San Francisco Bay View

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.

Time for a U.S. revolution: 15 reasons

mary — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:43:34 +0000

by Bill Quigley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cartoon: Khalil Bendib, bendib.com

The U.S. is not only involved in senseless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the U.S. now maintains 700 military bases worldwide and another 6,000 in the U.S. and our territories. Young men and women join the military to protect the U.S. and to get college tuition and healthcare coverage and killed and maimed in elective wars and being the world’s police. Wonder whose assets they are protecting and serving?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is time.

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

Berkeley Housing Authority’s shady operations

mary — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 05:09:28 +0000

by Lynda Carson

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

Berkeley – According to documents recently released online by the Office of the City Manager in Berkeley, the Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA) may receive kickbacks from a local non-profit housing developer in a scheme to privatize, revitalize and sell off its public housing. The scheme involves a vice president of consultant ICF International.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Frank Greene, Silicon Valley technology pioneer, dies at 71

mary — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 06:47:00 +0000

by Hattie Carwell

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

Frank S. Greene, who removed countless barriers for Blacks in technology and business and expanded opportunities in those fields for young people, died at age 71 unexpectedly the day after Christmas 2009. A “Celebration of the Remarkable Life and Work of Frank S. Greene Jr., Ph.D.,” will be held Saturday, March 6. The ceremony begins at 1:30 at Santa Clara University Mission Church, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, and will be followed by a reception at 2:30 in the Williman Room of Benson Memorial Center.

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

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

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

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

He earned a B.S. in electrical engineering from Washington University, an M.S. from Purdue and a Ph.D., also in electrical engineering, from Santa Clara University. He was president of the GO-Positive educational foundation. The GO-Positive Foundation offers leadership programs with “core positive values” for high school and college students. He is the author of “Leadership in the NOW: Power and Endurance” and “Leadership in the NOW: Success Guide.”

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

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

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

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

Oscar nomination for ‘Music by Prudence’ about disabled Zimbabwean singer Prudence Mabhena

mary — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 06:37:19 +0000

“Music by Prudence” director Roger Ross Williams and the star, Prudence Mabhena, learned to trust and understand each other as they made the film. – Photo: Osato Dixon

“Music by Prudence,” a film by Roger Ross Williams, has been nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Documentary: Short Subject. Produced by iThemba Productions and Elinor Burkett, the 33-minute documentary stars Prudence Mabhena, a talented young woman from Zimbabwe suffering from arthrogryphosis, a rare disorder that severely deforms the joints of the body. Despite overwhelming odds, Prudence, who sings in five languages, is sharing her astounding talent with the world.

Africans with disabilities

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally, Prudence is awarded a scholarship to KG6.

A new life … and Liyana

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

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

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

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

In 2006, the struggling school scrapes together the money to send Liyana to compete in Music Crossroads, an all-Africa competition being held in Mozambique. The journey to Mozambique is long and arduous. They get there just in time to compete and come in second. The prize? A tour of Sweden. The band performs and gains a name.

Arrest, prison, blackouts and hunger

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

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

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

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

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

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

Narrated by Prudence

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

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

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

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

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

Synopsis of ‘Music by Prudence’

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

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

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

Against these, the voice of a woman: clear and strong. “Liyana,” she sings. “Yes,” they respond. “Where are you?” she calls. “We are here,” they answer. “Come,” she beckons. “We are coming.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prudence Mabhena – Photo: Errol Webber

The movie’s final scene is a concert by Liyana. The crowd applauds and whistles, then the screen darkens, leaving only Prudence’s lustrous, smiling face. Recalling the opening sequence, her face is in perfect symmetry to the African sky, rushing and streaming towards hope.

Roger Ross Williams, director-producer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Roger Ross Williams – Photo: Marc Yankus

“My ancestors were slaves imported from the western lowland coast of Africa to the lowlands of the Carolinas. They were rice cultivators, which is why they were imported to America: to cultivate rice before cotton took over. Malaria hit, but they were immune, and survived to settle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Red Cross collected $255 million for Haiti relief effort but only sent $80 million!

mary — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:10:07 +0000

by Ester Goldberg

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

After the earthquake in Haiti, the American Red Cross became the go-to nonprofit for donating to the Haitian relief effort, since they could be trusted to properly handle your money. Or so we thought.

