San Francisco Bay View

‘John Brown’s Truth: A Musically Improvised Opera’ by William Crossman

mary — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 20:42:35 +0000

by Wanda Sabir

Photo: Wanda Sabir

Harper’s Ferry … freeing slaves … Virginia … hanging … white man – this is the extent of my knowledge of John Brown. I wasn’t aware that it was 150 years ago, on Oct. 14-15, 1859, that this happened, an event which many say forecast the Civil War and the emancipation of enslaved Africans.

Ninety minutes without intermission, a live jazz band using improvisation to accompany the chorus and soloists, who took turns in the lead role of Brown, the scenes move quickly as the events of 1859 in Ohio proceed with a foiled escape to Canada and capture of Brown and escapees, who stand trial, are found guilty and then hanged.

I wasn’t aware that Brown quoted scripture and had visions like Nat Turner. Was this common with most abolitionists? Seems like it. In the book that one set of white people use to justify enslaving other human beings, another white person finds evidence of slavery’s evil.

I loved the cast’s voices. From Raymond Nat Turner to Maria Medina Serafin, Eliza O’Malley and Duana Leslie as John Brown to Zigi Lowenberg as preacher, it was cool listening to the different voices dramatize their scenes. I wonder if the actor or actress’s voice was a determining factor in who got what scene.

I really liked Eliza’s dramatic presentation. She got on her knees and used the entire stage to tell her story. I liked Duana and Maria as well. Zigi was a sourpuss preacher who argued vehemently with Maria’s John Brown, who said her religion or reading was not Christian, based on the teaching of her lord.

Photo: Wanda Sabir

All the actors, when not switching off in the roles, were the chorus. Here the voices lifted and soared as the band played: William Crossman, playwright, on piano, Lewis Jordan on baritone saxophone, India Cooke on violin, Henry Mobley on string bass, Akinyele Sadiq on percussion, Cheryl Schwartz on tenor saxophone.

Linda Johnson danced; as it was a small stage and smaller ensemble, her presence added a nice texture to the setting … opening the way before the cast entered the room – just she and the drummer. Dressed in ceremonial white, she tried to get the audience to clap, but they didn’t until she finished.

It was a good thing William made introductory remarks – otherwise we would have missed our cue to recite or sing the four nursery rhymes at the end of each scene or movement. These interludes were led by a very capable youngster who comes out at one point jumping rope.

Will said each evening would be different depending on the audience, which has a lot to do with what happens on stage. The interaction between artist and consumer or patron is a hefty topic for a book.

The East Side production on March 14 will be a lot more intimate, so the interaction heightened to reflect this. Last night, Sister Linda wasn’t getting much love initially, but as she kept coming back – in different costumes telling the same stories: We want freedom, we want justice, we want equality NOW! – the audience began to collect their cues and in the end were on their feet as well.

It made sense that Michael Lange would direct, having written the definitive piece on Nat Turner, in my opinion.

There are two performances left, one Sunday afternoon, March 14, 3 p.m., at the East Side Cultural Center, 2277 International Blvd., Oakland. The last performance on the current schedule is Sunday, April 25, 4 p.m. at the Community Music Center, 544 Capp St., San Francisco.

To learn more, visit http://johnbrownstruthopera.com/. The photos were taken opening night at Live Oak Park Theatre in Berkeley.

Bay View Arts Editor Wanda Sabir can be reached at wsab1@aol.com. Visit her website at www.wandaspicks.com for 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.

Balancing act: an interview with the Bay Area rap artist Balance

mary — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 18:53:07 +0000

by Minister of Information JR

I’ve known the man that the music world calls Balance for many years. Ever since I can remember he has been on his music grind, whether it was recording, performing or learning the game from his 9 to 5 job at Rasputin’s in Berkeley, where he is the rap buyer.

I saw this man carve out a space for himself in the often times hostile Bay Area rap pantheon of recognized artists. I noticed it first with the “New Bay” controversy a few years back. Now he is known most as the Bay Area mixtape king. One thing is for certain: Balance knows how to keep the world saying his name. Here he is in his own words …

M.O.I. JR: This is the first time that we did an interview. How did you get into making music? When did you consider yourself a rapper?

Balance: I started rappin back in junior high school – Claremont to be exact, home of Gary Payton and Rickey Henderson (laughing). Had to brag. I didn’t take it seriously until high school. That’s where I wrote my first rap – it was horrible – but ever since that day I said I would never come weak again, so I just practiced and practiced. Once I graduated high school, I saw that I was getting pretty good.

M.O.I. JR: What makes you different from the thousand other indie rappers in the Bay?

Balance: I think my name says it all. BALANCE. I think if you get a project from me, it’ll have a balance or a lil’ bit of everything. Also I think what separates me from a lot of Bay rappers is quality. I put a lot of money into my mixes and each song, making sure they sound no different then any other major release. I believe in quality over quantity.

M.O.I. JR: About five years ago, you and the Frontline were at the middle of a controversy in Bay Area rap around the concept of the “New Bay.” How do you feel about the concept now?

Balance, the mixtape king – Photo: Austin (Texas) Chronicle

Balance: It’s funny you’d ask that because I may call my next cd “New Bay” (laughing). I think “New Bay” is a mindset and I’m waiting for the next “New Bay” group of rappers.

