At one time in Baltimore, there was an effort to build coalitions between Pan-Afrikan organizations.  The most recent one I can remember was the Tubman City Alliance, which was promoted (and possibly conceived) by activists in Reality Speaks, Solvivaz Nation and other groups.

Over the years, however, a combination of personal tragedies, conflicts and organizational inertia have plunged much of the Baltimore, Maryland area, including parts of the activist community, into apathy, dysfunction and ineffectiveness.  The Tubman City Alliance, and other efforts at building a Pan-Afrikan United Front before that, would have kept the community together, active, relevant and growing.

There is a serious need to rekindle such a coalition.  If you are interested in taking a hand in the resurgence of true Pan-Afrikan Unity in the Baltimore area and the forging of a more unified, coordinated effort among our many and varied organizations, then either leave a comment here or send an email to me at cliff@kuumbareport.com.

April 18, 2014
For KUUMBAReport Online, https://kuumbareport.com

April 24, 2014 is the 60th birthday (Earth Day) of longtime Political Prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, and April 25th is the 68th birthday (Earth Day) of recently-released Political Prisoner Marshall “Eddie” Conway.  These two Veterans of the Black Panther Party, both wrongly-convicted of murdering police officers, both pillars of the Pan-Afrikan Community and strong voices for truth and justice, are linked also by sharing a birth week as well as supporters in common within the Pan-Afrikan and Truth-And-Justice communities.  We hope to report on the events in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania  commemorating Mumia’s 60th Earth Day.  Below, in celebration of Eddie’s 68th Earth Day and of his newfound freedom, we offer this brief look at his case and at some of those who contributed, in ways large and small, to his ultimate liberation.

Pan-Afrikan and human rights activists have estimated that between 150 and 200 people are currently being held in state prisons, jails and federal penitentiaries across the United States because of their political activism, despite the repeated claims of US officials that this country holds no one for political reasons.  These estimated 150 to 200 people, members of organizations such as the American Indian Movement (AIM), the Black Panther Party (BPP) and its “underground” affiliate the Black Liberation Army (BLA), largely-White leftist organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and its “underground” affiliate the Weather Underground, the Puerto Rican Independentista activists, various Socialist groups, the MOVE Organization and others, are considered by activists in the Pan-Afrikan, Black Nationalist and leftist communities to be Political Prisoners (PPs) or Prisoners of War (POWs). 

Political Prisoners are those, such as community activists in the BPP, AIM and SDS, for example, whose work dealt with the organizing of repressed communities in the area of political activism, while Prisoners of War are those who have concluded, based on the frequent murderous attacks by police on members of the BPP, AIM, SDS and various non-violent activists, that a full-blown state of war existed between these communities and the government of the United States, and thus had dedicated themselves to the waging of armed resistance, many under the banners of the BLA and Weather Underground, respectively.

Since the United States could not officially imprison someone because of their political beliefs since the tactics of Sen. Joe McCarthy and the “Red Scare” of the 1920’s to the 1950’s were discredited, another means had to be developed to remove these activists from the populace.  Thus, with the collusion of corrupt police and judges and the compliance of a cooperative media, the easily gullible populace would be persuaded that these activists posed a mortal threat to the average, law-abiding American citizen.  Three primary tactics were instituted. 

First, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) made official public announcements designating organizations such as the BPP to be “the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States”, while issuing internal memoranda detailing its plan to “destabilize, disrupt and neutralize” the BPP and AIM in particular but also Civil Rights leaders such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers and Malcolm X.  This plan actually included the infiltration of these organizations with “agents” or “provocateurs” who would spy on members for their FBI “handlers”, attempt to persuade organizational leaders to undertake illegal and violent actions in the name of “the struggle” (the vast majority of these “suggestions” were rejected because of their violence and illegality), and even attempt to “finger” loyal members as traitors to get them to turn on each other.  Several activists were killed by their own people during the 1960s and 1970s because they were believed to have been traitors based on the accusations of members who themselves turned out to be the “agents”.

Second was a wave of official “extra-judicial” violence directed against Civil Rights and community activists.  Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was surveilled, terrorized and finally shot on a hotel balcony by a supposed racist vigilante, though the surveillance and terror tactics had been committed by the FBI and police.  Medgar Evers was shot in the back in his driveway.   Malcolm X was surveilled and terrorized by the FBI, firebombed and finally shot to death at a public meeting.  Members of the Black Panther Party, officially founded in California’s Bay Area in 1966 but inspired by the Lowndes County (Louisiana) Community Organization, were also spied upon, infiltrated, and murdered in police raids.  Prime examples of this tactic included Bobby Hutton (Los Angeles, 1968) and Fred Hampton Sr. (Chicago, 1969).

The third tactic can be examined today, in the names and faces of the activists of the BPP, MOVE and AIM in particular who were targeted, arrested and subjected to “kangaroo court”-style trials, complete with questionable “jailhouse” informants, inflammatory politically-motivated rhetoric (the stereotype of the BPP as a “terrorist group” or of MOVE as “violent”), misconduct by police, prosecutors and judges, and most importantly, a lack of physical evidence (or the withholding of evidence that would exonerate the defendants).  These trials were designed to convince a jury, in spite of a lack of evidence, to convict them and impose harsh sentences, ranging from life (Sundiata Acoli) to double-life (AIM’s Leonard Peltier) to terms up to 100 years (the MOVE Nine) to the death penalty (former Panther and MOVE supporter Mumia Abu-Jamal).  The activists who were subjected to this tactic of public character assassination leading to unjust convictions on trumped-up charges are today’s Political Prisoners.

Among the longest-held Political Prisoners are Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald (44 years in California), perhaps the longest-held of all, and Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa (42 years in Omaha, Nebraska).  Another case of special note is that of veteran Panther Veronza Bowers (Florida), whose mandatory release date (you read that right) was eight years ago, but he remains in custody because of intercession from the law enforcement community over the objections of the prison warden, despite his acknowledged peaceful nature (he helped quell a prison riot that probably saved several correctional officers’ lives) and the usual issues of evidence and misconduct in his original case.

In March of 1998, the Jericho Organization took on greater prominence as the Jericho March for Political Prisoners marked a new phase in the effort to bring public awareness to this issue.  Led by former Political Prisoner and now-Honored Ancestor Safiya Bukhari (she died of cancer at the age of just 53 in 2003), the Jericho ’98 March brought thousands of activists to Washington, D.C. to protest this country’s treatment of its Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War, most of whom were subjected to various forms of solitary confinement, sensory deprivation and other conditions that are considered torture by international human rights organizations.  Though then-President Bill Clinton was conveniently in Afrika at the time, the march helped to galvanize a number of Political Prisoners’ support committees across the country. 

One of the longest-held Political Prisoners was an important member of the Baltimore Chapter of the Black Panther Party and was considered part of the BPP’s “secondary leadership”.  That fact, and the fact that he had helped uncover the existence of police spies in the Baltimore organization, caused him to become a prime target for neutralization by corrupt elements within the FBI, National Security Agency (NSA) and Baltimore City Police Red Squad.  This veteran Panther, who was finally released from prison on March 4, 2014 after 43 years and 11 months of unjust imprisonment, is a man we in the Baltimore area all simply called “Eddie” but who is more widely known in activist circles as Marshall “Eddie” Conway.

Convicted in 1970 (with absolutely no physical evidence) of the murder of a Baltimore City police officer, he had seen multiple parole petitions denied due to an Executive Order from Governor Parris Glendening forbidding parole for inmates serving life sentences, or “lifers”.  This was brought about by a 1993 case in which a paroled lifer committed a murder after being released from prison.  As a result, the Governor held his “Life Means Life” press conference outside the Maryland House of Correction in Jessup, Maryland, effectively ending all petitions for parole from lifers from that moment on.  In the meantime, Eddie was a model prisoner, his record infraction-free for at least twenty years.  He was a beacon of stability, earning several college degrees, mentoring younger inmates and establishing computer literacy and other educational programs for inmates during his over four decades behind bars.  Thus, he embodied perhaps the best example of a prison-wide rehabilitation program, having single-handedly done more for many of the inmates than the official “rehabilitation” programs could have hoped to accomplish.

Over the years, Eddie’s lawyers filed multiple federal habeas corpus briefs to the federal courts, essentially pointing out that, without physical evidence to link him to the crime and only the use of a peculiar “stacked-deck” procedure (A police officer looked at two stacks of photographs with pictures of Eddie in both stacks to elicit a positive identification) and the testimony of a “jailhouse informer” who claims Eddie confessed to the murder of a Baltimore City police officer in 1969 to connect him to the crime, the state had failed to prove Eddie’s guilt.  For his part, Eddie proclaimed his innocence from the start and insisted upon proving his innocence to the world. 

Community Support for Marshall “Eddie” Conway

Before going into our list of contributors to Eddie’s struggle for freedom, we must state that we cannot possibly name everyone who had a hand in the effort on Eddie’s behalf.  Eddie himself has suggested that we simply relay his thanks to all who played a part in his struggle.  There are a number of people, however, who do deserve mention, and we have attempted to list them as completely as possible below.  We will certainly forget someone, and we encourage our readers to mention these people in comments on this article.  But we realize that we will almost certainly leave someone out, and we apologize in advance and we hope that no one will be offended by the oversight.  That having been said, here goes.

Much of the public credit for Eddie’s successful release has gone to Attorneys Robert Boyle and Phillip G. Dantes.  Attorney Boyle has been Eddie’s longtime legal counsel and has accompanied Eddie to his most recent public appearances to speak on the legal aspects of the case.  They were the legal team who brought Eddie down the Home Stretch and across the Finish Line to his freedom.  Earlier valuable legal support had also come from Attorney Edythe “Mama E.J” Jones, who spoke eloquently about Eddie’s case several times in the 1990’s and early 2000’s.  This struggle was certainly not a sprint, though; it was a nearly 44-year marathon for justice, and the final victory was the result not only of their strong efforts but also of a decades-long, hard-fought campaign to raise public awareness and to undo the miscarriage of justice that was the original 1970 trial.  In truth, the list of contributors, in ways both large and small, is quite long, and in this short article we can only hope to make mention of some of the many activists and organizations that had a hand in the decades-long struggle to free Marshall “Eddie” Conway.

Two of the most active organizations in the struggle to free Eddie Conway, at least from the 1980s through the early 2000s, were the Marshall E. Conway Support Committee and the Friends of Eddie Conway, both of which were operated and staffed by Veterans of the Black Panther Party who either lived in Baltimore at the time of Eddie’s arrest or were living there as the work to free him became more organized.  Some key members of these organizations who deserve special mention for their tireless and often thankless efforts include Nana Njinga Ohema Nyamekye, Baba Dessalines Kambon, Baba Yusef Bey, Sis. Ameejill Whitlock, Baba Gerald Mills, Dr. Gossie Harold-Hudson and Sis. Nzinga of WEAA-FM’s Just You & Me program, and Dr. Kwame SabakhuRa (who became an Honored Ancestor in 2000).  More recently, the Partnership for Social Justice had managed Baba Eddie’s public outreach through the efforts of Sis. Dominique Stevenson and affiliates from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).

Other local Baltimore organizations that embraced wider missions but placed Eddie’s case high in priority included the NAACP Prisoner Support Committee; the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM), which was led by now-Ancestor Mama Anditu Siwatu; Ancestors Roots, founded by Mama Lola Jenkins and Baba Ras Marcus, who promoted Eddie’s cause at their twice-a-year Afrikan Family Day events in Baltimore; and the Organization of All Afrikan Unity-Black Panther Cadre (OAAU-BPC), which was founded in large part to work for Eddie’s freedom by Baba Ade Oba Tokunbo, himself a veteran of the BPP.  The city’s youth stepped up as well, as Reality Speaks, a youth-oriented organization led by Bro. Jabari Natur, participated in and organized a number of events dedicated to informing the public about Eddie’s case.

A number of political figures consistently spoke up for Eddie as well.  The Baltimore City Council had voted several times in favor of Resolutions calling for a re-hearing of Eddie’s case.  While he was a member of the City Council and even afterwards, Rev. Kwame Abayomi was one of the stronger voices in that movement and in the efforts to spark awareness among the congregation of Unity United Methodist Church while he was Pastor there, hosting several events dedicated to Eddie’s case.  In the Maryland State Legislature, Delegates Salima Siler Marriott and Clarence “Tiger” Davis were consistent champions not only for Eddie, but for all Political Prisoners, whose cases demonstrated the antithesis of the just society they had worked toward as public servants.

The city’s religious community was ably represented, not only by Rev. Abayomi when he was Pastor of Unity United Methodist Church, but also by Rev. Douglas Sands, who as Director of the Morgan State University Christian Center had hosted the 1987 Political Prisoners Forum which highlighted the cases of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the MOVE Nine, Leonard Peltier and others, as well as that of Eddie Conway.  His work has been carried on by younger church leaders such as Pastor Heber Brown, whose Pleasant Hope Baptist Church sponsored over the last several years the Marshall “Eddie” Conway Freedom School, a series of lectures and classes centering on Eddie’s work for truth and justice. 

The academic community was active in efforts to wake up the student populations in the state of Maryland.  At UMBC, there was the venerable Dr. Acklyn Lynch.  At Morgan State University, the Philosophy Department was instrumental in raising Eddie’s name, and Professors Jesse McDade-Bey, Robert Burt and Cliff Durant led the way.  These were the trailblazers not only for Eddie and Political Prisoners but for much of the Pan-Afrikan and revolutionary thought in the colleges and universities, and this work would be taken up by the next generation, which included people such as Dr. Jared Ball, a professor at Morgan State University, frequent contributor to Pan-Afrikan media outlets and producer of the “IMixWhatILike” mixtapes of music and political analysis, who often spoke on Eddie’s behalf at public events that dealt with Political Prisoners. 

Members of the cultural community also spoke out about Eddie’s case.  Multi-instrumentalist Roy Ayers gave a concert ay which he lifted up Eddie’s name.  Local Afrikan-centered recoding artists Fertile Ground featuring James Smith, Navasha Daya and Marcus Asante, performed at local venues and donated proceeds from those events to Eddie’s defense fund  Local conscious, Afrikan-centered group Precise Science, led by Bro. Ampu “Ruffmic” Ptah Amen and Bro. Heru “Freedomwriter” Ptah MeriTef, performed uplifting rap, spoken-word and song, and often dedicated their efforts to the struggle for Eddie’s freedom.  And the aforementioned Bro. Jabari Natur promoted Eddie’s case at cultural events, including the work of the youth performers Watoto On The Nile.

