EDITOR’S NOTE: The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (UNHCHR) held a Regional Consultation of the Regional Mechanisms to Combat Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Other Related Forms of Intolerance on Saturday, December 8. The official announcement of the Regional Consultation reads,

“In recognition of the vital role played by regional and sub-regional human rights mechanisms, the Human Rights Council (HRC) since 2007 has requested OHCHR to bring together International and regional human rights mechanisms to exchange views on good practices and lessons learned aiming at enhancing cooperation between them. … In 2017, the HRC requested OHCHR to hold a workshop in 2019 to take stock of developments … including a thematic discussion on the role of regional mechanisms in combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and in the implementation and commitment in the Durban Declaration and Program of Action [DDPA]. … The [December 8] regional consultation will generate discussion on good practices, challenges and lessons learnt in combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance in Americas and measures to be taken to enhance the effectiveness of the Inter-American human rights mechanisms in following up on the [DDPA], including through strengthened cooperation with other regional and UN human rights mechanisms [and] will allow participants, who may not be able to attend the international conference to provide input into the discussion …. “

The following report was compiled by Mama Tomiko Shine, Director of the Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (APP-HRC), one of the participating organizations. Also included is her written contribution to the Consultation, concentrating on issues in the Criminal Justice System, as well as several recommendations for action.

Consultation of the Regional Mechanisms of Human Rights in the Americas and the United Nations Human Rights Mechanisms to Combat Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Other Related Forms of Intolerance

December 8, 2018
OAS, Washington DC; IACHR Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner

by Tomiko Shine
Director, Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (APP-HRC)

On Saturday, December 11, 2018 an all-day civil society consultation was held in Washington, DC at the Organization of American States with human rights defenders from the Americas to discuss human rights mechanisms to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and other forms of intolerance. Most of the participants represented South America from countries such as Brazil, Columbia, Peru, and Ecuador, with a few representing North America.
Organizations represented from the Americas were: Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN); Inter-American Commission on Human Rights; Office of the High Commissioner of the United Nations; Inter-American Court of Human Rights; The International Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights; Centro de Desarrollo de la Mujer Negra Peruana (CEDEMUNEP); Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (CNDH); Ilix-Acción Jurídica; American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU); UNEAFRO; Consejo Comunitario Casimiro y Casimirito Chocó – Colombia; WOLA; Asociación de Comunidades Afrocolombianas del Centro del Valle; Thurgood Marshall Center for Civil Rights – Howard University; Defensoria Pública da União; Red Latinoamericana y del Caribe para la Democracia  REDLAD; Inter-American Commission  of Women; Mano Amiga de la Costa Chica A.C.; Coletivo de Advocacia em Direitos Humanos (CADHU); The Sentencing Project; International Human Rights  Association of American Minorities; US Human Rights Network (USHRN); Secretariat for Access to Rights and Equity (OAS); Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (APP-HRC); Mesa Departamental de Tierras para Comunidades Afrocolombianas del Departamento del Valle del Cauca.

Panels of discussion and interventions included Racial Discrimination in the police and criminal justice system, Under-representation of Afro-descendant persons in politics, Special Measures and affirmative actions, and Cooperation with international mechanisms to combat racism.

President Commissioner IACHR, Special Rapporteur on Women, and Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons of African Descent and Against Racial Discrimination Margarette May Macaulay expressed concerns on police/state violence, mass incarceration, under representation of Afro-Descendant women in politics, and the current hostile climate towards human rights of Afro-Descendants men and women in the Americas. Human rights defenders in testimony spoke about rising Police/State Violence, and the assassination of Brazilian politician Marielle Franco. Also, there was alarm at the growing denial of their Afro Descendance by the youth in countries like Dominican Republic, and throughout the Americas.

In addition, much testimony was given towards the astronomical numbers of Afro Descendants in North America incarcerated both young and old; it was concluded the prison experiment has been a complete failure. In addition to speaking on Police/State Violence, Criminal Justice, Education and Political Under-representation, much talk was given to the topic of Reparations and the continued poor living conditions of Afro Descendants throughout the Americas centuries later. It was echoed that the back-breaking work done by enslaved Africans over the centuries in building international, national, and generational wealth for the Americas should never be forgotten.

President Commissioner Margarette May Macaulay implored several times throughout the day for civil society to unify and work together as organizations in solidarity to combat racism and racial discrimination.

The few North American participants spoke to the historical and current situation of Criminal Justice, Education (Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs), and Reparations on the national, state, and university level regarding the descendants of enslaved Africans. Below is one intervention by North American participant Tomiko Shine, Cultural Anthropologist and Director of Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (APP-HRC).