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

The obvious question is: Where did it go?

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

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

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

In other words, the Red Cross decided Haiti only needed $80 MILLION. So any money they receive over that amount is being used to pad their general fund. Which isn’t such a bad thing. But it’s not the first time they’ve done this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Engineering Firm Seeks Subconsultants

mary — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:32:49 +0000

Emeryville-based construction engineering and inspection firm seeks UDBE subconsultants for Caltrans RFQ No. 59A0737. We seek inspectors and Assistant Structural Materials Representatives from women-owned or minority-owned firms. Must be registered DBE with CUCP. Please send qualifications to jmehta@altavistasolutions.com no later than March 12th.

Haiti: A tale of two disasters

mary — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:15:07 +0000

by Chris Zamani M.D.

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

Haiti is a nation that has served as an important example for both the forces of liberation and the forces of oppression since its inception as the first Black republic in the modern world in 1804. What was true then and is even more true today is that the power of example has never been underestimated by the forces of colonialism and imperialism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We served in a tent city in the Delmas area of the capital and at a curb-side clinic in the slum area of Cite Soleil. It was in these two locations that we found a very different level of resources and engagement by international relief workers and foreign missionaries.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mainstream media leads us to believe that the soldiers were there for security in a violent and chaotic environment. Nothing could be further from the truth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘The Breach’

mary — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 02:37:03 +0000

Review by Wanda Sabir

Photo: Wanda Sabir

The traffic was horrific Thursday evening when I got into San Francisco. I’d planned to go by TJ’s on Masonic for a salad for dinner, but the traffic was so slow heading for Fell Street, I got off and backtracked to Ninth Street, got the salad and then drove the surface streets to the Buriel Clay Theatre at the African American Center for Art and Culture, 762 Fulton St., where I ate half my salad in the car before getting out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo: Wanda Sabir

Joanna’s character was spinning on a ladder – her form beautiful in motion as her body balanced on a rung, her skirt billowing out, beauty found within a grotesque state we filed by, her body now slumped over the rung, literally spun.

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

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

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

I don’t see her whip, but I obey.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo: Wanda Sabir

As we walked under the loading dock, Idris tells me later that the building was once a brewery. We saw objects draped in white cloth: “That’s where they keep the bodies,” one young man said to a friend. I asked him to repeat it. I wasn’t sure if I heard him correctly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you a plant?” He asks.

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

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

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

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

Havana harvest: Organic agriculture in Cuba’s capital

mary — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 05:20:31 +0000

by Mickey Ellinger and Scott Braley

The 44th Street and Fifth Avenue Organoponico in Havana was founded in 1992, at the beginning of the “special period.” Each weekday the ripe beds are picked and sold to the neighborhood at the Punta de Venta on site. – Photo: Scott Braley

We are looking at the end of (relatively) cheap oil, food and transportation, crises that have already had a devastating impact on Third World nations and communities of color. These issues hit Cuba a stunning blow in the early 1990s, which they overcame by using what they have – scientific intelligence, organization and human energy instead of money and machines.

On a recent visit we learned that Cuba has been raising its fruits and vegetables organically for more than 15 years, using worm and vegetable compost and integrated and natural pest management to raise crops for its people. In the process they have decentralized agricultural production, tripled farmers’ average income, built stronger communities and shown the way to living well after the end of cheap oil.

When Cuba overthrew the dictator Batista in 1959, wealthy Europeans, Americans and Cubans fled the revolutionary society and the U.S. cut off economic and political relations. Cuba turned to the Soviet Union, and for about 30 years exported its sugar, nickel, coffee and tobacco to the socialist world at better than market prices. Russian oil powered agriculture and Russian cars and trucks filled the roads.

