Category Archives: Ourstory

April 13, 2024: Baba Imhotep Fatiu on Pan Africanism and its Implications for the 21st Century at Temple of New African Thought (Baltimore)

Baba Imhotep Fatiu, Founder of the Pan African Liberation Movement (PLM), will give this lecture to address issues of race, class, culture and identity from 6 pm – 9 pm at the Temple of New Afrikan Thought, 5525 Harford Road in East Baltimore.

PLM has been at the forefront of Pan Afrikan organizations in Baltimore, educating our community on Pan Afrikanism, Black manhood and Black womanhood.  PLM has sponsored such important programs as the African Awareness Critical Thinking Study Class, the Urban Youth Initiative Project, the Watoto Developmemt Center, the Ipet Isut Bookstore & Cultural Center and the Kimoyo Shule Africana.  PLM also sponsored Kwanzaa events for several years in the Baltimore area, as well as the annual Pan Afrikan Day of Solidarity for several years, the current Race First Rally in West Baltimore and the annual Royal African Gala.  For more information on PLM, visit their Web site at https://www.plm95.org.

Maryland Council of Elders Announces African Liberation Day in Baltimore, May 25, 2024

The Maryland Council of Elders (MCOE) has sponsored African Liberation Day at Lafayette Square Park in West Baltimore for the last 6 years, having worked with Baba Charlie Dugger since 2018.  Every year, African Liberation Day has grown in scope and popularity, now reaching our people in Washington DC, Philadelphia PA, New York NY, and cities further north, south and west.

This year’s theme is “Same struggle: Smash Settler-Colonialism in Occupied Palestine, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania”.  This year’s gathering is dedicated to the Centenary (100 years) of Ancestor and Freedom Fighter Amilcar Cabral.

There will be vendors, music, children’s activities, health screenings, and updates on the local, national and international struggle for freedom.

For those who are coming from Washington, DC and are looking for transportation to the gathering, check out the flyer “Need A Ride to African Liberation Day?” which is attached to this email.

The gathering will be preceded by an International Webinar on May 24 at 12 noon.  Check out the attached African Liberation Day flyer for more details, or contact the Maryland Council of Elders at marylandcouncilofeldersbmore@gmail.com, or phone (202) 528-6884.

Also, the Maryland Council of Elders is conducting training for those who wish to become members of MCOE.  The training session will be held on Saturday, April 20, 2024 at Douglas Memorial Community Church, 1325 Madison Avenue in Baltimore at 10:45 am, to be followed by a Town Hall Meeting at 1:00 pm.  I’ve attached a flyer for the training to this email as well.  Again, for more information contact the Maryland Council of Elders at marylandcouncilofeldersbmore@gmail.com, or phone (202) 528-6884.

April 16-19, 2024: Third Session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, Geneva, Switzerland

April 16-19, 2024 is the Third Session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD), which was created by the United Nations just under two years ago.  PFPAD has held two Sessions already, one in Geneva, Switzerland in December 2022 and another in New York City in June 2023.  This Third Session will be held in Geneva, Switzerland from April 16-19, 2024.

Our interest in this Third Session stems from one of the “Spokes” in the “Spokes of the Wheel” diagram of the Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition (https://kuumbareport.com/spokes-of-the-wheel/maryland-pan-african-cooperative-coalition-mpacc/) that has served as sort of an unofficial logo for the Cooperative Coalition: International Pan Afrikan Activism.  Many of the issues we face on the ground where we live stem from decisions that are made by heads of state and by international bodies like the United Nations, African Union, and Organization of American States that deal with the human rights of the citizens of countries, of ethnic and religious minorities, of women and children, and of migrants.  Misdeeds by states (apartheid in South Africa and the genocide in Darfur are two examples) can often be mitigated and finally brought to a halt by concerted and persistent action by international grassroots activists, either through protests at embassies or presentations at international conferences and sessions such as those held by the Permanent Forum.  Thus, this Third Session in Geneva is directly related to our work as a Cooperative Coalition to bring a variety of forces to bear in a combined, cooperative effort to improve and enrich the lives of Afrikan People.

Sis. Tomiko of Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (APP-HRC), SOLITUDE and the Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition (MPACC) is leading a delegation of experts to the Third Session, concentrating on issues of Mass Incarceration, Reparative Justice and Women of Afrikan Descent.  She led this same panel of experts to the Organization of American States (OAS) Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in Washington, DC last November, and her panel made quite an impression on the OAS Commissioners.  Our prayer to the Creator and the Ancestors is that they will guide her panel at this Third Session so they can make a similar strong impression on the Third Session of PFPAD and strike yet another blow for Afrikan People.

The following come from the Web sites that are linked below, in case you want to know more about the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD) and the Third Session taking place next week in Geneva, Switzerland.  Each session listed below includes links (full Web addresses that can be copied and pasted to your browser in case the link doesn’t work) to learn more about the Sessions and to arrange to attend the Sessions over the Internet.

(1) This first link is to general information about the Third Session of PFPAD.  You’re invited to check the link for more detail on this Session:

Third session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent | OHCHR
https://www.ohchr.org/en/events/sessions/2024/third-session-permanent-forum-people-african-descent

Third session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent

DATE: 16 – 19 April 2024

LOCATION: PALAIS DES NATIONS OF THE UNITED NATIONS OFFICE IN GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is pleased to announce that the third session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent will take place from 16 – 19 April 2024 in the Palais des Nations of the United Nations Office in Geneva, Switzerland.

(2) There are also several specific Side Events taking place during the Third Session.  This is one of the early events of the week.  Our own Sis. Tomiko is helping organize this Side Event for Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign, which will take place on Tuesday, April 16:

Third session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent: Side event – Global Mass Incarceration a… (sched.com)
https://thirdsessionpfpad2024.sched.com/event/1br8X/side-event-global-mass-incarceration-and-reparative-justice-a-roundtable-discussion

GLOBAL MASS INCARCERATION AND REPARATIVE JUSTICE: A ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION

Date: 16 April 2024, 18:15 – 19:45 (6:15 pm – 7:45 pm Geneva Time; 12:15 pm – 1:45 pm Eastern Time)

Organizers:

  • Geneva Graduate Institute-Gender Centre;
  • Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign/SOLITUDE

Language of the event: English

Description of the event:
This roundtable discussion will explore the issue of mass incarceration of African descendent women and women of color on a global scale. Our speakers will shed light on the historical links between slavery, colonialism and mass incarceration, and discuss activist struggles and the global reparations movement against the overarching carceral landscape of the world.

Location: Auditorium A2, Maison de la paix, Geneva Graduate Institute
https://www.graduateinstitute.ch/communications/events/global-mass-incarceration-and-reparative-justice-roundtable-discussion

PANELISTS

Moderation: Nicole Bourbonnais, Geneva Graduate Institute.

This is a hybrid event. Please register below to attend the event online or in person.

