Quirky Black Girls! Yes-sir-eee!

M.dot's done it again. Already this morning, she introduced me to some folks and a space I've added to my blog roll. I wanted to reprint their Manifesta in electric purple, but that turned out not to be an option on Blogger. I'm posting it anyway -- with a warning. Don't read this if you ain't ready to do feel the music. 'Cause it'll getcha. Right where you live.

Here's to the quirky Black girl. Let her know today how much you dig her.

"The Quirky Black Girl Manifesta

"Because Audre Lorde looks different in every picture ever taken of her. Because Octavia Butler didn't care. Because Erykah Badu is a patternmaster. Because Macy Gray pimped it and Janelle Monáe was ready.

"Resolved. Quirky black girls wake up ready to wear a tattered society new on our bodies, to hold fragments of art, culture and trend in our hands like weapons against conformity, to walk on cracks instead of breaking our backs to fit in the mold.

"We're here, We're Quirky, Get used to it!.... Quirky Black girls don't march to the beat of our own drum; we hop, skip, dance, and move to rhythms that are all our own. We make our own drums out of empty lunchboxes, full imaginations and number 3 pencils.

"Quirky Black girls are not quirky because they like white shit; rather they understand that because they like it, it is not the sole province of whiteness.

"Quirky black girls are the answer to the promise that black means everything, birthing and burning a new world every time.

"Sound it out. Quirky, like queer and key, different and priceless, turning and open. Black, not be lack but black one word shot off the tongue like blap, bam, black. Girl, like the curl in a hand turning towards itself to snap, write, hold or emphasize. Quirky. Black. Girl. You see us. Act like you know.

"We demand that our audiences say 'yes-sir-eee' if they agree and we answer our own question 'What good do your words do, if they don't understand you?' by speaking anyway, even if our words are 'bruised and misunderstood.'

"Quirky black girls are hot!

"Whether you're ready to see it or not.

"Quirky means rejecting a particular type of 'value,' a certain unreadiness for consumption and subsumption in an economy of black heterocapital. This means that Quirky Black Girls act independently of dominant social norms or standards of beauty. So fierce that others may not be able to appreciate us just yet.

"No matter what age we are, we hold onto that girlhood drive for adventure, love for friends, independent spirit, wacky sense of humor, and hope for the future.

"Quirky Black Girls resist boxes in favor of over lapping circles with permeable membranes that allow them to ebb and flow through their multiple identities.

"Quirky Black Girls - Embrace the quirky!"

__________________________________________________________

The photo above is a self-portrait of LaVonna Varnado, one of the quirkiest Black women in my current world.

Poverty = Violence

On Thursday, as I prepared to leave my home for the five hour drive to Clarksdale, Mississippi, where I was committed to participate in a public hearing on poverty in Lambert yesterday, I found the following comment on my post about the last visit I made to the Delta:

"When I found out about this article, I just had to read & respond to it. I am a resident of Lambert,Ms. I too have lived there all of my life. I attended the public schools there. When you live in an rural area such as Lambert, you don't have many choices. You either apply yourself in school and go on to further your education or you CHOOSE to be content with your life and surroundings. I chose the first.

"There are MANY who chose to better themselves. My friends and neighbors are teachers, nurses, law enforcement officers, highway patrolmen, lawyers, dentists, doctors, school administrators, casino workers, grocery store workers, farm attendants, you name it. I say all of this because WE ALL CAME FROM THE SAME PLACE.

"Yes, Lambert is the, 'City of Hope.' But you must have the drive within to want a better life. I can say this because I see the good and the bad in my community everyday. Lambert does not have a grocery store, doctor's office or a general merchandise store. We do have access to all of the before mentioned. We have 5 housing complexes, all with central heating and air. Everyone who qualifies for a program called Mis-State, which will pay electricity, gas and qualify you for food-stamp assistance. No one has to or should live in the conditions that family lives in. I do believe on helping the community. Yes we should take care of the elderly, children and those who cannot do for themselves.

"I do not think that our community should have to be responsibe for able-bodied, young adults. I am a young adult. I attended the Quitman County Schools. I could have dropped out and hung in the streets but that wasn't an option in my household. As with a lot of households, my sibling and I had to graduate from high school and attend college. My mom always told us that she wanted her children to have more education than her. My mom has her Master's in Education. I am working on my Master's in Nursing. I am a firm beliver that you shape how you want your life, no matter the circumstances. I am from a single-parent household. My mom taught school during the day and went to college at night. I have friends who became pregnant while in highschool. That didn't deter them from graduating and going on to college.

"There are families that have received new free homes and end up losing the homes because they borrowed money against the home or they never pay the property tax. There is a lot of good going on in Lambert. We are a small community and we try to take care of the truly needy. There are families who went thru the proper channels to receive new homes. There are many programs out there for those who truly want help." -- DownHomeDiva

I appreciate your taking time to share your perspective, Diva, and I congratulate you on your professional success. Actually, I wrote this response to your comment while in Lambert and just wasn't able to post it until now, and I did see that parts of Lambert are as lovely as any other community I might visit.

The point is not that there's poverty in Lambert or even that some people are particularly poverty-stricken -- for whatever reason. And certainly, I would not suggest that we should just hand out free houses or free cars or free anything necessarily. I was in Lambert yesterday because of the way poverty has been institutionalized in our country -- and not just in Lambert -- to disproportionately shut many poor people and, most particularly, poor people of color out of the loop of financial well-being and economic development entirely.

Is it possible for an African-American brought up in a single-parent home to earn a Master's Degree in nursing? Absolutely! Frederick Douglass was born a slave, after all. I myself -- though admittedly not African-American -- spent five years on welfare in my thirties and now I teach college. One of the reasons I became a sociologist is that I celebrate the indefatigueable human spirit. To paraphrase Maya Angelou's poem, "We rise. Like dust. We rise."

Nevertheless, Martin Luther King, Jr., understood when he kicked off the first Poor People's Campaign in Marks (just a few miles from Lambert) in 1968, that poverty is violence and that, while it is always true that some will "make it" somehow, the majority of those in truly abject poverty have difficulty doing so and the causes are known. It's hard, for one thing, to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when somebody stole your shoes. This country became the rich nation it is on the free labor of African people who received no acknowledgement and no financial benefits from that labor during or after it was appropriated. Just because it was never paid doesn't mean the debt doesn't matter. Only a couple of decades ago, cotton field workers in the Delta were still making $80 for working an 80-hour week. What kind of life could be built on that kind of foundation?

Another reason people sometimes get stuck is that they don't have immediate role models. It cannot be underestimated the power that relationships with successful individuals has on children. Conversely, the power of being surrounded by people whose lives are a testimony to their discouragment, depression, and hopelessness is at least equally powerful, if not more so. When I was told by my father, for example, at eighteen years of age that "women are for sex and cooking," it would not have affected me nearly so much if I had known one woman personally who had broken through that barrier. As it was, it took me twenty years to get over the infection that statement imbedded in my psyche.

You mention growing up in a single-parent household, but you also mention that your mother was a teacher while you were still a child. What if she had been a former sharecropper -- now unemployed -- who had to drop out of school at thirteen to eat? Do you imagine you would still be earning your Master's Degree? Statistical data tells us that the single greatest predictor of how far a child will go in school is how far their parents went. That doesn't mean it's impossible to go beyond, just that the odds are against the child who has to scale uncharted territory.

