The House Negro and the field Negro – Malcolm X

Potent food for thought!!!!

Curtains Blackfolks by Dope Boy C

A must listen!!!! “You ARE who you associate yourself with, don’t want no bs in my cipher, 3rd verse is the story of my life (I cosign this to the fullest!!!). Song should have been on the Untitled lp. I’m bs intollerant and have no apologies for it. I’m better off dolo than with a weak ass crew,”- The Realest Talk from True Father… the god!!!!! Stic Man murked Nas on his own joint his verse is TOP SHELF!!!

Propaganda by Dead Prez

Caribbean leaders seek united front amid economic crisis

We can’t stand alone

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica (IPS/GIN) – Caribbean Community (Caricom) leaders gathered here in early July for their annual summit still struggling to recover from the two-year global economic and financial crisis that has taken a major toll on their individual economies.

Especially hard hit have been the tourism industry and remittances from abroad. The Guyana-based Caricom Secretariat says that at least half of the 15-member group will record either zero or negative growth this year, while high unemployment and other factors are likely to exacerbate the situation.

“This state of affairs cannot be separated from our continuing major social problems related to crime and security,” Caricom Secretary-General Edwin Carrington told reporters ahead of the July 4-7 event.

His economic adviser, Dr. Maurice Odle, added that a looming debt crisis and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico would also be on the agenda.

Caricom countries have been working towards a Single Market and Economy by the year 2015, but the initiative has suffered several setbacks.

“The goalpost on CSME inauguration keeps shifting as a number of member states continue to falter in honoring their pledges to close the yawning gaps on implementation of treaty-based policies and programs,” said veteran Caribbean journalist Rickey Singh.

Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding, who is also the conference chair for the next six months, reiterated the need for the small countries, “naked, shivering for warmth in the blizzard of the global crisis,” to stay together. “We are faced with the stark reality that the world is realigning itself into huge blocs with defined interests that determine how they relate to the rest of the world,” said Mr. Golding, according to CaribWorldNews.com.

“None of us, especially those as small as we are, can or will make it on our own … Our reality check is that we are on our own and we must decide whether in this journey that we must make what we will work alone or walk together.”

St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, a stalwart of the integration process, said he believes that Caricom could learn from the progress being made by the sub-regional Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), which recently signed a treaty establishing an economic union among themselves that provides for improved governance and deeper cooperation among member states.

The summit coincided with Caricom’s 31st anniversary.

The Economic Partnership Agreement that the Caribbean signed with Europe nearly two years ago, negotiations with Canada for a new trade and development accord, and ways to strengthen relations with the United States were also part of weekend discussions.

The outgoing Caricom chair and prime minister of Dominica, Roosevelt Skerrit, said that in the past “there has not been sufficient political dialogue” with Washington.

“We are receptive to dialogue and President Obama has recognized that and he is taking a different approach to the Caribbean,” Mr. Skerrit said.

The Barack Obama administration pledged 45 million dollars to the region this year under the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative. In April, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made a further commitment of 79 million dollars for the security initiative for next year.

Following a 90-minute meeting with Caribbean leaders in Barbados in June, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also announced that the region was in line to receive a further 170 million dollars in funding for HIV/AIDS and climate change programs.

Caricom has also sought to deepen its relations with its Latin American neighbors through Brazil and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States as well as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas and UNASUR.

The catastrophic January earthquake in Haiti and the pending presidential and legislative elections were dealt with during the Montego Bay summit. President René Préval was assured that Caricom would continue to support efforts to rebuild Haiti—and press the world to make good on promises to help.

“We impress upon the international community the urgency with which actions must follow these commitments, especially in strengthening the institutional capacity of Haiti to undertake the mammoth task at hand,” Mr. Golding said.

But, like the international donor community, Caricom is fearful that the arrival of the hurricane and rainy seasons could seriously hamper efforts to rebuild a country where more than a million people became hopeless following the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed an estimated 300,000 people.

Haitian President Préval recently announced that elections will take place on Nov. 28 and he intends to step down in keeping with the constitutional deadline of Feb. 7 even though the parliament recently approved an extension of that date to May.