I think that the problem is everybody is in they own cliques. We came up all together so it made a bigger statement. I think some of the new rappers should take a lesson from what we did.

M.O.I. JR: Working at Rasputin’s, how has that helped your career? What do you understand about the music business that you may not have understood had you not had that job while being an artist?

Balance: It helped me greatly, by just seeing why cds sell. I talk to customers so I know who they’re looking for and why. I see the truth. It helped me understand retail and just how competitive this game is, as well as putting me in a position where if you’re a Bay rapper you will know me and I know you. That’s a great asset.

M.O.I. JR: What are you working on now? When will it drop?

Balance: I just dropped a cd wit me and Big Rich called “Good as Money,” which you can get off iTunes. I got a new mix cd droppin January. You can get it from here: http://balanceskillz.blogspot.com/.

This year, I’m going to drop a lot of free music, so you can log on to my blogspot or follow me on Twitter – BALANCE510 – and you can get my music for free. I feel like music now is dispensable and because of recession, people don’t wanna buy music – so shit, I’ll give it to you for free. A true fan will support you once they get cash or go see you live!

Right now I’m working on a project called “The Exit,” which I’m dropping free online this month. That’s my next solo.

Email POCC Minister of Information JR, Bay View associate editor, at blockreportradio@gmail.com and visit www.blockreportradio.com.

The big lies against Cuba

mary — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 05:32:44 +0000

by Ashaki Binta for the Cuban Working Group of the Black Left Unity Network

Unlike medical teams from other countries working in Haiti since the earthquake, Cuban doctors – already 500 strong in Haiti when the quake hit – are winning high praise from the people for doing everything possible to avoid amputations. Gangrene had already set in to the arm of this woman who was injured in a building collapse and had been unable to find medical help. These doctors, working in a makeshift outdoor clinic, found a way to save her arm. – Photo: BBC

Despite President Obama’s declaration of his administration’s desire to “seek a new beginning with Cuba” and to “learn from history, not be trapped by it” in April of last year, Cuba has remained under attack by the U.S.

In January, new U.S. air security policies included Cuba on a list of countries whose air passengers would get extra security screening as they enter U.S. territory. And Cuba remains on the State Department’s list of “state sponsors of terrorism,” notwithstanding the lack of any evidence of Cuban involvement in acts of terrorism. Cuba has vigorously protested all of these unconscionable attacks.

In fact, Cuba’s policies of internationalism have arguably been the most politically advanced in the world – from the direct military intervention to help in the defeat of Apartheid in southern Africa in 1988 (Cuito Cuanavale, Angola) to direct medical aid and solidarity with Haiti (before the earthquake). Since the earthquake, Western media has been suspiciously silent on the exceptional role Cuba has played in support of Haiti with more than 900 health care providers on the ground, the largest and most organized contingent on the island.

Yet, one of the most disturbing new attacks against Cuba occurred late last year when a host of prominent African Americans signed on to a so-called “Declaration of African American Support for the Civil Rights Struggle in Cuba.”

This misguided declaration accuses the Cuban state of racism. It cites the imprisonment of a Dr. Darsi Ferrer, an active critic of the Cuban government, as an example of racism in Cuba. Dr. Ferrer was reportedly accused of attempting to establish a private medical clinic outside of Cuba’s world-renowned medical system, by receiving illegally obtained construction materials. Whatever the case, Dr. Ferrer’s situation should immediately bring to mind the 50 year history of attempts by the U.S. to subvert the Cuban Revolution through internal dissent and direct attack harkening back to the Bay of Pigs invasion and so on.

Certainly the struggle against racism anywhere in the world is of paramount importance to all of humanity. But can this attack against Cuba under the guise of fighting racism really be justified? We think not.

Many African Americans may not know about some of the unique features of Cuban history even though African Americans and Cubans have a deeply rooted history of solidarity with each other.

For example, during Cuba’s first War for Independence from Spain in 1868, plantation and slave owner Carlos Manual de Cespedes freed and armed the slaves on his plantation and called on them to join the struggle for Cuba’s independence. Afro-Cuban Gen. Antoneo Maceo emerged as one of Cuba’s most renowned revolutionary leaders of all time. As a result of this struggle, slavery was abolished in Cuba by 1886.

What a contrast to U.S. history, where the maintenance of slavery was a pre-condition of unity between the colonies in the American fight for independence from Britain. Although more than 5,000 Blacks fought in the American Revolution, legalized slavery continued for nearly another 100 years.

And the U.S. has historically played a role in maintaining racism in Cuba. The U.S. intervention and occupation of Cuba starting in 1898 during Cuba’s second War for Independence (1895), where more than half the fighters were Black, re-established institutional racism in Cuba. Under the intermittent U.S. occupations there, Afro-Cubans and women, as well as the poor, were barred from voting, holding elective office, owning businesses, land etc. Sound familiar?

Most Cuban historians and scholars agree that the Cuban Socialist Revolution in 1959 abolished legalized institutional racism in Cuba. Cuba’s revolutionary constitution outlawed racial discrimination while open and public debate and education since the revolution have tackled Cuba’s history as an Afro-Cuban nation. However, the legacy of 500 years of slavery, racism and all forms of discrimination is difficult to completely eradicate in just 50 years, especially while also under the U.S. led attacks and blockade against Cuba.

