

Then Rhodessa, dressed in an orange prison jumper from South Africa (orange the universal prison attire, like a brand), appears with a whip. All the sensations: cold, hard, eerie darkness, unfamiliar sounds, smells, give the audience plenty to contemplate, especially those in the first two rows where the whip spinning in Rhodessa’s hand over our heads, which she then flicks, we feel, too close to our faces as its breeze and the sting of its impact hits the ground again too close for comfort. But this theme – the Black holocaust – is it supposed to be an idea that brings ease?

Kids jump almost into my lap and I don’t blame them. This weapon is real … threatening. I just make room.

One could feel the atmosphere shift, as the kids settle down, the bantering chatter ceases and the audience resigns into spaces previously occupied by the captive, the overseer, the slave catcher: on the block at the auction, in the ocean floating, on the limb lynched.

No one knew her story, just her name: “Laura Nelson.” Where was she from? She just sprang up. The other one? Watch. This happened on a bridge … go to sleep, little baby,” Rhodessa sang. There wasn’t even time to mourn as we gathered under the tree where Haigood’s body hung. Time shifted between slave transport to Jim Crow America and the Black Codes post emancipation.

We weren’t allowed to dwell in any sensation for long. Negro memorabilia – the huge lips and hips, the bulging eyes – all successful efforts at dehumanizing the captive as piano music surrounded us from the rear (how did Idris get back there?) and it was time to move. People started filing past us. Who were they? more captives?

Photo: Wanda Sabir

As I watched Laura spin, I wondered how those filing past got selected to be in the procession … to where? Did I want to go? At first I wanted to go as well and then I saw that the first into the dungeon would be the last to leave. We were all going down into the loading dock … where? onto a slave ship? and if not a slave ship, where were we going? It was all a mystery to me.

Zaccho Dance Company, which Joanna Haigood founded, has created several pieces which look at the slave trade, one in collaboration with the San Francisco Arts Festival a couple of years ago when Rhodessa Jones was artistic director. The piece for SFIAF, called “Arrivals and Departures,” took place at the San Francisco Airport in the International Wing – yes, how appropriate – and looked at Africans newly arriving and those already here and the interchange, both the physical and the philosophical.

There was another Zaccho theatre installation I attended which took place at Fort Baker I’d like to say about 10 years ago, and in this work the audience became captives. I don’t know why I was surprised when I was pulled from the audience in “Breach” – yes, we do finally get to the theatre. I am taken from my comfortable seat and placed on the auction block with two others where the auctioneer tells me to open my mouth – “wide” and “bend over.”

I don’t see her whip, but I obey.

Rhodessa is in the audience trying to get the prices up. I think we are sold for $500. I don’t see to whom, my back to them literally, butt in the air. The experience was transformative. I felt like those ancestors must have felt … scared, in a strange place, polished and cleaned up for the show … and then like that separated from family, land, community … however horrible on the ship. I know the place in New Orleans where the enslaved Africans were chained to posts and sold. It is now a grocery store: Circle Market on Claiborne Avenue. It was damaged during Katrina.

Breach, the word both a noun and a verb. A breached birth is one where the child is engaged butt first, and a breached agreement means that it is not honored. No one asked Rhodessa, Idris or Joanna what “Breach” meant in their context. It could have meant both, especially when the theatre piece shifts to the present – not that the present wasn’t always implied with slavery as the new plantation, HIV/AIDS on Jones’ and Haigood’s T-shirts another type of Maafa or Black holocaust.

I was surprised that many in the audience didn’t know the word and that still others didn’t know about the Maafa ritual in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past 14 years or so. Visit http://www.maafasfbayarea.com.

I really liked the way Cultural Odyssey and Zaccho framed the discussion and the interactive nature of the theatre piece. I agree with Idris: This was nothing new for Cultural Odyssey, a theatre company that promotes art that engages and calls for active participation. Audiences have to work as they spin new paradigms out of old social-political concepts.

We often leave a Cultural Odyssey event feeling disturbed and not at all at ease when the curtain falls and “The End” flashes across the marquee, but that’s what art is supposed to do if it is good art – disturb.

In the theatre, Rhodessa’s last character is a Black woman who has applied for a top position at a corporation; she is first choice for the position. The powerful Black woman is at the top of the ladder, literally – what a different image from the previous one, but is it any different? The woman is chatting with her girlfriends about the party they are going to have when the job is hers.

“The Breach” is non-linear; the corporation job story is mixed with the story of Black urban professionals and Black love and varying definitions on the question Rhodessa sings about, accompanied by Idris, who also engages Joanna in a loving duet, she dancing to his active accompaniment.

Photo: Wanda Sabir

“Can we keep love on our minds? Is torture so different now? Was it so different then?”

Yes, for fans, Idris does tap and play his saxophone at the same time. He also plays a loving Arabic lute. As all this is happening, there are videos streaming on the screen and women swaying from cocoons and hoops. It’s really too much to capture on paper. “Breach” is like Cultural Odyssey’s name; it’s a journey where we heard stories of Alphonzo the Flea and Hurricane Bruce where we learn to “improvise or die.”

“Michelle is from Chi-town. She didn’t sit down. She is running this country. It’s time to get paid.” “How does a Black man know he’s in hell? He doesn’t. It’s all around him.” “Angel, talk to me.” “Dry bones stare in surprise.”

“When I die, halleluia bye and bye, I’ll fly away.” We all sing with Jones. (And then we are brought on stage and sold.)

I can tell you this journey along the breach, but really it’s one you must take for yourself.

Conceived by Joanna Haigood, Rhodessa Jones and Idris Acakmoor, “The Breach,” directed by Acakmoor, with choreography by Haigood, text by Jones and Cecil Brown, lighting design by Stephanie Johnson and set design by Pam Peniston, transforms as it teaches.

I love Rhodessa’s questions at the end when we learn of her topic for her dissertation: the similarity between the slave plantation system and the corporate system. “These bones don’t lie,” she tells her potential employer who is of course taken aback.

“Are you a plant?” He asks.

“Grant me what I have lost,” she says.

Jones then breaks form and asks the audience: “What does reparations look like to you? Are the corporations that made money (read all of them) responsible for repayment? What about the American government – should it apologize and to whom and what does a tangible apology look like?”

“The Breach” closes this weekend with two more performances: Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., all at 762 Fulton St. in San Francisco. Visit http://www.culturalodyssey.org/v2/aboutus/.

Bay View Arts Editor Wanda Sabir can be reached at wsab1@aol.com. Visit her website at www.wandaspicks.com for an expanded version of Wanda’s Picks, her blog, photos and Wanda’s Picks Radio. Her shows are streamed live Wednesdays at 6-7 a.m. and Fridays at 8-10 a.m. and archived on the Afrikan Sistahs’ Media Network.

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