Much of the work to inform the community and fight for Eddie’s release was done at the home of Nana Nyamekye and at the Umoja Nyumba Shule (“Unity House School”), an educational center that was being established between 1996 and 2001 in West Baltimore by Bro. Hakim Muhammad and that had hosted a number of Pan-Afrikan gatherings devoted in large part to securing Eddie’s release and exoneration, and which had continued this work despite threats and vandalism against the Shule itself that culminated in a 2001 arson of the building.  Thus, there were many who had made sacrifices of time, money and even some degree of personal safety while working for Eddie’s release and for the larger goal of the establishment of truth and justice.

On the national and regional scale, one could see Eddie’s name and likeness displayed at Political Prisoner conferences, rallies and dinners, especially in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and New York City.  The Jericho Organization continued to support Eddie’s cause after the passing of Sis. Safiya Bukhari under the able leadership of Baba Herman Ferguson, an Elder in the New York community and a former Political Prisoner himself, and his wife, Mama Iyaaluua Ferguson.  In Philadelphia, the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal (ICFFMAJ) and the Friends of MOVE, which were organized, coordinated and kept active by Mama Pam Africa and Mama Ramona Africa, respectively, always discussed the cases of the country’s prominent Political Prisoners, such as Eddie, even as they were engaged in the constant struggle to free their own members from unjust imprisonment in Pennsylvania.  For several years, the Temple of the Black Messiah, under the leadership of Ancestor the Rev. Dr. Ishakamusa Barashango, hosted a Political Prisoners Dinner in Philadelphia, in cooperation with Baba Khalid Abdur-Rashid and Bro. Hamid Abdul-Aziz of the Pan-Afrikan Liberation Front. 

Meanwhile, media outlets such as the Black Agenda Report, Pacifica radio stations such as WBAI (New York), KPFK-FM (California) and WPFW-FM (Washington DC), NPR radio station WEAA-FM (Baltimore, MD) and Internet radio stations such as Harambee Radio (http://harambeeradio.com) and LIB (Living In Black) Radio (http://libradio.com) regularly broadcast information about Political Prisoners, including Eddie.

These and other organizations all worked in various ways to increase public awareness of Eddie’s case, through teach-ins, small-scale community publications and public rallies such as the one sponsored by the Marshall E. Conway and Friends of Eddie Conway Support Committees at Baltimore’s City Hall on June 8, 1996 in protest of Eddie’s then-26 years of unjust incarceration and then-Governor Parris Glendening’s position against releasing prisoners with paroleable life sentences (his “Life Means Life” declaration).  Several speakers and performers addressed the crowd that day, providing unique perspectives on the case of Marshall “Eddie” Conway.  We’ve dug into the KUUMBAReport archives to find a number of quotes from many of these community activists to provide a more personal perspective of the man we all simply called “Eddie”.

Veteran Baltimore Panther Dessalines Kambon spoke a bit about the importance of the public education campaign about Eddie’s case: “Eddie Conway has been locked up … for a crime he was never legally convicted of.  He went through a bogus trial.  And this was during a very strong climate when Black people were up in arms and were struggling.  Eddie was a leader of the Black Panther Party at that time.  Eddie exposed agents of the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) during the early seventies and they made sure that he would not be able to continue to do that.  They set him up. … There are people who are afraid to come out and support Eddie Conway and other political prisoners for the simple reason that they are afraid of the police.  But the governor knows about Eddie Conway’s issue and we’re going to make him more aware. We’re going to make [then-Baltimore Mayor] Kurt Schmoke more aware of it.”

Nana Njinga Ohema Nyamekye: “Blacks are more prone to be sentenced for longer periods of time and put on death row in the state of Maryland and around this country because of the conditions of racism that have been allowed to permeate this country for some time. … Eddie has … done more time than any other person has done in this state for this type of crime.  He’s one of the longest held Political Prisoners in the United States and we need for the madness to end.  He has met the criteria that was placed upon him by a judge and by the criminal justice system. … Eddie was in this community … working on the freedom and liberation of all Afrikan people, and all people in general, who are under oppression. Eddie came to see about us and now we’ve got to go see about Eddie. We must demand his freedom!”

Bro. Jasaga, veteran Panther from the Washington, DC chapter, spoke about the cost to the community of Eddie’s incarceration and the destruction of the Panthers in the 1970s: “It’s aggravating to know that the organization that Eddie was organizing has gotten so much revisionist history said about it and there are very few Panthers around now to tell their story. … Eddie Conway also is one of those people who has always had a raised consciousness about people and he’s always known that there is virtue in serving people.  It’s not something he had to be prodded into doing.  He’s done this from the time he was a very, very young man.  I measure this whole situation by what we have lost by having someone like Eddie Conway behind bars.  Here’s a great role model for people in the community.  Here’s a person who knows, understands, and strives to continue to learn how to make cooperative economics work–how to get people to understand the need to express yourself in a world that is hell-bent on killing you even before you get a chance to do so.  He understands these things.  The children growing up in certain communities all around this country, and especially here in Baltimore, need him. We need him. We need him here.”

Baba Dhoruba bin Wahad, veteran Panther and onetime leader of the New York chapter, spoke about the larger issue of the political repression that led to Eddie’s imprisonment and the implications for freedom around the world: “One of the things people must understand about the issue of political repression in the United States is that the United States has internationalized its municipal police policies.  The police agencies in other nations in Europe and around the world are increasingly dancing to the tune of U.S. municipal policies when it comes to issues on drugs, political repression, and so-called anti-terrorism.  So people need to be very much concerned with how political repression manifests itself in so-called American democracy.  This is the reason why it’s very important that people contact web sites … that deal with issues like political repression and political prisoners in the United   States.”

Baba Charlie Dugger, well known community activist: “You see, these political prisoners’ threat has been that they are conscientious.  It hasn’t been because they’ve done anything bad.  And for speaking up against that which is bad, they’ve become a problem.  But we have to say that there are too many problems in our community among our people and we need their solutions.  We need their solutions.”

Washington, DC attorney Thomas Ruffin, who also had contributed to efforts to free Eddie, relayed this message upon hearing of Eddie’s release: “Imprisoned for nearly forty-four years, Mr. Conway remained loyal to his work, as well as to the sacrifice of his comrades, in the Baltimore City Chapter of the Black Panther Party.”

A number of other Baltimore-area community organizations are to be commended for their regular contributions to the efforts to win Eddie’s freedom.  They include: Unity for Action, founded by community activists Bill Goodin and Eric Easton (now an Honored Ancestor), the Concerned Citizens for Police Accountability and Review, the All People’s Congress, the Baltimore Emergency Response Network, , the Baltimore Local Organizing Committee of the Million Man March and their local Coordinator, Sis. Ertha Harris, Black Classic Press and its Founder, Baba Paul Coates, radio talk show host Marc Steiner of WEAA-FM, and a number of individual activists and concerned citizens.

The Case of Marshall “Eddie” Conway

The following article was written in November 2000 by Mardon Walker, JD for the Marshall E. Conway Support Committee’s Justice for Eddie Conway Campaign and was featured in KUUMBAReport Newsletter #19, January-February 2001.  Ms. Walker’s article is one of the more concise yet comprehensive analyses of the essential issues surrounding Eddie’s case.

Original Charges

Marshall “Eddie” Conway was arrested while he was at work at the US Post Office on April 26, 1970.  On the previous night, two police officers sitting in a patrol car had been fired upon; Officer Donald Sager was killed, and Officer Stanley Sierakowski was wounded.  Within an hour of the shooting, two suspects were arrested near the scene, both with affiliations to Baltimore’s Black Panther Party.  One of the weapons used in the commission of the crime was recovered at the scene.  An additional officer who responded to the crime reported seeing a third man “at a distance” near where the two suspects were found.  Mr. Conway’s arrest as the third man was the result of a warrant based on information supposedly supplied by a never-identified informant.  The two men arrested the night of the attack, Jackie Powell and Jack Johnson, were tried and convicted for these crimes. Mr. Powell later died of a heart attack while in prison serving his sentence; Mr. Johnson is still incarcerated in a Maryland prison.

These charges came at a time when there was already considerable media attention focused on the Baltimore Chapter of the Black Panther Party.  This included front-page coverage of the multiple indictments of this case, and a mass arrest of the Baltimore Panthers for the purported torture/murder of an informant who participated in local chapter activities. In the first trial following the mass arrest, the prosecution witnesses proved to be both contradictory and not credible to the jury.  The first defendant charged with the torture/murder and conspiracy was acquitted after just two hours of jury deliberation.  None of the remaining cases were ever tried, and all those arrested were released.

The FBI surveillance of Mr. Conway and the Black Panther Party in Baltimore began even before these events, and were part of Mr. Conway’s FBI files, secured by him through the Freedom of Information Act.  The FBI’s letter to Baltimore’s Postal Inspector dated 10/22/69 provided notification that Mr. Conway, a Postal employee, was a member of the Black Panther Party.   An additional memo in the file was from the Baltimore FBI, dated 11/28/69, and stated that 1) the Panthers were under constant surveillance and investigation, and 2) that the Baltimore chapter had already been infiltrated by government agents and informants.  That memo refers to a “highly sensitive source who is of continuous value to the Bureau.”  The same memo also confirmed that from November of 1969 on, there was direct coordination of the surveillance of the Baltimore Panthers by the FBI and the Baltimore City Police Department.

An Unjust Conviction

Mr. Conway was never linked by any physical evidence to the crimes for which he was tried.  There were no fingerprints, and no physical evidence linking him to either the crime scene or the weapons.  Mr. Conway maintained his innocence at the trial, and continues to do so.  Mr. Conway rejected the use of a criminal defense, which in all likelihood would have ended in his acquittal, based on lack of evidence.  Instead, he accepted advice to use a “political” defense, and was wrongfully convicted.  With adequate legal representation denied him, an acquittal could have been convincingly argued.  At his trial, the prosecution primarily relied on the testimony of an informant, placed in Mr. Conway’s cell under suspicious circumstances and against Mr. Conway’s written protests to the guards.  Mr. Conway supposedly then confessed to this stranger who he had already identified as an informant.  Such use of informants was common knowledge to all Black Panther Party members.  The only other evidence came from the third officer who responded to the shooting, who stated he “followed a man who seemed to be acting suspiciously” near where the two suspects were arrested.  The officer’s identification of Mr. Conway came about only after he was given a set of photos and he recognized no one.  The same officer was then given a second set of photos in which Mr. Conway’s photo was the only one repeated from the first set, and he “identified” Mr. Conway.  Since Mr. Conway was being held in a cell at that very station house as the photos were being shown to the officer, a lineup could easily have been arranged, but was not (the lineup is considered a more reliable means of identification).

Mr. Conway was connected to the shooting of the two officers in the patrol car only by the disputed statements of Charles Reynolds, the jailhouse informant, placed in Mr. Conway’s cell despite documented protests to guards by Mr. Conway.  Reynolds was inexplicably transferred to Mr. Conway’s cell in the Baltimore City Jail from a Maryland prison, where he was serving time on an assault conviction.  Reynolds was en route to Michigan where he was wanted on forgery charges.  With his record of four previous convictions, and prior service as a police informer, Reynolds wrote to Baltimore police from Detroit and offered them his testimony in exchange for intercession with the Michigan Parole Board.  Nothing came of the interview conducted by the Baltimore police officer flown to Detroit to talk to Reynolds.  When it became evident that the case against Mr. Conway was weak however, one of the prosecutors flew to Detroit for a second interview, and as a result, Reynolds was brought back to Baltimore for the purpose of testifying at Mr. Conway’s trial.

On most days of the trial, Mr. Conway left the courtroom while the trial proceeded because the trial judge denied him an attorney of his own choosing, or to represent himself.  Instead, only the court-appointed lawyer for Mr. Conway was allowed to question witnesses.  That lawyer spent only 45 minutes prior to trial with Mr. Conway, and during the trial often appeared to be intoxicated. (Apparent from the transcript itself is the lawyer’s inadequate and inappropriate demeanor in the afternoons, following lunch recess.)

Certainly a factor in the trial was Mr. Conway’s appearance to the jurors: he was shackled and chained, with his imposing height, huge Afro, and raised-fist salutes to supporters in the crowded courtroom before his refusal each day to sit at the trial table.  Prior to their selection, the jurors had been exposed to weeks of inflammatory media coverage of the Black Panthers in Baltimore in connection with allegations of kidnapping and murder.  This mirrored the media’s negative national coverage of the Panthers throughout this period. Pervasive negative media attention has since been authoritatively attributed to the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Program [“COINTELPRO”], and other national security operations, as part of their stated intention of destroying the Black Panther Party.  Prior to and during the trial, stories were in both of Baltimore’s daily papers and in the Afro-American each Friday.  The jury was not sequestered, and had access to these materials.

Incarceration

Mr. Conway ha[d] been incarcerated since April 1970, on his 24th birthday … classified as medium security prisoner, and … held in a maximum-security institution at the Maryland House of Corrections in Jessup, MD.  [Eddie was subsequently moved to a prison in Cumberland, Maryland, then back to another prison in Jessup. – Ed.]

A vicious beating by Maryland Penitentiary guards in 1974 was part of an attempt to destroy the Panther Collective, formed by Mr. Conway in the Penitentiary.  As a result of that attack, Mr. Conway suffered a broken shoulder and compound fracture of his jaw, necessitating surgery and a three-month hospitalization.  Although Mr. Conway filed a civil rights action against the guards, an all-White federal jury refused to hold the guards accountable for their actions.  The US Court of Appeals subsequently refused to substitute its judgement for that of the jury but did acknowledge that: “The severity of the injuries…presents a closer question of whether excessive force was used, amounting to a constitutional deprivation.”  Mr. Conway earned his high school GED while in the US Army, and while incarcerated, earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Social Science from Coppin State College.  In addition, as his interest and expertise in computers grew, he also earned an Associate of Arts degree in Computer Science and Business Studies from EssexCommunity   College. … While incarcerated, Mr. Conway was also the Inmate Coordinator for the Penitentiary Library, and worked to secure a $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Mr. Conway directed the project supported by this grant which resulted in To Say Their Own Words, fifty videotaped discussion sessions between 100 prisoners and a wide-ranging group of published authors, recorded over a one year period.