Climate change issues, particularly as the region gears up to attend a major meeting in Cancun, Mexico in November, were also a major talking point here, given the outcome of the Copenhagen conference last December. “Every step must be taken by the region to prepare for that meeting to ensure that the results, in particular the maximum rise in global temperature, do not exceed 1.5 degrees,” said Caricom Secretary-General Edwin Carrington.

“The region’s mantra of ‘1.5 to stay alive’ is not a mere slogan for our islands and low-lying coastal states. Its achievement is vital for our very survival.”

The four-day summit was the first opportunity for Kamla Persad Bissessar, the first ever woman prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, to interact with her regional colleagues since her May 24 general election victory.

And while Caricom has been often criticized as ineffective, its value is not underestimated. “The process of regional integration has stalled in most respects, notably the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) and is in reverse on many other areas such as freedom of movement of Caricom citizens. The inability to accomplish freedom of movement is a classic illustration of the failure of the grouping,” said the Jamaican Observer in a July 6 editorial.

“Ironically, during the colonial period people were free to move from one colony to another. But immediately after the attainment of political independence, governments began instituting a system of work permits.

“While welcoming tourists with only a driver’s licence, immigration officials subject passport holders from other Caricom states to hostile interrogation. In the Bahamas and Barbados, citizens of Jamaica, Guyana and Haiti are treated as personas non grata.

“The state of Caricom is the equivalent of a bankrupt company that has been losing money for well over a decade. But since there are still obvious benefits to be realized from regional integration and cooperation, abandoning Caricom is the option of the faint-hearted. The only viable course of action is fixing it,” it said.

Part of the solution, the Jamaican Observer argued, is the resignation of the current secretary-general. The resignation “would dramatize the need for a fresh start, without which Caricom will drift aimlessly on to certain death,” said the editorial.

Source

Neo-slavery in the American South

By Brian E. Muhammad and Richard B. Muhammad

Though called by other names, poor Blacks are kept in bondage today in the United States

COLUMBIA, S.C. (FinalCall.com) – Nearly 150 years after Emancipation, trapped by extreme poverty, isolation, fear and shame, some Blacks remain victims of neo-slavery in rural areas of the South, locked into work in fields, factories and assorted industries.

While not bought and sold at auction block, these poor Blacks are forced to work, live in shacks, often have no indoor plumbing and are often trapped in peonage, tied to land where they owe owners debts that are never repaid, according to an activist and researcher. Some Blacks are even forced to pay rent to White landowners for dilapidated housing but are fearful of identifying landlords and owners.

“Slavery never ended and that’s the point, it never ended. It just disguised itself in other forms,” says Antoinette Harrell, who is based in Louisiana and has documented the plight of people she describes as modern slaves in America.

Ms. Harrell has been tracking this problem for the past decade. She knows it is hard for many to accept abusive conditions that amount to slavery exist today. Blacks don’t want to believe this is happening in 2010, she adds. But people are forced to stay on plantations in Glendora, Miss., Webb, Miss., Roseland, La., and other places where landowners use isolation and threats of violence to keep these Black workers under control, she says.

Though others would define the conditions as peonage, which was outlawed by the 13th Amendment in 1865, or as sharecropping, where agricultural workers live on and work on land owned by someone else for a share of the fruits of their labor, the researcher is adamant the bottom line is slavery inextricably tied to debilitating poverty.

It’s slavery because people are forced to stay against their will, worked, controlled and dehumanized, she stresses. In some cases people have been murdered, charges Ms. Harrell, reciting accounts told to her over the years. In addition to extreme poverty and no opportunity, other essential elements make people vulnerable: There is no transportation, workers don’t have cars, dogs are used to track people who try to run away and many feel there is nowhere else to go, says Ms. Harrell.

Dr. Ron Walters, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, explains that after Emancipation, new systems were instituted to exploit Blacks and to keep Blacks essentially enslaved. Over the years, whenever federal officials were asked to intervene, one problem was proving that Blacks were indeed suffering from slavery prohibited by the Constitution, he says.