REGISTER TO ATTEND THIS EVENT ONLINE:

Register: https://iheid.webex.com/weblink/register/r53c15d520c17538a2603b0be9f91b69f

Person to contact: 

  • Nicole Bourbonnais; Director Gender Centre-nicole.bourbonnais@graduateinstitute.ch
  • Tomiko Shine; Director Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign/SOLITUDE, dcapphrc@gmail.com

(3) Sis. Tomiko is also organizing the following discussion on Friday, April 19:

Third session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent: Side event – The Second International De… (sched.com)
https://thirdsessionpfpad2024.sched.com/event/1aS8k/side-event-the-second-international-decade-challenge-protecting-women-and-girls-of-african-descent-after-400-years-of-state-violence

The Second International Decade Challenge; Protecting Women and Girls of African Descent after 400 years of State Violence

Date, time and time zone of side event: Friday, April 19th, 9:45 – 10:45 am Geneva Time (3:45 am – 4:45 am Eastern Time)

Sponsoring organization(s) or entity/ies:

  • WAPB-thewapb.org -The WAPB is a Community Policing and Human Rights social entrepreneurship whose mission is to become the premier organization providing services, education, and training to eradicate violence against women during policing encounters, including female officers.
  • APP-HRC/SolitudeSolitude (wordpress.com) – A international human rights research consortium focusing on black women of African descent across the Diaspora building on a foundation of reparative justice.

Language(s) in which the side event will be held: English

Description of the side event:

This side event/workshop will look at the qualitative and quantitative cost of state violence through various institutions, laws, and policies to the black woman of African descent over generations. The panelists will also provide reparative justice models and recommendations that protect and re-define the African woman’s womb as a renewed space of generational healing, wealth, and nation building.

Contact details of the organizer: Crista Noel, cnoel@thewapb.org

Sis. Tomiko: Cultural Anthropologist and Mitigation Specialist
Founding Director: Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign
www.apphrc.com
https://m.facebook.com/apphrcusa/

“The seed you plant in love, not matter how small, will grow into a mighty tree of refuge” Afeni Shakur

“I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth” Assata Shakur

In Recognition of Black Herstory Month

We remember Anti-Apartheid Icon Winnie Madikizela Mandela, former political prisoner and solitary confinement survivor (1936-2018)

In Recognition of Black History Month

Free Civil Rights Icon and Aging Prisoner
Imam Jamil al-Amin aka H. Rap Brown (incarcerated 2000-Present)

Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign Holds Hearing at the Organization of American States on “Loss of Resources and Generational Mass Incarceration’s Impact on Black Women”

We decided to petition for this hearing today because we are an organization that works to get people out who have been in for 30, 40, 50, 60 or more years in prison. Our organization is made up of mostly women who are working to get their folks out of prison. Right now in the United States you have two and three generations of men and women, mothers and fathers from the same family, incarcerated. All of them are attached to generations of women. For us today, this is not simply a hearing, this is a trial. This is something for 400 years we’ve been waiting. What you see here is, we are the daughters of the plantation, daughters of Maroons, daughters of Abolitionists, daughters of Freedom Fighters, daughters of Garveyites, daughters of Revolutionaries, and we are versus the United States, and they have been found guilty. The crime is the war on the Afrikan woman’s womb. Anything that has come out of the Afrikan woman’s womb in the last 400 years has been attacked, assaulted, decimated, incarcerated, imprisoned, and this will no longer be tolerated. This is unacceptable. Walter Rodney, in his book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, talks about this underdevelopment. Thus, 400 years later, the Afrikan person that comes out of the Afrikan woman’s womb is still being underdeveloped by institutional racism and White Supremacy racism.

“So therefore, today, we sentence the US, and all the Western World that has benefited from our human resources, to 100 years of reparations that is to be paid in full. Reparative justice. In the next 10 to 20 years we want this abolition of prisons to commence. We want the extraction of our human resources from the human resource of the Afrikan woman’s womb to stop feeding the pipeline of institutional racism and generational incarceration. This will no longer be tolerated. We close the chapter today on the Department of Justice, the Prison Industrial Complex, any system entire that oppresses our bodies, our people, the Afrikan woman’s womb.

“Edward Baptist in his book, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, emphasizes this, that the extreme amounts of money that has been made from the human resources of Afrikan people, Dr. [Tasseli] McKay [has calculated] the price, so we say the [price] to be paid is 7.16 trillion dollars to the Black woman, only for the last four decades of incarceration, and we’re talking about one institution. Today’s verdict that has been passed is sealed. It cannot be undone. The seven testimonies and interventions that have occurred [here today and documented below are akin to the story of] the Walls of Jericho, and they will fall, tomorrow being the seventh day [November 7]. This verdict is sealed today by our ancestors, Alberta Williams King, Winnie Mandela, Maria Elena Moyano, Safiya Bukhari, Louise Little, La Mulatresse Solitude, and Fannie Lou Hamer. [The walls of Jericho] will fall today. I thank you.”

Thus the objective of this hearing, held at the offices of the Organization of American States (OAS) at 1889 F Street, NW in Downtown Washington, DC on Monday, November 6, was proclaimed by the organizer of this session, Ms. Tomiko Shine, cultural anthropologist, Founder and Director of Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (APP-HRC), an organization dedicated to securing the freedom of those who have been held in penitentiaries and prisons for upwards of 20 to 50 years. Many of these aging people in prison are what we often refer to as Political Prisoners, members of organizations such as the Black Panther Party (BPP), American Indian Movement (AIM), MOVE and other political-dissident groups who were targeted under the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). Others were convicted in tainted trials on questionable evidence in spite of their lack of political activism, and still others were handed draconian sentences for relatively minor offenses and have been imprisoned for decades. Practically all of the prisoners and former prisoners represented by APP-HRC have grown old under incarceration, and have faced struggles not only in securing their release through parole or exoneration, but also in adjusting to “life on the outside” after being freed. In practically all of these cases, the burden of their imprisonment has been felt most acutely by their families, particularly by Black women.

This hearing was presided over by the OAS’s Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) for its 188th Session. The Commissioners on the panel were Ms. Margarette May Macaulay (President), Ms. Roberta Clarke (Second Vice President), Ms. Julissa Mantilla Falcón, and Ms. Tania Reneaum Panszi (Executive Secretary).

Ms. Maccaulay, President of the IACHR, opened the session, welcomed the presenters and received their testimonies, after which she and the Commissioners present asked several follow-up questions and offered their words of support and encouragement, and a request to remain connected to the presenters so they can receive further updates and calls to action from them.

Introductory Presentations by the Expert Panel

Attorney Efia Nwangaza, Esq., South Carolina-based human and civil rights attorney, director of the Malcolm X Center for Self Determination, founder and coordinator of WMXP Community Radio, chair of the US Human Rights Network’s Political Prisoners and State Repression Working Group, past co-chair of the National Jericho Movement for the release and freedom of all US-held political prisoners, was the first presenter:

Attorney Efia Nwangaza, Esq.

“The United States is party to several human rights treaties and conventions, and the issue of mass incarceration has raised concerns about violations of these treaties in the context of the disproportionate impact on Black women. Some of the key treaties include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified in 1992, the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, ratified in 1994, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, ratified in 1994, and the Universal Periodic Review along with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These treaties encompass fundamental human rights principles, including non-discrimination, the right to a fair trial, the prohibition of torture and cruel treatment, and economic and social rights. The impact of mass incarceration on Black women, including issues such as racial disparities in the criminal punishment system, access to education, health care, family separation, has led to concerns about these violations. Mass incarceration in the United States disproportionately affects Black women, and as a result they face various lifelong human rights challenges.

“My colleagues will detail the key human rights issues that Black women suffer as a result of these violations.

“The issues reflect systemic disparities in the criminal punishment system, a system which is grounded in the US history of slavery, apartheid, and racial violence. Viewed through a human rights lens, they are violations of fundamental human rights, particularly the right to equality, non-discrimination and dignity. Ongoing advocacy and reform efforts to address these human rights challenges and to promote a more just and equitable system are frustrated by the United States’ self-proclaimed exceptionalism, use of reservations, understandings and declarations when signing on to treaties, and a total lack of public and professional human rights knowledge, in the courts and the legislatures especially.