Yet another nail in the coffin of persistent poverty is the expectation of others. In a country where the default position is White Supremacy, children of color from coast to coast routinely meet reduced expectations in school and otherwise. It's a matter of public record that the effects of this over time are damning to the developing souls of children. And I would argue that along with the genocide of the indigenous people of this continent and the continuing travesty of Black men languishing in the bellies of this nation's prisons and jails without cause, what is being perpetrated against children of color under this U.S. system will send the decision-makers in this nation to hell if there's any justice in this universe at all.

This is why Martin Luther King, Jr., organized the first Poor People's Campaign in 1968 and why Antoinette Harrell and Ines Soto-Palmarin co-founded Gathering of Hearts and called for yesterday's poverty tour and public hearing. They're not saying people need more free stuff. They're saying we shouldn't keep operating as if money is more important than life. They're saying that we can't morally defend prioritizing war over job development. They're saying we need to remember that all children have an inalienable right to adequate nutrition, safety, medical attention, and education. And they are saying that, without a vision, the people perish.

You and your immediate neighbors may have jobs and homes and vehicles, but when 30,000 textile factory jobs left Mississippi and were not replaced in the 1990's a lot of people became long-term unemployed. Not to mention the fact that, while your mother was able to supplement your education, the Mississippi schools in general are statistically the worst in the nation. These are things government officials can address. Unfortunately, they're so committed to putting money in corporate pockets -- and their own --they claim not to have anything left to meet these other challenges.

Nobody's criticizing your hometown, Diva. We -- just like MLK before us -- are simply saying that the citizens of the United States should be able to expect a reasonable quality of life, no matter whether they're Black or White, male or female, from Michigan or Mississippi. Everyone's all in a lather about the formerly middle class (and above) White folks who are having trouble meeting the mortgage payments on their quarter of a million dollar houses now because the job market's gone belly up. Gathering of Hearts is just trying to remind us that there are people in America who were already poor before last year. They were at the bottom of the ladder before and being ignored. Now, with the new economic developments, there's every possibility that they'll go from being ignored to being forgotten completely.

I live in a parish in Louisiana where 60% of the public schools are still segregated. Some people drive their kids all the way from Mississippi every day to attend these segregated schools and the ones that are racially identifiable as White look like palaces compared to the ones that are racially identifiable as Black. African-American men are four times more likely to be unemployed than European-American men at every educational level. African-American life expectancy is shorter. African-American babies are more likely to be born with low birth weight. And European-American families hold on average eleven times the wealth of African-American families. Sociologists call the practice of holding people responsible for attacks against them "blaming the victim." Even victims of attack have power -- especially in numbers. But that doesn't make the attack deserved.

What I describe is only the tip of the iceberg and it all suits well a system that is calculated to keep the most of the best for people that look like me and relegate African-Americans to whatever's left over. Then, when someone like you, Diva, makes it out from under anyway, those with the power to define point at you and say, "See. Black people have the same opportunities as White people. If they aren't doing well, it's their own fault." And they've said it so long and repeated it so often, they've convinced even you that it's true.

Poor People's Campaign 2009 on 6/19

Photo by Walter C. Black, Sr.

As you may recall, I was fortunate enough to attend one of Antoinette Harrell's poverty tours in February. The one I went on involved the Mississippi Delta region near Marks, where Martin Luther King, Jr., kicked off his Mule Train for the first Poor People's Campaign in 1968. It was a life-changing experience. Even my post about it generated attention from a wide range of readers, including, for example, a producer from Al Jazeera in Washington, D.C.

Harrell co-founded, with Boston city planner Ines Soto-Palmarin, an organization they call "Gathering of Hearts" and on Friday, June 19th, Gathering of Hearts will host an all-day event in Lambert, Mississippi, intended to raise national awareness of the condition of the people who still live there in much the same type of financial crisis that drew Martin Luther King's attention in the first place.

King's original focus, of course, was racial inequality and in the mid-1960's, he was riding a huge wave of public support on that issue. Then, on April 4, 1967, King delivered a speech entitled “Beyond Vietnam” at New York City’s Riverside Church. It outlined, as only King could, exactly how he had come to feel about the war in Vietnam and about the government’s practice of allocating funds to the military “with alacrity and generosity” while turning to the poor with “hostility,” divvying out poverty funds with “miserliness.” Those that agreed with his stance were thrilled, but there were many who turned a jaundiced eye on his foray into a much less clear-cut political arena not seen as directly related to de-segregation issues.

Determined to address this major root cause of inequality and pain in the nation, King moved shortly into talking – loudly and eloquently – about the many abjectly poverty-stricken in the U.S., whether African-American or not. Soon, he was including Latinos, Native Americans, and even poor Whites from the Appalachian mountains in his discussions about what was wrong in America and what needed to be done about it. He had never left them out entirely, but now he spoke not as a Black leader of Black people, but as an American leader of poor people. And there are those who believe that this is what cost him his life.

Soon, King and the other founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Council were deep in discussions planning a Poor People's Campaign that would give a voice to a “multicultural army of the poor.” Senator and Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy instructed Marion Wright (now Edelman) to tell Dr. King to bring the poor to Washington, to make them visible. And King answered the call.

By the time he and the other SCLC leaders reached Memphis in April of 1968 to support a strike by the sanitation workers for better conditions and the right to unionize, the decision had already been made to take a mule train from Marks, Mississippi, to Washington, D.C., to demand a Poor People’s Bill of Rights. King called the Campaign the “second phase” of the civil rights movement and massive government jobs programs, affordable housing, and a guaranteed annual income for the poor were only the beginning of what was going to be presented as non-negotiable expectations. The Reader’s Digest warned of an “insurrection.” But the day after King arrived in Memphis, he was shot and killed, insuring that he would never see the Poor People's Campaign become a reality.

Photo by Laura Jones

Undaunted, the multicultural army King had enlisted gathered and made the trek to Washington in May, where 50,000 marchers established a shanty town they named Resurrection City. With 2000 to 5000 residents, Resurrection City had a sewer system, health care, schools and even a mayor, the Rev. Dr. Ralph David Abernathy. Each day began with a demonstration at the Department of Agriculture and then various groups would descend on the office of their primary interest. At night, musicians would entertain. Jimmy Collier sang. Peter, Paul and Mary showed up. Even Pete Seeger made an appearance.

But an almost incredible amount of rain soon turned the City into a mud hole of soggy despair that no musician could brighten. And by the time government bulldozers rolled into the camp on June 24th, many, if not all, of the residents were doubtless relieved, though broken-hearted that the Poor People's Campaign, valiant effort that it was, had joined the one who conceived it as only a historical note.

Nevertheless, one of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s many memorable quotes is: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it always bends toward justice.” And so it is, that, 41 years after the first Poor People's Campaign, Gathering of Hearts has stepped up to the plate to re-awaken history by calling for a new commitment by a new Presidential administration to the old problem of poverty – even deep, deep poverty – in the United States.

The new Poor People's Campaign will begin with a poverty tour from 9:00 a.m. until noon on Friday, June 19th. Anyone who wants to participate should meet before 9:00 a.m. at the Quitman County Elementary School on Highway 3 South in Lambert, Mississippi. A Public Hearing at that same school from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. will feature speakers such as the Rev. Dr. Al Sampson (one of the planners of the original Poor People's Campaign); long-time organizer Dr. John Perkins of the John M. Perkins Foundation; Snoop Dogg's father, Vernell Varnado; and Nation of Islam Student Minister Ava Muhammad. For more information about the poverty tour or the afternoon press conference event, call 985-229-8001.