APP-HRC Written Testimony and Recommendations
Intervention Panel: Criminal Justice

In the US Criminal Justice system today, we are no longer in the mass incarceration era but generational incarceration. Where the black bodies of African descent have been confined, contained, or imprisoned for the last 400 years from racialized laws, plantations, Jim Crow, segregation and prisons. Thus, the same laws and policies that confined the slave/sharecropper to the land of his oppressor/slave master are the same laws/policies that imprison the woman and man of African descent in prisons across the nation. In effect we must conclude after 400 years the US criminal justice system has failed US families of African descent generationally, and reparative justice must begin immediately to salvage the future of unborn children of African descent in American society. To combat historical institutional racism, we can no longer engage in talks or activities of reform, but that of transformation to dismantle the criminal justice system transforming it into a human rights system based on justice, rebalancing human identities, narratives, and conditions.

Recommendations

⦁ The criminal justice system must begin to move away from colonial/race language ushered from 18th century European philosophical thought that only lends itself to incarcerate identities and narratives and use a human rights language that speaks to liberation and freedom of the person.
⦁ The criminal justice system must become a human rights system based on the human being and their historical lived experience in America.
⦁ The criminal justice courts should begin to be replaced with human rights courts.
⦁ The international mechanisms of human rights need to be inserted more into the current system of the criminal justice system.
⦁ Persons of African Descent that stand before the courts should have access to all forms of justice which includes international and regional human rights mechanisms.
⦁ As 2019 is the 400th year of the first enslaved Africans brought to American ports, the tools of reparative/restorative justice and human rights mechanisms must begin to be used in releasing aging prisoners across America who have been in prison for 30, 40, 50 and 60 years.
⦁ A Human Rights Office should be established in every major city and state across the nation.
⦁ In US law schools a human rights curriculum should begin to be taught to law students for them to develop into human rights agents, builders, and defenders.
⦁ Criminal Justice Departments/Criminology Studies across US colleges should now evolve into Human Rights Departments/Studies.

This intervention is dedicated to human rights defenders Maria Elena Moyano Delgado and Marielle Franco.

References 
Books:
⦁ Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration from the Chain Gangs to the Penitentiary, by Dennis Childs
⦁ Dred Scott’s Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America, by Judge Andrew Napolitano
⦁ The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander
⦁ The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, by Edward Baptist
⦁ Perpetual Prisoner Machine, by Joel Dyer
Journals/Articles:
⦁ Black Power Incarcerated: Political Prisoners, Genocide, and the State, by Laura Whitehorn
⦁ Generations of Philly Families Are Incarcerated Together, by Samantha Melamed
Hearing:
⦁ 1985 Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission/MOVE
Films:
⦁ 500 years Later, by MK Asante
⦁ 13th, by Ava Duvernay
Campaign:
2015-2024 UN Decade for People of African Descent 

On Friday, November 16 and Saturday, November 17, the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC) and the Maryland Council of Elders (MCOE) hosted the 2018 SRDC International Summit at the historic Great Blacks In Wax Museum. The actual meeting was held at the Mansion, located at 1649 East North Avenue, on the corner of North and Broadway in East Baltimore.

The Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus was founded as an international Pan-Afrikan organization as a result of the African Union’s 2003 invitation to the Afrikan Diaspora to become involved as potential voting members, and the holding of a Pan-Afrikan roundtable discussion among activists in Los Angeles in April of 2006. Its mission centers on the establishment of local, national and international groups dedicated to reaching out to the grassroots communities of people of Afrikan descent, establishing a Pan-Afrikan Agenda and electing a cadre of representatives to present that Agenda to international Pan-Afrikan bodies such as the African Union. A plan was developed and proposed by SRDC by which the local organizing committees can reach out to their communities and elect Representatives and Councils of Elders, who would in turn become potential spokespeople for the Pan-Afrikan Diaspora in international meetings. The Maryland Organizing Committee of SRDC was founded in 2007.

The Maryland Council of Elders was established at the December 2017 Pan-Afrikan Town Hall Meeting that was held by the Maryland Organizing Committee of SRDC. This is not the first time a Council of Elders has been established in Maryland, but so far it has been the most active, having presided over three Town Hall Meetings, the commemoration of Afrikan Liberation Day 2018, and now the 2018 SRDC Summit. Its members include Baba Rafiki Morris (Co-Chair), Mama Maisha Washington (Co-Chair), Mother Marcia Bowyer-Barron, Mama Victory Swift, Mama Abena Disroe, Baba Ishaka-Ra-Hannibal-El, Baba Kenyatta Howard, Dr. Ken Morgan, Baba David Murphy and Baba Ade Oba Tokunbo. Key activists who have worked directly with the MCOE to make the Summit a success include Bro. Brandon Walker, Bro. Ben Enosh, Sis. Kim Poole and Bro. Charles Jackson.