“Addressing mass incarceration and the associated human rights violations against Black women requires a multi-faceted approach. We suggest (1) Reparations. The US must create a commission to study the continuing impact of slavery, apartheid and centuries of White violence reflected in the criminal punishment system. It must devise and fund proposals for remediation and prevention of their perpetuation, including ensuring Black women full and complete access to legal representation and resources necessary to realize our full human potential. Legislative changes must occur at the federal and state levels to address laws and systemic issues contributing to mass incarceration and racial disparities in the criminal punishment system including data collection and transparency, racial bias training to raise public awareness about human rights, mass incarceration and the specific challenges that are faced by Black women.

“I thank you.”

Ms. Simone Harris read a letter from her son Rashid Harris, age 36, incarcerated since age 23 at James T. Vaughan Correctional Center, at Smyrna, Delaware with a sentence of life plus 527 years due to a habitual offender law, to his mother.

She concluded by saying, “My recommendations are to abolish the three-strike law, abolish life sentences, and to stop incarcerating juvenile minorities in their prime, which equates to genocide. Thank you.”

Ms. Krystal Young spoke about her experience, a struggle of several years against a bogus arrest and a threat of decades of imprisonment on a false charge. In 2015, she was arrested with her mother and twin brother for burglary and trespassing, was released after 9 days but was rearrested three months later on warrants based on false allegations stemming from a series of complaints of a neighbor. Her seven-year-old daughter began exhibiting psychological issues. She recounted the suffering of her grandmother, mother and daughter as she went through five different attorneys over the course of a two-year fight during which she was confronted with the possibility of facing 127 years in jail. Her case was finally dismissed, but the damage was done to her family. “It should be mandatory for any state government official to obtain any arrest history of police districts as some form of compensation for falsely accused victims. Thank you.”

Dr. Avon Hart-Johnson, president and co-founder of DC Project Connect, coming today as a support specialist, advocate, author and researcher, conducting studies in the United States and abroad, focused on several key recommendations for reforming the current carceral system (a prison, confinement and surveillance-based system of punishment):

Dr. Avon Hart-Johnson

“Today, I focus on four key areas and recommendations. First, Black women are largely incarcerated for crimes associated with survival and coping, in essence, criminalized mental health conditions, domestic violence, unaddressed substance use, has likely led to their incarceration. Recommendation number one: abolish prisons. When sanctions of a last resort are warranted, these women should be offered holistic care as a community-based alternative to restore health and well-being. Second, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 5 states in part: ‘No one should be subjected to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment’, yet alarming reports of physical and psychological violations occur in women’s prisons every day. In 2015 alone, there were 25,000 incidents and allegations of sexual abuse, extortion, rape, groping, or other sexual related abuses in prison. Recommendation number two: we demand reparative justice, holding carceral systems responsible for past harms, current harms and preventing future harms. All prisons and halfway houses should be converted to healing centers, with emphasis placed on mental and physical health care, funded by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Third, the United Nations recognizes the right to the highest attainable standards of physical and mental health, in particular Article 25. The denial of adequate mental health intervention and gender specific health care needs, and adequate menstrual products, in prison, result in women making dehumanizing tradeoffs between basic needs and hygiene. The use of medically unsafe trauma-inducing restraints and shackles on pregnant women should cease today. Recommendation number three: we demand that incarcerated women have access to adequate health care as a matter of human rights as a public imperative. Finally, and fourth, maternal incarceration has the greatest impact on children and intergenerational incarceration. According to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights Article 12, incarcerated persons have the right to family life, a protective factor that can mitigate the cycle of incarceration. The fourth recommendation: incarcerated women should not be arbitrarily separated from their families, and their right to family life must be respected and restored, with efforts made to ensure that contact is maintained between mothers and children, and vital family bonds preserved.

“Thank you for the opportunity to testify.”

“The total harm in under 50 years of mass incarceration comes to 7.16 trillion dollars. That’s more than half the value of the entire Black-White wealth gap. No other form of domestic state violence carried out in the United States since the beginning of the 20th century compares to the scope and scale of these effects. If we are ever going to move beyond mass captivity, beyond the mass exploitation of Black women’s bodies and labor on this continent, we need universal understanding in the US and around the world of the vast harms of mass incarceration.”
— Dr. Tasseli McKay

Attorney Maya Hylton-Garza, Esq. has worked with prisoners who have relatives who have been incarcerated, worked in cities like Baltimore, Oakland and Los Angeles. She spoke “about the primacy of the American criminal justice system from the perspective of someone who works inside it.

Attorney Maya Hylton-Garza, Esq.

“To put it plainly, it’s a mess. But calling it a mess is [insufficient]; what it truly is, is a horror show. The United States incarcerates more people than any other country, being responsible for about a quarter of the world’s imprisoned people. Despite accounting for only about 13% of the US population, Black people comprise 38% of that incarcerated population. Along with incarcerating more people than any other country, the US also incarcerates more women than any other country. Racial bias permeates every facet of the system, reflecting the … lineage from the present-day system to the earliest days of slavery. At the onset, we had Slave Codes, a separate and more severe set of crimes and punishment for slaves. Following emancipation, the existence of this dual system did not disappear. While we may no longer explicitly have a separate set of crimes and punishments for Black people, evidence of racially disparate treatment can be seen throughout the system. While the United States has not yet consistently and accurately [shared] data on arrest, prosecution and incarceration trends, what we do know is that there is clear evidence pf racially disparate arrests, racially disparate sentencing, [with] more and longer sentences given to Black people and racially disparate administration of parole and probation. Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign is an abolitionist organization that [argues that] the process of emancipation for all Black people in the United States cannot conclude until the criminal justice system is abolished. The Supreme Court … very explicitly acknowledged the possibility of racial prejudice influencing a jury’s decision in any criminal case. When faced with actual statistical evidence of racial bias influencing a death penalty case, they found it as ‘not unacceptable’, allowing the death penalty to stand. With a Supreme Court so comfortable with allowing an ‘acceptable amount’ of racial discrimination to infect every Black person’s interaction with the criminal justice system, there is no reform that could occur that would be able to repair the corrupt White Supremacist heart of the current system. Aging People in Prison seeks the dismantling of the systems that support and reify such oppression, including the police, the judiciary and the carceral state. Nothing less will set us free.”

Dr. Tasseli McKay, a social scientist and record of policy scholar at Duke University, shared “new figures from my research on the economic impact of mass incarceration on Black women.

Dr. Tasseli McKay

“For all of this century in the US, the huge Black-White wealth gap that is the legacy of slavery was slowly narrowing. Those gains, small and slow, were very hard won. But in the 1970s, following great Civil Rights progress in the US, our criminal legal system began to be mobilized against Black Americans in an intensely violent and far-reaching way. As it did, the wealth gap also began to widen again, in a way it had not since the ferocious anti-Black mass political violence of the late 1800s. During the mass incarceration years, the wealth of the typical Black household has dropped 75%, while that of the typical White household has risen 14%. Mass incarceration has brought tremendous harm to Black women, families and communities, and social scientific evidence makes it possible to rigorously calculate its economic impact. I’ve written two academic books about this work, carefully reviewed by top economists and criminal legal system scholars, and so I have great confidence in what I’m about to tell you about these costs. The criminalization of Black children and youth, and their pipelining out of educational and supportive institutions has sapped 4.31 trillion dollars. The perpetual punishment of formerly incarcerated Black adults, particularly their long-term exclusion from the formal workforce, has sapped 1.07 trillion dollars. The burdens and harms shunted onto partners and mothers of incarcerated Black adults total 434 billion dollars. The lifelong repercussions for Black children of the incarcerated, particularly in lost educational opportunity, total 452 billion dollars. And the community and population-scale damages, particularly impacts on Black infant mortality and adult life expectancy, total 890 billion dollars. The total harm in under 50 years of mass incarceration comes to 7.16 trillion dollars. That’s more than half the value of the entire Black-White wealth gap. No other form of domestic state violence carried out in the United States since the beginning of the 20th century compares to the scope and scale of these effects. If we are ever going to move beyond mass captivity, beyond the mass exploitation of Black women’s bodies and labor on this continent, we need universal understanding in the US and around the world of the vast harms of mass incarceration. We need reconstruction of the abusive public institutions that did these harms. And we need at least 7.16 trillion dollars in reparations to Black women and communities for mass incarceration. Thank you so much.”