The Southern Christian Leadership Council has organized an SCLC fundraiser breakfast and a Poor People's Campaign march in Jackson, Mississippi, for the following day, Saturday, June 20th. For more information about these events, call 404-522-1420.

Pitts: You Don't Really Know Me

The following was written by Leonard Pitts, Jr., of the Miami Herald. I virtually never post anything in its entirety, but this is extraordinary. Leonard Pitts is a highly respected columnist who happens to be African-American. This is his take on White people who always seem to blame a Black man when they want to create a believable villain:

"I am your scapegoat. I am your boogeyman. Brown-skinned, kinky-haired, black man, me.

"So I was not surprised (it was just another day at the office) last week when a white woman from suburban Philadelphia called police from her cellphone, claiming she had been locked in the trunk of a Cadillac by two black men. Nor was I shocked (it was just another day in the life) when police said Bonnie Sweeten was actually holed up in a luxury hotel at Walt Disney World, and there never was a kidnapping, much less by two black men.

"I'm your scapegoat. I'm your boogeyman. So I'm used to these things.

"In fact, they happen often. Happened just a few months ago when that John McCain campaign worker said she was robbed by a burly black man who carved a 'B' into her face . . . as in 'Barack,' get it? Turned out she carved the letter herself, then blamed a black man. Just as Charles Stuart did when he killed his wife in 1989. Just as Tanya Dacri did when she dismembered her 7-week-old son that same year. Just as Susan Smith did when she rolled her car, her two boys inside, into a lake in 1994.

"University of Florida law professor Katheryn Russell-Brown, author of The Color of Crime, has documented 92 such incidents between 1987 and 2006. She cautions that white men are sometimes victims of racial hoaxes: witness the cases of Tawana Brawley and the Duke lacrosse team.

"But she says the overwhelming majority of the time -- 67 percent, to be exact -- it is the other way around: white liars blaming black men for things that did not happen. Russell-Brown is particularly intrigued that Sweeten identified her supposed kidnappers as driving a Cadillac. That fits a pattern, she says. 'When it's someone white alleging they've been harmed by someone African American, there are these fantastic racially laden stereotypes that are used. Whether it's dreadlocks, or smell, or big and burly. This fits right in, the Cadillac.'

"Naturally. Because I'm your scapegoat, your boogeyman. Cadillac drivin', pimp-walkin', white woman-lustin', me.

"I am the shape and size and sound of your fears. You know me on sight, know me before you know my name, know me before I even stick out my hand and say Hi. You know I have no feelings beyond your perception of me, no thought beyond what you impute to me, no purpose beyond your fear of me. I live in the shadow of your consciousness, do not exist outside of you.

"But can you imagine if I did? Boy, can you imagine the ache and anger if I did?

"It's a good thing I don't, a good thing I am only what I am: scapegoat, boogeyman, the car window you roll up, the door you lock, the ATM you avoid, the crime statistics you glance right by because they try to tell you I'm not what you think I am, didn't do what you thought I did.

"Hell, you don't need some researcher's 'statistics' to know about me. We've known each other for years. Dozens of years, hundreds of years. Remember when you denied me a job, then called me a thief? Remember when you blew up my school then called me ignorant? Remember when you killed my father, then complained I was filled with rage?

"No, you're right. There's no point in remembering that. Why should you remember a past that makes you uncomfortable? Why do I even need a past, existing as I do only within the confines of your awareness? All we have -- or need -- is the now. And in the now, Bonnie Sweeten has been exposed and she'll face the law and that's all we can really ask, isn't it? There's no point in digging deeper, no purpose served in wondering why, when she wanted to put a face to a crime, she chose mine.

"We already know. I'm your scapegoat, I'm your boogeyman. And I have no feelings beyond those you give me.

"But can you imagine if I did?"
__________________________________________________________

Leonard Pitts, Jr., can be contacted by email at lpitts@miamiherald.com

The Face of Racism

The last several days, I've been making my blog rounds for the first time in quite a while. I mean, I've dropped in here and there from time to time, but overall, nothing like I used to do. This blogging stuff takes time.

Anyway, the blogs I haunt are about the socially-constructed, political notion of "race," by and large. So, during my rounds, I've been inspired, entertained, informed, and unfortunately, horrified by what I read. And here are a few of the highpoints.

1) Ann at Beautiful, Also Are the Souls of My Black Sisters tipped me to stories about swastikas being burned into the lawn of a family in Merced, California, and a KKK newsletter being left on the porch of a bi-racial family living in Warren, Michigan.

2) Andrew Grant-Thomas at Race Wire wrote about race and poverty and how things cost more in poor neighborhoods, assuming they're available at all.

3) ZNet presented a Tim Wise essay on race and law enforcement, focusing particularly on how White privilege makes marijuana more of an option for White youth than for Black youth in a country that still (supposedly) instructs us all to "just say no."

4) M.dot at Model Minority wrote a blockbuster analysis of the point where hip-hop, capitalism and gender meet. I'm going to give students extra credit for reading this one.

5) Minister Faust at The Bro-Log talks about what he calls "blood chocolate" by introducing Carol Off's new book on the topic.

6) The Villager at Electronic Village posts a letter written by Ben Jealous, the national President of the NAACP, after he visited Troy Davis, an innocent man who's being threatened with eminent execution even as I write. Apparently, the mass media is clamoring to meet with Davis, but the Powers-That-Be are blocking any access to him that might wind up making them look like the criminals they are.

7) Over at the Huffington Post, Ann Medlock writes about the oil companies killing kids in Nigeria.

8) The award-winning editorial team at Sanctuary presents a statement on the travesty that occurred in the court when the murderers of Luis Ramirez were acquitted.

9) The newest edition to my blog rounds was RiPPa at The Intersection of Madness and Reality, whose writing reminds me of DNA when he was at Two Sense or maybe The Field Negro. RiPPa posted about Philadelphia, Mississippi, where civil rights workers were murdered and the KKK, according to a former mayor, was made up of a bunch of guys who were just doing their best to make the community a better place to live. Uh-huh!

10) And finally, Kai at Zuky did his usual breath-takingly elegant job of de-constructing (and explaining) what drove major world leaders (including Obama) to boycott the U.N. anti-racism conference in Geneva, Switzerland, last month (the problem of Whiteness). Quote: "[W]hiteness is not genetic; it's socialized, not inherited; though ironically, whiteness deploys a pseudo-genetic basis in its contempt for The Other. Whiteness is a socio-political construct and a fluid strategic ideology of power which has only existed for the past 5 centuries or so, during the era of racist globalization and colonialism. When I talk about the whiteness problem, I'm not necessarily talking about white people, I'm talking about whiteness. I'm saying that whiteness is a disturbingly unifying thread you can find running through many of the great problems of our time: environmental destruction, the war racket, famine, human migrations, curable yet untreated disease. Attempts to address any of these issues are severely hindered by whiteness; that is, by the existential drive of a global elite, profoundly informed by whiteness, to live in dominion over, rather than harmony with, humanity and nature."

Jay Smooth on the Racial Crossroads

While I could care less about Asher Roth and his twitter toe-stubbing, I think Jay Smooth has some very crucial things to say in this video about where we are in the process of becoming ever so slightly less racist in this culture. Listen carefully, because Jay comes at you fast. And thanks to Angry Black-White Girl for the heads up on this one.

Cop-on-Cop Crime? Uh...