At the 44th Street and Fifth Avenue Organoponico in Havana, the banner says, “From our beds to your table.” Amaranth (shown) is an insect attractant planted on the edges to keep insects from going further into the garden. – Photo: Scott Braley

The plantations owned by foreigners became state farms. Cubans were paid better and had more say in their working conditions, but the structure of the economy – what was produced and how – did not change that much. People worked on big farms drenched in fertilizer and pesticides, and almost 60 percent of Cuba’s food was imported, paid for with income from the socialist bloc.

By the 1980s, Cuban biologists and ecologists were already challenging these methods and urging attention to integrated pest management and methods of cultivation better suited to Cuba’s relatively infertile tropical soil. Their studies, demonstration projects and policy papers laid the basis for rapid change in agriculture once the crisis forced changes upon Cuba.

For Cuba, the end of cheap oil came in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed and its trade agreements with Cuba collapsed with it. Overnight, Cuba lost 80 percent of its oil imports. Cuba was thrown back into the world market, and the price of its exports fell dramatically. The U.S. tightened its trade embargo and Cuba had to come up with hard currency for all its imports.

The 44th Street and Fifth Avenue Organoponico in Havana was founded in 1992 at the beginning of the “special period.” The members of the cooperative make a production plan and planting schedule each November. They always grow lettuce, both acelga espanol and acelga bok choy, spinach, radishes, green onions, garlic chives (which they call ajo montana), arugula, chicory, green beans, carrots, watercress, apio (celery), parsley, broccoli and an Argentine green bean that looks like a snap pea on steroids. They also raise medicinals – aloe vera, manzanilla (camomile), tilo, mejorana, cana mexicana, yerba buena, and another kind of mint. A sign explains the health benefits of chicory. – Photo: Scott Braley

This crisis, which Cuba calls the “special period,” hit the people hard. The food ration shrank; and although no one starved, people were hungry. People lost weight. Cubans began to suffer from diseases of malnutrition for the first time since the revolution.

Cuban society not only survived this crisis but actually used it as an opportunity to make major changes in how it raises food. Today tens of thousands of small gardens, ranging from patios and back yards to medium sized truck farms, produce more vegetables and tubers than before the crisis, using organic methods and manual labor.

One immediate way people confronted the food crisis was by starting to grow food in their own back yards, in vacant lots, even on their balconies. State institutions did the same. Catherine Murphy, researcher for Food First, writes: “The Ministry of Agriculture (MINAG) tore up the front lawn at their modern headquarters in Havana, and planted lettuce, bananas and beans. Many employees that regularly worked behind desks began watering and weeding to ensure a steady food supply for the ministry’s lunchroom.”

Alamar – people’s farm in Havana’s suburbs

Members of our Global Exchange tour visit the Alamar Organoponico – in front, Mickey Ellinger, and in back, Jesus Garcia, our guide and translator from Amistur. Miguel Salcines Lopez told us that when he was working in the Ministry of Agriculture at the beginning of the “special period,” his job was to found the farm, which was one of the first and is now one of the largest in Havana. – Photo: Scott Braley

One of those Ministry of Agriculture bureaucrats was Miguel Salcines Lopez, who came out from behind his desk to learn to be a real farmer. Today he is president of the Alamar Food co-op in Havana’s eastern suburbs, which he helped establish in 1998 on land that had been used to dump building materials.

After the density of central Havana, turning into Alamar is a relief: long straight rows of greens, ranging from the nearly yellow green of lettuce through the gray green of the cabbage family to the deep red greens of beet tops, like a striped afghan against the red soil.

The central part of the co-op is built out of recycled materials: wood, tin roofing, one building with windows that clearly came from a bus, hand painted signs.

Alamar has 160 members, 42 of them women, 63 seniors over the age of 60, two Ph.Ds. They farm on 10 hectares (a hectare is 2.6 acres) and produce 80 tons of food per acre with as many as five rotations a year of some crops. The co-op receives credits and services from the government, contracts to deliver crops for schools, hospitals and the food ration that every Cuban gets – people tell us it’s about half a month’s worth of food – and sells the surplus.