Attorney Efia Nwangaza, Esq. made additional comments:

“I would simply add to the information and comments that have already been made in that when we talk about reparative justice, when we talk about reparations, we’re talking about full and complete reparations, and the full and complete reparations go far beyond the money that necessarily includes the rebuilding of the individual and of a people or peoples, like the abused adopted child. We long to know who and what we are, where we were kidnapped from, what were then our names, what would have been our language, what would have been our spiritual development system, what would have been our social and familial structure. There is no price that can be put on that; at the same time, every effort must be made to do so.”

Dr. Tasseli McKay added some historical context to the discussion of the harms caused to Black women and Black families, highlighting the intentional and official US policy nature of these harms, dating back to the Richard M. Nixon administration and even before that.

“I’d like to read a quote from John Ehrlichman, who was the domestic policy advisor to Richard Nixon, widely understood by people in my field as the forefather of mass incarceration. And I’m quoting him now:

‘The Nixon Campaign in 1968 and the Nixon White House after that had two enemies: the anti-war left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the people to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.’ [from an interview Ehrlichman gave to Dan Baum in 1994, published in the April 2016 issue of Harper’s Magazine — Editor.]

“I’d like to add that I think it’s important that we understand this as the domestic state violence that it is and has been, and that the impacts of that state violence on Black women in particular have been concealed of necessity, because the work that Black women have taken on in the face of this state violence has been to absorb, to cushion and to defend their families and communities against it, perpetually, and without their permission concealing the true magnitude of its effects. The costs of this system are so much greater than we have ever acknowledged and those costs have been borne by the most vulnerable among us, and because those costs could not come out of bank accounts, they have come out of bodies. Chris Wildeman’s research on the impacts of mass incarceration on population health in the United States shows that yes, mass incarceration has done definitive damage to our health as an entire population, and yes, those effects on life expectancy and infant mortality have been concentrated predominantly in Black communities. And yes, those effects on life, the years taken off of American lives by mass incarceration, have come off of Black women’s lives. When we look at the effects of rising Black male incarceration rates, beginning around 1978, on population health in the US, we see that the years of life lost came primarily from Black women. There’s so much that has happened, so much that has been concealed and so much strength that has been standing in resistance to this domestic state violence for many decades. Thank you so much for the time to speak to you.”

“I don’t understand why the American establishment doesn’t recognize this, and it doesn’t augur well for the reputation of the state, for this sort of thing to go on. And then I hear politicians on TV, in Congress and the Senate, Senators and Congressmen, talking about how America is not a racist country. That is the biggest, what I call ‘real politics’, because everybody looking around can recognize it, and yet they’re denying it, so how much trust can one have in the system?”
– IACHR President Margarette May Macaulay

The IACHR Commission members ask questions to the presenters.

The members of the Commission asked a number of follow-up questions. President Margarette May Macaulay added a comment and a question: “Thank you for the personal stories that show what these policies do to life and families. Thank you also for the empirical evidence that combines the information into research in action about these punitive policies that have been repeated from 1940 until today. You referred to identity reparations, and we would like to hear more about that. What are the triggers that cause the increasing harshness of the penalties?”

Attorney Efia Nwangaza, Esq. offered some additional perspective on the Black reparations struggle.

Attorney Efia Nwangaza, Esq. makes a point.

“To talk about reparations, the (IACHR) President rounds it out in a simple word: personhood, that full and complete reparations required restoration of personhood. We have since the Civil War in the United States, made demands for reparations, and the visibility and the intensity of that struggle has risen and fallen depending upon political circumstances. At the moment it enjoys great visibility and global recognition, and we credit that to the 2001 Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, which was the opportunity to globalize the issue and to bring together the Afrikan community globally in formulating the consensus that the DDPA is [important], and even more importantly and recently is the struggle to protect and defend the DDPA against the onslaught of the former, well, the colonizers, because some of them are still in place, and enslavers attempting to distract us from the consensus that was reached with the DDPA, and most importantly its civilization and expression of self-determination, setting forth the crimes against humanity and the basis for global reparations, slavery, colonization, apartheid and genocide, and that we must not allow the creation and the mandate that was given to the Permanent Forum on People of Afrikan Descent or the Agenda 2030 SDG’s, Sustainable Development Goals, to become the shiny objects that take us away from the DDPA and the significance of that expression of self-determination, which of course also includes the Five Elements that define those guidelines as to what would constitute full and complete reparations. We look forward to submitting further information on that point, and consistent with the questions that you have asked here, suffice it to say that the greatest violations continue to occur in the South, what we call ‘the Black belt’, which is where the Afrodescendant population was enslaved in the largest numbers and continues to this day to live despite our apparent mobility and our escape from bondage. Finally I would add that the US Constitution provides for the continued enslavement of people generally and Afrikan people particularly. It was a concession that was made to the South wherein the 13th Amendment is thought to abolish slavery, however it does not. It only shifts the enslavement of persons from private hands to public hands, the hands of the government. It provides that a person cannot be held in involuntary servitude except in the case of a crime. And of course it is the enslavers who have defined what human behavior is criminal. And that invariably falls heaviest on people of Afrikan descent and Afrikan women in particular. Thank you.”

“We have since the Civil War in the United States, made demands for reparations, and the visibility and the intensity of that struggle has risen and fallen depending upon political circumstances. At the moment it enjoys great visibility and global recognition, and we credit that to the 2001 Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, which was the opportunity to globalize the issue and to bring together the Afrikan community globally … and even more importantly and recently is the struggle to protect and defend the DDPA against the onslaught of the former, well, the colonizers, because some of them are still in place, and enslavers attempting to distract us from the consensus that was reached with the DDPA …”
— Attorney Efia Nwangaza, Esq.

Attorney Maya Hylton-Garza, Esq. spoke about state-run versus private institutions, racialized arrest practices and released prisoners being saddled with heavy debts to the state that had imprisoned them.

“I want to speak to two things, the question of abuse in state-run versus private facilities and the question of racialized arrest practices. … The United States Congress mandated under the Prison Rape Elimination Act a comprehensive study of sexual assault and sexual abuse in United States correctional facilities. That study … included a representative sample, i think, of maybe 400 United States correctional facilities. That study used state of the art methods and it did document the very substantial prevalence of sexual assault around the country and it highlights not only in adult prison facilities but in detention facilities that house children, very widespread prevalence of sexual assault and abuse. And further, I’ll note that to my knowledge there is no established difference in rates of abuse in private-run versus state-run facilities, and that isn’t intended to be offered in defense of private facilities so much as I think it speaks to the extent to which our public institutions have been harnessed to abusive ends in a time of mass incarceration.