A number of local organizations were also involved in the planning and implementation of the Summit: Our Victorious City, the All-Afrikan Peoples Revolutionary Party (A-APRP), the Organization of Afro-American Unity Baltimore (OAAU), the Organization of All Afrikan Unity Black Panther Cadre (OAAUBPC), the Ujima Peoples Progress Party (UPP) and the Teaching Artist Institute (TAI).

The Summit’s objectives are also inspired by several international organizations: the Central American Black Organization (CABO), known in Spanish as the Organizacion Negro Centro Americana (ONECA); Per Ankh Smai Tawi from the Virgin Islands; the Mouvement International pour Reparation (MIR) from Guadeloupe; the Pan African Federalist Movement (PAFM); the African Union African Diaspora Council (AUADC) from Europe; the Middle East African Diaspora Unity Council (MEADUC) from Dimonas, Israel; the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent; and the Pan African Diaspora Union (PADU).

Delicious and healthy food for the attendees was graciously provided courtesy of Sis. Ujimma Masani, founder of the organizations Brothers Who Can Cook and Sisters Who Can Burn as well as a member of the activist organization Working, Organizing, Making A Nation (WOMAN) and Mama Victory Swift, who provided much-needed financing for the food.

Special guests traveled far to participate in the Summit. Aside from the Organizing Committees from Los Angeles California, Charleston South Carolina, Seattle Washington, Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, The Netherlands and Dimonas Israel, delegations from The Gambia (Gambian Embassy), Liberia (Sehwah) and the African Diaspora Union (Afridu, based in South Africa), as well as representatives of Queen Mother Delois Blakely (New York) and the Pan African Federalist Movement made presentations to the audience during the two days of the Summit.

The first day started later than scheduled, largely because of delays in transporting the out-of-town guests from their hotels near the Marshall Baltimore-Washington International Airport to the meeting venue. In spite of the early chaos, the members of the Maryland Council of Elders, in particular, made sure the arriving delegates and community members were welcomed and that food was made available for attendees during both days of the Summit.

Future articles will discuss some of the statements and presentations made throughout the Summit. This article will concentrate on the opening remarks from SRDC’s founder, Professor David Horne, as well as the Co-Chair of the Maryland Council of Elders, Baba Rafiki Morris, and the former President-General of the UNIA-ACL, Baba Senghor Baye.

Baba Rafiki Morris
Co-Chair
Maryland Council of Elders (MCOE)

“My name is Rafiki Morris. I’m one of the co chairs of the Maryland Council of Elders, who along with the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus is hosting this meeting today. I’m also an organizer for the All-Afrikan People’s Revolutionary Party, and so we’re going to exchange some views about the problems our people have, and try to approach some solutions over the next couple of days. We apologize for the late start, and hopefully we’ll catch up, because we have a lot of things to talk about.”

After Mama Abena Disroe and Baba Ishaka-Ra-Hannibal-El officiated the Tambiko (Libation), during which the Ancestors were recognized and honored, Baba Rafiki continued.

“In December of last year, the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus pulled together some of us for what has come to be known as the Maryland Council of Elders. The Maryland Council of Elders consists of Brothers and Sisters from basically all walks of life and we were given a charge by the people who brought us into existence to choose one thing and do it well. It took us a while to examine the activities of the various organizations that made up our group, to find out what that one thing should be. We finally concluded that the best thing that we can do as Elders in a troubled community, is bring our people together. The best thing that we can do is forge unity among our organizations, among our community and among ourselves.

“And it is in that spirit that we have maintained our activity over these past several months … soon it will be a year. Wow. It’s been a long year. We did a lot of work in that year. And we have made some progress. It’s a funny thing about progress. You don’t always know that it’s happening, until somebody else says ‘I see whet you all did.’ And this is what’s been happening with the Council of Elders. I was up in Arch Social Club a couple of weeks ago, and one of the Brothers there — because we hadn’t been meeting there for a while — says, ‘Rafiki, no matter what you all do, make sure that you all stay here at Arch Social Club, because you all don’t know the impact that your presence has had on what we’re doing here.’ We didn’t know. But just our presence there, seniors in our community, meeting to talk about our problems, inspired the people around us to begin to do things to help our people.
“We took on two major activities outside of our Town Hall Meetings. The first one was Afrikan Liberation Day, and the second one is this Summit. We put a lot, a lot, a lot of hope, faith and confidence in this Summit. And we will tell you like we tell everybody, you see there’s a small amount of people here. We always tell folks, it’s not the size of the audience in the fight. It’s the size of the fight in the audience. And when I look out at this audience I see fighters. I see strugglers. I see people who are not content with the status quo. And if you are Afrikan on the planet Earth, one thing you should not be is content. Because it ain’t right what’s going on.