Profit is divided among the members according to a formula that allocates shares based on seniority as well as hours worked. Their average wage is 950 pesos per month (about $40 US), about three times the average Cuban wage. The seniors also have a pension, and the co-op provides not only breakfast and lunch but interest-free loans, work clothes, detergent, hair cuts and beauty parlor services.

At the 44th Street and Fifth Avenue Organoponico in Havana, crops are protected from insects by amaranth, marigolds and basil (shown), which repel insects and are planted at the end of each bed. Onions or garlic (shown) are also planted on the perimeter of each bed to repel insects. – Photo: Scott Braley

Cuba’s soil is not naturally high in nutrition for plants, so Alamar, like most of Cuba’s gardens and farms, nourishes the soil with worm castings. The worms eat garden scraps as well as manure from Alamar’s animals, supplemented by manure from neighboring farms. In turn, they provide worm compost for smaller gardens and the storefronts that serve individual gardeners.

Unlike the smaller co-ops in the city itself, Alamar has domestic animals, even a pair of oxen that they use to bring new areas under cultivation. Most but not all of its crops are grown in the raised beds that are standard for Cuban organic agriculture and, except for the oxen, all the labor is done by hand.

Farming in the city

“Del cantero a la mesa: from the garden bed to the table,” says the banner outside the urban garden at 44th Street and Fifth Avenue in Havana’s Playa district. People are lined up at the counter to buy today’s harvest: lettuce, spinach, bok choy, garlic chives.

Havana has almost 10,000 gardens, ranging from back yards to truck farms like Alamar. The 44th Street organoponico (the official term for the organic gardens in raised beds), founded in 1992, takes up half a city block on what used to be a dumping place. Its 48 raised concrete beds are filled with a planting mixture made of soil brought in from farther out in the country, mixed with worm compost from a bigger garden near them. They start the plants in three shade houses, harvest a bed all at once and set out new plants the same day.

They grow sorghum around the edges of the whole garden as a trap plant; the bugs like sorghum and munch on it instead of the leaf vegetables. Garden director Roberto Perez Sanchez says that the sorghum “keeps the insects entertained.” Basil and marigold bloom at the foot of every bed to ward off more insects; and onions or garlic planted close together as a border inside each bed is a third line of defense.

This planting method gets results: They harvest half a dozen crops a year on average. Some plants like spinach go from garden to table in as little as 15 days. And the leaf crops are organically grown – beautiful, succulent, unblemished.

They also raise medicinal herbs – aloe vera, chamomile, lime, marjoram, two kinds of mint, and chicory. A sign at the counter from the macrobiotic researchers at Havana’s world-famous Finlay Institute explains the health benefits of chicory: “a friend of the liver.”

The garden co-operative has eight members: three in production, three in sales, a biological specialist that makes trichoderma (a biological control for nematodes) and director Perez, who is the agronomist and administrator. They contract part of the crop to the government to redistribute to schools, hospitals and workplaces to supplement what these institutions grow on site. They sell the rest directly: 80 percent of the profit goes to the workers, 15 percent to the state and 5 percent is saved as a capital reserve.

Agricultural extension Havana style

This is downtown Havana from the old Morro Fort. Havana is one of the oldest cities in the Western Hemisphere, founded in the first years of the 16th century. – Photo: Scott Braley

The consultorio at Seventh Avenue and 60th Street is full of customers, buying seeds and worm compost, consulting with specialists Odalys Bello Barrera and Magaly Vines Diaz. These state stores support Havana’s backyard gardeners. A leaflet series called “ABC of the Producer” explains planting, soil, worm culture, the use of biological controls for pests.

The consultorio conducts workshops for institutions planning an autoconsumo (garden at an institution to feed its members) and consults with individual backyard gardeners, helping them plan their plots. They diagnose pest damage and recommend remedies. Although a state agency, they are self-financed and share half the net proceeds, often as much as five times the average Cuban wage.

What makes it work?

Of course there are challenges: convincing more people to see farming as an honored and well-paid job, training new farmers, allotting and preparing more farm land, encouraging more people to grow food in their back yards or on their patios.