“With regard to the question about racialized arrest practices, in the contemporary United States, 49% of Black men can expect to be arrested by the time they reach age 23. We’ve seen in the work of … Vesla Weaver and colleagues, [which] demonstrates that in fact, over the decades of mass incarceration, we have seen what she calls a great uncoupling of arrest from criminalized behavior such that arrest is now so racially targeted that it is less and less correlated with engagement in any criminalized activity and more strongly correlated with perceived race, and that racial disproportionality of course, as you all know well, continues at every level of the system and its impacts are so devastating, even at the point of arrest and policing as your remarks highlighted, many jurisdictions have implemented what they euphemistically call ‘proactive policing strategies’: stop-and-frisk, hotspot policing, various forms of aggressive police engagement and implementation of these policies we know from several rigorous social scientific studies is strongly correlated with a drop in well-being across the Black population of those cities. So, for example, we see Black students’ educational achievement drop in New York City with the implementation of stop-and-frisk, and there are examples like that from social science research across the country.

“I also want to speak to this question, which is very well taken, of individuals released from incarceration with tremendous debt to the state. To my knowledge, that practice is much more the rule than it is the exception, and those debts have to do with everything from system fees, parole monitoring fees, court fees, victim restitution, and an enormous contributor to that debt is child support enforcement. Many families have enormous debt to the child support enforcement system after the incarceration of a loved one, and often a five-figure debt, in particular because, in most states, that continues to rack up those arrears during incarceration, even though earning enough funds to pay those commitments is a true impossibility during that time. And to the also quite well taken question of what happens when individuals are released with debts that are far beyond their capacity to pay, what happens to those debts, there is fairly strong indication that those debts are paid by the women family members of incarcerated and released individuals. They are not forgiven. They are shunted onto those who can least afford them.”

Dr. Avon Hart-Johnson made further comments on behalf of mothers of incarcerated persons and the impact on families.

“I’d like to address the question about what happens when the mother is incarcerated. The first thing I want to say is that, when you incarcerate the mother, it has the greatest impact on the children. Let me give you an example. In Washington DC, we don’t have a prison. So therefore, when mothers are separated from their children, they are sent across the United States to serve their sentences. That could be California, Texas, West Virginia, for example. We know that in Washington DC, the zip codes that have the highest incarceration rates also have 16% of the people living at or below the poverty level. So how do you stay connected? Let’s talk about what happens in the family system. Well, first of all, it’s recognized as a crisis. Children are often not told where their parents are because of the stigma and shame associated with it, or perhaps the adults who are raising the children at home don’t want to emotionally burden the children. We know that about 11% of the fathers are taking care of children. We know that 11% of the children are going to go into foster care. And the vast majority are going to stay with the grandmother or grandparents who may be on a fixed income. So when we start to think about what happens with the children and why is this thing about intergenerational incarceration showing up, well, the short story is, parental incarceration is an adverse childhood experience. Probably 60% of us in this room have gone through an adverse childhood experience. It could be a frequent change of caregivers, it could be abuse, neglect, it could be violence or conflict in the home, or parental incarceration. The thing is, when children are exposed to contiguous stressors, it actually changes their genetics. So, there’s this science called epigenetics, and so when children are living in these situations, incarceration is probably just one issue, there are many complex issues going on at the same time. When the body is exposed to contiguous stressors, over and over again, it stays in a state of hyper-vigilance, and the cortisol levels are bring produced, and those kids are always in fight-or-flight, even if it doesn’t look like it, they’re in fight-ir-flight, and so therefore, the genes in the body will adjust, and it will start to put all of this energy in the fight-or-flight, rather than fighting off infections.”

Attorney Maya Hylton-Garza, Esq. spoke about efforts at reforming the carceral system:

“I just wanted to speak briefly on some reforms that are occurring. In the state of California, the Racial Justice Act was passed, which specifically tries to address the effects of racially disparate sentencing and arrests, and allows for somebody who has been convicted to bring forward evidence of racially discriminatory behavior and then allow for some type of reduction in sentencing. The law is extraordinary in the fact that it is retroactive, and it covers all families and anybody who has picked up a juvenile case, so as far as we’re concerned that’s basically everybody in the state of California who has been arrested and experienced … confinement. The law has been passed. We don’t know yet how the judges are going to handle that responsibility. It’s the Racial Justice Act, 2021. Right after George Floyd, people were very inspired to suddenly realize discrimination existed. And so, we don’t know yet. It leaves a lot to the judges in terms of how they’re going to handle each of those cases. But it does allow [for evidence of] racially discriminatory behavior to be used as evidence to prove the case, and so that is one example of reform. There are two other states that have passed Racial Justice Acts. Neither one of those are effective in any way. One is so broad that no one can use it and the other one is so narrow that no one can use it. The first one was so broad that it was repealed, and the second one is so narrow that it’s useless. We don’t know yet how California is going to handle this, how California judges are going to handle this power. I’m going to stay optimistic, but what we’ve seen in the United States is that there is a fear of too much justice, that because everyone has experienced racial discrimination, Black and Brown and Native American people have experienced racial discrimination that has impacted the way in which they engage with the carceral state, that reform would require everyone to be helped, and the United States is simply unwilling to do that.”

Closing Remarks from the Chair

IACHR President Margarette May Macaulay

IACHR President Margarette May Macaulay offered some closing comments. She noted that quite a few people have been released because DNA evidence showed their convictions were false, evidence was flawed and the convictions and sentences were unlawful. She noted that in other countries, “such persons will be compensated by the state for their mistake”. In the news, we see that people who are released in the US have received “no compensation, despite the claims about America’s largesse. Where is that when they are at fault?” There are similar issues with social welfare, in which recipients who were determined to have received Social Security and health benefits by mistake were ordered to repay years later (usually with onerous amounts of interest) regardless of their ability to pay. This had been reported on the previous day on the CBS News program 60 Minutes.

President Macaulay asked what the presenters would want the Commission to do to assist them in this matter, and expressed the desire to collaborate with them. IACHR wants to hear about the issues and specific complaints people have that are related to this case. The Web site and phone number are available for submitting information and complaints, and there is training available in some cases for Non Governmental Organizations.

Ms. Macaulay closed with these comments: “This is long past due, long, long past due. And I don’t understand why the American establishment doesn’t recognize this, and it doesn’t augur well for the reputation of the state, for this sort of thing to go on. And then I hear politicians on TV, in Congress and the Senate, Senators and Congressmen, talking about how America is not a racist country. That is the biggest, what i call ‘real politics’, because everybody looking around can recognize it, and yet they’re denying it, so how much trust can one have in the system? So please, let’s collaborate. And thank you, thank you, thank you for coming to us.”

About the IACHR

IACHR’s mission statements explain that

The IACHR is a principal and autonomous organ of the Organization of American States (“OAS”) whose mission is to promote and protect human rights in the American hemisphere. It is composed of seven independent members who serve in a personal capacity. Created by the OAS in 1959, the Commission has its headquarters in Washington, D.C. Together with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (“the Court” or “the I/A Court H.R.), installed in 1979, the Commission is one of the institutions within the inter-American system for the protection of human rights (“IAHRS”).

The formal beginning of the IAHRS was approval of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man at the Ninth International Conference of American States held in Bogota in 1948. There the OAS Charter (hereinafter “the Charter”) was adopted, which declares that one of the principles upon which the Organization is founded is the “fundamental rights of the individual.”