“So, we want to welcome you, but we want to welcome you with an understanding of what’s happening. We are dying. Our people are dying. In Baltimore, we lose almost four people a day, to gunshots and opioid overdose. More in opioid overdoses than gunshots. And Baltimore doesn’t have 500,000 people.

“They spend more money on police in Baltimore per capita than almost any city in the United States. Like 25% more. Sixty percent of the city’s budget is spent on policing. Now you know who they’re policing. They’re policing you. And they’re waiting for you to give them a reason to come kick your door in. This is the same process that they’re using in the Sudan, this is the same process that they’re using in West Afrika, this is the same thing that they’re doing in Venezuela, in Bolivia, in Colombia, in Trinidad, in every major city in the United States. It’s called counterinsurgency. Keep them down so they don’t rise up. This is what’s going on. This is what’s happening. This is a military operation. And you are the enemy. Some of us don’t want to acknowledge that we have enemies. But we definitely have enemies, and the only way to deal with our enemies is to get organized, and the only way to get organized is to set aside some of the petty differences that keep us divided, separated and apart from one another.

“So, it’s to address these issues that we are here today. And we would like for all of you to pay close attention, to involve yourselves in this discussion. This is not a series of lectures. This is a discussion. A dialog. That means you’ve got to talk and listen. Right? That’s what dialog is. It’s an exchange. And we’re here to exchange views. There are a lot of different formations and groups represented here, with different points of view. And we say all of these points of view have some validity. Because you don’t fight a revolution just one way. You fight a revolution in every possible way, at the same time. And this is what we have to do, and this is what we have to talk about.

“So without further ado, I would like to bring Professor Horne, who’s going to do our opening remarks, and thank you all for coming, hope you stay with us throughout these two or three days of activity, and give your best, because your people need it. Thank you very much.”

At this point, Professor Horne approached the podium to make his opening remarks, in which he gave a synopsis of the situation of Afrika, its connection to its Diaspora and the mission of SRDC.

Professor David Horne
Founding Member of the National Secretariat
International Facilitator
Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC)

“Are Black people going to win? Will Afrika be united? Then, Hallelujah.

“My given name, by my parents, is David Lawrence Horne. I was given an Afrikan name three days ago, when I was in Liberia. I’ve always been of the belief, particularly with Afrika, that when you have done something that they can identify, they give you a name. In Afrika, names mean something. Names are significant. Quite often here, our names are just whatever is cute, whatever kind of fits. … And again, that’s part of an adaptation to this country. But we are Afrikan people. We were Afrikan people before. We were Afrikan people then. We are Afrikan people now. And we will be Afrikan people tomorrow.

“Historically, everybody’s Afrikan. We all came from the Continent, even though White people don’t want to acknowledge it, even though they came from Afrika. We are the birthplace of mankind. Now, clearly, they don’t want to be Afrikan anymore, and we really don’t want them to be Afrikan anymore, because they don’t really represent us. But we who are Afrikan, whether we’re in Brazil, Suriname, Trinidad, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, Baltimore, Los Angeles, no matter where we are, we are still Afrikan people. Israel — not all of Israel, just Dimonas — we are still Afrikan people, and part of our assignment, part of our reason for being here, in case we forget — and the Elder just reminded us of why we’re here, which is to have a discussion — but in case we forget why we’re here, it ain’t right. And it’s not going to be right until we correct it. Until we bring the balance back into the world. So, it may not be right before we leave this Earth, but it is our obligation to do everything we can in the short time that we can have to make sure we move it forward.

“It should be better, we should be further along the road, when each of us transition out of here. If we’re not doing that, then why are we here? Just to make a little more money? Just to get a bigger car? Just to party a little more? That’s a complete waste of damn time. If you’re not here to make this place better, you shouldn’t be here. Afrikan people have one job — to reclaim the land, and to reclaim ourselves. Afrika must be reunited. Afrika must come back together.

“I am part of a group that organized itself in 2006 called the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus. I was lucky to found the organization and we’ve been moving and expanding ever since. The original objective of SRDC was to help get Afrikans who are not on the Continent — and again, we are trying to move away from this concept of the ‘Diaspora’; there are basically Global Afrikans, those on the Continent and those not on the Continent, but we’re all Global Afrikans — our responsibility was to figure out a way of showing the African Union that we were willing to accept their invitation. Now, we’ve been gone a long time. We’ve been scattered all over the place. We have all kinds of songs, all kinds of poetry, all kinds of writings remembering that. We all in here remember ‘Sometimes I feel like a motherless child / A long, long way from home.’ They were talking about us being away from Afrika.