But farming in Havana works. It fills an important social need and has government and social support. By Cuban standards it is well paid. It’s a place where workers have collective control over their work, influenced by consumer demand, community needs and government direction. And it’s not opposed by developers or corporations who want to make a profit from the land.

What Cuba can teach us about changing from gigantic pesticide- and fertilizer-heavy monoculture to urban agriculture and sustainable farming points the way to sustainability for people all over the world.

Urban farmers in the United States face different opportunities and different challenges. On the one hand, community activists from Oakland to Detroit are organizing urban farms as part of a strategy of environmental justice and community empowerment, and it will be a topic at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit in late June as activists converge under the slogan, “Another world is possible; another U.S. is necessary.”

And on the other hand, Fortune magazine in January featured an article on a Detroit financier who smells money in urban agriculture and is thinking of investing tens of millions of dollars in a land grab to run for-profit urban farms on Detroit’s vacant land. Whether urban farming is a resource for profit or community power depends on what we are able to make happen in the next while.

Scott Braley is an Oakland-based photographer who works for educational, non-profit and social justice organizations. Mickey Ellinger is an Oakland-based freelance journalist. You can see more Cuba pictures and other examples of their work on their websites, www.scottbraley.com and www.mickeyellinger.com.

The Bay View’s First Amendment Campaign: an update

mary — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 03:50:15 +0000

by Randall “Sondai” Ellis

California’s prisons reserve some of their harshest punishment for prisoners accused of “gang” membership simply for possessing anything mentioning George Jackson – and, because the Bay View often mentions George Jackson, sometimes for merely possessing a copy of the Bay View newspaper. Gov. Schwarzenegger admitted that he decided to execute Stanley Tookie Williams primarily because Tookie dedicated one of his books to a long list of Black heroes that included George Jackson.

As reported in previous issues of the Bay View, the Bay View, its readers, the community and those of us behind enemy lines had been working with attorney Anthony D. Prince to develop a litigation strategy that would address the state’s suppression of legitimate historical and cultural expressions by relegating those expressions and beliefs to the realms of gang activity simply because it may refer to historical figures that the state deems objectionable. Working with the attorney, we sought to expose this blatant attack upon the First Amendment by showing how the state continues to deny the safe exchange of the wealth of ideas contained in the free marketplace.

Attorney Prince sought to protect the Bay View’s right to publish what it chose to and deemed to be newsworthy under the First Amendment and to protect prisoners’ rights to view, express and even comment upon issues that continue to affect them and their communities. As the United States Supreme Court recently recognized in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, “the First Amendment is the life blood of the press” (according to James Taranto in the Jan. 30, 2010, Wall Street Journal story “The Media and Corporate Free Speech”). And even further back than the Citizens ruling the high court “said unanimously … that the notion that a newspaper should be kept from publishing what it wanted to publish – even at least one day of the year, even for a supposedly good cause – was alien to this country” (First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams quoted Jan. 30, 2010, in the same Wall Street Journal story).

Well, this is to update our readers to our recent setback: It appears as though for some unexplained reason that our attorney has disappeared. We have not received any word at all as to the whereabouts of our attorney. Although it may be premature to speculate as to why we were so suddenly abandoned by our attorney, as in any struggle, we realize that there will be setbacks, but we are always hopeful that new counsel will step forward and assist us with our lofty endeavor, specifically an attorney experienced in the First Amendment, but all legal help is welcomed. Contact Sister Mary Ratcliff at the San Francisco Bay View newspaper.

Bay View editor Mary Ratcliff can be reached at (415) 671-0789 or editor@sfbayview.com. Please contact the Bay View if you have any information about attorney Anthony Prince and why his phone is disconnected and his mail returned. We are concerned about his wellbeing, and the State Bar has no information. To correspond with Randall “Sondai” Ellis, who attorney Anthony Prince told the Bay View would be the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, write to Randall Ellis, C-79874, SHU D2-213, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95531-7500.