Even so, the conditions of all Cubans have improved under the covenant of the socialist revolution in Cuba, which has provided free education, free health care, land for poor farmers, reduced cost rent and utilities, the elimination of unemployment and so on.

Racism, institutionalized or otherwise, has not been abolished any place in the world. Yet Cuba, in our view, remains a hopeful beacon in the Western Hemisphere that humane societies can be constructed that provide the basis for the elimination of all forms of discrimination, exploitation and oppression.

You may contact the working group at cubaworkinggroup@gmail.com. Documents from the Cuba Working Group may be viewed at www.blackeducator.org/cubasolidarity.htm.

Medea Project presents ‘Dancing with the Clown of Love’

mary — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:08:30 +0000

by Wanda Sabir

Photo: Wanda Sabir

I didn’t know what to expect, certainly not an evening exploring the concept of loving oneself and releasing stigma attached to HIV and AIDS diagnosis, but I wasn’t surprised. Medea Project: Theatre for Incarcerated Women tackles the tough issues around incarceration, so why not HIV, another sort of prison, perhaps the worst kind, where escape is virtually impossible.

Multi-layered with healing at its center, the large cast, some infected, everyone affected, shared stories written over the past two years at the Women’s HIV Program at the University of California San Francisco, under the direction of Edward Machtinger, M.D. The program opened with a short film directed by Jenny Chu which documented Medea Project at the Women’s HIV Program.

What I thought really remarkable and special was how in the talkback with the audience, people who were HIV positive in the audience self disclosed, many for the first time. It was amazing! I mean really.

Rhodessa Jones, in red silk pajamas with a black fedora, a fat cigar and a bottle of rum, blessed the stage. Gede incarnated the spirit of the graveyard, sprayed the four corners and some audience members on the first rows, as the chorus sang.

Next came the three Fates. For those who know Medea or Macbeth’s encounter with the witches stirring, Medea is character who has a messy divorce and, rather than give her children up or cooperate with her estranged lover, she kills them – a crime of passion. This is different from the madman who drops his children from the window in Ntozake Shange’s “for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf.” I don’t remember if men complained like they did when “The Color Purple” hit the big screen, but he and Mister were certainly brothers.

Photo: Wanda Sabir

In beautiful costumes, the Fates orchestrate the light and dark in the characters’ lives, dancing in and off the stage at strategic moments. Using the entire theatre as its stage, “Dancing with the Clown of Love” encouraged the audience to be a part of the production as we were invited to dance with the women, get tested and ultimately refuse the stigma associated with this HIV disease, an illness, to choose life and health and love.

Several children participated in the theatre production. For the youngest two, whom we meet in program notes, if not on stage, the actresses in costume were a bit too frightening.

With superb lighting by longtime collaborator Stephanie Johnson, dramaturgy by Fe Bongolan, choreography by Lisa Frias, Angela Wilson and Gina Dawson, and costumes designed by Rene Walker, “Dancing” is as luscious as it is sad. These women have a life threatening disease, some of them clearly ill, others – you’d never know. We wouldn’t know if they didn’t tell us in the end.

In one piece a slightly built actress dances, her fragility an aspect of the play she embodies. She is the reality check, the reminder that this is theatre and life.

After my safe sex talk with a cast member during one of the shattered fourth wall moments, I got a red condom – my favorite color. I thought about my first cousin Roland, a chef, who was refused admittance at the hospital in Mississippi when my Auntie Henrietta took him there one evening. They told her to take him to New Orleans, an hour away. He died upon arrival.

I thought about all the Black women over 50 with HIV disease, the new face of AIDS, and the youngsters becoming infected every day.

This 30th anniversary of Cultural Odyssey – Rhodessa Jones and Idris Ackamoor’s baby – and the 20th anniversary of the Medea Project is superb and shouldn’t be missed. In conjunction with the theatrical celebration, there is a wonderful exhibit in the Sargent Johnson Gallery, multimedia and interactive, which visitors should see before the show or afterwards, as there is no intermission.

Photo: Wanda Sabir

“Telling truth creates beauty,” Rhodessa says. The director believes that even when it is hard truth, is a necessary ingredient for wellness. Like a coach, we hear Rhodessa’s voice telling the women, most of them not professional actresses, to “push it” as they do a ring shout and dance, as they tell their stories, like one women from Austria who speaks of the gift her status has facilitated in her life. Another woman speaks of how she has learned that intimacy is sacred, while another actress dances us through the sensuality of physical love which doesn’t go away just because one has an HIV diagnosis, that there is life after HIV.

Visit www.culturalodyssey.org. Closing weekend shows are Friday-Saturday, March 12-13, 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Buriel Clay Theatre, 762 Fulton St., San Francisco. Check the times. The intimate theatre was almost full Thursday evening.