Throughout the decades that he has been incarcerated, Mr. Conway has provided inspiration and leadership in numerous other efforts to benefit fellow prisoners.   Some examples of this are: 1) the formation of the United Prisoner’s Labor Union at the Maryland Penitentiary, which signed up 500 members and secured the support of the labor community; 2) a counseling program for youths at risk for imprisonment, which operated for 12 years: the court paired young offenders with Penitentiary inmates for 10-week counseling sessions; 3) the ACLU-affiliated Prison Committee to Correct Prison Conditions, which was chaired by Mr. Conway, and worked with a team of ACLU lawyers to litigate overcrowding, brutality, and health issues at Maryland House of Corrections [the resulting court decree is still in effect; at the time of the suit the MHC population was 2,100, which was  reduced to and remains at 1,200]; and 4) the Maryland Lifers Association … with chapters in three institutions, which created African-centered holiday celebrations for prisoners with their families; a program which used four computers to teach 600 prisoners computer literacy; and the first ever prison-based Touchstone Project, which is based on weekly discussions of classical literature. …

… As the previously undisclosed records of the FBI and other security agencies are brought to light, Americans are reexamining what was done by the government and the courts in the name of its citizens during the turbulent period of the 1960’s and 1970’s.  Across the country, efforts are being made to win release for the wrongfully convicted and still-incarcerated targets of the FBI’s COINTELPRO, including Eddie Conway.

As one part of this effort, Amnesty International called for an independent commission of inquiry into the effects of abuses by the FBI on trials in the US.  In a press release dated October 13, 1981, Amnesty International asked that the inquiry determine “whether misconduct which judges might have treated as isolated irregularities formed part of a pattern.”  These abuses were documented in the 144-page report released on that date, and included those that were part of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program aimed at disrupting target organizations such as the Black Panther Party.  Amnesty International’s study was based on an examination of thousands of pages of official transcripts and documents, and cited many examples of irregularities by the FBI in the cases of activists from militant groups, including the Panthers, targeted for FBI intelligence work.

According to that study: “Production of false evidence, misstatements about FBI action, harassment, infiltration of defense teams by informants and failure to make available information which the defense might have used are all shown to have occurred.”  (Proposal for Commission of Inquiry into the effect of domestic intelligence activities on criminal trials in the United States of America, 1981)

“All Power To The People”

How Marshall “Eddie” Conway was Freed

As was mentioned above, the struggle to free Eddie was a long, drawn-out struggle, highlighted by dozens of appeals based on the facts of the case and actual evidence of misconduct that were rebuffed by the courts.  After decades of struggle to gain a re-hearing of the actual facts and evidence in Eddie’s case, it was an improper tactic that had been applied by prosecutors and judges in his original trial and the subsequent discrediting of that tactic just two years ago that established the legal justification for the ending of Eddie’s nearly forty-four-year political imprisonment.

Attorney Boyle was able to succeed in using what is known as the Unger Case to finally force a review of the legality of Eddie’s conviction and imprisonment, and thus secure Eddie’s release from his four-decade-plus ordeal.

In 1976, Merle Unger was convicted of killing an off-duty police officer in Hagerstown.  But in 2012, the state’s highest court found that improper jury instructions had led to an unfair trial.  The instructions that, simply put, a jury should consider the law and the presented facts in the case led them to ignore questions of reasonable doubt in arriving at a verdict.  Judges had almost routinely given these jury instructions at least up until 1980; as a result, hundreds of cases were thrown into doubt and the estimate is that close to 200 prisoners convicted of violent crimes before 1980 could be released, or at least be granted new trials.  The case of Marshall “Eddie” Conway was one of these cases.  Eddie, at age 67 and not being considered a threat to society, was granted his release on probation.

It is somewhat ironic that, after so many appeals based on the lack of real evidence in his case and the use of tactics of misconduct in his case had been rejected, and after appeals from a number of Maryland State Senators, university educators, clergy and even the Baltimore City Council (which had voted on a resolution that Eddie should be freed years ago) had fallen on deaf ears, it was the case of a man, Merle Unger, whose guilt in the murder of the off-duty Hagerstown police officer was never in question, that would provide the justification for the freeing of a man who should never have been imprisoned in the first place.

What does this teach us?  Perhaps that, as we continue to struggle for truth, justice and righteousness, we must press on, even when the obstacles seem overwhelming.  Sometimes, even when efforts of substance see to be rejected at every turn, it can be something that seems inconsequential to most of us, and which by comparison is trivial in importance, that finally, and suddenly, tips the scales in our favor.  In this crazy, mixed-up world that seems to be run by the forces of Isfet (disorder, untruth, unrighteousness), sometimes, after all our work to appeal to Truth have failed, the actions of those who appear to mean us no good (such as Merle Unger and his legal team) can open that final door for us that our many well-wishers could not.

The Day Marshall “Eddie” Conway Became a Free Man

Attorney Phillip Dontes, Marshall “Eddie” Conway, Attorney Robert Boyle

On the afternoon of Tuesday, March 4, 2014, a small group of supporters gathered in a small courtroom at the CourthouseEastBuilding in downtown Baltimore, Maryland.  By the time we had arrived, Effie and his attorneys were already seated at the defense table and the official pronouncement by the judge had been made.  With no fanfare, Eddie was escorted from the room, still restrained in handcuffs and leg irons, and led to the Lexington Street entrance.  The rest of his supporters left the building and awaited his emergence from the CourthouseEastBuilding to breathe the free air at last.

A number of his longtime supporters were there to greet him.  Baba Paul Coates, who had served in the BPP with Eddie in the late 1960s, was there.  Marc Steiner, who had discussed Eddie’s case on his WEAA-FM radio show several times, was there.  Former Political Prisoners Laura Whitehorn and Baba Dhoriba Bin-Wahad were there.  Baba Ade Oba Tokunbo, founder of the Organization of All Afrikan Unity-Black Panther Cadre, which had as one of its primary goals the freedom and exoneration of Eddie and other Political Prisoners, was there.  And several others gathered on that chilly afternoon to greet Eddie back to the streets of Baltimore, a place where his example and his teachings will hopefully bring the city back to a place of wholeness and healing.

Now, however, the time has come for Eddie to enjoy the feeling of freedom.  Actually, he might regard his status as being “marginally free”, or, as he had once said of those of us on the outside, “You’re not really free, you’re just loose.”  In any case, it is hoped that, while a number of the local community organizations, as well as national ones such as the Jericho Organization will likely be calling him to set up appearances (the day after his release, he and Attorney Boyle appeared on DemocracyNow! for an extended interview with hosts Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh), Eddie will clearly need some time to himself, to adjust to this major change in his life.  “Eddie’s got that Thousand Yard Stare right now,” said veteran Panther and former Political Prisoner Dhoruba Bin-Wahad.  “When he starts looking straight at you with the clear eyes, then you’ll know he’s adjusted to where he is.”  We hope to see Eddie in the community soon, and we hope to be able to sit and talk with him sometime in the future.  But for now, we should feel overjoyed that one battle to free a Political Prisoner has finally been won, and that those who did not live to see this day, from Safiya Bukhari and Mama Anditu Siwatu to Dr. Kwame SabakhuRa, can look down from their place among the Honored Ancestors and smile.  Those of us who are still here, including Baba Ade, Nana Nyamekye, Sis. Ameejill, Bro. Hakim, Baba Dessalines, Baba Yusef and so many others who fought this long fight on the local front, can count one more freedom fighter in the Pan-Afrikan Community who was freed from the deepest, darkest corner of the Belly of the Beast.  Meanwhile, Eddie has long since earned time to be with family and close friends, to fully adjust to all the technology that didn’t exist the last time he was “on the outside”, to walk through doors that will not shut and lock behind him (unless he wants them to), and to savor the smell and taste of the open air for the first time in nearly forty-four years.

The literary skill of our people is impressive, but, like with many of our major conferences and speeches, we are turning the Internet into a huge Pan-Afrikan Cyber Talk Shop.  Quite frankly, we spit at each other entirely too much.  We take to the Internet and email to trash each other’s models for developing Pan-Afrikan Unity instead of getting together to work out our similarities and differences in sincere, face-to-face meetings.  We prefer to lean on our own lack of knowledge about the efforts of others and to spew critical anal-yses of why the plans of everyone else will fail and why ours alone will succeed (despite the fact that, so far, our own plans have also failed for the most part).  Even the idea of our different organizations coming together in a coalition to at least try to forge some sort of Pan-Afrikan United Front has been criticized as ineffective or improper or as an attempt to mislead, hijack and otherwise destroy the Pan-Afrikan movement.  We constantly warn each other about attempts by our historical oppressors and their Negro Stooges to Divide and Conquer us, while our own actions further that very same Divide-And-Conquer process.  We assume, without any proof whatsoever, that those with whom we do not agree are “Uncle Toms” or “collaborators” and thus the unification of our people is over before it starts.  We are not backing up our Pan-Afrikan words with sincere action to bring about that Pan-Afrikan Unity that we all claim to cherish.  Might this be because if we were to act on our words and succeed in bringing that unity to our people, we risk losing the very topic that gives us license to prattle on incessantly?

When are we going to stop doing our oppressors’ work for them and start coming together?

Over the last year or so, I’ve encountered a few people who seem to feel the same way as I do.  But there are too many of us who either feel their way is the only way, or who want to go it alone, or who want to be the leader over everyone else, or who simply want to shut others out for some reason.  As long as this is the prevailing attitude, we as Afrikan People will continue to suffer “and the band will play on.” (Apologies to The Temptations.)

I look forward to hearing from anyone who is truly ready for us to accept each other and come together.  I don’t need to hear from those who want to trash me, my organization or each other; those who insist upon putting up barriers will ultimately isolate themselves and consign themselves to the “dustbin of history”.  It’s time for us to stop making excuses for why we will not unite, or at least start communicating and meeting with more mutual respect in an attempt to develop some Pan-Afrikan Unity.  When that day comes, I will rejoice.  Until then, I will settle for working with those few among even our self-described “conscious” Pan-Afrikan community who are ready to put the words of unity into action.

Peace and Power,
Bro. Cliff
KUUMBAReport Online
https://kuumbareport.com

The Pan-Afrikan Family is invited to check out the discussion of “Agenda 2063”, s document that was written by African Unon Commission (AUC) Chair Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma (pictured, left) spelling out her concept of a Confederation of African States that would amount to a United States of Africa by the year 2063.

Her document was written in the form of hypothetical letter, written 50 years from now, ostensibly to Ancestor Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first elected President and considered by many to be the father of Pan-Afrikanism.

Perhaps because of the style in which it was written, some critics have already lambasted her document as pie-in-the-sky dreaming.  Others took issue with the fact that it did not call for the immediate creation of a Union Government for the African Continent, stating that 2063 is too long to wait for such a development.  But the document was apparently meant to spark the kind of discussion that will take place on Saturday, March 15.

Dr. Chika Onyeani (pictured, right), Publisher of the Africa Sun-Times and the author of several books, including 2000’s rather controversial Capitalist Nigger and a later spy novel, The Broederbond Conspiracy, has called for this discussion, which he has touted as “the biggest open discussion event by Africans ever, that will not involve participants spending a lot of money to participate.”

Details about the call are included below, from Dr. Onyeani’s announcement and press release.  It’s recommended that anyone wishing to participate in Saturday’s conference call read Dr. Dlamni-Zuma’s “Agenda 2063” document to familiarize themselves with the content and to allow for a intelligent and positive discussion.  As Dr. Onyeani states below, the document can be accessed through the African Sun Times website at: http://africansuntimes.com/2014/02/dr-nkosazanas-agenda-2063-african-unity/.

This piece was initially written as an email to two Elders who have often bemoaned the lack of unity that we as African people have demonstrated over these many generations since the Ma’afa (a Twi word meaning “great disaster”, used by Pan-Afrikan historians and activists to describe the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the Arab Slave Trade, the Scramble for Africa and the suffering African people have endured as a result).  I meant it as a helpful response to their question (which was probably rhetorical anyway) about why our people continue to act in such a self-destructive manner, refusing to hear the words of our knowledgeable Elders and instead preferring the siren song of the corporate interests who wish to keep us subjugated as compliant consumers and labor lackeys to keep the wheels of their industry moving.  When my email was returned to me with the message “the recipient is only accepting mail from specific email addresses”, it became clear to me that, while the message was meant to be distributed broadly so that all could hear the wisdom of their words, they did not themselves wish to hear the words of the rest of us.  In other words, this was to be a one-way discussion.  And, apparently (and unfortunately), the only answer they wished to see or hear was the rest of us unifying under their leadership.

I’ve encountered a number of wise and well-meaning activists and organizers, such as these respected Elders, who have taken this view, that they are the ones with the answers and all others should simply follow their banner.  The organization I belong to, the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC), is a coalition-based organization that realizes that such an approach will often fail to attract allies who already have ideas and organizations of their own.  SRDC has attempted to form cooperative partnerships with other organizations whose response was simply “join under us and then we will work together.”  These partnerships failed to materialize because we could not subordinate our mission to someone else’s, but we were willing to work side-by-side with other organizations in areas of shared interest, an offer which has often been refused.  Our various organizations’ utter failure to work together in such a unified and cooperative manner (despite our avowed reverence for the principles of Kwanzaa, specifically Unity–Umoja–and Collective Work and Responsibility–Ujima) actually underlines the primary reason why the words of our enemies carry so much more weight than do our own with our own people. 

I’m not saying that the Elder’s complaint was without merit; quite the contrary.  He is absolutely right: our grassroots communities easily and readily swallow the brainwashing and propaganda that is fed to them by the powers that be.  Where I differ with the Elder is in his seeming surprise and bewilderment as to the reason why this is happening.  It is not because of some magic spell that has been cast over our people.  It is not because of some myth of intellectual or moral inferiority that right-wingers try to sell us.  It is not even so much because of Western “tricknology”, though it is a tool that is used to deliver the poisonous messages our enemies feed us.  It is because, as much as anything else, of our own inability, or refusal, as self-styled “leaders”, to actively model the unity and cooperation we want the masses to practice to lift our communities up. 