There's nothing like cutting out the middle man. I've posted a bunch of times about police officers killing "suspects," but this story takes the cake. What happened was:

25-year-old Omar Edwards, a plain clothes police officer working out of a precinct in Harlem, found a guy rummaging through his car when he got off work last night. The would-be thief ran off, of course, and Edwards -- being a cop and all -- whipped out his trusty 9mm as he chased the man down the street.

Enter another police officer in an unmarked car (man-oh-man, they be SNEAKIN' around Harlem, don't they?) and you may have guessed what happened next. Yep. At the sight of a Black man (uh-huh) with a gun running down the street, the police officer still on duty jumped out of his car, squeezed off six rounds and dropped Edwards as he ran, killing him.

I hardly know where to begin. Edwards might still be alive if he hadn't pulled his gun law-enforcement-fast while chasing the guy he caught in his car. And Edwards might still be alive if the apparent police officer praxis/policy/whatever wasn't to shoot first and ask questions later. But the bottom line, I suspect, is that the shooter was White and Edwards, as I already pointed out, was Black.

Nevertheless, as always, the statement that's been released is: "It was unclear if race had any role in the shooting." When, oh, when will they quit pretending to be asleep? Even a chimpanzee can be taught to shoot a gun. One wonders if a trained chimp would use less emotional judgment and less knee-jerk reactions -- and kill fewer people -- than the cops. Especially now that they're killing each other.

Am I Not Human?

It's the 27th again and time to post on human rights with the folks at AfroSpear. And, as a matter of fact, in keeping with another of AfroSpear's recent campaigns, I'm going to take this opportunity to post on Tasering in particular as a human rights violation disproportionately -- though not only -- perpetrated against people of color in situations patently uncalled for. I received an email from the African American Political Pundit recently about a petition AfroSpear has generated to call for a Congressional hearing on the use of these weapons and I most assuredly concur with their concerns.

I've been watching in horror ever since the Taser first hit my radar a decade or so ago. I mean, all we need in this country is more ways to do bodily injury to people and get away with it. (Tasers are legal to carry -- open or concealed -- in 43 states!) But obviously, my main attention has been focused on the fascist way law enforcement officers have tended to use these tools of torture. Even Amnesty International, citing more than 300 deaths by Taser since 2001 (which averages out to about one death per week, by the way), has called for police to severely limit or suspend their use.

And no wonder. Just off the top of my head, I can recall a whole string of cases in less than a year. A 21-year-old last July; a 15-year-old in March; a 16-year-old in April; and even the near misses can do lasting damage, as indicated by the case of a 14-year-old in February. At least one branch of the NAACP is seeking information for an investigation it's doing on excessive use of Tasers. And AfroSpear announced a Day of Blogging for Justice in April, calling death by Taser "pre-trial, extra-judicial execution." In addition, a new blog, Electrocuted While Black, tracks and reports on the issue of Taser use and abuse.

Numbing U.S. citizens to the use of force resulting in "accidental" deaths ought to be reminding us of Nazi Germany, when the population was trained fairly quickly to accept whatever happened to "other people" until it started happening to everybody and it was too late to put on the brakes. Anyone that has done even a cursory exploration of history knows better than to believe the assumption that if you just "keep your nose clean," you don't have to worry about those with the Power-To-Define, including in this case, the police, who get to define these situations and their outcomes in ways that make the question "Am I not human?" moot.

Goodbye, Columbus?

I'm back from New York City now and will be posting my usual human rights piece later today since this is the 27th. But in the meantime, I just had to upload the photo above. It's me (of course) in Central Park...er...waving hello...as it were...to the statue commemorating that brutally violent Euro-centric slaver and child rapist Columbus for "discovering" the Western Hemisphere. Hee hee.

The photo credit for this one goes to my daughter's significant other (the socialist) who had no problem with it. My daughter, on the other hand, loooooong since tired of Mommy's outrageous public behavior, slipped away to a bench while the festivities were occurring.

"Those who are not afraid to die, come to the front."

For those who haven't been reading this blog lately, let me explain first that I'm in New York City right now. And tonight, I went to the Film Forum in Greenwich Village to watch "Burma VJ," an HBO documentary about the underground video bloggers who chronicled the popular uprising in Burma in September of 2007. Three of the monks who led the demonstrations and then had to run for their lives disguised as car salesmen (now that would be a major leap even for the paranoid Burmese military to make) were at the theater for a question-and-answer session after the showing and now I feel like a baby-stepping slacker of a social change agent. A bunch of talk and some occasional action, maybe, but nothing like what they've been doing in an attempt to free their people.

I spent most of the film with my hands up under my chin, unconcerned with what those sitting next to me must have thought. The suspense was chilling, despite the homework I did before leaving Louisiana so I'd have a clue what I was looking at. I mean, I knew the end of the story and yet I was still shallow-breathing through it, almost afraid to blink.

Some of the marching monks were children. Few were very far into their adulthood. And there were hundreds, maybe thousands of them, leading the demonstrations in their saffron-colored robes carrying their alms bowls bottom up to symbolize their unwillingness to accept contributions from the military officers who do the dirty work of the junta that has changed Burma's name to Myanmar and crushed its people for forty years. Monks refusing alms in a country where 90 per cent of the people are Buddhist is a major statement of shaming condemnation. And even after the military brutally beat the demonstrators in front of their supporters, killing one monk in the process, the monks came back again and again, forcing the government's hand until more than two hundred monks at one time were dragged bloody out of a single monastery and caused to disappear.

Even after that, monks and students still took to the streets, belligerently ignoring the government's edict that no more than five people could congregate at a time. At one point, when it became apparent that the guns were coming out, a VJ only an arm's length from the action captured the student leaders declaring over a bull horn, "Those who are not afraid to die, come to the front."

All of this is only in the film because incredibly brave and dedicated souls committed themselves to filming the events in a country where people were being shot for having cameras. In fact, more than one of the Burma VJ's were filming when a Japanese photographer was shot to death, sending that single incident out over the airwaves by satellite to the astonishment of a watching world and the horror of the military leaders giving the orders. Which was the whole point of the VJ's actions. They wanted to show the world what the dictatorship in Burma was up to. And show us all they did.

Now that U Pyinya Zawta, U Gawsita, and U Agga have been forced to run for their lives, they worry about their friends back in Burma. They know some of them are imprisoned and being ill treated. They know that some of them are dead (the film shows one monk floating face down in a creek). And they can't get good information to even know which are which. Not only are the monks and students under constant surveillance now, however. The fact is, no one in Burma dares talk about "politics" with anyone else for fear it will get back to the Powers-That-Be. There's no wiggle room. And still they fight.

Most of the Burma VJ's are now in prison or in hiding and no longer in touch with each other. Wildly popular opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for years and is about to be tried in a kangaroo court to move her into prison proper. Nevertheless, "Joshua," the VJ who was in Thailand during the demonstrations in 2007, catching what the other VJ's pitched and forwarding it on to the rest of the world because his cover had already been blown, has walked back over the mountains into Burma to set up another VJ network in preparation for the next revolution.

At the end of the showing, the three monks in attendance politely described their concerns -- two through an interpreter and one in halting, but understandable English -- and asked for help for their fellow Burmese citizens. They want China and Russia to vote as U.N. Security Council members to bring pressure to bear on the military junta in their country. The U.N. talks about how wrong the junta is, but implements nothing to put teeth in their statements. The U.S., too, of course, only talks about democracy in Burma without doing anything to encourage that as a reality. But then, the U.S. has never really had a problem accepting fascist dictatorships. It's the socialist democracies that make our government nuts.