Leaking Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant shutdown ordered as Obama pledges $50 billion for nuclear power

mary — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 06:23:22 +0000

by Bob Nichols

Nuclear power opponents from at least three states converged in Brattleboro, Vermont, for a rally Sunday, Feb. 21, calling for Vermont Yankee to stop operating immediately until the source of radioactive tritium leaking from the plant is found. Their call for a permanent shut down when the plant’s license expires in 2012 was echoed Wednesday by a 26-4 vote in the Vermont Senate. – Photo: Susan Keese

In the depths of a near-Depression, the Vermont Senate on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly for health and safety over jobs and tax revenue when it chose not to renew Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant’s operating license when it expires in 2012. Unless Entergy, the plant’s owner, can stop the leaks of radioactive tritium, the 26-4 vote means the plant will shut down in March 2012, taking 650 jobs and $9 million in tax revenue with it.

Vermont Yankee is a 38-year-old decaying nuclear reactor running flat out at 120 percent of capacity in Vernon, Vermont. It is about 30 miles north of Mount Holyoke College. A few miles further south are Amherst College and hundreds of other colleges and prep schools.

Millions of people are within its range. Should Vermont Yankee lose enough coolant to expose the glowing uranium core to air, it catches on fire and the hydrogen gas manufactured normally in the reactor explodes.

Vermont Yankee is sitting on top of its own outhouse-toilet-in-the-woods, a 100m by 50m by 9m (m = meter, or about 39 inches) underground “lake” of highly radioactive reactor coolant vigorously pumped there by Vermont Yankee itself already.

This poisonous lake is about the size of a football field and 35 feet deep – maybe even bigger, according to Arnie Gunderson, a former nuclear engineer, nuclear company executive and nuclear consultant to the Vermont Senate.

What’s more, the approximately 1,900 thermal megawatt reactor will supply as much power as is necessary to pump ever more scalding hot radioactive coolant to the football field sized underground lake.

As is usual, an obliging and well paid Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) sees nothing unusual in the overall situation. The NRC is a federal agency in Washington, D.C., far removed from the woods of New England.

The NRC has officially placed 27 of America’s 104 big nuclear hot water heaters in the leak reactor coolant category, though it is known that all nuclear reactors are designed to leak even when operating normally.

All 11 big nuclear reactors in the D.C.-Chesapeake Bay area are leaking reactor coolant. East Coast writer Cathy Garger exposed this D.C. area scandal – not the laid back and easy going national anti-nuke groups like Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), Beyond Nuclear or any of the many others in the 17 million person greater D.C. metro Chesapeake Bay Area.

The 2007 collapse of a Vermont Yankee cooling tower convinced many residents to become anti-nuclear activists. Now they’re celebrating the impending shutdown of Vermont’s only nuclear power plant.

It is unknown at this stage if all the Vermont Yankee reactor coolant will gush out into the underground reactor coolant lake or not. According to ABC News, two environmental organizations, Conservation Law Foundation and the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, have “asked the U.S. Justice Department to launch a criminal probe of Vermont Yankee nuclear plant officials, saying they had provided false information under oath and operated the plant with ‘careless disregard’ of the potential for leaking radioactive substances.”

On Jan. 7, Vermont Yankee officials announced that the plant was leaking tritium into the groundwater and the following week it was revealed that they had lied to state regulators and lawmakers – under oath – “by saying the plant did not have the sort of underground piping that could carry tritium,” ABC News reported. State Attorney General William Sorrell has launched a criminal fraud investigation.

Ironically, Vermont Yankee’s threat to human health and the environment and its owner’s attempted coverup made news at the same time President Obama took note of the fine job America’s nuclear reactors are doing by approving the all necessary loan guarantees to a Southern company to build two more big reactors in Georgia to heat water for electricity.

The NRC is expected to play ball and approve the reactor applications for unapproved reactor designs. Loan guarantees are necessary since Wall Street and private bankers refuse to fund the big reactors. Obama says he’s willing to approve loan guarantees in excess of $50 billion to fund nuclear power.

Notes

1. “Senate Votes to Close VT Yankee,” VPIRG, Feb. 23, 2010.

2. “Nuclear power plants and other large nuclear facilities in the United States” by Ace Hoffman of Animated Software, San Deigo.