Full respect for human rights appears in several sections of the Charter, underscoring the importance that the Member States attach to it. In the words of the Charter, “the true significance of American solidarity and good neighborliness can only mean the consolidation on this continent, within the framework of democratic institutions, of a system of individual liberty and social justice based on respect for the essential rights of man.” The Charter establishes the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) as one of the principal organs of the OAS whose function is to promote the observance and protection of human rights and to serve as a consultative organ of the Organization in these matters.

The work of the IACHR rests on three main pillars:

      • the individual petition system;
      • monitoring of the human rights situation in the Member States, and
      • the attention devoted to priority thematic areas.

Operating within this framework, the Commission considers that inasmuch as the rights of all persons subject to the jurisdiction of the Member States are to be protected, special attention must be devoted to those populations, communities and groups that have historically been the targets of discrimination. However, the Commission’s work is also informed by other principles, among them the following: the pro homine principle, whereby a law must be interpreted in the manner most advantageous to the human being; the necessity of access to justice, and the inclusion of the gender perspective in all Commission activities.

According to the American Convention on Human Rights, the Commission shall be composed of seven members, who shall be persons of high moral character and recognized competence in the field of human rights, elected in a personal capacity by the OAS General Assembly from a list of candidates proposed by the governments of the Member States. Each of those governments may propose up to three candidates, who may be nationals of the State proposing them or of any other OAS Member State. When a slate of three is proposed, at least one of the candidates shall be a national of a State other than the one proposing the slate. The members of the Commission are elected for a four-year term and may be reelected only once.

For more information on IACHR and OAS, go to the Web site https://www.oas.org/en/IACHR/jsForm/?File=/en/iachr/mandate/composition.asp.

To View the Full Hearing Video

The full hearing in video form, ‘Loss of Resources and Impact of Intergenerational Incarceration on Black Women’, can be viewed at https://www.oas.org/en/iachr/sessions/?S=188 (scroll down to Monday’s hearings, APP-HRC is first hearing)

About Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (APP-HRC)

APP-HRC is an organization dedicated to securing the freedom of those who have been held in penitentiaries and prisons for upwards of 20 to 50 years. Many of these aging people in prison are what we often refer to as Political Prisoners, members of organizations such as the Black Panther Party (BPP), American Indian Movement (AIM), MOVE and other political-dissident groups who were targeted under the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). Others were convicted in tainted trials on questionable evidence in spite of their lack of political activism, and still others were handed draconian sentences for relatively minor offenses and have been imprisoned for decades. Practically all of the prisoners and former prisoners represented by APP-HRC have grown old under incarceration, and have faced struggles not only in securing their release through parole or exoneration, but also in adjusting to “life on the outside” after being freed.

We ask you to support APP-HRC by making a donation to https://www.apphrc.com/Donate.php; Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (https://apphrc.com) so they can continue to do their human rights reparative justice work of breaking the systemic pipeline to mass/intergenerational incarceration.

 

The Ancestors’ Call: Dr. Susan Hycenth Efe ALFRED, May 1, 1969 – September 19, 2023

Friday, September 22, 2023
Tribute to A Great Pan-Africanist: Her Excellency Ambassador Dr. Susan H.E. Alfred, President of the Ghana-Caribbean Chamber of Commerce (GCCC), May 1, 1969 – September 19, 2023
Prof. David L. Horne and Dr. Line Hilgros

“Through death, the family is not destroyed, it is transformed, it is just a part of it that goes into the invisible. Death is not an absence, because it remains a discreet presence.”
– Dr. Line Hilgros, SRDC-Guadeloupe

Prof. David L. Horne, founder of the organization SIXTH REGION DIASPORA CAUCUS (SRDC) of the USA, Central America, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyana and all our members, learned with amazement and sorrow the passage towards the luminous summits of our dear friend Her Excellency Doctor Susan Hycenth Efe Alfred.

Guadeloupe-Martinique: ONE PEOPLE ONE NATION ONE GOAL

A great Trinidadian and Ghanaian by adoption has just added her name to the African pantheon of Pan-Africanist pioneers.

The SRDC would like to acclaim you for the legacy you have left us, and above all to thank you, because in all humility you have left the mark of your intelligence on the African world and its descendants.

As Ghana’s excellent ambassador for the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and the African Union, you have helped to forge unfailing links between the two sides of the Atlantic, the world of Mother Africa and that of her deported children.

The SRDC would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to you as a woman of passion, conviction and determination, whose unshakeable will could not be swayed by any pressure, and whose beautiful creative soul, independent of all powers, had a clear vision for the development of our regions. The SRDC also remembers your courtesy, humility and savoir-être, filled with gratitude and love for our Mother Continent, all qualities that have made your aura reach far beyond the borders of your beloved country Trinidad and Tobago.

Your struggles and work to advance the Pan-African cause, and to build a bridge between Ghana, the Caribbean and, by extension, the Diaspora as a whole, made you an exceptional individual.

To be or not to be? said Shakespeare,

You chose to Be, by quietly building lasting relations between Ghana and its uprooted children, thus implementing the directives of the International Decade of People of African Descent, with the creation of the Chamber of Commerce whose objective is to link the Caribbean with Ghana. Together with your family and colleagues, we will strive to ensure that your legacy continues to flourish.

The SRDC would like to thank you once again for refocusing on the real issues at stake in the future of Ghana-Diaspora relations, with courage and determination.

The time has come for us to say goodbye and not farewell to our fabulous and charismatic comrade, following that fateful Tuesday 19 September 2023, when her luminous smile, a source of inspiration, was brutally snatched from our affection.

The SRDC salutes with love, strength, gratitude and sorrow the memory of our sister Her Excellency Dr. Susan H. E. Alfred who has just joined the circle of Great Ancestors.

And as you advance along the path of Light, we ask Mama Africa (Miriam Makeba) to sing the hymn of welcome to the Righteous of this world, of which you are now a part.

Ase! Ase! Ase! Asante sana

Condolences to the Alfred family and to the Honorable Members of the Ghana-Caribbean Chamber of Commerce (GCCC)!

Prof. David L. Horne, PhD
Founder of SRDC
Founder and Executive Director of Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute (PAPPEI)

SRDC 2023 Summit, Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia, October 10-13

The Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC) holds its 15th Annual International Summit at Clark Atlanta University during the week of October 10-13.  The Summit continues SRDC’s theme of “21st Century Pan Africanism: Moving Africa Forward”.

Presenters will include Professor David L. Horne, SRDC’s International Facilitator and Director, and Honorable Madam Louise M. Siaway, founder, Executive Director and CEO of Sehwah Liberia, a civil-society organization and SRDC affiliate in Liberia.

Among the questions to be discussed at the Summit are:

  • What is the African Diaspora and where do we fit in?
  • Can we make a real difference in Africa?
  • What’s already happening and how can we get involved?

The 2023 SRDC International Summit is being run in cooperation with the 2023 HBCU Pan African Global Trade and Investment Conference (PAGTIC) which is being held concurrently with this Summit.  To learn more about PAGTIC, click here or visit their Web site, https://www.panafricanglobaltradeconference.com/.

To inquire about attending the 2023 SRDC International Summit, contact us at info@srdcinternational.org or cliff@kuumbareport.com.

 

 

“Black August: The Shakur Nation” on Africa 500, Wednesday, August 9, 2023

The Wednesday, August 9 edition of Africa 500 begins its celebration of Black August by taking a look at the legacy of the Shakur Family in “Black August: The Shakur Nation”. Show hosts Sis. Tomiko and Bro. Ty welcome special guests Mama Efia Nwangaza and Dr. Kokayi Patterson.