Leonard Peltier: Statement of solidarity with Mumia Abu-Jamal

mary — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 07:16:50 +0000

Leonard Peltier was a leader of the American Indian Movement in 1976 when he was arrested and charged with the deaths of two FBI agents during a shootout at the Pine Ridge Reservation of the Oglala-Lakota Nation. He has now been imprisoned for 34 years — one of the world’s longest-held political prisoners. Peltier sent the following message to an international teach-in held Feb. 13 in Philadelphia on the struggle to free death row inmate, journalist and former Black Panther Party activist Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Leonard Peltier

Greetings, brothers and sisters, and thank you for attending this event to listen, learn, teach and organize. I am Leonard Peltier, a proud Lakota and Anishinabe American Indian activist, organizer and patriot. I am likewise, unfortunately, a fellow political prisoner in this “land of the free.”

I, along with my family, my supporters and American Indians everywhere know full well what the justice system of the United States can mean to the Brown man, the Black man, and any man or woman who dares to think or talk truth to power.

That we have been made targets in our own country should outrage every single man and woman everywhere, no matter the color, background or political leaning. That this country continues the barbaric practices of executions should be opposed by all people of conscience.

Whether or not you approve of capital punishment is irrelevant as long as minorities are executed with alarming disparities. Whether you approve or not is of secondary concern when people like Mumia Abu Jamal, myself and many others are convicted and sentenced to die with evidence that would exonerate ‘most any white man. As such, every single progressive organization should oppose the death penalty as we now know it.

That we have been made targets in our own country should outrage every single man and woman everywhere, no matter the color, background or political leaning. … (But) as long as you are willing to work for justice, all political prisoners can still hope for freedom.

This has not been a case of justice or the law, it has been politics, racism and control, and we should confront these issues long before we decide who to execute. As long as we have these inequities in our midst, we will continue to convict and execute innocents. Execute – let’s call it what it really is – state sanctioned murder! Why does America allow this brand of “justice” to exist?

That is a question that must haunt the soul of every true American patriot. For as long as it does, America can never be the bastion of freedom it has claimed to be, the light in the darkness it wants to be, nor the high ground of morality it hopes to be.

Pay attention to the names this government uses when it is opposed. The American government has called other countries “evil empire” and “axis of evil.” The rest of the world hears this and scoffs!

Why? Because they see this country convicting, imprisoning and executing innocent minorities and political liabilities while claiming to be a free society, because they see corporate personhood allowing the rape of the Earth and desecration of the sacred, because they see this country waging illegal war while claiming to love peace, and because they see this country propping up murderous dictators while giving lip service to human rights. The rest of the world sees all of this and wonders, is not America the real evil empire?

Mumia Abu-Jamal

I, like Mumia, have been called a terrorist by my own government. Well, I never knew a terrorist who advocated the rule of law as we have. Some people need to find a new dictionary!

There may be other parts of the world which are breeding grounds for terrorism, but this government makes sure they have fertile ground to harvest. We are not the terrorists! I love my country. Progressive thinking people love this country. It is thusly our patriotic duty to respond to such government with righteous indignation! It is only when we allow a corrupt government to corrupt our very minds that a patriot becomes a terrorist!

As long as you are willing to work for justice, all political prisoners can still hope for freedom. Real power starts from the bottom and goes up, not the other way around. Free Mumia!

In solidarity,

Leonard Peltier

Word was received on Feb. 25 that Leonard Peltier’s parole denial appeal was rejected. He is not scheduled to go before the Parole Board again for 15 years, when he will be 80 years old. Because he is in very bad health, the parole denial is a death sentence. Supporters are urged to appeal to the White House on the Comment Line at (202) 456-1111 or (202) 456-1112, by email at www.whitehouse.gov/contact/, by mail to President Barack Obama, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, DC 20500 or by fax to (202) 456-2461.

Send our brother some love and light. Write to Leonard Peltier, 89637-132, USP Lewisburg, US Penitentiary, P.O. Box 1000, Lewisburg, PA 17837. Learn more at www.whoisleonardpeltier.info.

For Akua Njeri (Deborah Johnson)*

mary — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 06:30:48 +0000

by Titilope Sonuga

These booking photos of Akua Njeri – then Deborah Johnson – were taken the day of the assassination of her husband, Chairman Fred Hampton, and 25 days before the birth of Chairman Fred Hampton Jr.

2337 West Monroe
December 4th, 1969
on the cusp of a new year
You
19 years old
lay sleeping
carrying
a new day
in your belly

8 and a half months
of dreams
for a boy
with a fierce spirit

like his father

prayed for him
the power of speech

like his father

in a world
where a Black man
walks with
a target on his forehead
you prayed for him

peace

“Knock, knock”
“Who’s there?”
“Tommy”
“Tommy who?”

bang! bang!

What were you dreaming
of when the first shot was fired
45 rounds
for the 45 times
you must’ve said

“he’ll be just like you”

45 rounds
for the 45 times
he must’ve put
his head to
swollen belly
whispered

“revolution”

to his unborn son

So you lay
on top of him
as he slept silently
human shield
for this
21 year old man
with fire on his tongue
this man
who knew the value
of freedom
because you knew
that the world
needed more men
like him

Felt the baby
kick and turn into the space
for fatherless children
then the final shot to the head
our dreams bleed red
on new carpet

“Is he alive”

Yes
because you carried
his legacy inside of you

“he is good and dead now”

good
but never dead

“You can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail the revolution”

December 29th, 1969
A new sun rises
Fred Hampton, Jr.