“Well, in 2003, the African Union, the newest iteration of an organized Pan-Afrikanism, the newest organization to move us forward, about bringing Afrika together, that organization, in 2003, invited the Global Afrikans not living on the Continent to come back home. Not just to come back home to raise hell. Not to come back home to rob people, beat people up and bring some of these ills that we’ve learned away from home, to bring them back. No. They invited Afrikans to come back home and help to push Afrika to where it should be. We should all be talking about Wakanda. Afrika should already be there. We are supposed to be helping them get there. And the African Union invited us to come back home, to stop being like motherless children.

“But they would set up a procedure to do that. We then embarked on having Town Hall sessions, creating Councils of Elders so that we could get people in the community to decide who had been working in a Pan-Afrikanist way before this invitation. Who would now carry us further. And we’ve been working with trying to get into the African Union. There are supposed to be twenty delegate seats to join one branch of the African Union called ECOSOCC [the Economic, Social and Cultural Council]. ECOSOCC is an advisory part of the African Union. It makes no real executive decisions. It makes a recommendation for action.

“The African Union is a presidential-head-of-state organization. There are essentially 55 Afrikan countries. Actually 54, unless you count Western Sahara. Morocco does not count Western Sahara because it sees it as a colony. [People] don’t recognize colonies anymore. So [for us] there are 55 Afrikan countries. The heads of state make all the firm decisions.

“ECOSOCC, which is were the Global Afrikan Community called the Diaspora is supposed to come back in, and is supposed to become part of this discussion body, and make recommendations to move forward — they don’t know us anymore. We’ve been gone too long. A lot of us don’t know them. A lot still don’t have real relationships with Continental Afrikans. When they come here, you don’t invite them to barbecues. You don’t invite them to your churches. You don’t hang out with them, you don’t invite them to your parties. You know what I’m talking about. They have convinced us that the Continent is no longer a part of us. Afrikans don’t even know who we are. White people spend a whole lot of time bringing Afrikan guests in and keeping them in White communities. ‘Don’t talk to Black people; don’t talk to Afrikan-Americans because they will taint you, because they will get you messed up. They will take you to the ghetto and get you all into their life of crime.’ So while a lot of Afrikan guests have been brought in, and kept away from us, we have had our history books written by crazy people who taught us that we’re not Afrikan. ‘No, your history began when you got off the slave ship. That’s Black history.’ And that was a lie in and of itself. Number one, the people who got off that ship in 1619 were not slaves. And our history did not begin there anyway. We have a global authority. World history came from Black folks. …

“But they have tried to keep us divided. They have taught us a bunch of nonsense about each other. Part of the African Union’s job is to get rid of all that. They must change the whole educational system. In the 55 Afrikan countries, the educational system is still based on European values. They are still teaching young Afrikan kids about Galileo and a bunch of other White heroes. They don’t have Afrikan heroes in books, so that you can learn that Afrikans came up with mathematics, not White folks. That the first civilization was in Afrika, not in Europe. We don’t have that yet. So part of the African Union’s effort is to change the White educational system, just like we are changing our educational system. Just like too many of us still don’t know who we are and where we came from, and that we are worth something. It’s not supposed to be based on what White people say. …

“So, the SRDC was created to connect those who wanted to be recognized as Afrikans again. We’re the continental organization that was talking about real Pan-Afrikanism. This is the next iteration of Kwame Nkrumah and his dream. This is the next iteration of what Haile Selassie talked about. …

“The state of where we are now is that the African Union is still making major, major, major progress, but it is a bureaucratic organization, still run by heads of state, who still care much more about bringing in money for their family, and staying in charge, than they are worried about how to better govern the people, how do I make decisions that will help my individual country.

“We are still working on dual citizenship for us. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I want to have an option. When that orange man [in the White House] goes nuts — he’s not nuts yet, he’s just normal now for him — but when he goes nuts, I want to have a place to go, that loves me back … where I can be a citizen, where I can help develop something. I want to have an option. So a part of what SRDC is working on is dual citizenship, so we’re setting up negotiations in different countries. We’re working on this responsibility we have to reconnect ourselves to this Afrikan future.
“I just came from Liberia. The single Afrikan country that America colonized. In the 1884 European conference [known as the Berlin Conference–Editor] which colonized all of the Continent, except Ethiopia — South Sudan was not there, Eritrea was not there, they were not entities at that time — America was at that [1884 Berlin] conference. They didn’t take on any of the other territories, but they had already colonized Liberia. They had taught some Afrikan-Americans that ‘you can go back home, you can go back to Liberia. Just act like us.’ So some of us went home and acted like White folks and imposed ourselves on the native population of Liberia. Now I grew up seeing Liberia in every magazine all the time, talking about how things were getting good for Afrikan-Americans to return and if you wanted, you could go back and instantly become citizens. But it was a mess. It was a mess and it got to be a big mess and got to have a civil war. This country [the United States] dropped Liberia like a stone. Ignored them so their development went backwards instead of forward. And they are now in serious need.