Mama Efia Nwangaza

Bio: South Carolina based Human Rights Attorney. Founder and Director of Malcolm X Center for Self Determination – WMXP Community Radio, a Co-founder of National N’COBRA and Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, past co-chair of the National Jericho Movement to Free All Political Prisoners, member of the Black Belt Human Rights Coalition, member of Black Alliance for Peace, veteran of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and a proud daughter of Garveyites.

from the Web site https://www.wmxp955.org/staff-and-friends:

Efia Nwangaza, Founder

Efia Nwangaza is a lifelong civil/human rights activist and freedom fighter who first worked for the liberation of African/Black people as a child in her Garveyite parents’ apostolic faith church, in her birthplace of Norfolk, Virginia.

At age 13 years, she served as secretary of the Norfolk Branch of the NAACP Youth and College Chapter and, later in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania she fought police violence, worked in the successful NAACP led campaign to desegregate Girard College, “a school for poor white, male, orphans” which then sat in the heart of Black North Philadelphia.

Efia and her family helped raise money and collect clothes and food to send South for those evicted and persecuted for attempting and registering to vote.

She joined forces with returning SNCC volunteers to found the Northern Student Movement (NSM) Freedom Library Day School; featured in the Xerox sponsored Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed series.

Anxious to go into the heat of battle, Efia Nwangaza accepted a scholarship and attended Spelman College. She worked at the national SNCC office and took on campus organizing for the successful Julian Bond Special Election Campaign Committee/SNCC-Atlanta Project. The Atlanta Project, SNCC’s first attempt at urban organizing, began raising concerns of a maturing movement and demands of the day, self-determination and SNCC’s position on the US War in Vietnam (which it did before King and SCLC), Palestine, and the role of whites in the community and organization. Atlanta Project position papers became the theoretical underpinnings for SNCC programming, and advancement of the modern “black power” call popularized by Kwame Ture (FKA Stokely Carmichael).

Armed with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and Visual Arts from Spelman College, Temple University’s first Master of Arts degree in Women’s History (African-African American), and Golden Gate University School of Law Juris Doctorate, she went to Greenville, South Carolina where she is known as a freedom fighter, legal precedent setter and the recipient of many awards.

Efia Nwangaza is the founder and Executive Director of the Afrikan-American Institute for Policy Studies and Planning and founding member and SC Coordinator for the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement for Self-Determination. She is the founder/coordinator of the WMXP-LP community-based radio, and a board member of Pacifica National Foundation, the nation’s oldest progressive radio network.

Efia is the former co-chair of the Jericho Movement for US Political Prisoners, represented the U.S. Human Rights Network’s Political Prisoner Working Group in observing the U.S. first appearance for UN Universal Periodic Review, in Geneva. She represented the National Conference of Black Lawyers in Aristide era Haiti, lectured at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women, NGO Forum, Beijing, China, and helped draft action plan for UN World Conference Against Racism.

She is an Amnesty International USA Human Rights Defender, and past member of the national Board of Directors for National Organization of Women (1990-1994) which launched the Every Woman NOW Campaign for President to force NOW to address internal white supremacy and elitism, African-American Institute for Research and Empowerment (1994-1996), South Carolina ACLU (1994-2000), and she was a 2004 Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate in memoriam and education of voting rights/citizenship work and ethics of Fannie Lou Hammer, Mojeska Simpkins, and Septima Clark.

Taken from Invisible Giants: Coming Into View Volume II

Dr. Kokayi Patterson

from the LinkedIn page of Dr. Winston Kokayi Patterson (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-winston-kokayi-patterson):

Dr. Winston Kokayi Patterson

Wholistic Health Practitioner, Co-Founder of The African Wholistic Health Association, Exec. Dir. of The Acudetox Specialist Collective

About

Prior to becoming an Acupuncture Detox Specialist in 1979, Kokayi Patterson was a Drug Counselor and Program Manager/Director specializing in Residential Treatment, Community Outreach, and Youth Counseling. For over 35 years, he witnessed acupuncture used since 1970 at a local Drug Center. He lectures in D.C., MD, VA, and nationally. At the Drug Center, he headed both staff & client orientation and training for 20 years.

The Legacy of the Shakur Family

AUTHOR INTERVIEWS: ‘An Amerikan Family’ traces the legacy of Tupac Shakur’s influential family, article by Tonya Mosley, Fresh Air, June 14, 2023:
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/14/1182123264/an-amerikan-family-traces-the-legacy-of-tupac-shakurs-influential-family

Article on the Web site of The New Republic by Keisha N. Blain, August 3, 2023: How the Shakurs Became One of America’s Most Influential Families; In a white supremacist society; the Black family offers a buffer and, at times, a space for resistance:
https://newrepublic.com/article/173319/shakurs-became-one-americas-influential-families

“Now all ancestors …. Looking at the lives of Dr. Mutulu Shakur, Afeni Shakur, and Tupac Shakur will be an entryway into their life’s work of resistance, commitment, and sacrifice and how to collectively reproduce this in families and children of the African collective in America” – Sis. Tomiko

If you weren’t able to hear the show in its usual Wednesday 3 PM slot, Hand Radio will rebroadcast the show on Thursday, August 10 at 3 PM (Eastern Time, United States).  Or, listen to the recorded show below:

Africa 500 is broadcast every Wednesday at 3:00 PM (Eastern Time, United States) on Hand Radio (https://handradio.org). After the broadcast, the show is available in an update of this post and on the Audio-Visual Media Pages of KUUMBAReport (https://kuumbareport.com), KUUMBAEvents (https://kuumbaevents.com) and the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (https://srdcinternational.org).


AFRICA500
Wednesdays @3pm EST.
https://handradio.org/
https://kuumbareport.com/
https://webuyblack.com
https://kweli.tv

Celebrating Black August

“The seed you plant in love, no matter how small, will grow into a mighty tree of refuge” – Afeni Shakur
“I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth” – Assata Shakur

African Diaspora High Council Meets in Maputo, Mozambique

The African Union African Diaspora Sixth Region High Council (AUADS High Council), formed last May in the aftermath of the Roots-Synergy Roundtable that had been competed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia over the weekend of Africa Day/African Liberation Day, recently competed its second international meeting, the Roots-Synergy Roundtable in Maputo, Mozambique, from July 10-13, 2023.

The meeting was scheduled to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the July 11, 2003 drafting of the African Union’s Article 3(q) of its Constitutive Act, which was the key statute launching the AU’s Diaspora Initiative and included the call for the African Diaspora — those whose ancestors had been taken away in slavery centuries ago as well as those who had voluntarily left the Mother Continent to live in the West — to return home to Africa and participate in the AU’s governance and development on behalf of the global African world.

The meeting was organized by a coalition of global African activists, including Dr. Barryl Biekman of the African Union African Diaspora Sixth Region Facilitators Working Group Europe (AUADSFWG), Dr. Tumenta Kennedy, formerly of AUADSFWG in the United Kingdom but now living in Africa, Mama Angela Sayles of the Global African Sheroes Union and Mama Abena Grace James of the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC), currently living in Tanzania.  Other key participants and presenters included Professor David Horne, Director of SRDC based in California, and Bro. Siphiwe Baleka of the Balanta B’urassa History and Genealogical Society in America (BBHAGSIA) and Coordinator of the Lineage Restoration Council of Guinea Bissau (LRC-GB), whom is now living in Guinea-Bissau after tracing his lineage there.