In any case, the three monks, one of whom said later that they pray loving kindness constantly on the military tormentors who hold their country's people in thrall, not surprisingly, chose to close this evening with a prayer, as well:

"May there be no deception of one another;
may loving kindness envelop the world;
and may there be peace on Earth."

Indeed. Indeed.
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NOTE: The three monks at the film showing have apparently reached President Obama, according to The Huffington Post. Not that the Burmese junta is likely to listen. But still...

Smoke Signals

I used to be a cigarette smoker. I mean to tell you, I was a serious addict, a light-'em-off-each-other smoke fiend. In my early twenties, when I was doing my heaviest ripping and running, I was using an Alfred Dunhill short holder with a crystal filter and I still had to grab a spoonful of honey in the morning to coat my raw throat so I could have that first morning cigarette comfortably. I was so addicted that even after I'd been quit for twenty years, I picked them up again -- not even wanting to, but seemingly helpless to fight off the urge.

But that was a decade or so ago and I seem to have cleared the hurdle this time. And of course, in stereotypical "reformed smoker" fashion, I notice my friends and my students lighting up one after another (at damned near $5 a pack, for God's sake!), while they hack between puffs if they're my age or bemoan their latest cold or flu or whatever, if they're not, as if all manner of physical manifestations weren't directly attributable to their veeeeeery damaging habit.

Still, except for an occasional comment, I usually mind my own business about it. Smokers are strung out behind their addiction, after all, and by and large, have heard it all before and just haven't decided to do anything about it. And while I have a major problem accepting it as a "privacy issue" when second-hand smoke will kill a non-smoker, too (would anyone claim drunk driving is a "privacy issue"?), I pick my battles and that's not one I see as possible to win, as a rule.

Then, the other day, I came across some information I found interesting: tobacco is the #1 killer of African-Americans, bringing down more than 47,000 Black people in this country per year. In fact, tobacco-related deaths and diseases affect communities of color almost twice as much as all other communities. Heart disease, stroke, cancer -- they're all easily traced in many cases to cigarette smoking and the presence of second-hand smoke.

Latricia Dixon, the Regional Coordinator for the Communities of Color Network of The Louisiana Campaign for Tobacco-Free Living reminded me recently that nicotine is a drug and that oppressed and depressed poor people of color are quick to pick up what some folks call "cancer sticks" because their "nerves are bad." Well, no lie. Being poor and Black in the United States would be enough to make anybody's nerves "bad." But what's so interesting about this government taxed and subsidized drug pushing business is that, if you pay attention, you can't help but notice that the biggest, flashiest cigarette ads are disproportionately to be found in Black neighborhoods. Kinda makes you wanna go "Hmmmm...", doesn't it?

And why am I not surprised?

Race and the Mortgage Crisis

Normally, now that I've turned in the grades for this semester (about an hour ago), I'd be blogging my head off for the next week. But what with working on a manuscript I promised a publisher over a month ago AND a statement I'm supposed to be writing for the court on the sociological disaster that school segregation has created here in this parish even AFTER the school system was ordered thirty years ago to straighten this mess out, I wouldn't have much time to blog even if I weren't running off to spend five days in New York City hanging out with my daughter and an artist friend of mine. Still, I gotta do something in this space from time to time or they're going to rescind my blogger's privileges.

So let me start by making a public service announcement: if you're on the verge (or even in the middle) of losing your house right now, check out Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America's National Save the Dream Campaign. I don't know much about it, but I heard a guy give a little spiel at a public meeting and it looks straight up. They do advising, advocacy, political organizing and more. They even pressured the notorious Countrywide Mortgage Lenders into an agreement that has radically lowered interest rates on thousands of families' mortgages (see above). So if you're in trouble, maybe they can help. The guy swore they routinely pull fat out of the fire with their bare hands, so it might be worth a call to 1-888-302-6222, huh?

What does this have to do with the socially-constructed, political notion of "race?"

"A report released today by the Applied Research Center (ARC), a racial justice think-tank, finds that an inclusive and equitable national economic recovery will require that the country address deep patterns of racial discrimination and disparities. The report, titled 'Race and Recession: How Inequity Rigged the Economy and How to Change the Rules,' found that numerous policies and institutional practices that create racial inequity are among the root causes of the subprime mortgage crisis and economic downturn.

"While several economists and analysts have focused on the 'what' and 'how' questions behind the current recession, an in-depth analysis of income, unemployment, foreclosures, and public benefits brings the largely overlooked 'who' into the analysis: Who were predatory loans targeted towards? Which Americans are losing jobs? The current crisis has brought soaring national unemployment rates, record foreclosure filings, and record lows in the stock market, with global repercussions. However, the most bruising effects have been unevenly distributed -- overwhelmingly to people of color.

"The report examines systemic patterns of racial inequality, including unemployment levels for people of color, which are consistently higher than those of whites and considerably higher during recessionary times. In March of this year, when unemployment reached 8.5% nationally, 13.3% of Black workers and 11.4% of Latinos were out of work, compared to only 7.9% of whites. In contrast, Black unemployment has dipped below 8% only once since 1973.

"Sizeable income gaps between people of color and whites also still persist. Seth Wessler, the report's author and lead investigator, explains that 'Racial disparities in income leave communities of color making about 60 cents for every dollar earned by whites. This huge difference is a direct result of institutional policies and practices that collectively block people of color from opportunity.'

"ARC's analysis of the housing crisis also demonstrates that communities of color were disproportionately saddled with subprime loans at very high rates. Wessler says 'The cumulative effects of historic and current housing discrimination -- including restrictive racial covenants, redlining and neighborhood segregation -- have left people of color with less equity and access to credit, making them prime targets for largely unregulated predatory lending practices. High-cost loans were aggressively marketed in communities of color.' Yet, Wessler says, most troubling is that 'many who could have qualified for prime loans were sold high-cost loans instead - 35 % of subprime loans were sold to people who could have qualified for a traditional, fixed rate, prime loans. And clearly, subprime loans were responsible for the crash.'

"ARC's Executive Director, Rinku Sen, says 'This study reveals that a healthy economy requires explicit attention to ensuring racial equity in our public and private institutions. Thankfully, there are many clear solutions to move us toward fair policies and shared prosperity.'

"The report recommends the use of Racial Equity Impact Assessments, modernization of the Community Reinvestment Act, a moratorium on foreclosures, a lifting of time limits in Temporary Aid for Needy Families, expunging past criminal records, protections for immigrants, passing the Employee Free Choice Act, raising the minimum wage, establishing universal healthcare and the full enforcement of anti-discrimination laws."

Passin' It On

I haven't done this for a while, due to the embarrassing limit on my on-line reading level of late. But my "they-need-to-know-about-THIS" list has reached a point that I really must pass a few things on for your information.

First, Michigan is considering doing away with the state's current practice of sending juveniles to prison for life without parole. The bill is presently stalled in committee, though I can't imagine how a human being with any sense at all could waffle on this issue. If passed, the bill would immediately affect the 350 people now serving life without parole for a crime committed when they were seventeen or younger, seven out of ten of which are Black (why am I not surprised?). Even the Director of the state Department of Corrections supports the bill, saying that juveniles should never come into adult prisons at all. Particularly in a state with one of the most under-funded public defender systems in the country, I would add.