“I’m a Pan-Afrikanist. I’ve been a Pan-Afrikanist most of my adult life. I’ve worked with a bunch of other Pan-Afrikanists. I understand why we ignored Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras. Because we can understand that some Black people spoke Spanish. I understand that we focused only on ‘Let’s Go Back To Tanzania, Let’s Go Back To The Continent’. I understand that. I do not understand why we ignore Liberia. Pan-Afrikanists should have been all over Liberia by now. But we were not, we have not been. And they need some serious help.

“So one of the things we’re doing right now is a big project. We are going to build a Public Library in Liberia. Liberia has no Public Libraries anywhere in the country. Not one. Shocking to think about, but in most Afrikan countries, a Public Library is not a big deal. They use their money to build streets and highways. We’re going to build a library, so the young people will have a place to go. … We’re going to build something from the Diaspora. That’s part of what SRDC is doing in partnership with Liberia. We need to understand, Liberia needs help and all of Afrika needs our help. We have to come back. We have to reconnect. That is what SRDC is about, that is what, essentially, this Conference has to be about.

“Yes, there have been wars [among activists] … word-wars between 2008, 2007 and now. [Some people] have been acting crazy, and have called people a bunch of names, and have gotten in the way of progress. Unfortunately, that is how we move forward. By moving backwards ten yards before we can move one yard up. [Ancestor and former Jamaican Ambassador and barrister] Dudley Thompson, who was the President of WADU [the World African Diaspora Union, another prominent Pan-Afrikan organization] before his untimely death, was a great, great man. He had done innumerable things which we have to give him credit for. And he [and other recent Ancestors deserve] much more than the nonsense we have heard on the Internet. A lot of you have read foolishness about who is doing what and who is not doing what, who is a CIA agent and who is basically sleeping around. All of that gets in the way and should be ignored.

“We must have projects. We are now going to connect with the African Union and we’re going to connect with this whole effort to re-unify Afrika. Afrikan must be unified. We’re going to connect to that, not by just going through the bureaucratic [organizations]. We want our twenty seats in the African Union. We’re not letting that go. But we’re not going to say that this is the only way that we’re going to handle this.

“We are going to do project-by-project. We are going to show you that we are so valuable that you cannot ignore us. We have a representative here, Dr. Barryl Biekman, from Europe, who represents at least 25 years of trying to organize [Afrikans living in] Germany, The Netherlands, France and other European countries to do the same thing, because Afrikan people are everywhere. We are fighting through the nonsensical name-calling to get to the real, purposeful action forward. That is what SRDC has been about. SRDC has a very, very strong connection to our European counterpart, we are working with folks in the Caribbean, we’ve actually traveled to Brazil, we’ve gone to Canada, we’ve gone around trying to tell people Afrika Says Come Back. They’re ready. Get ready to help.

“Dr. Khazriel [Ben Yehuda, from Dimonas, Israel], who is the head of the Afrikans in Israel, has been working with SRDC and the European Pan-Afrikanists to make us understand that there are Black Palestinians, there are Black Bedouins, there were Black people in what White people like to call Israel long before those people showed up.

“We’re a historical people. We’re the bedrock. And that bedrock is now rising back to the surface where it belongs.

“We must understand something about science. Climate change means they all are going to come running to Afrika. The cold weather [that is expected to result in the polar regions when the planet’s heat-exchange mechanism breaks down] is going to kill all of them off. All of them are going to come back to the Equator. When they come, they are going to come to reclaim, retake it. And we’ve got to be ready for that. They’re coming for everything that we have. If we have not reconnected ourselves to that Continent, we have given away the future of the Afrikan people, and we cannot allow that.

“The Conference this weekend is about How do we move forward along that pathway? How do we reconnect with Afrika? How do we do something tangible? How do we make some decisions that will not only impact why we are killing each other here [but also] how we will stop killing each other over there?