3. “Another DC Area Stand Down – As Radioactive Groundwater Due to Hit Chesapeake Bay” by Cathy Garger, Axis of Logic, Jan. 3, 2010.

Bob Nichols is a Project Censored Award winner and correspondent for the San Francisco Bay View newspaper. Nichols reports on the two nuclear weapons laboratories in the Bay Area, war and nuclear topics. He can be reached at duweapons@gmail.com.

Blacks working in Black communities: a revolutionary idea!

mary — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:50:10 +0000

Bay Area Black Builders meets every second Saturday; next meeting is March 13, 12 noon, 1099 Sunnydale, Vis Valley, San Francisco

by Joseph Debro

Six days after a provocative interview with Joseph Debro was broadcast by CBS5, two armed white ex-cops working for Lennar showed up at the mosque in Hunters Point for the Feb. 18 standing-room-only meeting sponsored by EPA on the City/Lennar Draft Environmental Impact Report. They were arrested.

Young Black men have been killing each other for decades. It has gone mostly unnoticed in the larger community. These murders are only reported as criminal acts in order to sell the news. No notice has been paid to the root causes of this violence. No attempt has been made to cure this pathology. These violent acts are used to justify hiring more police. These police are an occupying force.

It appears that a Kabuki (provocative statement) that I presented to the press (Mr. Debro was interviewed by CBS5 News on Feb. 12; see CBS5 interviews Bay Area Black Builders: ‘The only thing this country understands is violence’ – ed.) is the only way to attract attention to this horrible situation. I suggested unemployment in the Black community is directly related to Black people being locked out of the public works construction in our communities. My Kabuki imagined that these same Black youngsters who kill each other might turn their guns on those who are using Black community turf to sell their labor. This Kabuki suggested that white people might be in danger working in a Black community without a diversified crew.

Alarms went off. The messenger was vilified. The message was elevated. Working a diversified crew in a Black community is a revolutionary idea. It was not done in the Western Addition, it was not done in the Fillmore, it was not done in Hayes Valley, it was not done when the Third Street rail was laid, and it is not being done at the Hunters Point Shipyard.

Why should it be done here and now? Why should it be done in Hunters Point?

Federal money comes into San Francisco, to a large extent, because of the number of poor people in Hunters Point, Bayview and Vis Valley. This money is used to build structures in those communities. The people who are the reason for the money coming in are prohibited from working on those structures. Instead of jobs and contracts, they are given government cheese and Section 8 housing.

This is not unlike the welfare that the Black community has been handed over the past 50 years. Keep them dependent and poor. Do not build self-sufficiency. Keep them dependent. We need a dependent poor community. If we cannot develop and maintain one, we will import one. Our borders are porous because we need to import poor people to supplement the poor Black population.

There have been some unintended consequences from my public Kabuki. Two white ex-cops working for Lennar appeared at the mosque armed (for the Feb. 18 standing-room-only meeting sponsored by EPA on the City/Lennar Draft Environmental Impact Report and were arrested – ed.). This incident was not reported in the major press.

The San Francisco police called me. They were worried that my call for mitigation of Black violence might spill over into the white community. White workers were feeling some guilt about non-diverse work crews. Some organizations to which I belong felt obligated to distance themselves from my revolutionary ideas. A Black man working was too strong a statement for some people. The San Francisco Examiner is reporting that the non-diverse crew at the shipyard was afraid to come to work.

Bay Area Black Builders does not advocate violence. We do advocate doing all that is required to unlock the doors to economic opportunity for Black people. We do plan to make it uncomfortable for public officials and large white contractors to continue to keep us locked out of the construction process, funded largely by a census of poor people.

If the thought of a Black man working is not too revolutionary an idea, we would like you to join us. We plan to picket the library site in Hunters Point and the Cox school site in Oakland. Our phone tree will announce the date.

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.