“knock, knock!”
“who’s there?”
“Revolution”

*Akua Njeri (fna Deborah Johnson) is a former member of the Illinois Chapter Black Panther Party. She is a survivor of the Dec. 4, 1969, assassination of Chairman Fred Hampton and Defense Captain Mark Clark. She is the widow of Chairman Fred and the mother of Chairman Fred Jr.

Njeri is the chairperson of the December 4th Committee, which fights to defend and maintain the legacy of the Black Panther Party and what really happened on that fateful morning. December 4th co-coordinates with POCC (Prisoners of Conscience Committee) the annual Aug. 30 birthday celebration and commemoration of Chairman Fred Hampton and the life, work and commemorative events around the annual December 4th International Revolutionary Day (IRD), the anniversary of the “Massacre on Monroe” – the assassination of Chairman Fred and Defense Captain Mark Clark.

Njeri is the co-author of the proposal to name one Chicago block – 2300 W. Monroe –”Chairman Fred Hampton Way,” a campaign that exposed the dividing line between the interests of the state against the demands of the people.

Njeri coordinates free clothing and fresh vegetable giveaways with POCC and other survival programs. She continues to fight against police terrorism and for the freedom of political prisoners in the U.S. She also is on the Advisory Committee for POCC. For information and speaking engagements, contact December 4th Committee, P.O. Box 368255, Chicago, IL 60636, (773) 256-9451 or akuanjeri@aol.com.

Listen to Titilope Sonuga (pronounced Tee-tee-law-kpeh Show-nu-ga) read this poem. Visit her website at www.titilope.ca.

“For Akua Njeri” read by the poet, Titilope Sonuga

Remembering Althea Francois, beloved Louisiana Black Panther, prison abolitionist, ‘pillar in our struggle’

mary — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 05:44:33 +0000

Althea Francois

“Althea Francois joined the Black Panther Party in New Orleans in 1970 as a community worker,” writes the Black Panther Party legacy and alumni website, It’s About Time. Althea made her transition on Christmas Day 2009 at age 60.

“She was 19 years old and attended her first political education class at the Piety Street office. At one of the political education meetings, it was announced that there were two undercover police present. People from the community identified them and then ran them out. This incident led to the first raid on the party office. After the office was raided, Althea called Central Headquarters and was directed to reopen the office. By the end of the next day, the office was open and functioning.

“Althea’s responsibilities included soliciting for funds for the party, the Liberation School and visiting political prisoners arrested during the raid.

“Althea survived the second raid on the office in the Desire projects. During that time, she worked in the Sickle Cell Research Center. She came to California in 1972 to work on Bobby Seale’s mayoral campaign. She worked at the West Oakland Center where some of her duties included selling papers, collecting donations and serving as the health officer for the West Oakland office. Althea also registered many people to vote during Bobby’s campaign and worked as a cook at the Lamppost Restaurant.

“Althea continued to educate and organize. She was on the board of the Prison Activist Resource Center, a key member of the New Orleans Chapter of the National Coalition to Free the Angola 3 and an organizer for Critical Resistance South.”

“Althea Francois,” writes the Louisiana Justice Institute, “embodied the finest and most basic ideals of empathy and generosity and inspired all who had the privilege of coming in contact with her.

“She has long been a leader in local organizing against the Prison Industrial Complex. In the late ‘90s, Althea worked to create a base for political prisoner work in New Orleans and was one of the main organizers in the campaign to free the Angola 3, three Black Panthers held in solitary confinement for their political beliefs. When Angola 3 member Robert King was released in February of 2001, he moved to the home of Althea and Marion Brown, another former Panther.

This photo of Althea Francois and Malik Rahim speaking at the Ashe Cultural Center in 2003 illustrates Orissa Arend’s new book, “Showdown in Desire: The Black Panthers Take a Stand in New Orleans.”

“Shortly before Katrina, Althea was able to purchase a home-base for her daughters and grandchildren in New Orleans’ Gentilly neighborhood. In 2005, the flooding of New Orleans ripped apart the security she had at long last established. The years since then were a tense balancing act between work in Atlanta, work in New Orleans, her children and her grandchildren. Though Althea rarely complained, she was beset with a number of crippling maladies – asthma, high-blood pressure and the incessant pressure of keeping a family together in these difficult times with never enough support.

“In the months after Katrina, she was one of those who came together to form a new organization, called Safe Streets / Strong Communities. Her dedication, vision and commitment guided the organization through several intense years of struggle over the city’s criminal justice policy. Her efforts brought real reforms, from the establishment of the city’s Office of the Police Monitor to uncovering and exposing the role of New Orleans police in post-Katrina killings.

“When told the news of her passing, former prisoner Robert King struggled to find words to express the depth of his sorrow. Invoking Matthew 25:35, he said: ‘”I was hungry and you fed me, was thirsty and you gave me drink, was in prison and you visited me.” Althea fed us with hope. She had an enormously giving spirit that we will all deeply miss.’

“Althea loved her daughters with the ferocity of a lioness and was so proud of their accomplishments. They were the center of her being.

“Sadly, Althea had no insurance and no savings, thus leaving her daughters not only with the grief of losing her, but with the challenge of raising funds for her funeral. If you can help with a donation to the family, please send it to: Olga Francois, c/o Todd Taylor, 7704 Benjamin St., New Orleans, LA 70118, (202) 277-0997.