Plantation owners, understanding the law, would argue that there was no slavery and the Justice Dept. was unable to declare what was happening illegal because of “vague” Constitutional language, he adds. Another problem was the lack of political will and a concern about confronting and exposing the continued problem of slavery and Blacks in America, Dr. Walters explains. From 1865 onward, the problem has cropped up at different times, but it has never been entirely resolved, he adds.

Ms. Harrell, a genealogist, became aware of modern manifestations of slavery while exploring the issue of reparations. Based on conversations with workers, Ms. Harrell says she found many did not know they could actually leave. Ms. Harrell is unsure of how many people may be in this condition inside the United States. She has been able to access these areas by networking, researching plantation histories and locations and through the story of Mae Miller.

Ms. Miller, whose life as a modern slave in Mississippi and Louisiana has been documented, escaped captivity in 1961. The problem exists today, she declares. Ms. Miller, who says she was raped by a slave master beginning at age five, told The Final Call her family and others who moved from one plantation to another where they worked and were kept in horrible conditions and weren’t regularly fed. We were beaten and barely fed table scraps, she recalls.

Ms. Miller says she didn’t realize she had been kept illegally as a slave until 2001. She recalls that her father, her mother, her siblings, her grandfather were with her. She says she didn’t know anything about other family members or what was happening in the outside world.

Ms. Miller says she knows people that are still on these plantations—and who still live under the fear and conditions that she suffered from. Her story was told in 2007 in People magazine, as well on ABC Nightline and CNN. She declines to talk about her family’s experience—it brings up painful memories loved ones would like to forget. Her family’s plight was called peonage in the People article.

Slavery in all its forms

According to the Florida-based Coalition for Immokalee Workers the problem of real slavery exists today—in particular among tomato pickers and agriculture workers in the Sunshine State. “Slavery in Florida today is not separate from the past—indeed its roots extend deep within our state’s history. Farm workers have always been, and remain today, the state’s poorest, least powerful workers,” says Gerardo Reyes of the coalition. “If we are to abolish slavery once and for all in Florida agriculture, we must pull it up by the roots by addressing farm worker poverty and powerlessness.”

“There is real slavery in the fields of Florida. This is not about lousy jobs, but violent control, vicious exploitation, and the potential for serious harm and even death,” adds Dr. Kevin Bales, of Free the Slaves, an international organization.

The coalition is kicking off a July 25-Aug. 14 tour of its Modern-Day Slavery Museum, which will visit the northeast. The exhibit consists of a cargo truck designed as a replica of trucks involved in a 2008 slave operation in Florida. Dozens of farm workers from Mexico and Guatemala were kept in trucks and shacks, beaten, forced to pay for food and showers, and plied with alcohol. Some of victims suffered in bondage for years and were forced to work fields in Florida and other locations in North Carolina and South Carolina.

The Coalition for Immokalee Workers, a farm worker justice group, says the upcoming tour is also an attempt to raise awareness of conditions in the tomato supply chains for Ahod’s USA supermarket brands, which it says includes Giant, Stop&Shop, and Martins.

Since 1997, the coalition says it has helped the Justice Dept. prosecute seven farm slavery operations and helped free over 1,000 people.

“I am not surprised with that because it’s the same system and Florida was one of the 16 states that really heavy peonage cases came from there,” says Ms. Harrell. “The new slaves that they are focusing on in 2010 are the immigrants.”

The sixteen states that Ms. Harrell’s research has shown were once involved in post-Emancipation slavery included Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Alabama, Missouri, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Arizona, New York, Illinois and Georgia. Today the problem exists in Louisiana and Mississippi, she says.

Calls to the U.S. Department of Justice about allegations of modern slavery in the South went unanswered at Final Call press time, however cases of slavery involving immigrant workers have been prosecuted by the federal agency. Attempts to reach state officials in Louisiana were unsuccessful, Mississippi officials, however, did respond. “No one has complained of this to our office. If you have specific allegations, we’d be happy to hear them and see what we can do or help refer to the appropriate agency,” says Jan Shaffer, a public information officer with the Mississippi state attorney general’s office.