The messages with which our communities are bombarded–Look out for Number One, Individual Freedom, Personal Responsibility, I Gotta Get Mine–have profoundly influenced us, and not for the better.  While it took military coups d’état and the imposition of military dictatorships to turn communities in Latin American countries and even villages against each other, the unraveling of the fabric of our Village was accomplished more through a coup d’esprit–the conquest of our spirit through a combination of drugs, deprivation, fear and propaganda.  The major entertainment media (which often masquerade as news) and the corporate interests that control them were able to pull off this stunt in a way that was well-coordinated and affected our collective psyche across the board.  This is largely because of the fact that they are well organized in spite of belonging to different organizations and corporations.  While they all have their specific organizational interests (mainly profit), they all agree on the basic narrative to feed to our people, and thus their message is well crafted, organized and unified.  They often sit on each others’ Boards of Directors and, though they may be competitors in many ways, they have learned to support each other in a variety of projects.  Even going back in history, we see this level of cooperation.  At the Berlin Conference, supposedly-competing countries “cooperated” to divide Mother Africa up so that each of them was given control of specific, resource-rich sectors of our ancestral home, knowing that they would all benefit at our collective expense.  This spirit of cooperation would ultimately serve them well in the two World Wars, when first Otto Von Bismarck, then Adolf Hitler and the Axis Powers, decided to attempt to conquer all of Europe for themselves.  The countries of Europe, including the United States and Russia in World War II, not only cooperated militarily, they also worked together to develop and implement the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe.  Thus, our historical oppressors from the United States and Europe have been practicing “Ujima” (Collective Work and  Responsibility) and “Umoja” (Unity) for hundreds of years before we even mouthed the words. 

We as African people do no such thing.  With the exception of the occasional slave revolt, civil-rights march  or presidential election, we seem unable to truly come  together and cooperate on anything without our own self-interested aims derailing our efforts.  (The African Union is trying to provide an example of cooperation among member states, but that project, much like the Organization of African Unity which it replaced, is being challenged as well, from inside and from outside the organization.)  Our different organizations are still involved in the “me-first” game and no other strategy is acceptable.  To us, unity seems possible only through conquest and the absorption of other groups’ members.  If people do not join our organization and follow our specific organizational agenda, we assume that they do not wish to work with us and that they are against Pan-African Unity. 

This, our refusal to even work in cooperation with each other while our enemies have been doing so for generations, is the main reason why our message goes unheeded by the masses of our people.  We are so busy competing with, contradicting and fighting ourselves that our messages of liberation and uplift sound jumbled and self-contradictory; why should anyone listen to us talking about unity when we all fight amongst ourselves?  The corporations, while they do compete with each other for the biggest share of the profits, are at least selling us, by and large, the same thing, and have agreed to use their common media outlets
to send us the same basic message of what we should call ourselves and what dreams we should seek to attain.  Our ironically self-described Pan-Afrikan organizations, however, disagree on what we should call ourselves, what our relationship should be to Africa and what is best for us as a people, and they all seem to insist that they alone are the path to our psychological, economic and political freedom and that all others must join them and them alone.

The fact is that our different organizations are not going to join each other.  You may have no interest in “joining” my organization, the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus or SRDC (not that I’m insisting that you do) because you want to continue to build your organization, and I don’t have the time or energy to join other organizations because I’m quite busy with more than enough unpaid work helping to build SRDC. 

However, this need not be a major problem or an impediment to our organizing efforts.  While we in SRDC are still focused on building our organization and establishing a means to bring the voice of the Grassroots Communities of the African Diaspora to the World Stage (be that through the African Union, World Social Forum or other vehicles), we also recognize that, while our different organizations are not ready to join each other, they can, and must, find a way to work together cooperatively for the education, mobilization and general uplift of African people, as the corporations of our adversaries do in their effort to strengthen their control over us.  
          
I have been reaching out, on behalf of SRDC, to other organizations that have shown an interest in working cooperatively.  I’ve concentrated my efforts in the area near where I live, and as a result I’ve gotten a few interested responses from some of the Continental African organizations in the Washington DC area, even though many of them would tell you that their perspective on who the African Diaspora is (that the Diaspora is primarily Continental Africans who emigrated from the Mother Continent to the West) are often quite different from that of SRDC and of African Descendants in general (that the Diaspora includes all people of African descent who live outside the African Continent).  Still, if there is a way for Continental Africans and African Descendants to engage in constructive planning so that we can eventually develop a narrative of Diaspora Unity instead of the individualistic disunity and thoughtless consumerism that our adversaries teach us, I hope to be a part of that planning process.  I don’t expect these organizations to join SRDC, but my hope is that they will agree to work alongside us to reach out to, organize and galvanize the African Diaspora so that the aims of all our organizations can be attained.  

If this sounds like an acceptable arrangement, I am prepared to hear from you so that we can make plans to move all of our people forward.  Just leave a comment here, or send an email to cliff@kuubareport.com.

Peace and Power,
Bro. Cliff

Every year in Plymouth, Massachusetts, as most of us are taking the time of the Thanksgiving holiday to share fellowship with family and friends, watch too much football and eat too much turkey, a different commemoration is taking place.  The descendants of the Wampanoag Indians who encountered the Pilgrims in 1620 have a different story to tell from the one we all learned in school.  Their story is one that begins in friendship, but is soon followed by betrayal, by war, and ultimately by the genocide visited upon their Nation.

I’ve had the honor of being able to travel to Plymouth to take part in this commemoration five times.  The first time, in 1998, was a journey by bus, which was originally published in KUUMBAReport No. 9, February 1999 and is reposted below.  Four other times I drove to Plymouth from Maryland, and on three of those occasions my dear departed Rottweiler, who died in October 2012, traveled with me.  I was not able to make the trip this year, so I cannot share that experience with you, but we hope the description that follows will provide a reasonable explanation of what the National Day of Mourning, which most Americans regard as Thanksgiving Day, is all about.

“We are not Vanishing.
We are not Conquered.
We are as Strong as Ever!”

This was the primary slogan of the United American Indians of New England (UAINE) as they commenced the 1998 Day of Mourning Rally and March at Cole’s Hill in historic Plymouth, Massachusetts, overlooking Plymouth Rock.  The event had been held at this place every year since 1970, when Wamsutta Frank B. James, a member of the Wampanoag Indian Nation, had been invited by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to address a gathering of dignitaries marking the 350th anniversary of the arrival of the Pilgrims.  After he accepted their invitation, he was asked for a copy of his remarks in advance.  Upon seeing that his view of the history of the Pilgrims did not agree with theirs, the planners of the event first attempted to write a speech for him to recite, then, upon being told he would not have words put in his mouth, they withdrew their invitation and chose not to allow him to speak.  With that, he and other Indigenous people from throughout the country called for “Thanksgiving Day” to be observed as a Day of Mourning for Indian people.  It has been so observed every year since that time.

Most of us know well the story of the Pilgrims as was taught in school.  Upon landing at Plymouth Rock, these hardy adventurers, seeking only religious freedom, nearly starved to death in the first winter.  But, after surviving with the help of the benevolent Indian chief Massassoit, the Pilgrims and the Indians got together for a feast of thanksgiving turkey.  Thus, 377 years’ worth of good cheer, turkey, cranberry sauce, and (finally) football games was begun.

The only problem with that scenario is that it is untrue.  Yes, the Pilgrims did nearly starve to death that first winter.  Yes, they would not have survived if not for the goodwill of Massassoit, if for no other reason than he chose to live in peace with them rather than try to drive them from Indian land.  Today, many UAINE activists say the decision to live in peace with the Pilgrims was the worst mistake Massassoit could have made.  This sentiment was eloquently stated in the speech that Wamsutta Frank James had prepared for Thanksgiving Day 1970, but his words were silenced due to ignorance, fear and greed.  We reprint some of his words here as they tell the story better than ours could.

The Suppressed Speech of Wamsutta Frank James: Thanksgiving Day, 1970

“I speak to you as a man–a Wampanoag Man. I am a proud man, proud of my ancestry, my accomplishments won by a strict parental direction (“You must succeed – your face is a different color in this small Cape Cod community!”). I am a product of poverty and discrimination from these two social and economic diseases. I, and my brothers and sisters, have painfully overcome, and to some extent earned the respect of our community. We are Indians first–but we are termed ‘good citizens.’  Sometimes we are arrogant but only because society has pressured us to be so.

“It is with mixed emotion that I stand here to share my thoughts. This is a time of celebration for you–celebrating an anniversary of a beginning for the White man in America. A time of looking back, of reflection. It is with a heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People.

“Even before the Pilgrims landed it was common practice for explorers to capture Indians, take them to Europe and sell them as slaves for 220 shillings apiece. The Pilgrims had hardly explored the shores of Cape Cod for four days before they had robbed the graves of my ancestors and stolen their corn and beans. Mourt’s Relation describes a searching party of sixteen men. He goes on to say that this party took as much of the Indian’s winter provisions as they were able to carry.

“Massasoit, the great Sachem of the Wampanoag, knew these facts, yet he and his People welcomed and befriended the settlers of the Plymouth Plantation. Perhaps he did this because his Tribe had been depleted by an epidemic. Or his knowledge of the harsh oncoming winter was the reason for his peaceful acceptance of these acts. This action by Massasoit was perhaps our biggest mistake.  We, the Wampanoag, welcomed you, the White man with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end; that before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people.

“What happened in those short 50 years? What has happened in the last 300 years?  History gives us facts and there were atrocities; there were broken promises–and most of these centered around land ownership. Among ourselves we understood that there were boundaries, but never before had we had to deal with fences and stone walls. But the White man had a need to prove his worth by the amount of land that he owned. Only ten years later, when the Puritans came, they treated the Wampanoag with even less kindness in converting the souls of the so-called ‘savages’.  Although they were harsh to members of their own society, the Indian was pressed between stone slabs and hanged as quickly as any other ‘witch’.

“And so down through the years there is record after record of Indian lands taken, and in token, reservations set up for him upon which to live. The Indian, having been stripped of his power, could only stand by and watch while the White man took his lands and used it for his personal gain.  This the Indian could not understand; for to him, land was survival, to farm, to hunt, to be enjoyed. It was not to be abused. We see incident after incident, where the White man sought to tame the ?savage? and convert him to the Christian ways of life. The early Pilgrim settlers led the Indian to believe that, if he did not behave, they would dig up the ground and unleash the great epidemic again.

“Has the Wampanoag really disappeared? There is still an aura of mystery. We know there was an epidemic that took many Indian lives–some Wampanoags moved west and joined the Cherokee and Cheyenne. They were forced to move. Some even went north to Canada! Many Wampanoags put aside their Indian heritage and accepted the White man’s way for their own survival. There are some Wampanoag who do not wish it known they are Indian for social or economic reasons. …

“History wants us to believe that the Indian was a savage, illiterate, uncivilized animal. … Two distinctly different cultures met. One thought they must control life; the other believed life was to be enjoyed, because nature decreed it. Let us remember, the Indian is and was just as human as the White man. The Indian feels pain, gets hurt, and becomes defensive, has dreams, bears tragedy and failure, suffers from loneliness, needs to cry as well as laugh. He, too, is often misunderstood.

“The White man in the presence of the Indian is still mystified by his uncanny ability to make him feel uncomfortable. This may be the image the White man has created of the Indian; his ?savageness? has boomeranged and isn’t a mystery; it is fear; fear of the Indian’s temperament!

“High on a hill, overlooking the famed Plymouth Rock, stands the statue of our great Sachem, Massasoit. Massasoit has stood there many years in silence. We, the descendants of this great Sachem, have been a silent people. The necessity of making a living in this materialistic society of the White man caused us to be silent. Today, many of my people are choosing to face the truth. We ARE Indians!

“Although time has drained our culture and our language is almost extinct, we the Wampanoags still walk the lands of Massachusetts. We may be fragmented, we may be confused. Many years have passed since we have been a people together. Our lands were invaded. We fought as hard to keep our land as you the Whites did to take our land away from us. We were conquered, we became the American prisoners of war in many cases, and wards of the United States Government, until only recently.

“We are uniting. … We stand tall and proud, and before too many moons pass we’ll right the wrongs we have allowed to happen to us.

“We forfeited our country. Our lands have fallen into the hands of the aggressor. We have allowed the White man to keep us on our knees. What has happened cannot be changed, but today we must work towards a more humane America, a more Indian America, where men and nature once again are important; where the Indian values of honor, truth, and brotherhood prevail.

“You the White man are celebrating an anniversary. We the Wampanoags will help you celebrate in the concept of a beginning. It was the beginning of a new life for the Pilgrims. Now, 350 years later it is a beginning of a new determination for the original American: the American Indian.

“There are some factors concerning the Wampanoags and other Indians across this vast nation. We now have 350 years of experience living amongst the White man. We can now speak his language. We can now think as a white man thinks. …  We’re being heard; we are now being listened to. The important point is that along with these necessities of everyday living, we still have the spirit, we still have the unique culture, we still have the will and, most important of all, the determination to remain as Indians. We are determined, and our presence here this evening is living testimony that this is only the beginning of the American Indian, particularly the Wampanoag, to regain the position in this country that is rightfully ours.”

Thus the National Day of Mourning began.

The 1997 March and the Police Beat-Down

The 1997 March evidenced a growing response from the Indian community and its supporters.  This evidently was too much for the City of Plymouth to bear.  The 1996 March had raised concerns among the city fathers due to what was referred to as a ?minor incident? in which the Day of Mourning March began just as another march, called the Pilgrim Progress “which celebrated the arrival of the Pilgrims as much as the Indians mourned it” was passing Cole’s Hill, the site of the Day of Mourning Rally.  Apparently, the Pilgrim Progress marchers, feeling intimidated by the Indian protesters, chose to halt their procession and allow the protesters to continue through the streets of Plymouth.

In 1997, however, the City of Plymouth was apparently prepared for a conflict.  As the Day of Mourning marchers began their procession and continued into downtown Plymouth, police descended upon them, arresting 25 March organizers, participants and supporters.  Many marchers accused the police of brutally dragging protesters by the hair (to the extent that one man’s braided locks were torn from his head), throwing and pinning people to the ground and other acts of excessive force.  The police department countered that the protesters had no permit to march and that the police officers? actions were the only way to secure arrestees who trespassed and refused to comply with ?lawful? police commands.  As a result of the confrontation on November 27, 1997, the case of “The Plymouth 25” was born.