Althea forever: My platonic love

“Almighty God has recalled a soul back that was a pillar in our struggle for human dignity and spiritual liberation,” writes Nassor Faruq Hassan (Ronald Ailsworth), a comrade of Althea’s in the Black Panther Party, who has been confined at Angola State Prison for 30 years. “She was the love of my life, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood.

“When I needed love, she was there giving me love and tender care. Whenever she smiled, her smile lighted up the world. My heart is heavy.

“Althea, I see and visualize you walking around heaven with Harriett, Martin, Malcolm, John Brown, Nat, George, Clara, Billie etc. There are no tears to be shed, only rejoicing for an African queen among queens, a soldier among soldiers.

“You fed the hungry – mentally, spiritually and physically – and clothed the needy. You gave the blood of your intellect for the liberation and spiritual salvation of all the oppressed and exploited people, the masses.

“Althea, my love, I’ll see you when I get there.”

Send our brother some love and light. Write to Ronald Ailsworth, 92888, Oak 2, Louisiana State Prison, Angola LA 70712.

Just what Haiti doesn’t need: Rwandan police

mary — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 03:45:47 +0000

by Ann Garrison

Outside the collapsed National Palace, symbol of Haitian sovereignty, U.N. troops hold back hungry Haitians demanding food, water and shelter to enable their families to survive. – Photo: AFP/Getty Images

In case anyone needed further evidence that President Paul Kagame’s Rwanda is the Pentagon’s proxy, 140 Rwandan police are about to undertake special training before heading to Haiti, as reported in the Rwanda New Times, because, according to Rwandan Police Chief Edmund Kayiranga, “Rwanda wants to be involved in promoting peace in other countries” and, if need be, they would send more peacekeepers to other countries.

Rwanda police are off to Haiti to promote peace, even as:

1) Grenades explode in Kigali in the run up to its 2010 presidential election, and two of three viable parties are still unable to register and field candidates against incumbent President Paul Kagame.

2) A new list of the five most horrible prisons on earth includes Rwanda’s Kigali Gitarama Prison and describes it as the most overcrowded penitentiary in the world, so overcrowded that prisoners have no choice but to stand up all day while their feet rot in filth, often developing gangrene, which may require amputation. (Amnesty International reported, in 2005, that Gitarama Prison was way overcrowded, with 7,477 prisoners in space designed for 3,000.)

Rwandan Police Superintendent Edmund Kayiranga

3) Top military commanders and government officials flee the country, and journalists go into hiding to escape arrest.

4) Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative Group, the Africa Faith and Justice Network, the Greens European Free Alliance and Sen. Russ Feingold, chair of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Africa, call for human rights, an end to attacks on political opposition, and a free and fair presidential campaign and election, with polls scheduled for Aug. 9, 2010.

And why does Haiti need all these U.S. and U.N. troops and now Rwandan police ‘peacekeepers’?

Even France accused the U.S. of occupying rather than aiding Haiti, the former jewel of the French empire, but it’s very difficult to interpret this as anything but France’s pseudo moral complaint against its longstanding imperial competitor – England and the Anglophone world – in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

Rwanda President Paul Kagame leads his troops.

Before the catastrophic Haitian earthquake on Jan. 12, 2010, Haitian lawyer and human rights activist Marguerite Laurent pointed to little known oil reserves and mineral riches to explain the already existing U.N. and U.S. occupation of her homeland, on Salon.com, CKUT Radio and the San Francisco Bay View.

Sound familiar? Where else do Rwandan troops, if not police, serve? Wherever the U.S. wants to project military force in Africa, including resource rich nations, like oil rich Sudan, which the U.S. forever threatens to invade “to stop genocide,” and now resource rich Haiti, which much of the world perceives as a part of Africa as much as a part of the Americas.

And oil and mineral rich D.R. Congo, where the Rwandan Army’s constant invasions and mineral theft in that country’s tortured eastern provinces were finally, in January 2009, officially sanctioned, when the Rwandan Defense Force collaborated with the Congolese Army (FARDC), the Rwandan CNDP militia and U.N. peacekeepers (MONUC) to, so they said, go after the FDLR, the Rwandan Hutu refugee militia. The FDLR is the eternal excuse for military aggression and mineral theft in eastern Congo.

The U.S., seeing the earthquake as good cover for occupying Haiti, held back aid flights in the early weeks to bring in some 20,000 troops – in addition to the thousands of U.N. troops already on the ground. – Photo: AFP

The Congolese FARDC and MONUC had been engaged in a fierce fight with the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), backed, in stealth, by the Rwandan Defense Force up until Jan. 20, 2009, when they suddenly joined forces, with the blessing and applause of the U.S. State Department and the assistance of AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command. Human Rights Watch, in May 2009, predicted that the consequence would be another human catastrophe in eastern Congo and, by December 2009, HRW and major news outlets in the region reported that it had.

This unlikely and unholy alliance emerged in eastern D.R. Congo on Jan. 20, 2009, Barack Obama’s Inauguration Day, and all eyes were on Washington, D.C., the first African American U.S. president, Rev. Rick Warren, celebrities dotting the crowds in the streets and Aretha Franklin’s hat.