While the plight of immigrant workers, sexual bondage, holding women against their will and forcing them into prostitution; human trafficking, in which immigrants pay for passage to America and are forced to work in factories, prostitution or restaurants; or child labor, where children are exploited and abused to make products, are acknowledged and called forms of slavery, calling poor Blacks in the South “slaves” remains distasteful and is seen as almost impossible.

But Ms. Harrell traces the connections to slavery and post-slavery practices through the U.S. National Archives, Justice Department records, local court records and interviews victims living on plantations to understand and document its existence.

“The documents are there from the slave holders; companies that insured our family members, our ancestors and once you start to look into records, you find something a little bit deeper,” Ms. Harrell says.

She says she met people in St. Johns and St. Charles parish in Louisiana who were on sugar cane plantations well into the 1960s and 1970s.

According to Ms. Harrell, letters appealing for investigations into the claims, filed at the National Archives expose that no fewer than three U.S. presidents knew of post-Emancipation slavery during their terms—Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Digging through U.S. Department of Justice records in Washington, D.C., Dr. Walters, who is also director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland, found the extent to which the federal government was aware of post-Emancipation slavery and its challenges with addressing the problem.

Glendora, Miss., Mayor Johnny Thomas agrees bogus debt schemes like peonage and sharecropping were used to exploit Black people well into the 20th century. This was his experience growing up as a sharecropper in the late 1950s.

“It’s pre-meditated,” Mayor Thomas explains. “You were kept indebted to the point where you couldn’t leave.” In these cases the plantation owner pays the debt, then the “debtor” and—in most instances—his entire family work the plantation to repay the money. Only the debt is never caught up.

Mayor Thomas says as far as he knows sharecropping is going on, albeit hurt by the economy, but not slavery.

Both Ms. Harrell and Dr. Walters told The Final Call that the deplorable conditions people are living under on the plantations is nothing short of slavery regardless of the label.

“They are in deep rural areas, miles off the main highways, back off into cotton fields where you got 2,000 acres; how can they get away?” asks Ms. Harrell.

“I was born into slavery, I guess because my father was in slavery. I don’t know if it was generational or only us,” Mae Miller says. “As far as I can remember back when I was a little bitty girl it was happening to us.”

Talks with Ms. Miller expose the extent of isolation experienced with no exposure to the world outside of the plantations. She later learned to read and write and worked following her literal escape from a White landowner under, she says, a death threat.

According to Ms. Harrell, two things must happen as awareness of slavery in modern America grows: The language of what is understood as slavery in the history books must be expanded and there must be a legal injunction against the U.S. for allowing slavery to continue illegally.

Eradication of slavery in America is an issue for the World Court because the practice is a crime against humanity, argues Ms. Harrell. She also sees the atrocity as another example of why Blacks deserve reparations. “It is necessary for the attorneys to come and further the case for reparations, not only for the 19th century but the 20th and 21st century,” Ms. Harrell argues.

The Cotton Pickin’ Truth: Still on the Plantation (FCN, 07-13-2010)

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‘Trying to bring back the plantation days’

By Adrian Sainz Associated Press

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a White incumbent who represents a majority Black district in Memphis, landed the endorsement of President Barack Obama in July—and harsh criticism from his Black opponent in the primary.

Opponent Willie Herenton called the July 13 endorsement a desperate political move by Rep. Cohen and said Mr. Obama doesn’t know the voters in the district.

President Obama issued a statement backing Rep. Cohen for a third term in the House, calling him a proven leader. Rep. Cohen and Mr. Herenton, who served 18 years as Memphis’ first elected Black mayor, face off in the Aug. 5 Democratic primary.

“Together, we passed historic health care reform and together we’re continuing the fight to renew our economy and bring jobs back to the American people,” President Obama said. “I am proud to stand with Steve and support his re-election to Congress.”

Mr. Herenton said Rep. Cohen, who is White, is concerned he’ll lose the Black vote and pushed the Obama staff for an endorsement. He said Mr. Obama is disconnected from the district, which roughly follows the city borders, and slipping in popularity.

“Mr. Obama’s got to look hard and long to even know where Memphis, Tenn., is, OK?” Mr. Herenton said at a news conference.

“I’m going to always be respectful to the president,” Mr. Herenton added. “He doesn’t understand the aspirations of people in this community. He made a political decision.”