Members of this group, which included 1998 organizers Mahtowin Monroe and Moonanum James, were arraigned and charged with a variety of offenses.  Letters, e-mails and faxes were sent to federal, state and local officials demanding that the charges be dropped.  Petitions were signed, and many people honored UAINE’s call for an economic boycott of Plymouth.  “Supporters stood with us in court every time we were required to make an appearance and made sure that information about our case was distributed internationally,” said UAINE in a prepared statement. The end result was vindication for the protesters after almost eleven months of court battles.   “We are pleased to announce that the frame-up criminal charges against those arrested on November 27, 1997 have been dropped,” their October 19, 1998 statement continued.  “Further, [UAINE] has reached a settlement with the town of Plymouth.  Plymouth has acknowledged our right to walk on our own land without a permit on National Day of Mourning.  Plymouth has agreed to make the truth part of its celebration of the pilgrim myth of thanksgiving.  Under the terms of this agreement, we will have a number of important opportunities to address the lies and inaccuracies about ?thanksgiving? and the history of indigenous peoples that have been disseminated not only in Plymouth but throughout the country.  We are confident that this agreement represents a tremendous victory for the struggle of Native people to have our voices heard and respected.”  In addition to the above, Plymouth agreed to pay $100,000 to the Metacom Education Fund “for education on the true history of Native people,” $20,000 to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for legal fees, and $15,000 for two plaques commemorating the National Day of Mourning and the story of Massasoit’s successor Metacom (or “King Phillip” to the Pilgrims), who, upon witnessing the aggressive tactics used by the Pilgrims, had sought to drive them from Indian land.  This had led to what the Pilgrims called “King Phillip’s War”, during which Pilgrims and Indians alike died en masse and Metacom was finally hunted down and killed, his head stuck on a pike in front of the Pilgrims’ settlement for 24 years.

Arrangements have been made to allow the Indian perspective of “Thanksgiving Day” as a Day of Mourning to be represented in the schools of Plymouth.  And the events of 1997 practically insured that Plymouth, Mass. would gain more media attention in 1998 than it bargained for.

The 1998 Rally and March

A bus carrying a delegation from Baltimore was arranged by the All People’s Congress in response to Ms. Monroe and Mr. James’s call for action.  Approximately 30 travelers left Baltimore at about 12:00 midnight for the long ride to Plymouth, arriving at about 9:00 am.  The weather was cold and threatening, with rain in the forecast.  The assembled crowd, which was estimated to have reached 1,500, was not deterred.  Better rain drops crashing on their heads than police batons, they must have thought.

After several Indigenous speakers addressed the crowd, covering topics from the history of the Day of Mourning, the history of the Pilgrims and the previous year’s March to the plight of political prisoners including not only Leonard Peltier but also Mumia Abu-Jamal and Marshall “Eddie” Conway, the March through the streets of downtown Plymouth began.   The March wound through several blocks, all the time under the watchful eyes of the Plymouth police as well as the “peacekeepers” appointed by March organizers whose job it was to insure against confrontations with the police or other potential adversaries.  The Pilgrim’s Progress march, which had quietly passed by over an hour before, did not conflict with the protesters.

At the end of the March, a Town Hall Meeting was held in the auditorium of a local community center.  There, several March organizers spoke again, while participants greeted each other and Food Not Bombs provided their version of a true Thanksgiving feast–thanks for a successful event, thanks for an important victory for Indian people, thanks for rain being the only thing to pound the marchers’ heads.

The 2010 National Day of Mourning March

The last time I was able to attend the National Day of Mourning March was in November 2010.  At that time, KUUMBAReport Newsletter was not being published, however, the KUUMBARadioReport was being broadcast on Harambee Radio (www.harambeeradio.com).  We shared audio of the many speeches that were made that day, and we will share three of those speeches below.

Moonanum James discusses the Myth of Plymouth Rock and Governor Bradford’s Statue:

Moonanum James discusses the Plaque to honor Metacom at Plymouth Plantation:

Burt Waters reads a Statement from American Indian Political Prisoner Leonard Peltier:

On Thursday and Friday, October 17 and 18, 2013, the Institute of the Black World, under the leadership of Dr. Ron Daniels (1992 candidate for US President and  consistent speaker and activist on causes that are relevant to the Global Black Community), hosted a Symposium on The Future of Democracy and Development in Africa and the Caribbean.  This event brought together activists, organizers and intellectuals from a variety of Pan-Afrikan organizations to discuss issues pertaining to democracy and development in Afrika and in the Caribbean, and to explore ways in which the Afrikan Diaspora can help facilitate these aims and bring self-determination, prosperity and freedom from fear to Afrikan people around the world.

The two keynote speeches were delivered by two shining examples of good governance, democracy and human rights in the Caribbean and Afrika.

Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent and The Grenadines

Prime Minister Ralph Everad Gonsalves, born August 8, 1946, has been the Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines since March 2001.  He completed a Bachelors Degree in Economics at the University of the West Indies, there obtaining several noteworthy accolades, including President of the Debating Society and President of the Guild of Undergraduates.  In 1971 he obtained a Masters in Government from the University of the West Indies.  In 1974 and 1981 he obtained a Ph.D in Government and a degree of Utter Barrister at the University of Manchester, England and Gray’s Inn, London respectively.  Concurrently while pursuing his political career and prior to his becoming Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dr. Gonsalves practiced law extensively and successfully before the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court in a wide range of matters, bur particularly in the fields of constitutional law, administrative law, matrimonial law, real property law, law of tort generally and the law of contract.  Dr. Gonsalves has researched, written and published extensively on a range of matters touching upon the Caribbean, Afrika, trade unionism, comparative political economy, and developmental issues. (from the IBW Program Introduction)

Dr. Gonsalves spoke on the evening of Thursday, October 17 in the main sanctuary of the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Washington, DC.  After a stirring speech by the Honorable Congressmember John Conyers, Dean of the Congressional Black Caucus, and an introduction by his ambassador, Dr. Gonsalves spoke about the spirit of cooperation hat has historically existed between Afrikan-Descendant nations in the Caribbean and South America, specifically pointing out the invaluable assistance from Venezuela and Cuba as Caribbean nations faced constant diplomatic, economic and even military pressure from the United States.  Special mention was made of the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, the continuing US embargo of Cuba, the destabilization of Ayiti (popularly known as “Haiti”) and the repeated efforts to overthrow the government of Venezuela, and the degree to which cooperation between the countries of ALBA (The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas in English) has helped his and other countries to maintain their independence and develop their infrastructure.  One key project he has implemented is an airport that will provide alternatives to US airstrips for people in South America, Central America and the Caribbean to travel to Afrika and the Global South.  His story is an inspiring one, and an important lesson in cooperation between small countries that we could learn from as organizations here in the US.

Former President Pedro Pires of Cape Verde

The first speaker for the Friday sessions was former President Pedro Verona Rodrigues Pires of Cape Verde.  Born 29 April 1934, he was a Commander in the field with the famed Amilcar Cabral, leader of the anti-colonial liberation struggle against Portugal.  He served as President of Cape Verde from March 2001 to September 2011.  Before becoming President, he was Prime Minister from 1975 to 1991.  He is a graduate of the University of Lisbon in Portugal.  In May 2008, he said that he favored a cautious, long-term approach to the formation of a United States of Africa, preferring that regional integration precede a continent-wide union.  He was awarded the 2011 Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership.  It was awarded in recognition of his role in making Cape Verde a “model of democracy, stability and increased prosperity”.  The prize included a monetary component of $5 million — which President Pires planned e to fund the Amilcar Cabral Foundation to train future leaders for Cape Verde and Africa.  In their citation, prize committee members wrote that “Cape Verde is now seen as an African success story, economically, socially and politically.”  President Pires himself told reporters that the prize was “a recognition of my 50 years of wholesale and exclusive dedication to politics, and the causes of independence and democracy.” (from the IBW Program Introduction)

President Pires was lauded during the Friday morning panel for his commitment to democracy in Cape Verde, to the point of requesting a reduction of his own power as Prime Minister and the distribution of that power to other officials, including his political opposition.  He is seen as having been so committed to democracy that he was willing to risk his own political career for that cause, as he lost an election shortly afterward, in part based on his own request to share his power.

President Pires concluded his remarks, which were interpreted from his home language of Portuguese, with nine “Priorities for an Afrkan Agenda for Progress”: (1) Peace and security throughout the entire territory of the Continent, including “a solid fight against religious fundamentalism” and intolerance; (2) “The pursuance of reforms in states practicing the rule of law, making them more democratic”; (3) “Taking effective advantage of the Continent’s enormous hydroelectric and agricultural potential”, ensuring food security on the Continent; (4) “The establishment of a common land policy that preserves Afrika’s land heritage and protects the mutual strategic interests of the Afrikan and cultural sector”; (5) “Devising solutions for the serious infrastructural and structural energy and communication  deficits on the Continent”; (6) “The development of intra-Afrikan trade and intensification of Afrikan investments in Afrika”; (7) “Intensive investment and Continent-wide coordination in the areas of education, research and innovation in order to build human capacity”; (8) “Dissemination of technological knowledge among the population to the aim of extending national, social and technological basis”; and (9) “Continuous capacity-building of public and private leadership and the appropriation of a strategic culture.”

“I believe the Pan-Afrikanism as practiced in the Twentieth Century has begun to show signs of exhaustion.”
— former Cape Verde President Pedro Pires

He noted the need for strong leadership fro the African Union (AU), the establishment of the rule of law and good governance throughout the Continent, Afrika’s need to modernize and industrialize itself, the need to respond effectively to important issues of the Continent, and “an ethics-based commitment on the part of Afrikan elites to the strategic interests of Afrika and its respective countries in favor of progress and the effective liberation of the countries.”

President Pires closed his remarks with a warning of sorts to the Continent’s leaders and would-be leaders: “I am faced with another concern.  I believe the Pan-Afrikanism as practiced in the Twentieth Century has begun to show signs of exhaustion.  So what will the journey of the Pan-Afrikanist ideals mean in the age of highly-competitive economies under the fast-paced globalization and in the expansion of the Information Society?  I leave you with this question for further deliberation.  Thank you very much.”

The Friday panels provided some important perspective on many of the issues that impact Afrika, the Caribbean and the Diaspora, and we will focus on them for the remainder of this article.

The Panel on Afrika

The first panel on Friday morning concerned The Future of Democracy and Development in Afrika, moderated by Dr. Jemadari Kamara, Director, Center for African, Caribbean and Community Development, University of Massachusetts at Boston.  This panel brought together several significant advocates for the Continent from Afrika and the Diaspora.

The first speaker was Her Excellency Amina Salum Ali, African Union Ambassador to the United States.  She began on a hopeful note, pointing out the face that seven of the top ten growing economies in the world are in Afrika.  She spoke about the African Union’s efforts to for a Continental Union akin to a federalized Continent (what some refer to as the United States of Africa or Union of Afrikan States).  She stressed the importance of democracy and elections on the Continent and the need to create a more peaceful, prosperous and people-centered Afrika.  The election last year of Madame Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as the Chair of the African Union Commission was an important step in Afrika’s advancement and renaissance.  Of course, the Diaspora must contribute to this progress as well, and it will have a important role to play as the AU proceeds with its plan to establish a unified Continent by 2063.  Ambassador Ali also pointed out that “growth and development are not necessarily the same thing.”

Dr. Pearl Robinson is a current Professor at Tufts University and is the President Emeritus of the African Studies Association.  She has held positions on the Board of Directors of TransAfrica, Oxfam and the National Council of Negro Women, as well as serving on he Boston Pan-Africa Forum.   She made mention of the Afro-Barometer, an online “Gallup Poll of Afrika” that compiles “the views, opinions and attitudes of ordinary Afrikans in political and economic issues in their countries.”  While she acknowledged the “Afro-Optimists” who see the economic growth of the Continent as the fastest in the world, she stated that for ordinary Afrikans, “life is a little bit different.”  22% lack clean water.  20% receive no medical care.  53% rated their economy negatively, 38% said it was worse than before and 56% say their governments are doing a bad job with the economy, jobs and the income gap.  Afro-Barometer will release three more reports on Democracy, Corruption and Internet Usage before the end of 2013.  She stated that we each have an “opposite number on the Continent, someone whose abilities, aspirations and work parallels our own, and she asked us, “How can we work to improve conditions and prospects for our “opposite numbers” on the Continent?

Wale Idris Ajibade is the Executive Director of African Views, an Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) focusing on a framework for research and communications for Afrikan development.  He is also the Chairman of a proposed Afrikan Diaspora Credit Union and the founder of the Foundation for Cultural Diversity.  He referred to the issue of development and democracy as “a great responsibility that we can no longer outsource.”  He noted the issue with Afrika’s youth in which “Niger Republic has the highest youth population in the world.  They are at risk.  Uganda has the next population of youth in the world.  They are in great danger.”  Unrest has led to situations where the youth are “uneducated and in atrophy.”  The AU and CARICOM (The Caribbean Community of economies) need to cooperate to expand opportunities for youth in Afrika and the Diaspora.  He stated the need to shift the current paradigms “from conflict to resolution, from confrontation to truce, from hostility to hospitality, from poverty to sustainable democracy to empathy, from fear to comfort, negligence to conscientiousness, from crisis to confidence, from threat to security.  This is the true principle of democracy and development.”

Emira Woods is a Liberian activist and is Co-Director, Foreign Policy in Focus for the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).  She made reference to the responses to the Afro-Barometer survey and stated the need to “dive deep” into what impacted the people to respond as they have.  “This is our century.  We have had enough of being dictated to in the decades past, and we are claiming our collective vision as a continent and as a people, and we are moving forward.”  The AU’s 2063 Plan provides a framework for that progress.  Still, there is growing inequality.  “The 1% elite tied to multinational corporations are living large … they are really enjoying the benefits of the Continent … not putting the people first.”  The resources of Afrika are not benefiting the people but are driving the global economy and enriching international industrialists, from the “unconscionable” exploitation of coltan in DR Congo and oil in the Niger River Delta, to commodity-pricing of goods where “we are not controlling the prices of [our own] resources”, to the two million acres that are being taken from the people to grow biofuels.  “It is devastating our communities … people being pushed off their land … to urban areas where there are not enough jobs … it is a scourge that must end.”  She also noted that remittances, which far outweigh trade and aid to Afrika, are down, and the riding sea levels are threatening countries like Cape Verde with land loss.  Finally, she stressed the need to get past the “us vs. them” mentality that pits Christian against Muslim, tribe against tribe, country against country and is creating “a world where we are all terrorists” as weapons, drones and military contractors are flooded into Afrika, undermining democracy and development, devastating communities throughout the Continent.  She ended with the advice of veteran activist and entertainer Harry Belafonte during his visit for IPS’s 50th Anniversary: “Be Radical!”