But so little of the world heeds or makes sense of sub-Saharan African news that only a handful of bloggers, dissident journalists and scholars noted, on Jan. 20, that D.R. Congo had suddenly become a violent D.R. Disneyland.

After the earthquake, which killed as many as 300,000 Haitians, troops were assigned not to help people survive or even to begin cleanup but to arrest “looters.” – Photo: Reuters

In December 2009, Keith Harmon Snow reported, in Dissident Voice and the San Francisco Bay View, that soldiers of the Rwandan Defense Forces were being flown all the way across D.R. Congo, from its eastern border with Rwanda to its Western border with the Republic of Congo, in oil and timber rich Equateur Province, to join AFRICOM, U.N. peacekeepers (MONUC) and Belgian paratroopers in suppressing the Dongo Rebellion.

Why not Congolese soldiers? Because they lack the discipline of the Pentagon’s Rwandan proxy army and, as Keith Snow reported, many of them were defecting to join the Western Congolese fighters calling themselves the Resistance Patriots of Dongo.

Now, with 140 Rwandan police about to undertake training to serve as peacekeepers in Haiti, the first question is: Why peacekeepers? Didn’t Haiti suffer an earthquake, not a war? And aren’t 10,000 U.S. troops there already?

Why not 140 more Haitian police? Why Rwandans? If Haiti needs “peacekeepers within its own borders,” shouldn’t Haitians be best able to keep the peace in their own homeland?

Yes, but not the peace that those now managing the U.S. occupation of Haiti want.

In February 2007, the New Times reported that the FBI was training Rwandan police in modern interviewing and interrogating techniques and in counter-terrorism, criminal investigation and cyber crimes investigation.

San Francisco writer Ann Garrison writes for the San Francisco Bay View, Digital Journal, Examiner.com, OpEdNews, Global Research and Colored Opinions. This story first appeared on her blog, AnnGarrison.blogspot.com.

BMW: Black Man Working

mary — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:00:09 +0000

Bay Area Black Builders meet Saturday, March 13, 12 noon, at 1099 Sunnydale, San Francisco, and every second Saturday – contractors, workers, jobseekers welcome

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

All of us want to see Black men working. Some of us feel the pain of the chronic unemployed more deeply than others. Some of us understand that many institutions with power over us do not always act in our best interest.

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.

Drug cases dismissed due to evidence tampering in SFPD crime lab

mary — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 05:03:57 +0000

by Tamara Aparton

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

San Francisco – People charged with drug offenses in San Francisco may have their cases dropped or convictions overturned due to alleged evidence tampering and substandard conditions in the police crime lab, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi announced Wednesday.

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

The revelations are the latest in a long history of problems within the crime lab, Adachi said.

• 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.

Youth to celebrate a year of accomplishment at BMAGIC 5th Annual Winter Ball

NOLA vs. the po-po

mary — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:41:44 +0000

by Darwin Bond-Graham

“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

The veil of authority and legitimacy shielding most urban police forces against popular suspicion and distrust simply doesn’t exist in New Orleans. Hardly anyone likes or trusts the po-po.

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

The actual point of this piece is to reflect a little on the war currently raging between the people of New Orleans and the NOPD.

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

Lohman’s plea comes after the seven officers who shot Madison and Brissette were exonerated by a state court in 2008, in a trial that was widely perceived in New Orleans to be a formality of injustice, a kind of modern day Emmet Till affair. Indeed, when the officers arrived in 2007 to Central Lockup, on charges of murder and assault brought against them by a grand jury, they were rallied around by hundreds of fellow NOPD officers who fraternally sent a message across the entire town: “Don’t fuck with the force” and “We look after our own.”

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.”

Lil’ Wayne is already in prison, of course, having surrendered himself on Feb. 9 after being convicted on gun possession charges stemming back several years. As rap’s most prolific motormouth, Mr. Carter has an amazing body of work that includes more than a few references to the corruption and brutality of the police.

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/.

organized crime,

Three Days of Prayer for Haiti

mary — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 06:03:40 +0000

‘Back from Haiti’ report-backs feature a short version of the upcoming full length film ‘Haiti: Rising from the Ashes’ and the Medical-Media Team – Minister of Information JR, Dr. Chris Zamani, Naseema McElroy, R.N., videographer Siraj Fowler and filmmaker Angela Carroll – plus updates from Pierre Labossiere of the Haiti Action Committee on

Thursday, March 11, 7 p.m., at the Black Dot Café, 1195 Pine St., West Oakland;
Wednesday, March 17, 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

On Feb. 11, 2010, I was blessed to be a part of a media-medical team that arrived in Haiti to give aid and document the real conditions on the ground. The effort was made possible by a collaboration of organizations including the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund, the Haiti Action Committee and the POCC (Prisoners of Conscience Committee). Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to witness. I arrived the day before the one-month anniversary of the earthquake commemorated by three days of public prayer services all over the country. This was my experience in three different areas during the three National Days of Prayer for Haiti.

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 head of our medical team, Dr. Chris Zamani, treated and diagnosed many infections and amputees at this site. Media team leader and POCC Minister of Information JR Valrey and myself began to organize by joining in on a basketball game with the Haitian youth, exchanging music and giving away food.