Underscoring this is Christopher Robbin's new book on the militarization of schools and how that systematically moves youth of color out of public schools in the interest of maintaining "order" and serving as a cautionary note to other students. Can we say "pathway to prison?" That's what the so-called "zero tolerance" practice has been called elsewhere, given the veeeery particularistic way in which it's applied.

Reading Robbin's book might be helpful to Congress as they review and consider the huge wealth gap in the U.S. related to race. An interesting topic in a nation with an African-American chief executive, it seems to me. According to the Federal Reserve, for every dollar White families had five years ago, Black families had 12 cents. And the numbers are getting worse, not better.

Continuing our magical mystery tour, then, trying to see the logic in a rampantly White supremacist system, we come to a report by the publicly-funded Virginia Fusion Center announcing that the "diversity" at Historically Black Colleges and Universities "affords terrorist operatives the opportunity to assimilate easily into society, without arousing suspicion." Good. grief.

And finally, lest we think that only African-Americans are taking the racial hit, consider the case of Diane Bukowski, a 5'4" 60-year-old White woman who writes for a Black newspaper in Detroit. This obviously dangerous woman was arrested for committing the heinous crime of being the first journalist on the scene when a police officer's driving resulted in the deaths of two young Black men, one on a motorcycle and the other a pedestrian. Bukowski was trying to take photos, when she was arrested for "obstruction of justice." Uh-huh. By the time the charge got to court, however (yes, to court), it had morphed into two felony counts (down from five!!) of "assaulting, battering, wounding, resisting, obstructing or endangering" the State Troopers who arrested her. Bukowski was convicted! and could serve up to four years in prison. That'll teach her...er...all of us. But what exactly are we learning?
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The graphic featured above is a Ricardo Levins Morales poster and is available at Northland Poster Collective.

Jayshawn Augusto In The House!

I presume everybody else on the internet has already seen this kid. Maybe a bunch of times. And frankly, I hate the fact that there are unquestionably thousands of super bright young African-American intellectual whiz kids out there who will never wind up in front of a video cam because THAT doesn't make the news. But really, this kid deserves some attention anyway. His name is Jayshawn Augusto. He's eleven years old. And he just might be the Mohammed Ali of basketball. Prepare to be amazed.

Am I Not a Human?

Last month, on the 27th, I was ill. So ill, I not only forgot to write my usual post on human rights, I didn't notice I had forgotten for days. And when I finally did remember, I felt so disappointed and was so far behind on everything, I didn't even try to explain my situation.

Things are still hectic, but not having an excuse this time, I'm going to highlight -- as I often do -- the criminal justice system. ColorofChange.org is again calling for action in support of making the sentencing of those convicted of drug offenses more balanced. They write:

"The so-called 'war on drugs' has created a national disaster: 1 in 15 Black adults in America are behind bars. It's not because we commit more crime but largely because of unfair sentencing rules that treat 5 grams of crack cocaine -- the kind found in poor Black communities -- the same as 500 grams of powder cocaine, which is the kind found in White and wealthier communities.

"These sentencing laws are destroying communities across the country and have done almost nothing to reduce the level of drug use and crime. We now have an opportunity to end this disaster once and for all. A bill is moving through Congress right now that would end the sentencing disparity. It's critical that members of Congress see support from everyday folks. Join us in asking our representatives in the House and Senate to push for its passage, and please ask your friends and family to do the same. It only takes a moment. At every step in the criminal justice system, Black people are at a disadvantage -- we are more likely to be arrested, charged, and convicted, but less likely to have access to good legal representation, and get out of prison on parole. While there's no denying that the presence of crack has a hugely negative impact in Black communities across the country, it's clear that the overly harsh crack sentencing laws have done more to feed the broken system than improve our communities.

"You have to be convicted of moving roughly $75,000 worth of cocaine to trigger a 5-year sentence. For crack? About $500 worth. These laws punish the lowest-level dealers, while providing a loophole that helps those running the trade escape harsh sentences.

"Recently, attention has turned to these ill-conceived policies as prisons burst at the seams with non-violent drug offenders. The U.S. Sentencing Commission, which provides sentencing guidelines for judges, has petitioned Congress numerous times to change the sentencing laws.

"Last year, we reached out to you when Senator Joe Biden -- one of the original architects of the disparity -- introduced a bill that would have finally eliminated it and ended the mandatory minimum for crack possession, while increasing funding for drug treatment programs and providing additional resources for going after major cocaine kingpins.

"His proposal stalled, but that same legislation is moving through Congress again with new support, and it looks like there's a real chance it could pass. The White House is a clear ally. President Obama has said many times that punishment for crack and powder cocaine should be the same, and Biden is now Vice President and still an ardent advocate for getting rid of the disparity.

"But there are foes of this plan. Others want to see the disparity reduced to 20-to-1 or 10-to-1, but not eliminated. As Bill Piper of the Drug Policy Alliance has said, that 'would be like amending the Constitution's three-fifths clause to make African-Americans fourth-fifths citizens or desegregating 60 percent of public establishments instead of all of them.' Members of Congress need to hear that there is strong support for a full elimination of the disparity, and that now's the time to support such legislation."We can take this opportunity to join the Sentencing Commission and countless other advocates in calling on Congress to change this unjust law. Please join us. -- James, Gabriel, William, Dani, and the rest of the ColorOfChange team "

From Heroes to Disappointment

I’ve been focusing for the last few days on men that sound like heroes. Today, unfortunately, I have to write about somebody that has turned out recently to be something of a disappointment. He’s the Rev. Dr. Byron Clay, the brand new Interim President of the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC), the famous civil rights organization co-founded by Martin Luther King, Jr., and Dr. Ralph Abernathy, among others, in New Orleans in 1957.

Clay, from a Louisiana family of recognized civil rights activists, was named to the National Board of SCLC in 1973 at the age of fifteen, which seems really odd to me somehow, no matter how anointed he appeared to be or what a go-getter he might have been. Anyway, he was named Vice President a year ago and was vaulted into the Interim President position on the 1st of February when Charles Steele, who saved the organization from bankruptcy over the past few years, stepped down.

As a dynamic, relatively young minister who’s been in the upper echelons of the SCLC leadership for more than three decades, Clay had the opportunity to take the newly stabilized organization and run with it, but he has already made a couple of decisions in his six weeks of tenure that probably ought to call into question his ethics, at least, and consequently the appropriateness of his serving further in that capacity.

The way I found out about this situation is that, as you may have read on this blog, I attended during the week-end of February 20-22 a Poverty Tour of the Mississippi Delta organized by Antoinette Harrell. Through her work gathering data on peonage (the process of keeping African-Americans locked into a pattern of abject poverty benefiting White society and which some have called “re-enslavement”), Harrell became known to Mayor Sylvester Reed of Crenshaw, Mississippi, who ultimately appealed to her for more concrete help.

Harrell threw herself immediately into the effort and on July 6th of last year, took her first U-Haul of food and clothing to the Delta. Her fervor energized the sociological student organization I advise to collect more than thirty bags of warm winter clothing to send up in December. And during the process of the collection, I first heard about Gathering of Hearts, the organization that Harrell had co-founded with Ines Soto-Palmarin, a Boston city planner who already had a cadre of others in that area who also wanted to help. The result was the Poverty Tour I mentioned above, with the Boston contingency bringing a whole truckload of clothing and other goods down, joining Harrell et al, National Public Radio journalist Donna Owens, Dr. Ron Walters of the African-American Leadership Institute, myself and a gaggle of students for a whirlwind tour that left us all limp with emotion and a renewed commitment to change.