“The 1% elite tied to multinational corporations are living large … they are really enjoying the benefits of the Continent … not putting the people first.”
— Liberian activist Emira Woods

Mel Foote is the President of the Constituency For Africa (CFA), which sponsors the Ron Brown African Affairs Series every September in Washington, DC.  He spoke about CFA’s work to help shape US policy towards Afrika, including talking to the “Evil Empire” of the World Bank, the State Department and the White House.  CFA has also partnered with the AU and Ambassador Ali, and attended the May 2012 Diaspora Summit in South Africa.  He spoke a bit about the AU’s five Legacy Projects: the African Diaspora Marketplace, the Diaspora Volunteer Corps, the Remittance Institute, the Investment Fund and the Skills Database.  Mr. Foote sees “challenges” but he is “energized.”  He noted that land-grabbing happens not just in Afrika but in the Diaspora as well, including right there in Washington, DC.  In referring to similar issues in New York, DC and rural communities around the globe, Mr. Foote stated that “Afrika is where Afrikan people are.”  In that regard, he stated that Afrikans living in the US are in a unique position, whether we came here by slave ship or by airplane, whether we were born here, came from the Caribbean, from South America, from Central America or were the children of those who did, were “officials like Ambassador Ali” or “regular folks”, all of whom “look at the Diaspora differently.”  He said, “we’re the wealthiest Afrikans in the world … throwing away food … obesity … push a button, there’s clean water.”  In any case, he sees the Afrika that the AU is building for 2063 as being “for the younger people.  We’re not going to be here.”  The biggest challenge, he said, will be educating Americas about Afrika, “the cradle of civilization.”

The Panel on The Caribbean

The second panel, The Future of Democracy and Development in the Caribbean, was moderated by Hulbert James, Executive Director, Diasporic Project, and featured speakers from a variety of perspectives representing Haiti, Panama and the Caribbean overall.

Col. Dr. Joseph Baptiste is the Chief of Dental Services at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC and one of the founders of the National Organization for the Advancement of Haitians (NOAH).  He is also a current member of the Board of Advisors on the Maryland Governor’s Commission of Caribbean Affairs.  He made note of the fact that the May 14, 2011 inauguration of Michel Martelly as Haiti’s 56th President was the first peaceful transfer of power from one political part to an opposition party in the country’s history.  Dr. Baptiste noted Haiti’s issues and difficulties but also made mention of the country’s progress under Martelly, with the expectation that “Haiti will become a middle-class country” in the near future.  Haiti currently receives much more in remittances from its Diaspora, many of whom live in the United States, than from aid from the US.

Esmeralda Brown, born in Panama, is the President of the Southern Diaspora Research and Development Center.  Speaking about the impact of slavery (“a crime against humanity”) and the need to fight for reparations, she recalled the 2001 World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa and how “descendants of the colonizers have conspired to retain the power to deprive people of Afrikan descent and indigenous peoples of their assets, including their land and the ability to develop … freedom and opportunity.”  She referred to several terms that are used to differentiate and cause disunity between people of Afrikan descent, from mulatto to mestizo to creole to octaroon to the exploitation of gender differences.  Afrodescendant advocacy groups in Latin America, including the Caribbean, Central America and South America, have worked to bridge the gaps under the principle that “discrimination on the basis of … gender and race are a human rights violation.”  She concluded her remarks with “we are on people.  We are from Latin America, the Caribbean, but we mostly are Afrikan.”

Dr. Karl B. Rodney, Publisher of the New York Carib News, concentrated on the fact that “both democracy and development in the Caribbean at this time is really threatened, and threatened by internal and external forces.”  Among those forces, he included loans that lead to crippling debts that are designated by the World Bank as “first to be serviced” and thus work to prevent “practical development plans” in favor of global banks, even preventing some countries from being able to assume any further debt.  This leads to dependence on foreign investors who then control what projects will receive any funding, to the detriment of development plans.  Examples include Chinese, Japanese and other foreign investors who support only plans that will benefit them and them alone.  This “pick-and-choose” approach leads to development that is haphazard at best.  CARICOM as a regional trade organization “is a shell” because the development plan that they should be planning and coordinating “does not in fact exist.”  Manufacturing is local and largely nonexistent.  “We are losing the battle even in agriculture.  We cannot feed ourselves effectively.”  The creative industries (including music, fashion and film) “are not organized around any program that can be expanded.”  Tourism is the main driver of the Caribbean economy, but it is controlled by foreign investors.  Even the financial services have largely been shut down, especially with he pressure now being put on offshore banking.  Thus, the illegal drug trade has become a major player.  And with that come gangs and crime.  This includes “shootings, kidnapping; even beheading has started in Trinidad and Tobago. … It’s not a pretty picture. … Those forces that controlled the economy are now looking to control the democracy.”  With all these issues, however, Dr. Rodney says we need not be discouraged.  The increase in literacy and certain economic indicators shows that we can come together, unite and fight back, if we have the will to do so.

“I do not think we can construct a future that is inclusive, prosperous and sustainable in the current environment in which we, the human race, find ourselves on the continuation of a Western capitalist paradigm that served to enslave us in the first place.”
— Dr. Claire Nelson

Dr. Claire Nelson, Executive Director of the Institute for Caribbean Studies, spoke of envisioning a society that truly puts people first.  She sees ICS as part of the “Revisionist” Afrikan Diaspora in the Caribbean region, having been founded in 2013 from the traditional Reparations Movement and considering itself charged with developing a “new paradigm of human development … learning from the triumphs and challenges of slavery, colonialism and the Western capitalist paradigm. … I do not think we can construct a future that is inclusive, prosperous and sustainable in the current environment in which we, the human race, find ourselves on the continuation of a Western capitalist paradigm that served to enslave us in the first place.  We cannot construct our future … on rules that consigned us to mere chattel.”  Looking at the state of Black people around the world, “we still live in a state of self-doubt, a state of skin-color consciousness and worshipping, a state of seeing ourselves as victims and not as victors. … Where I our vision of the New World Order … that devises [so] many ways for u to kill ourselves? … Where is the future that we want to construct?”  She mentioned the Caribbean Cultural Enterprise Initiative, which is assembling 5,000 new culture creators” employing 50,000 people and resulting in the creation of 55 new patents.  As for the classical Reparations Movement, “Yes, I believe that we need to b compensated. … Europe does bear some culpability in the fact that we seem to be a basket case. … [They tell us] ‘You should get your act together.’  No, we don’t have our act together and you [Europe, the US and Western capitalism] have something to do with it.”  She concluded, “We must engage our minds … to make a better world for all … bring the next generation to he table. … We can indeed create the vision and the future. … We can begin to see and build and fight for ourselves.”

“The baton that fell to the ground 30 years ago with the destruction of the Grenada Revolution has been picked up, and is being carried forward, not by the governments of the Caribbean, but by an array of civil society organizations (CSOs) all across the region.”
— Don Rojas, IBW Communications Director

The final presenter for the Caribbean Panel was Don Rojas, former Program Manager of Pacifica Radio WBAI in New York City, current CEO of Progressive Communications Online, founder of The Black World Today and Communications Director of the Institute of the Black World.  He began by giving mention to the 30-year anniversary of the “illegal and immoral” US invasion of Grenada under the Reagan Administration in 1983.  The US military “smashed an exciting and inspiring development in democracy.”  Maurice Bishop’s government made a point to instill true participatory democracy, involving the people of the country regularly and systematically instead of the “intermittent” form of democracy practiced in the US.  People were mobilized into mass organizations, formed monthly parish councils, and received regular reports from government officials in “a democratic process of profound transparency. … ordinary people becoming activators instead of passive subjects in the transformation of their own country.”  Mr. Rojas described the excitement, energy, enthusiasm and pride of in the faces of the people that “their ideas, their recommendations, had value, had worth, and would be considered.”  A democracy with the people, not just for the people.  That was Grenada in the early 1980s.  No such process exists today.  Now, there is a “top-down democracy dominated by the political and economic elites.  The masses are allowed to exercise universal suffrage, the right to vote, once every five years.  “This top-down model of democracy is not a model that empowers people.  It does not organize people.  It does not mobilize people to participate in their own socioeconomic development and nation-building.”  He does see hope for true democracy, however.  “The baton that fell to the ground 30 years ago with the destruction of the Grenada Revolution has been picked up, and is being carried forward, not by the governments of the Caribbean, but by an array of civil society organizations (CSOs) all across the region.”  Comprised mostly of social justice advocates, environmentalists and community activists that have no formal structural relationships with governments or state institutions in their respective countries, but “this does not mean they are ineffective or impotent.”  Grenada is experiencing economic growth without aid from the US because of an engaged and mobilized people in their society.  Several region-wide networks have been formed, including the Pan-Caribbean Civil Society Reparations Network and an electronic region-wide Town all Forum called Haiti 1804 Carib Voices, named after the 1804 Haiti Revolution and created by Dr. Norman Girvan from Jamaica (www.normangirvan.info/1804-caribvoices-weekly).  Mr. Rojas stressed the need to ensure that young people are involved: “It is urgent that young people in CARICOM countries understand the damages, the economic, cultural and social damages meted out to the enslaved peoples of this region.  The impact of these damages remains deeply imbedded in many of our institutions until today. … Equally important are the lessons that we need to extract from these experiences about the importance of social justice, the inclusion of vulnerable groups rather than their exclusion, respect for and nurturing of our own collective vision. … CARICOM governments must know that they will be held accountable for maintaining the momentum, for including voices of ordinary people in this journey, and for providing the visionary leadership now required.”  Mr. Rojas ended his remarks with an urgent proposal to send letters of support of the Reparations Movements to CARICOM, the Organization of American States (OAS), the African Union and the Congressional Black Caucus, and to “go on record condemning the racist ruling by the Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic” tat denied citizenship to people of Haitian descent who were born in the Dominican Republic, thereby rendering these unfortunate people stateless.

The Panel on the Diaspora and 21^st Century Pan-Afrikanism

Dr. Ron Daniels, Elder Joe Beasley, Mr. Siddique Wai, Dr. Waldaba Stewart,
Ms. Estella Vasquez and Dr. James Early of the Diaspora Panel.

The final panel of the Symposium was Practicing Pan-Africanism in the 21st Century: The Role of the Diaspora.  This panel was moderated by Dr. Ron Daniels, President of IBW.

The first speaker was Sidique Wai, President of the United African Congress, a not-for-profit umbrella organization representing the interests of Afrikan immigrants in the United States with its headquarters in New York City and branches in Georgia, Ohio, California, Atlanta and Connecticut.  His main point centered around the prospects of the official organization of the Afrikan Diaspora as the Sixth Region, as it is being promoted by the AU.  The Sixth Region is not into law.  We have no power.  You can’t elect; you can’t vote.  We can write papers, but … somebody else will put it somewhere, but noting’s going to happen. … So, I hate to say this, but the truth is, the Sixth Region of the Afrikan Diaspora is only something that they wish, but it’s not happening.”  He mentioned the AU’s plan to unify the Continent by the year 2063.  “What about Afrika today? … The people who attended that two and a half-day session gave a critical critique of Afrika and how they see it. … What is the role of the Diaspora? … If anybody in this room believes that the Diaspora is going to be taken seriously by commissions, by reports, by getting hot, by inviting people to fund raisers and all tat kind of stuff, 20 years from now we’ll be having tis same conversation and nothing’s going to happen.  Now let me tell you what I think.  No one is going to give you power.  You have to take it. … You have to find people with credibility, who are honest.  Integrity, transparency, cooperation and truthfulness.”  He made reference to populations within the Continent who are internally displaced from their home countries as people who should be included in the definition of the Diaspora.  Finally, he quoted two Afrikans from Jamaica who gave him some eye-opening critiques some time ago: “‘You guys who are Pan-Afrikanists, that we on the ground look up to for the salvation of the Afrikan Continent, are by your benign neglect helping dictators and corrupt leaders pull the trigger that is slaughtering countless members of our future leaders of the Afrikan Continent that you often glorify but do nothing to save.  Start doing some things that help us protect he Afrika that you often talk about via Facebook and Twitter.’  The other person said to me, ‘Use me, don’t abuse me, don’t confuse me, don’t disrespect me, and still us me to do the people’s business.’ And I thank you.”

“If anybody in this room believes that the Diaspora is going to be taken seriously by commissions, by reports, by getting hot, by inviting people to fund raisers and all tat kind of stuff, 20 years from now we’ll be having tis same conversation and nothing’s going to happen.”
— Sidique Wai, President, United African Congress

Elder Joe Beasley from Atlanta, Georgia, the Founder and resident of African Ascensions, spoke next.  He called for us all to recognize the debt we all owe to Haiti for its Revolution in 1804.  He then began his discussion about the African Diaspora and its place in today’s society.  “They don’t like us any better now than when they marched u 1,000 miles across the Continent of Afrika to Cape Coast Ghana and Goree Island. … Wherever you’re from, from the United States or other parts of the Diaspora, we’re on the margins, and we’re never going to get out of the margins by somebody else’s desires.  Slave masters never change their minds.  We have to change our minds. … Maybe (we won’t be given recognition as the Sixth Region); maybe we have o take it.”  This would mean standing up to the AU, to the US Government, even to our Afrikan-American President.  “It was a President that called the War On Drugs. … We need a President to call off the War On Drugs because it’s really been a War On Us, on Black People.”