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

On our tour of Port au Prince we were accompanied by Gadi, a Haitian translator I met the night before in Delmas. Gadi helped to describe the different scenes of devastation that used to be his social hangouts: memories now reduced to rubble.

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

I was blessed to go on two different trips to Cite Soleil on two different missions: both to help the people in different ways. My first trip was with the media team on a mission to deliver water to the starving and thirsty people throughout the city.

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

My second trip to Cite Soleil was with the medical team led by Dr. Chris Zamani. The team pulled into Cite Soleil and within minutes had managed to set up a curbside clinic. Young Haitian mothers began bringing their children to be checked out by Dr. Chris. More and more people came because a doctor coming to their neighborhood was unheard of … a spectacle.

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.

Native Youth Movement’s war for land and freedom continues

mary — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:00:34 +0000

by Native Youth Movement Society of Warriors

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

Indigenous peoples are celebrating worldwide after claiming victory over the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Invaders were warned not to enter our lands and now they are to blame for the “worst Olympic games ever.”

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/.

The Haiti response: Guns or doctors?

mary — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 06:14:21 +0000

by Mumia Abu-Jamal

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.

As Haitians engage in their latest war for survival, it is instructive to see how certain neighboring nations responded to this crisis, for a nation’s response unveils its motive, its fears and its hopes.

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.

And the former Cuban head of state turned to Haitian history: “Haiti is a net product of the colonial, capitalist and imperialist system imposed on the world. Haiti’s slavery and subsequent poverty were imposed from abroad. That terrible earthquake occurred after the Copenhagen climate change summit, where the most elemental rights of 192 member states were trampled upon.”

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.

Last rites for the USA

mary — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:48:45 +0000

by Cindy Sheehan

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.

A U.S. Supreme Court case decision from 1886, County of Santa Clara v. the Southern Pacific Railroad (SPRR), is the reason today that the U.S. is a corporate empire.

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.

Of Titanic proportions: Hunters Point Shipyard Superfund site and early transfer in the name of ‘development’

mary — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:32:13 +0000

by Nyese Joshua

Nyese Joshua – Photo: Carol Harvey

Naturally occurring asbestos (NOA), short fibers v. long fibers, hundreds of named and unidentified chemical compounds mixed with condos, parks, recreation, people and – oh, yes – a state-of-the-art stadium all at the Hunters Point Shipyard in San Francisco. Chemical compounds combined with parks and people – what is it all about?

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

for the audio and www.realasponse.com/wilma.ppt for the slides.

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.

Excuse me while I pause to dry my eyes as I imagine what the hell is really going on. What a sad day we are at when in San Francisco – arguably the most beautiful city in the world – kowtows to drunken greed driven by pressuring principality political figures and others.

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.

OBAMACARE: a dream deferred?

mary — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:01:26 +0000

by Ahimsa Porter Sumchai, M.D.

“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

Back on the front burner! The Obama White House has taken the “bull by the horns” in an effort to move the momentum of national health reform forward in the midst of stagnation, charges of political corruption and back room deal making and a shifting tide of public opinion regarding the need for massive overhaul of our nation’s health care system. On Thursday, Feb. 25, I watched the proceedings of the historic Blair House bipartisan summit on health reform. In advance of that televised forum, the White House released a blueprint health care plan drafted by the Obama administration.

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.

Ethnic Studies resolution passes School Board unanimously

mary — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 04:40:29 +0000

by Coleman Advocates

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

“How can I learn who I can be, when I don’t even know who I am? Ethnic Studies provides me the foundations to learn who I AM!” declared Monet Wilson, a Y-MAC leader at Balboa High School.

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.

House vote imminent on Rep. Maxine Waters’ bill to cancel Haiti’s debt

mary — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 06:48:50 +0000

by Michael Levin

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

Washington – Legislation introduced by Congresswoman Maxine Waters, D-Calif., to cancel all debt owed by Haiti to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and other multilateral institutions was passed by the House Financial Services Subcommittee on International Monetary Policy and Trade during a markup on Thursday, March 4, following a subcommittee hearing on debt relief for Haiti. The legislation could be voted on by the entire House of Representatives as early as this week.

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

H.R. 4573 also requires the Secretary of the Treasury to commence immediate efforts to urge other bilateral, multilateral and private creditors to cancel immediately and completely all debts owed by Haiti to such creditors.

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.

John Prendergast’s selective outrage at African crimes

mary — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:00:49 +0000

Black Star News editorial

Ugandan President Yoweri K. Museveni

If a person really cared about human suffering – torture, mass rape, pillage, torching of homes with people alive inside, targeted rapes to spread HIV/AIDS, burying people alive, chopping off of limbs – then such a person would condemn these acts wherever they may occur in Africa and demand that the perpetrators of the crimes be brought to justice.

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

But Prendergast loses credibility and commits a grave disservice to human rights fighters throughout Africa when he tirelessly agitates against Bashir – and excludes Museveni – through his lobbying efforts in Congress, through public events, campus events and non-stop press releases.

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

More than 7 million Congolese are estimated to have perished through the Uganda and associated atrocities. The ICJ granted Congo $10 billion in reparations and The Wall Street Journal reported on June 8, 2006, that Gen. Museveni urged then U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to quash the ICC’s own separate probe.

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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