On that tour, Harrell had arranged for Dr. Walters, herself and me to broadcast for an hour live from a van speeding over rain-soaked highways between small towns in the Delta and it was during that broadcast that the idea for Mule Train, 2009, was born. Harrell suggested it first to the listening audience, but when she handed the mic to Dr. Walters and he agreed, developing the thought still further and still on the air, I remember thinking, “Oh, my God! This is NOT how this is done! We can’t just call for something this huge without a whole bunch of previous planning.” But when Dr. Walters handed the mic to me, I heard myself laying it down just as heavily as they had. Like I said, Antoinette Harrell lights a fire in folks and when she gets rocking, nobody is immune.

She had mentioned to me that the SCLC had been invited to accompany us on that tour, but for whatever reason, they weren’t able to join us at that time. Still, I knew the conversations between Harrell and their national office had already begun. Then, when Byron Clay learned that Harrell’s film, “The Untold Story: Slavery in the 20th Century” was being shown in Selma on March 5th during the commemoration of the famous march there in 1965, he suggested that they meet at that time.


Harrell pitches her idea to Byron Clay and the SCLC

Harrell had an agenda and she was forthright about it. She asked for their support for a Mule Train event to pick up where Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign left off. She wanted to return to Marks, Mississippi -- where the original campaign had started -- and hold a public hearing with the media present to bring attention to the grave condition of the people there. She got the support she sought, though Clay and others on his side of the table wanted to add a demonstration of some type to the public hearing. Harrell didn’t care about that, she said, as long as the focus stayed on the poor people and their plight rather than the organizations leading the parade. They set the date for the event as June 19-21. A short time later, Clay communicated that SCLC was “suggesting” that the demonstration be in Jackson, the state capital, rather than the tiny town of Lambert where the public hearing would take viewers into people’s homes, giving a voice to those this whole thing is all about.

Then, on March 17th, Clay announced "his" vision for a new Poor People's Campaign to the Associated Press, somehow and inexplicably failing to mention Harrell or Gathering of Hearts in any way. Hoping to generate a crowd of 50,000 people, Clay claimed to be “organizing poor people of all colors to form the kind of beloved community that Martin Luther King, Jr., talked about.” Toward that end, he went on, he and the other SCLC staff would shortly be meeting with leaders in Mississippi for a tour of the Delta region.


Harrell and Clay on Gathering of Hearts tour in Mississippi

Actually, the tour was one of Harrell’s making and occurred on March 24th, at which time she asked Clay about why he was not giving Gathering of Hearts its just recognition for the work it had already done and was doing. It was, after all, Harrell who had come up with the idea for Mule Train, 2009, in the first place. He claimed an “oversight” and said he “meant no harm” by it. But the signal had been sent.

Then, later that day in the living room of a young couple whose house I had written about after my visit in February, Interim SCLC President Byron Clay – with the cameras rolling -- committed $10,000 of SCLC money toward a new house for the couple, instructing local ministers to set up a bank account with all due speed to begin receiving the monies.

That was nearly a month ago. And despite the fact that Clay talks differently when appearing with Harrell in front of a camera, there have been no new press releases from SCLC clarifying their partnership with Gathering of Hearts and the newly opened bank account for the young couple’s housing fund is still empty. In fact, SCLC has now begun publicly claiming a learning center Harrell and Soto-Palmarin have been in the process of setting up in Lambert, Mississippi, since February, a project the SCLC has had no part in whatsoever.
And in the meantime, Harrell is continuing to try to work with the organization. She has already conducted another poverty tour for them this month in Louisiana and has several more in the planning stages. Her view is that Clay and the SCLC needs to be educated just like everybody else…or maybe, the way things are playing out, even more than everybody else. For Harrell, it’s never about ego; it’s about the people, which ironically enough, is exactly what Clay says, as well.
“I am always moved when I see people whose lives are stuck in oppressive conditions,” Clay was quoted by the AP as saying. “We are gathering leaders ... to give them an opportunity to see some of the Third World communities in America."

“[The SCLC] can never afford to degenerate to a political or civic organization,” he went on. “The SCLC has the moral track record to bring forth reconciliation. The nation is ready for the SCLC to be restored to its stalwart role.”

The question, I would suggest, given recent events is whether or not Clay is the one to be at the helm while this stalwart role is being restored. On the SCLC national website, a button invites folks to contact Clay by emailing president@sclcnational.org. Perhaps we should let him know we’re paying attention.
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NOTE: The photos above were taken by Walter C. Black, Sr.

From the Bottom of the Heap

Yesterday, I mentioned the book I just finished reading, From the Bottom of the Heap by Robert Hillary King, promising to re-visit the subject. Rather than just talk about it, though, I'll simply say that this book is the autobiography of a life nearly half of which has been lived behind bars and worse, in a tiny cell alone. Nevertheless, the bulk of the book covers the years before King became a Black Panther and, therefore, an enemy of the State (according to Those with the Power to Define). It is a fine read that outlines in rich detail the realities of growing up poor and Black in the United States. I couldn't put it down. But it isn't just a well told story. It is also a hard learned and beautifully written treatise. And here are several sections I think are crucial points King makes:

"Due to years of suffering, privation, and other hardships, a sophistication -- commonly called, 'knowing the game' -- has developed among subjects in America. This is nature's way of balancing, her way of making it up to those downtrodden individuals.

"While all subjects ('subject' is here used interchangeably with African-American, but in a broader sense, it can refer to all people who are victimized by the system) aren't exactly players, all, beyond doubt, are aware of the game. The most aware are the most dispossessed, the lumpen, the so-called 'criminal element.' The lumpen subject, by decree of the powers-that-be, is cut off from the economic security enjoyed by others and must therefore put his or her knowledge of the game into full play just to survive. With cunning, developed over a long period of having to struggle, he/she must extend and stretch himself/herself beyond acceptable boundaries. To him/her there is a justifiable self-respect -- even a challenge -- found in playing out of bounds, pitting his or her wits against the system, getting over wherever, whenever and however he/she can..."

"Contrary to what the power structure would have us believe, the Black Panther Party's ideology was not cut from the block of gangsterism. Rather, its ideology defined the overall Black experience in America -- past and present -- and provided Blacks and other oppressed peoples in America with alternative ways of resisting American-style repression politically, economically, racially and/or socially -- by any means necessary -- as advocated by one of the Party's benefactors, Malcolm X.

"The Party recognized the myth of democracy, particularly where Blacks were concerned, and set itself up from among the individuals downtrodden by the system. The goal was always for the people to be their own vanguard. It boasted a sound political objective. Its main points were: We want freedom! We want justice! Land, Bread, Education, Housing. An end to police brutality and occupation of the Black communities..."

"Solitary confinement is terrifying, especially if you are innocent of the charges that put you there. It evokes a lot of emotion. For me, being in prison in solitary confinement was terrible; it was a nightmare. My soul still cries from all that I witnessed and endured. It mourns continuously. Through the course of my confinement, I saw men so desperate that they ripped prison doors apart, and both starved and mutilated themselves. It takes every scrap of humanity to stay focused and sane in that environment. I should be anything but what I am today; sometimes the spirit is stonger than the circumstances.

"At some point, we are going to have to call prison exactly what it is: a perpetuation of slavery. The 13th amendment did not abolish slavery. It reconstituted slavery instead, by putting it on another plane, the prison plane. The 13th amendment says 'neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist on these shores except for persons duly convicted of a crime.' But how many have been legally convicted of a crime even though they were innocent? At one point, I mistakenly believed that legality and morality were synonymous, that everything judged legal was also wholly and morally correct. Through hard experience, I learned that this is not true.