The earthquake takes Port au Prince back to the Stone Age

mary — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 06:12:39 +0000

Haiti report-back, Part 3

by Minister of Information JR

The Haitian capitol, the Palace, was destroyed in the earthquake, as you can see in the background. Many believe that the international community is leaving the Palace rubble in place to symbolize what they believe Haiti is now: a broken country of the descendants of rebellious slaves who beat their great general Napoleon and who dared to ask for reparations for the money they were forced to pay France so that they could be recognized internationally by other countries, most notably the U.S. – Photo: Minister of Information JR

Downtown Port au Prince, Haiti, looks like it was hit with an atomic bomb. Many say it was hit with a United States military-made weather weapon. Most people live in tents or makeshift tents, and some live in damaged cave-like buildings.

It is hard to put into words what I saw. There were so many buildings that were pancaked, meaning with the ceiling touching the floor and the supporting walls, in between, crushed. Hella people are dead in the rubble, and you can smell their bodies rotting.

There are more buildings blown out and crushed then there are standing intact by far. We passed by an indoor flea-market-like spot that I was in last time that I was in Port au Prince. It was gone.

Journalist Siraj Fowler accompanied me as part of the medical-media crew that was sent to Haiti by the Prisoners of Conscience Committee, the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund, the SF Bay View newspaper and the Block Report Radio show. Here he is in front of the Palace on the first of the three National Days of Prayer. – Photo: Minister of Information JR

We saw the Palace, the Haitian version of the White House, first up close and then up high, a ways back. It totally fell off of its foundation in like four places.

Surrounding the Palace, thousands of people live outside in the elements in a shanty-town, some in bedsheet and stick houses, on dirt. People were praying at a Christian prayer service outside of the Palace in bleached white on Feb. 12, the first day of the National Days of Prayer, marking a month since the quake.

The people at this event were deeply religious and deeply involved in the ceremony. There was a youngsta with a deep gash in his head watching the ceremony, like it was normal. It kind of fucked me up, for lack of a better term.

This is an example of how many of the buildings folded during the earthquake in Haiti. As you can see, the supporting beams were crushed while the ceiling fell on people intact. Based on what I saw in one day in Port au Prince, I believe that there is at least 300,000 people dead as a direct result of this earthquake. – Photo: Minister of Information JR

It was cold blooded to see how these Haitians were/are being done by the international community. Everybody is taking photo-ops and making speculations on land, but nobody cares whether the people live or die.

I am making this assessment based on what I saw on the ground not being delivered to these thousands, if not millions, of people. Where’s the money? I don’t know, but I do know if relief is not getting to Port au Prince, the capital city, chances are the other cities and rural areas are most likely suffering more.

This youngsta was at the first day of prayer at the capitol, on Feb. 12, ’10, marking the one month anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti. Seeing a child with such a serious wound out in the open is normal from what I saw in Haiti. – Photo: Minister of Information JR

After we left the prayer service, we went to SOPUDEP, the school where our tour guide, Rea Dol, is the director. The school building was heavily damaged and the desks and stuff in the classrooms were all broke up.

There were people living at the school who didn’t have any other place to go. When we were on the plane to Haiti and told the airline attendant where we were going, she gave us a bag of crackers, peanuts, pretzels, cheez-its, cookies and more. We gave it to Rea. She passed it out at SOPUDEP to people who might have to eat that stuff for dinner.

One young woman we met in the area has had a fever for a month and saw a number of doctors who have not been able to cure her. Rea helps to take care of her.

This photo was taken on the one month anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti. Many of these people were participating in the National Day of Prayer, but this is also where many of them live – right where they are sitting. Over a million people are homeless, and there is a policy enforced by the Haitian police that people cannot sleep indoors at night. So Haitians are forced by law into the streets even if they have a house to go to. It is part of the U.S. policy to make people leave Port au Prince, much like what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Amerikkka. – Photo: Minister of Information JR

Going back to the Jim Crow mission where we are staying doesn’t feel hot at all. But where else are we going to go in another country?

For the first few hours of being in Haiti, I was silent, soaking in everything that I saw, all the dead bodies that I smelled, so I could report it to the people. It was definitely an intense experience. I just thought about the fact that even though I’d soon be leaving, I feel like this – yet this is these people’s life. They live here.

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

by AlJazeera English

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