Estella Vasquez is the Executive Vice President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) No. 1099 out of New York.  She began her comments concerning SEIU-1099’s work for solidarity (a common Union watchword) with working people from the US, the Caribbean, Central and South America by paraphrasing Amilcar Cabral: “He said, ‘Solidarity is not an act of charity.  Solidarity is an act of defense.’ … When we exercise solidarity, we not only defend the interests of our own members, (but also) the interests of poor and working-class people.”  Her own story began in 1948 (her birth) but took a turn in 1965, when she left her home country of the Dominican Republic as the US military staged an incursion into her country in response to the brewing civil war: “President Lyndon B. Johnson used the excuse that there were fifty-five Communists in the Dominican uprising and sent twenty-two thousand Marines to deal with the fifty-five Communists.”  She went on to denounce the Dominican education system that “distorts who we are, that brainwashes us into thinking that we are children of ‘Mother Spain’. … but ‘Mother Spain’ was a real bad mother to all of us in the Continent. … We are all children of Afrika and not children of Spain. … How do (unions like SEIU-1099) educate workers about who they are; how do you use the struggle for better working conditions, for better housing, for better schools, as a way to unify people that have the same history and should have the same interests because they belong to the same economic class, and how do we use the opportunity to educate workers around the question of why there is oppression and how collective action can bring about change? … [T]he question of immigration reform is not one only of the Latino/Hispanic community, but is an issue also if the Afrikan community, the Asian, the Pacific Islander communities that are undocumented in this country.”  She turned to more local matters, specifically New York’s infamous “Stop-And-Frisk” policy.  “Millions of children, Black and Brown children, topped by NYPD [New York Police Department].”  SEIU organized an ‘End Stop-And-Frisk’ March with the NAACP and other organizations.  Now, victims of Stop-And-Frisk are starting to get their day in court and can sue the police for harassment.  Finally, she weighed in on the issue of the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court ruling denying birth certificates, passports and the rights of a citizen to a woman of Haitian heritage born in the Dominican Republic, which was applied to all Haitians born in the Dominican Republic between 1929 and 2007, “ten of thousands … over five generations … no passport, they can’t get married.”  Because hey were not born in Haiti, they have no rights there either, thus rendering them stateless.  She called upon organizations to work together on a campaign to “shame the Dominican Government. … We Are All Haiti.”

“… if we are serious, we must be sure we understand the importance of power, especially in a democratic society.”
— Dr. Waldaba Stewart, Medgar Evers College

Dr. Waldaba Stewart is the Chairman of the Caribbean Resource Center of Medgar Evers College.  His remarks centered around the need for Afrikans to unite to accumulate, develop and exercise power.  “Power is what we need if we want to change anything on the global stage, on the national stage, on the regional stage.  Therefore, if we are serious, we must be sure we understand the importance of power, especially in a democratic society.  Power consists of population count, of voter count … and if you don’t have that right, you really have no power.”  He sees the whole issue of immigration reform as a means of “diminishing the power of people of Afrikan descent.”  Europeans will soon comprise “less than 47% of this country … so Europeans have a problem.  They have to see who the are going to hook up with to protect them against their mortal enemy, on whom they have committed so many human rights violations and genocides. … The have already accepted Jews to keep themselves above the 51% number.  So no, who (will they hook up with) next?  Asians?  Hispanics?  And — oh, look — Blacks?  Never!  The only way we can neutralize that equation is by reaching out and dealing wit the fact that one-third of the so-called Hispanic number are Afrodescendants.  And here we are, we reject them!  ‘They will never be considered part of us.’  For, we reject them automatically! … We need to get to the place where we are proud to be of Afrikan descent, because that is the only thing that unites us worldwide.  So we should be concerned of the fact that immigration reform could reduce Afrikan (immigrants) to zero.  That’s the new immigration-reform equation.”  He took care to differentiate between Latinos and Hispanics, who he defined as the “blood descendants of the Spanish, who conquered Latin America and … parts of the United States also.”  Getting back to Pan-Afrikanism, he noted that “as Marcus Garvey, of whom I am his disciple, has said, we have to accept and discover that we are people of Afrikan descent, and if we come together and change our mindset, we can liberate ourselves, economically.”  The New Paradigm for the Eradication of Poverty, with which r. Stewart is affiliated, has “declared that that we cannot trust any of our governments, even if they look like us.”  They are working to link “people of Afrikan descent in all countries of Central America and use our own resources and the resources of our Diaspora to start our own economic initiatives.”  The four key goals are (1) use the land we occupy to launch initiatives in agriculture to go beyond mere subsistence farming to feeding the people of Afrika and the world; (2) the creation of Community Commissions to challenge those who come into our communities and impoverish them; (3) a consortium of universities and research centers in Black communities of the US, linked with universities and research centers in each of the countries we occupy, with cooperative requirements for those who wish to join the consortium; and (4) creation of “a market penetration system so tat anything we have to sell in the United States, we a sell it to you around the world.”  His final remarks were: “If we [are to] get out of our individual frustration, because of the enormity of changing a paradigm that was created by the Pope year ago, we have to begin to think differently.  We have to decide that the same way we are doing in Central America, we need to transfer that to the Sixth Region, we need to transfer that to the Caribbean, and we need to use that in our poor communities here in the United States.  Thank you.”

The final speaker on the panel was Dr. James Early of the Smithsonian Institution.  He agreed with Dr. Stewart that we currently are dealing with “a very nuanced and not pure term of the Afrikan Diaspora. … How do you position yourself? … The question is the question of power.  It is not speaking truth to power.  It is about becoming power.  And in the real negotiation of power, in what I call the paradigm of realpolitik [a usually expansionist national policy having as its sole principle advancement of the national interest, definition from Yahoo–Ed.] in the 21st Century, it is called neoliberalism, that we struggle with, in regard to questions of discrimination, and with regard to questions of exploitation of working people and the poorest of us.  It’s privatization, it’s deregulation of the global estate … and the public welfare of its citizens, it is corporations making decisions for the people and not in service to the people.”  He stressed that he is not anti-business or anti-investment: “The idea that you can make 30 times your money by investing in Haiti is not a social construct, that is a persona construct.  I’m not against people making money, but I think we have to deal with the fact that the notion of investment as we talk about it, is not about social welfare; it is about individual gain or small-group gain.  So, up against that neoliberal paradigm, which has the most powerful life-defying effect on the quality of life, the quality of reproduction, the environment, the context of our happiness, that’s the framework that I would urge us to think about.”  And one area which is especially threatened by that paradigm today is “that area where 150 million Afrodescendants are currently living, south of the United States.”  He mentioned different countries, from the Capitalist to the Marxist to the Socialist, all of which express different aspects of Pan-Afrikanism in the way they cooperate with each other, wit even South Americans of European descent, such as President Lula of Brazil, acknowledging Afrikan culture and supporting the rights of Afrikan descendants.  Dr. Early urged us to move away from the Afro-Pessimism that Prime Minister Pires had mentioned in his remarks that morning, and he left us wit three main points: (1) “We need to put some of what I like to call wholesome, critical, embracing attention to the African Union.  Why are our five Legacy Projects sitting in the World Bank?  Why are they not sitting in the Bank of the South, wit Brazil, with Venezuela, wit South Africa? … What is the policy?  Where is the World Bank leading us?  What is the juridical issue about the Sixth Region?  Why can’t we get an answer (on this matter) to those of us in the Diaspora?  The problem is we don’t have transparency and we need to put some pressure on the African Union on that.”  (2) “We need to look at the issue of the Caribbean and Latin America and see how we can build solidarity.”  (3) The power of ordinary people … Civil Society is democracy.  Not the Communist Party of Cuba. … They don’t produce anything because of the paternalism of the Communist Party.  Go to (local bookstore) Busboys and Poets and pick up the book of essays in English by Esteban Morales Dominguez, who is a Black Communist in Cuba, and look at his critique, his running critique of his revolution, in order to make it better.  We have to be honest about some of these things.  We have to put pressure on the ALBA [Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean] Presidents … to talk about Afrodescendants. … We have to put some wholesome, productive, embracing tension in tis and deal with realpolitik.”

“We need to put some … wholesome, critical, embracing attention to the African Union.  Why are our five Legacy Projects sitting in the World Bank? … What is the juridical issue about the Sixth Region? … The problem is we don’t have transparency and we need to put some pressure on the African Union on that.”
— Dr. James Early

Each of the panel discussions was followed by a question-and-answer session that allowed the speakers to embellish some of their points further, brought out some new points and allowed those in the audience to offer some analyses of their own.  We were able to offer some of our thoughts in the Afrika and Caribbean panels.

Our Impressions of the IBW Symposium

I learned more and gained more inspiration from the sessions on Afrika, and especially the Caribbean, than I had expected.  My main concerns going into the Afrika Panel centered around the advance of Afrika’s agriculture and infrastructure without the too-often accompanying infiltration of the Continent by global corporate power, which infuses Monsanto into the soil, the extractive  mineral industries into the ground and Big Oil into the land, sea and air.  Food security was mentioned but not, as I recall, food sovereignty, which is a critical prerequisite for Afrika’s  food security.  Energy was mentioned, but not the need to essentially kick Chevron and Shell out of the Niger River Delta.  Development was mentioned, but it needs to be on Afrika’s terms so she can avoid the scourge that accompanies globalization and industrialization.  The Afrika panel did establish that there was an important difference between development and growth, which was excellent.

The destruction of home-grown industries as well as budding participatory-democratic movements in the Caribbean, as was pointed out very well in the Caribbean panel, is testimony to what happens when the West and its globalizers  get their talons in.  It echoes the remarks from Dr. Claire Nelson about attempting to build a future on the foundation that was laid by our historical oppressors and current-day exploiters.  The problem we face, of course, is that the current institutions that we use to connect with each other and to build economic and political power are built on just such a flawed foundation, and our efforts to advance ourselves are too often controlled or influenced by the mindset of those who remain tied to, and thus loyal to, that foundation.  We will need to find ways to cooperate with each other in a sufficiently effective way that we can do so without depending on that Western capitalist paradigm.  I hope there will be opportunities for Afrikans in the US to more fully cooperate with our Brothers and Sisters in the Caribbean and the Mother Continent in the near future as a result of this Symposium.

The main problem I saw with the Diaspora panel was that there did not seem to be a proactive, positive direction to it.  When the remarks were not rather pessimistic (“You can’t elect, you can’t vote”) based on the very real obstacles that do exist, they seemed theoretical and philosophical, if eloquent (“It is not speaking truth to power.  It is about becoming power”).  Dr. Stewart and Dr. Early did have some general recommendations related to building power, but even these were a bit too general and not based on concrete, practical plans and objectives for Pan-Afrikan Diaspora organization and actualization to become that power we need to be, which is what 21st Century Pan-Afrikanism must be about.  In fact, there are concrete plans being pursued right now which did not have an opportunity to be discussed.  The sharing of these plans in an open session such as the IBW Symposium could have led directly to the formulation of specific, proactive and implementable cooperative plans that would jump-start the process of organizing the Diaspora that we all seek.  For example, people are apparently still unaware that the African Union has tasked the Diaspora to organize around just such a
grassroots-Diaspora-representative strategy that was rejected as a pipe dream by some of the participants. The Statutes of the African Union’s Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) call, in no uncertain terms, for the election of representatives from and by the Diaspora.

There are concrete plans [to organize the Pan-Afrikan Diaspora] being pursued right now which did not have an opportunity to be discussed.

The main sticking point is how this election of representatives is to be done.  The Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus or SRDC (www.srdcinternational.org) has proposed a method (a plan or “how”) and has been sharing that method with grassroots communities wherever a public meeting could be organized.  The African Union is still in the process of reviewing proposals from Afrikan Diaspora organizations and is supposed to make its assessment of these proposals known sometime in the near future.  In the meantime, Afrikan people have the human right to organize ourselves, do we not?  We have the right to meet in public sessions to decide who our local spokespeople will be, do we not?  And, given the increasingly critical situation our people face on the Continent, in the US and elsewhere in the Diaspora, there really is no time to waste with regard to getting this done.  On this basis, SRDC has embarked on its program to inform our grassroots communities and let them determine the issues that are important to them in their localities as well as the local activists who they feel will best give voice to their concerns on the national (and hopefully international) level.  These Town Hall Meetings have been held in eight states in the US, and SRDC will soon hold them in more states as well as in Canada.  Similar models are being implemented and refined in Central America, the Caribbean and Europe.  While this is certainly not the only way for the Diaspora to organize itself and prepare to assist in the Afrikan Renaissance, I believe it is one method that must be pursued as well as the critical cultural, economic, political and diplomatic initiatives with which we are familiar.

A major impediment to the advancement of SRDC’s plan is the lack of communication between our various organizations about the plan and the resultant lack of cooperation between organizations and activists.  More often than not, the dialog has tended toward expressions of cynicism and downright opposition toward the SRDC plan and, in general, any idea that differs from the established order of either leadership from the “Anointed Black Elite”, classical politics or economic (meaning business) development.  As a result, it has been difficult to spark the interest and involvement in our communities that would come if our organizations were at least together in support of such a plan, even if they were not themselves directly contributing to it.  The speakers in the IBW Symposium did occasionally make reference to the need to organize Civil Society, with Mr. Rojas in particular giving us a fine example of how this worked in Grenada before the US invasion 30 years ago.  But plans to implement something similar in the here-and-now, which would be in accord with SRDC’s plan, were not discussed as a plan moving forward from this Symposium.  In that regard, an opportunity was missed in an otherwise informative and inspiring Symposium.

One thing that needs to happen with greater frequency is the establishment of concrete plans and objectives to come out of our many and varied Conferences and Symposia.  There is a need for us to be more proactive and to find ourselves in a position to actually give concrete assignments to many of our activists so that true Pan-Afrikan Unity can be achieved in some key areas.  Too many Conferences have ended with the pronouncement that “this is not the end of our work; we will follow up”, and yet they seldom do that.  Thankfully, in the case of IBW, there are strong indications that they are indeed prepared to follow up on their prior work, and we hope that will continue to be the case.  When we are called upon to assess the state of activism in our community, we are often faced by the question, “What did you accomplish?”, and we are usually hard-pressed to demonstrate that our meetings, conferences and conventions are anything more than “talk shops” which accomplish little on-the-ground. This leads to a feeling of cynicism among our activists about the real commitment of our intellectuals and leaders to actually bring about the change they call for, and sometimes leads our best and brightest to leave the struggle entirely, citing burnout from “beating their heads against the wall” of community apathy, inconsistent commitment and intellectual inertia.