"The Black Panther Party's slogan 'power to the people' centered around the concept that power actually does belong to the people. But the people have relinquished that power to a small faction of people called politicians, and in relinquishing power they have left themselves at the mercy of ever-changing restrictions defined as laws. Many of these laws deemed legal are in no way moral. In reality, we are empowered en masse to direct or redirect our own course. In redirecting our own course, one of the main focuses must be the prison system and how it is connected to slavery.

"So let's call prisons exactly what they are: an extenuation of slavery. And we must let the politicans know that we know this. Mumia Abu-Jamal is in prison because slavery was never abolished. Jalil Alamin, formerly Rap Brown; the San Francisco 8; the remaining two of The Angola 3, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox; Leonard Peltier; the Jena 6...we could go on naming people, all political victims of a legal system that is in fact immoral. It is a system like this that allows a district attorney, Read Walters, to say to Jena youth Mychael Bell with impunity that 'with a stroke of a pen, I can take your life away.' It is a system like this that gives district attorneys, defense lawyers, judges, legislators, politicians a vested interest in passing the laws, regulations, decisions and judgments that keep people in prison. Justice cannot exist when the people charged with defending the rights of people are invested in their incarceration.

"During my twenty-nine years of solitary (and the two prior years in parish prison), I lived out the conclusion that the Black Panther Party's assessment of America, as it related to Blacks and other minorities, was correct. Without the Party's appraisal, and my total acceptance of this appraisal, I could not have survived intact those twenty-nine years. I had been given a truth to live by, a truth to cling to. And despite the internal friction among the Party's leaders and cadres (orchestrated by the FBI and CIA), and in spite of the eventual elimination of the Party as an organization by these same forces, this truth has sustained me. I made a vow to myself that no matter what, I would do my best to live out this truth, even in solitary confinement. I told myself that no matter where one resided in America --whether in minimum (society) custody or maximum security (prison) custody -- the struggle must continue..."

"Again I'll say that legality and morality are opposites in this country. And contrary to what people may believe, the deeper discussion at this time should not just be about the immorality inherent in the American legal system, but rather about the people relinquishing their power. We the people are our own greatest resource. We, not elected officials, are empowered en masse to redirect our own course. And in redirecting our course, one of our main focuses has to be the prison system and how it is linked to the slavery of old."

On Leading Solitary Lives

Thirty-seven years ago this morning, a young White guard at the infamous Louisiana State Prison at Angola was viciously stabbed to death in a dorm hallway. Prison officials, whether they knew who actually committed the crime or not (and why should we assume they don't?), saw this as a perfect opportunity to slam dunk several Black Panther Party members and slam dunk they did.

On the word of a snitch doing life without parole for a series of brutal rapes, who bartered his testimony for special favors -- like a carton of cigarettes a week -- and then release from prison only three years after he was sentenced, Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace were charged with the murders, scooped up and deposited in solitary confinement, where they have remained ever since. Why Woodfox and Wallace? Because they were Black Panther Party members. In fact, they had become BPP members after being incarcerated and had just been given permission to establish the first official BPP chapter behind bars.

Consistent with Panther principles to take responsibility and the initiative to improve conditions for African-Americans by engaging them in positive processes in their own communities, Woodfox and Wallace and their brothers in the new BPP chapter took action to protect new prisoners from the horrified rape culture that had become the hub of a corrupt and criminal system that put money in a lot of pockets -- including those of administrators and guards. Spreading the idea that self-determination -- even inside a prison -- could be a realistic goal, and backing up their talk with a willingness to put their lives on the line, Woodfox and Wallace threatened everything Angola had come to represent. Organized prisoners scare the be-jezzus out of those who oppress them. So naturally, Woodfox and Wallace were an immediate target. It mattered not one iota that they could not possibly have killed Brent Miller and that there was not one shred of credible evidence that either was connected to the crime in any way. They've paid the price just the same.

When Robert King (aka Wilkerson) arrived at Angola, already convicted of one crime he didn't commit (the conviction for which was eventually overturned), he was put straight into solitary confinement -- where he remained for twenty-nine years! -- on "investigation" related to the Miller murder, despite the fact that he hadn't even arrived at the institution when the crime took place. The reason? Because he, too, had found in the Black Panther Party a cause he could believe in.

Ultimately, Woodfox, Wallace and King became known as the Angola 3 and the campaign to see them released has traversed over a period of four decades, strengthening steadily during the past ten years. It's been a long and rocky road for the three. King was released in 2001, after being forced at the last minute to plead guilty to a trumped up charge, so the prison wouldn't have to ante up for what it had done to him. And since then, he has raised sand all over the U.S. and Europe in the attempt to see his brothers freed, as well.

As you know, I have already blogged about this case over the past year, but then the sociological student organization I advise decided to throw Albert Woodfox a birthday party in February, showing the movie, "Angola 3: Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation" (the initials in Last Slave Plantation being the same as the ones for Louisiana State Prison).
Writing Woodfox about the party and hearing from him shortly thereafter apparently set the hook because now I've talked with Robert King and read his book, From the Bottom of the Heap (more about that later, I promise); spent an afternoon with Malik Rahim of Common Ground Relief in New Orleans, himself a Black Panther Party member with a history and a commitment to the A3 struggle; and contacted Marina Drummer, who fiercely orchestrates the effort to free Woodfox and Wallace all the way from California. Drummer sent me enough stuff to open a small Free-the-Angola-3 store. And speaking with her last evening was like having a conversation with myself. What a long and magical mystery tour life sometimes is.

I don't know exactly what my role will be in all this, other than blogging, but I'm in the process of trying to set up an account to talk with Woodfox on the telephone; I want to visit him, if possible; and I hope to see Robert King speak at my university in the fall. And, in the meantime, I'm thinking about the fact that while two innocent men have spent the past thirty-seven years in solitary confinement, a murderer went free. While Bush et al got a pass for their policies and practices involving rendition, torture, and the deaths of a million Iraqis, most of them innocent and chalked up as "collateral damage," Robert King spent twenty-nine years in the hole and Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace remain locked up and locked down -- for a crime no one any longer thinks they committed.

About a year ago, Rep. John Conyers showed up at Angola, prompting the prison officials to release Woodfox and Wallace into a dorm. Eight months later, when Woodfox' conviction was overturned, not only was Woodfox NOT released, as he should have been, but the prison authorities put both men BACK in solitary confinement in response to a "rule infraction," while the State decides whether or not to re-try Woodfox yet again. Woodfox' legal counsel requested his release on bail, at the very least, but according to the Washington Post, Burl Cain, the warden at Angola, maintains that Woodfox "is still into Black Pantherism and deserves to be locked up, whether he did anything or not."

Last time I checked, locking up U.S. citizens for their political views is against the United States Constitution. But then so much that has gone on in this country -- since its inception -- has not lived up to our stated ideals or even our laws, I doubt our brothers inside expect otherwise. Still, it's up to us to get them out of there and to make sure they know that until they are out of there, we're in there, as well.

Albert Woodfox #72148
CCR, Lower A-13
Louisiana State Penitentiary
Angola, LA 70712

Herman Wallace #76759
Elaine Hunt Correctional Center
Unit 5, E-Tier
PO Box 174
St Gabriel, LA 70776