In recognition and celebration of the achievement of the Maputo Roundtable, Dr. Biekman sent this open letter to supporters and participants:

Dear Families,

This is to let you know how grateful we are for the results of our Pan African RootsSynergy Maputo Roundtable.  We have succeeded in realizing the long-cherished wish and mission in Maputo Mozambique.  We have been warmly welcomed and have built up good contacts/partnerships.  The door is now open for further cooperation on the implementation of the African Union African Article 3Q mission guided by the AUADS High Council.  The work had already begun.  From now on we have entered a different phase.  We continue to hope, believe and trust in your support.  Exactly what the ancestors wanted: An integrated Africa and its Diaspora.  We have shown that we have understood the wishes and expectations.  20 years of striving is a reality July 11: the Article 3Q Diaspora Day is a fact.  Let the bells ring.  And… The champagne bottle can now be opened.

Ubuntu United Connected Collective

On behalf of the AUADS High Council Facilitators:
Dr. Barryl A. Biekman
Mrs. Angela Sayles
Mrs. Nana Abena James
Dr. T. Kennedy

The official Press Release for the Maputo meeting is below in PAF format.  The Web site for the July 10-13 Maputo meeting is https://panafricanrootssynergyroundtable.com.

For media inquiries or further information, please contact:

Secretariat Facilitators African Union African Diaspora Sixth Region High Council
admin@auadshighcouncil.com

Final Press Release Results Maputo Article 3Q Roundtable July 11 2023

Africa 500 Discusses the State of the Diaspora, Wednesday, July 12 and Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Africa 500 is presenting its two-part discussion of the State of the Diaspora on two consecutive Wednesdays, July 12 and July 19, on Hand Radio (https://handradio.org).

Wednesday, July 12: Baba Francois Ndengwe

Show hosts Sis. Tomiko and Bro. Ty welcome Baba Francios Ndengwe, publisher and editor of Hommes d’Afrique and Femmes d’Afrique magazines and founder of the African Advisory Board, on Wednesday, July 12. He also has hosted the feature “Fresh News From Africa” which has aired periodically on Africa 500.

Listen to the July 12, 2023 show here:

Wednesday, July 19: Grandmother Walks On Water

Activist, artist and Elder Grandmother Walks On Water, also known as Nata’aska Humminbird is of Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee and African Heritage.  She is also co-founder of Baltimore based Wombwork Productions which utilizes art, theatre, and cultural healing modalities to empower youth and community. She has hosted the program “Mothership” on Africa 500 over the past year, and she follows up this discussion on the State of the Diaspora on Wednesday, July 19.

Listen to the July 19, 2023 show here:

__
Africa 500 is broadcast every Wednesday at 3:00 PM (Eastern Time, United States) on Hand Radio (https://handradio.org). After the broadcast, the show can be listened to on an update of this post as well as on the Audio-Visual Media Pages of KUUMBAReport (https://kuumbareport.com), KUUMBAEvents (https://kuumbaevents.com) and the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (https://srdcinternational.org).

AFRICA500
Wednesdays @3pm EST.
https://handradio.org/
https://kuumbareport.com/
https://kuumbaevents.com
https://srdcinternational.org
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Africa 500 Discusses Child Support Enforcement and the War on Black Fatherhood, Wednesday, July 5, 2023

The Wednesday, July 5, 2023 edition of Africa 500 looks as the issue of Child Support Enforcement and the War on Black Fatherhood. Joining show hosts Sis. Tomiko and Bro. Ty is Black Child Advocate and WPFW Jazz & Justice Radio Personality Bobby Rox.

Bobby Rox attended Howard University and his picture sits amongst the best of the best in the Bison sports hall of fame. He is known as the distressed child advocate and superhero to underserved Black boys and girls. Bobby is an on-air personality and news reporter who has broadcast award winning work for radio and television stations including WPFW 89.3 FM and WTTG FOX 5. Because of his business acumen in broadcasting and public advocacy efforts on protecting the entire Black family via better treatment by the family court system, Mr. Rox has appeared as a repeat panelist/guest speaker with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB), Multicultural Media Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and more. Bobby got his start in the broadcast industry as a DJ (of Soul, Funk, Jazz and Dilla Inspired Hip Hop) and continues to spin here and there when he is not on the air.

Listen to the Wednesday, July 5, 2023 show here:

Also, check out the following Eventbrite Virtual Call-To-Action related to this important issue:

Sunday, July 16
Black Fathers: The Child Enforcement Courts to Prison Pipeline
This virtual dialogue will discuss the Child Support Enforcement court to Prison Pipeline and the generational separation of black families.

By Strive365 and HANDRadio
Sunday, July 16 · 2 – 3pm EDT
Online

About this event
1 hour
Mobile eTicket (See Registration Link Below)

This long overdue and hidden issue will be discussed to unpack the systemic impact of child support enforcement courts on the black family. This discussion will specifically look at the various impacts that have accumulated over time on the black father like: separation from children, mass incarceration, poverty, economic loss, and trauma.

As systemic/institutional racism is a public health crisis; institutions like the criminal justice system has caused generational trauma, separation of black families, and disempowerment of black fathers. Thus this is an intergenerational safe space to begin policy/community dialogue, healing, and the reuniting of black fathers with their children.

This virtual dialogue is an initial preview and preparation for the DMV Child Support Enforcement Listening Tour to follow from August – October in Baltimore, Prince George’s County, and Washington DC. More details and dates/time to follow.

References:

Learning from the United States’ Painful History of Child Support – https://www.americanprogress.org/article/learning-from-the-united-states-painful-history-of-child-support/. June 2022.

How much child support do parents actually receive? – https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-child-support-do-parents-actually-receive/. July 2022.

The Regulation of Black Families – https://www.theregreview.org/2022/04/20/roberts-regulation-of-black-families/. April 2022.

Child Support as an Entry Point to Incarceration – https://socialwork.uic.edu/news-stories/child-support-as-an-entry-point-to-incarceration/. October 2021.

Was Child Support Designed to Destroy Black Families – https://www.thechildsupporthustle.com/2020/07/was-the-child-support-hustle-designed-to-destroy-black-families/

Child Support Enforcement can hurt black, low-income, noncustodial fathers and their kids – https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/child-support-enforcement-can-hurt-black-low-income-noncustodial-fathers-and-their-kids. June 2016.

How the Family Court System Fails Black Fathers – and How You Can Help – https://familylawyermagazine.com/articles/family-court-fails-black-fathers-how-you-can-help/. July 2020.

Op-Ed: Why The Taboo Of Child Support And Black Families Still Sparks Heated Debates – https://www.bet.com/article/el75ph/op-ed-the-taboo-of-child-support. November 2019.

California keeps millions in child support while parents drown in debt – https://calmatters.org/projects/california-keeps-millions-in-child-support-while-parents-drown-in-debt/. May 2021.

Topic: Black Fathers: Child Support Enforcement to Prison Pipeline

Date & Time: July 16, 2023 02:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

To reserve your space, go to this link:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/black-fathers-the-child-enforcement-courts-to-prison-pipeline-tickets-670642739487?keep_tld=1

Organized by
Strive365 and HANDRadio

 

Africa 500 is broadcast every Wednesday at 3:00 PM (Eastern Time, United States) on Hand Radio (https://handradio.org). After the broadcast, the show can be heard on an update of this post or on the Media Pages of KUUMBAReport (https://kuumbareport.com), KUUMBAEvents (https://kuumbaevents.com) and the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (https://srdcinternational.org).

AFRICA500
Wednesdays @3pm EST.
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