“And we have a representative from a group called Afridu [the African Diaspora Union, based in South Africa], which has said they want to reconnect with us as we reconnect to Afrika. They want to be our eyes and ears in the Pan African Parliament [which] was set up to become the legislative body for the entire Continent. Once you get to a Union Government or a Federalist Government, you’ve got to have a legislative body. The Pan African Parliament was established to do that. Right now they meet two or three times a year and they make recommendations but the recommendations are not always listened to by the heads of state. But they are firm in what they are trying to do. They understand Reparations. They understand that Afrikans from here want land and Reparations and they have discussed it. They have discussed the whole issue of human rights being imposed on them. … Afrikan culture, most of it, is not into the gay lifestyle, and the Pan African Parliament has had a number of discussions about [LGBTQ issues]. So the Pan African Parliament is going to become the legislative body for the entire Afrikan Continent. So we have a group, Afridu, that is working with us in the Pan African Parliament.

“In the 2012 Global Diaspora Conference, that was held in South Africa, part of the decision making was that the Diaspora could become Observers. If you were willing to pay your airline tickets and take time out from your job, you could become Observers at any of the African Union activities. You can do interviews. You can go to the Pan African Parliament. You can go to meetings of ECOSOCC … and then come back and talk to your home group about what happened at the meetings. If you’re willing to put in the time and spend the money, you can do it. We have not taken advantage of it. So for the most part, we don’t know what’s going on in Afrika. And we need to know.”

[On the question of how we can move forward in the face of movements such as #MeToo, the Women’s Movement, Blexit and various White Supremacist-inspired actions without falling behind and running out of time:] “We will get our 20 delegate seats [within the next two years]. [Also. US President] Donald Trump will be impeached. … [US Vice President Mike] Pence was involved in the skullduggery that got Trump elected in the first place [so he could be impeached as well]. …

“The plan that we came up with for building community, the Town Halls and the Community Council of Elders, that is still the best plan out there. There is not any place in the world where Global Afrikans live which has come up with a better plan than this. The people who were in charge of selecting how to organize the Global Afrikans kept assigning people that they liked, as opposed to assigning people who knew what they were doing, and so that got in the way. We have now been able to kill that. We now deal directly with African Union officials. The process will be in place to decide on those 20 delegate seats before the end of 2019. And for those coming from the United States, no, we are not getting 19 of the 20 seats, as some of my friends have said. … The United States may get four, maybe. Brazil’s going to get three or four. But anyway, we’ve got to divide them up.”

[On the need to check our tendency for American arrogance in dealing with Afrikan leaders and communities:] “In 1974 we went to the Sixth Pan African Congress in Tanzania. There were 350 of us. There were more delegates from the United States than there were from the rest of Afrika. Our first week there, we went to every meeting, every conference, and raised hell. ‘You Afrikan presidents don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know how to lead. You don’t know how to take Afrikans to the next level.’ We basically came in storming. At the end of that first meeting, [Guinean President] Sekou Toure sent his foreign minister in to talk to us. Sekou Toure was our major hero at the time. The foreign minister came in and said ‘My dear Afrikan Brothers, we are honored by your presence here, that you are coming back to show us how much you care about Afrika. But trust me when I tell you, sit down and shut up. Not one of you has ever run a country. Not any of you has ever had to face decisions about what to do with the thousands of people who are … in a particular area. You don’t know what you are talking about, coming here and telling us about how we have to have Scientific Socialism here, we need to have trade relationships there. Sit, listen and learn.’ Governance is hard. Trying to be able to maintain your country and not lose it is hard.

“That’s why we talk about how the African Union has made some progress, and it has. They have just passed something that no one thought possible: the Continental Free Trade Agreement, which means the entire Afrikan Continent will now start trading with each other, as opposed to focusing all their trade relations with what comes from Europe. To hear that Nigeria was importing rice every day to feed its people, that’s crazy. We taught the world about rice. Afrikans need to trade with each other and value what Afrikans produce. They have now made that agreement. They are now going to pull that off. Nobody would have thought that possible 15 years ago.

“There is progress being made. But it is, first of all, identifying what issue you can tackle, pull all your resources together, tackle that issue, then move on to the next one. You need to address these issues in your own communities, with your own Councils of Elders, so we can get together and pool the resources of all this wisdom. That is what this whole collective effort is all about. This is not a game. This is not going to be easy. This is a lifetime commitment.”

Baba Senghor Baye
Assistant Manager, Harambee Radio
Former President-General, UNIA-ACL

“First of all, this [Professor Horne] is my Brother here, and when we say SRDC, I’m with that. We worked with the UNIA for many years and are still with the UNIA. He served as International Organizer, I served as President-General. But I want my Brother to understand that there’s a movement taking place. Not in an organization, but a grassroots global movement, called the Pan African Federalist Movement. The head of the Regional Initiating Committee of North America will be here tomorrow. But I’m very much involved with that movement on the international, national and local level. So what I want you to understand, if we’re talking about people under 39, they are rising up. But they need the wisdom of those of us that know what has been going on, and know what can go on if we don’t do what we’re supposed to do. So all these [competing] movements we’re talking about, we’ve got a movement coming.