Mr. Herenton, who badly trails Rep. Cohen in fundraising, has drawn attention by making race an issue throughout his campaign, arguing with his “Just One” slogan that Tennessee needs a Black congressman. All nine House members and the two U.S. senators are White.

Rep. Cohen has used Mr. Obama’s election to support his argument that race should no longer be a major factor for voters.

Mr. Herenton said he admires and supports the president but found it unusual that Mr. Obama would intervene in a congressional primary. Memphis voters, not the “Washington establishment,” will decide who represents them in the House, the ex-mayor said.

Mr. Herenton saved his harshest comments for Rep. Cohen, calling him phony and weak. On the campaign trail, Rep. Cohen has been “trying to act Black, trying to bring back the plantation days,” Mr. Herenton said.

“As much as I admire the Obama administration, they have not moved this nation forward,” Mr. Herenton said. “With all respects to our former president, I think whomever followed President Bush had an uphill struggle. Any president would have had some real tall mountains to climb.”

Africa: Obama Administration Planning 50th Anniversary Festivities to Honor ‘Significant Gains’

1 July 2010

Washington, D.C. — President Barack Obama will host a town hall meeting next month with African youth leaders as part of a U.S. celebration of 50 years of independence being marked this year by 17 African countries.

“In honor of Africa’s significant gains since 1960, its increasingly important voice on the world stage and in anticipation of the next 50 years of progress toward peace and prosperity, the United States will host a series of events focusing on the Future of Africa in Washington, D.C., in early August,” Benjamin Chang, spokesman for the National Security Council, told AllAfrica.

Reports from last week’s G20 meetings in Toronto that African heads of state had been invited to Washington for anniversary celebrations were inaccurate, Chang said, adding: “The focus is on youth.”

High-profile activities include the annual U.S.-Africa economic forum. It opens August 2 and includes high-level American officials and Cabinet ministers from the 38 African countries eligible to take part in the provisions of the African Growth and Opportunity Act. The legislation, adopted in 2000 and revised and extended by Congress in 2006, provides preferential access to U.S. markets for a broad range of goods from countries in sub-Saharan Africa that meet eligibility requirements.

Events based on themes of youth, governance and opportunity, Chang said, “will bring together young Africans, the Diaspora community, U.S. government officials, civil society organizations and the private sector to focus.” He cited youth empowerment, good governance and economic opportunity as “key themes of America’s partnership with African nations.”

Youth leaders have been invited to Washington to discuss how a U.S.-African partnership “can ensure that all Africans, 60 percent of whom are under 30, are prepared to face the challenges of the coming decade,” Chang said.

The economic conference, formally called the ninth annual U.S.-Sub-Saharan Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation Forum, will take place in two parts. The two days in Washington will involve government officials, with expected participation by the U.S. secretaries of State, Commerce and Agriculture, and the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. “Agoa at 10, New Strategies for a Changing World” is the conference theme.

On August 5 and 6, the second two-day portion of the forum will convene in Kansas City, Missouri, where the focus will be agri-business, and participation will broaden to include U.S. companies and private sector representatives from a number of the 38 Agoa-eligible countries.

Source

Obama to host young African leaders at three-day forum

By the CNN Wire Staff

Washington (CNN) — President Barack Obama will host a three-day forum next month for more than 100 “young leaders” from Africa, the White House announced Wednesday.

The August 3-5 gathering will include a town hall meeting at the White House by Obama and participants from more than 40 sub-Saharan African countries, according to the statement.

“Together with American counterparts and U.S. government officials, the participants will share their insights on key themes of youth empowerment, good governance, and economic opportunity,” the statement said.

Titled “The President’s Forum with Young African Leaders”, the meeting “presents the U.S. government and American friends of Africa with an opportunity to deepen and broaden our understanding of the trajectories of African societies, and to reflect on how the next generation are building their communities’ and their nations’ futures — just as their predecessors did in the era of independence from colonial rule,” the White House statement said.

• President Obama will host a forum of young African leaders
• The three-day forum in August will include a town hall meeting with Obama
• Participants will represent more than sub-Saharan African countries
• Source