Even with these concerns, this Symposium represented an honest, proactive effort to bring a variety of Pan-Afrikan tinkers and doers together to see if a way forward can be charted, and IBW has demonstrated a desire to hear a variety of viewpoints that might help advance the aspirations of Afrikan people everywhere.  I feel that a solid foundation has been laid for me concerning where IBW is going, and I also hope that I, for one, will be able to give a more definitive answer to the question “What did you accomplish?” upon my return from future Conferences.  I hope that this represents the continuation and expansion of a cooperative, productive relationship between IBW, activists like me and the many leaders, scholars and workers who helped to bring this Conference together and participated in it.

Please visit the Institute of the Black World Web Site, www.ibw21.org, to review the photo gallery, see videos of the various presentations and read some of the pertinent documents.

Bro. Cliff Kuumba
Editor, KUUMBAReport Online 

Many women in Afrika are forced to deliver their babies in the dark.  Schoolchildren often must either study by flashlight (or candlelight) or finish their schoolwork during the day.  Equipment for cooking and pumping water cannot be used.  Critical life-saving medicines cannot be refrigerated when needed to prevent spoilage.  This I what life is like for too many of Afrika’s people.  While the Continent is advancing and is considered by many to be among the fastest-growing markets and trade partners, the lack of reliable electricity remains a huge stumbling block to Afrika’s ability to truly bring self-determination and prosperity to its people.

To assist in filling the need to bring electricity to the Mother Continent, United States President Barack Obama has initiated the Power Africa Initiative, and the United States Congress has proposed and is supporting the Electrify Africa Act.

The Borgen Project (http://borgenproject.org)  has advocated on behalf of the Electrify Africa Act as a needed supplement to President Obama’s Power Africa Initiative. 

“The Borgen Project believes that leaders of the most powerful nation on earth should be doing more to address global poverty. We’re the innovative, national campaign that is working to make poverty a focus of U.S. foreign policy.” 
                                                                                  — Borgen Project Mission Statement

Their case for support of the Act is spelled out in an article by Borgen Project’s Katie Bandera (http://borgenproject.org/what-is-the-electrify-africa-act-of-2013/).  According to the article:

While the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty has decreased from 52.2 percent in 1981 to 20.2 percent in 2010, poverty alleviation remains inconsistent across the globe.  East Asia experienced a significant reduction in the proportion of its population living on less than $1.25 a day, lowering its rate from 77.2 percent in 1981 to 12.5 percent in 2010.  South Asia also saw an impressive reduction, decreasing its rate from 61.1 percent in 1981 to 31.0 percent in 2010.  Efforts to alleviate poverty have clearly succeeded in Asia, but progress in Africa lags significantly behind.  Between 1981 and 2010, the proportion of those living in extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan decreased a mere 3 percent – from 51.5 percent to 48.5 percent.  Today, 68 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s population lacks access to electricity, and 30 African countries face frequent power shortages.  225 million people depend on health facilities that have no electricity.  While USAID and African economies have experienced recent successes, the lack of access to reliable electricity is cited as the main constraint that hampers both growth and development.  Aid organizations have made significant progress in Africa in recent years, but their efforts can only go so far when large areas of the continent lack electricity.  The Electrify Africa Act of 2013 seeks to provide affordable and reliable electricity to Africa in order to aid economic growth and decrease poverty rates.  Authored by several members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Africa Subcommittee, the Electrify Africa Act aims to “create a strategic approach to support affordable, reliable electricity in sub-Saharan Africa,” which will “unlock the potential for economic growth, job creation, improved health and education, and poverty reduction.”

If passed, the Electrify Africa Act will:
• Declare that it is the policy of the United States to encourage access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa;
• Require that the Administration create a comprehensive strategy to help increase electricity in sub-Saharan Africa;
• Encourage USAID to use existing tools like loan guarantees, partnerships and grants to increase electricity in sub-Saharan Africa;
• Direct the Treasury Department to persuade the World Bank and African Development
Bank to increase electrification investments in sub-Saharan Africa;
• Instruct the Overseas Private Investment Corporation to prioritize electrical sector investments in sub-Saharan Africa; and
• Call on the Trade and Development Agency to encourage broader private sector engagement in the sub-Saharan Africa electricity sector.

7 out of 10 people in sub-Saharan Africa currently live without access to electricity, but this legislation will ensure that the United States employs a specific strategy to increase access to electricity at no additional cost to U.S. taxpayers. Call your congressman to encourage their support of the Electrify Africa Act of 2013.

Policy Breakfast on Power: Eliminating a barrier to trade, development and growth in Africa

On October 24, 2013, the United States Congress Africa Policy Breakfast Series presented Power: Eliminating a barrier to trade, development and growth in Africa, at the Jefferson Building, Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

The event was hosted by the Office of Congressmember Karen Bass (D-California, pictured right), Ranking Member of the House Africa Subcommittee.  Ms. Bass had sponsored the Africa Braintrust event on September 20 at the Washington, DC Convention Center as part of the Constituency For Africa’s Ronald H. Brown Africa Series.  Congressmember Bass is considered one of the more progressive members of Congress, and her work has demonstrated a concern for Afrika and the Afrikan Diaspora.

The purpose of this event was to allow concerned members of the public to learn a bit more about current efforts to bring the infrastructure to Afrika that will facilitate the provision of reliable, consistent electrical power to Afrika’s people.

The event was co-hosted by Rep. Ed Royce, Rep. Eliot L. Engel, Rep. Chris Smith, Sen. Chris Coons and Sen. Jeff Flake.

A number of members from the Afrikan Diplomatic Corps were present.  This included ambassadors from several countries such as Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania and Uganda.  Other officials present included Former US Ambassador Lisa Wilson, representatives from the African Development Bank, Export-Import Bank and US-Africa Development Foundation.

Ed Royce (R-California) “became the Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in January 2013.  He is currently serving his 11^th term in the United States Congress, representing Southern California’s 39^th district.  From 1997 to 2004, Rep. Royce chaired the Africa Subcommittee” (from the program introduction).

Rep. Royce pointed out that “trade with Afrika has tripled” since 2000, and thus Afrika is becoming an important trading partner.  Afrika currently faces a crisis because of interruptions in power to the populace.  70% of Afrika’s people do not have access to reliable energy.

Rep. Royce is the current co-chair of the Conservation Caucus, which promotes a program that includes a focus on renewable sources of energy.  Unfortunately, it can’t all be done with renewables, according to Rep. Royce as well as most experts and advocates for bringing power to Afrika’s people; hence, Rep. Royce believes that a “balanced approach” that includes biofuels, oil, gas and so-called “clean coal” must be pursued to “Electrify Afrika”.  Part of his reasoning for this approach is the conviction that “governments sitting on gas reserves” will not support the use of renewable energy.

Kamran Khan is the Vice President of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).   He “is responsible for overseeing MCC’s $9 billion compact grant program portfolio and manages the agency’s engagement with partner country governments and civil societies to reduce poverty and generate sustainable economic growth” (from the program introduction).  MCC’s activities are built around supporting free trade and economic growth.  Their desire is to better establish Afrika as a trade partner.  Toward this end, they are assisting with the implementation of the Power Africa Initiative of the Obama Administration, which is currently in its primary phase, focusing on six Afrikan countries.  MCC employs 300 people in the US.  MCC is selective in choosing what countries they will work with.  A major part of their work includes identifying “constraints to economic growth” (regulations, investment climate, stability of the country and other governance issues).  Implementation is done by the countries and they must be ready, with a concrete plan and having satisfied MCC’s requirements before an investment is made.  The process includes the institution of whatever governmental or institutional reforms are needed in the recipient country, followed by “transactions” (investments) and “capacity-building” (actual construction of the needed infrastructure).  Currently, MCC plans to invest $1 Billion US in Power Africa countries.

Several US organizations are also involved in the Power Africa Initiative, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Overseas Power Investment Corporation (OPIC) and the United States Treasury Department.

Paul Hinks is the Chief Executive Officer of Symbion Power.  “With 30 years of experience in the power industry, Mr. Hinks has been responsible for the construction of power plants, transmission lines and substations in the USA, Africa, the Middle East and Asia” (from the program introduction).  Symbion started in Afrika in 2005, working with developing countries.  Symbion began in engineering contracting, then began building power plants in Tanzania after a successful bid on an MCC contract.  Symbion now has bases in Western, Eastern and Southern Afrika.

Olufunke Iyabo Osibodu is the Director, Vigeo Power Ltd., Benin Electricity Distribution.  “Ms. Osibodu has over three decades of banking experience with formative years at Chase Merchant Bank and Citibank.  She was the Managing Director and Chief Executive of two Nigerian banks.  She is the incoming CEO of the Benin Electricity Distribution Company” (from the program introduction).

South Africa currently generates 40 megawatts of power.  By comparison, the objective is to have Nigeria generating 20 megawatts by 2020.  To facilitate this goal, funding is needed in a “timely and fast fashion” but that level of funding has not yet been reached.  There is a need for agencies to work together better and be better coordinated.  |A special need is support for more distribution to customers.

The moderator of the panel was Oren Whyche-Shaw.  She is the Principal Adviser to the Africa Assistant Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).  “Ms. Whyche-Shaw serves as the Africa Bureau’s trade coordinator and as the coordinator for Partnership for Growth, an initiative that aims to accelerate and sustain broad-based economic growth bty putting into practice President Obama’s September 2010 Presidential Policy Directive on Global Development” (from the program introduction).  Her remarks were limited to the moderation of the panel and ensuring that the program, from the panelists’ presentations to the Question-and-Answer session, proceeded smoothly.

The Members’ Room of the Jefferson Building was packed to capacity with concerned citizens from the Afrikan-American, European-American and Continental Afrikan communities, all of whom had concerns about efforts to bring energy to the Afrikan Continent.  Questions from the audience ran the gamut from financing to governance to environmental concerns.

The questioning began with the issue of off-grid power for populations in rural Afrika.  This is supposed to be a key aim of both Power Africa and the Electrify Africa Act.  But how is local access to rural communities to be ensured?  The consensus seemed to be that Power Africa must include local people and businesses, not just the major extractive industries, especially since access to power for the populace is one of the constraints to economic growth identified by MCC.  However, as an example of the continuing problems posed by this issue, Liberian activist Emira Woods cited the example of a power plant in South Africa “surrounded by local communities living in the dark.”  MCC insists that there are provisions to ensure that local populations get power from power plants.  As Mr. Khan of MCC said, “We take this issue of social responsibility very, very seriously.”  He noted that MCC was rated #1 by Transparency International.

There were a number of questions regarding the degree of commitment to the development and use of “off-grid green renewables” such as geothermal, solar, wind, hydro and micro-hydro.  The discussion, even in this panel, had concentrated on large mega-projects, despite protestations about a balanced approach to providing energy to Afrikan communities.  Mr. Hinks stated that utility-grade batteries (1 MW for 2 days of power storage) will be needed for greater commitment to solar, and these utility-grade batteries are either not available or not feasible in the amount needed.  He cited this as one example of the limits of using renewables.  Symbion is pushing for more use of biomass to replace diesel.  One possible example that can be grown in Afrika is bamboo.  He noted the planned use of 5,000 acres of land near Lake Tanganyika to grow bamboo.  The energy yield from this is thought to be a bit less efficient than preferred, but the compensating factor is the creation of jobs at the same time.  Liberian activist Emira Woods voiced a concern about OPIC’s cap on renewable sources of energy in favor of “a focus on oil, gas and extraction.”  She noted that the land-intensiveness of even a purportedly environmentally-friendly source such as biofuels has already led to land grabs, particularly in Ethiopia and Kenya.

A question regarding the “appetite” for risk capital opened up more questions about the investment climate and a few options that may be available for smaller investors.  Mr. Hinks brought up the example of the Milken Institute, which had noted that the biggest US investors were in its Africa Section over the last 2 years.  “Africa panels are the busiest now.”  In response to a question about an expense of “billions of dollars” to build a power plant, Mr. Hinks noted the example of Transcorp Energy (Nigeria), which boasts a 300 MW power plant, estimated at about $300 million.  He also commented about what he regards as “excessive nervousness” in US investment circles: “Most Afrikan countries are on the way to doing well.”  Nigeria is much less corrupt and dangerous than many people think, he stated.  One member of the audience took the opportunity to introduce the idea of “crowdfunding”, which Wikipedia describes as “the collective effort of individuals who network and pool their money, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations.  Crowdfunding is used in support of a wide variety of activities, including disaster relief, citizen journalism, support of artists by fans, political campaigns, startup company funding, motion picture promotion, free software development, inventions development, scientific research, and civic projects.”  He made mention of a crowdfunding site that is oriented toward Afrikan and Afrikan-American users, www.blackcrowdfunding.net.

One member of the audience, an Ethiopian human rights activist, stated that a priority must be placed on good governance.  He questioned how Ethiopia became one of the 6 initial MCC-sponsored countries, a comment that drew the ire of the Ethiopian ambassador, who later questioned an Ethiopian who would speak out against his own country.

Power Africa has included provisions for weekly reporting from involved countries to ensure transparency and responsiveness to the concerns of advocates of Afrika’s development.  As the panel stated, Power Africa is there to “create a space” for the players.  But that is not enough by itself.  As was demonstrated by the questions from the audience, there remain concerns as to whether initiatives like Power Africa and the Electrify Africa Act will succeed in delivering a reliable source of power while at the same time protecting the Continent from the environmental ravages of industrialization, the dispossession of land from the people to grow biomass materials, the disproportionate support of the extractive industries over more renewable energy sources, access to power in the rural areas, the endangerment of democracy and the propping-up of repressive regimes in the interest of capital profits for big business.  Power Africa and the Electrify Africa Act are progressive measures by US standards, and they boast the potential to do much good for Afrika and her people.  The backers of these efforts are saying all the right things about transparency and responsibility (with the exception of the subtle, or maybe not-so-subtle reference to “clean coal” by Rep. Royce, as though he thinks it feasible to turn parts of the Mother Continent into West Virginia by blowing up mountains to access Afrika’s coal reserves).  But we’ve heard these assurances before.  While these appear to be worthy of support on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, we must be ever vigilant to ensure that the implementation of Power Africa and the Electrify Africa Act do not bring repression and suffering on the other side of the ocean.  We will keep our eyes open for the promised reports as they come in, so that the progress of this initiative can be monitored with the best interests of Afrika in mind.