“In 1958, when Kwame Nkrumah called Brothers and Sisters together for the first Afrikan Peoples Conference, there was a plan. … There were other plans that did not properly manifest. We’re talking about the grassroots plan of the people rising to power to address the issues from the bottom up.

“From December 8 to December 13 this year, we’re meeting in Accra, Ghana, along with the Kwame Nkrumah Center, led by Samia Nkrumah and others and the Pan African Federalist Movement. Thus far, representatives from 36 countries have registered. … David will be there with me and others. So, many of us are coming together to address the issues that our Ancestors put in place. They knew that the grassroots had to rise up. Unfortunately, many of the grassroots don’t realize how much power they have to go up against those other movements in terms of … the truth of Mother Afrika. So, in spite of what the countries may do, despite what happens from the top down, we’re coming from the bottom up. And that means there’s going to be change, regardless. So I want to make it clear, sometimes we put too much emphasis on others’ movements, and then we don’t concentrate on building our own movement. Young people are sick and tired of the foolishness, but they don’t have the wisdom, they don’t necessarily have the clear picture of what our Ancestors laid down. And this movement I’m talking about is led by those Ancestors. … We need to study and bring all that together, and build power from the bottom up. And whatever happens from the top is going to happen, but Dr. Horne assured us, we say by the next generation, we’re going to take Afrika back and unify Afrikans.

“Now, there’s going to be hit-back. Let’s be clear. But we don’t have a choice. By 2020, it will be 100 years [since] Marcus Garvey brought 25,000 delegates from all over the world together in Harlem, and the same objective they had. So we’re not far behind. Now we’ve got to catch up. But don’t be content. … Afrika’s gonna win.”

Later on Friday and Saturday morning, the various SRDC organizations from Seattle, Washington, Charleston, South Carolina and Baltimore, Maryland made presentations on their activities over the last year. The Saturday session also featured presentations by delegations from The Gambia, Liberia and the Pan African Federalist Movement, as well as an address by the Community Mayor of Harlem, Queen Mother Delois Blakely. Check back with this site over the next week or so for more articles from the 2018 SRDC International Summit.

Sunday, November 18 was the date for the Pan-Afrikan Memorial and Ascension Ceremony for prison activist and freedom fighter Bro. Abdul Jabbar Caliph.  “Jabbar”, as he was commonly called, was a leader in the National Jericho Movement for the freedom of Political Prisoners until joining the organization Release Aging People in Prison, now known as the Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (APPHRC) several years ago.

Bro. Jabbar was also an integral member of the Ujima Peoples Progress Party, building a Black worker-led independent political party in the state of Maryland. 

The following is a short tribute from the memorial program.  We will add more to this post in the near future.

Abdul Jabbar Caliph departed this physical world taking his last breath on October 8, 2018. In the context and ritual of the 40 day Ascension ceremony his transition falls on November 18, 2018. In the story of African people this is a most important date. Why? On November 18, 1803 over 200 years ago the Battle of Vertieres took place on the small island of Haiti against the imposing and powerful European armies; liberating the Haitians from slavery and European domination.

Thus Abdul Jabbar Caliph is ancestrally aligned within the pages of African history and cosmology. Considering the character of the man with Jabbar meaning strong and mighty, he always spoke about and to the need of liberation for people of African descent across the globe. He fought to the end for the liberation of African people mind, body, and soul. He went to the people because he was not afraid of the people, and recognized he was the people. His dedication, works, and brilliance of mind is etched in the memory of all he touched. Thus he moves on to continue his work on the ancestral plane; available to us Africans in America as we become ready to liberate ourselves and our future.
 
“African people are going to have to fund their own liberation”
“Only black people can free black people”
— Abdul Jabbar Caliph

 

EDITOR’S NOTE: Justice Initiative, founded by Heather Gray, regularly releases announcements, analyses and commentaries in the area of social justice, particularly racial justice and American racism.  Here, she shares a press release pertaining to a biotechnology conference occurring in South Africa which is supported by several multinational biotech agribusinesses and the response of several on-the-ground Afrikan civil society organizations and activists.  Ms. Gray can be reached at hmcgray@earthlink.net.

Note: For additional information on the disruption and the desire for corporate agribusiness to control all of the world’s food systems and seeds, as they are insidiously attempting to do throughout Africa as described below, please read the interview with organic farmer Rashid Nuri entitled: Rashid Nuri on “Seeds of Destruction”. 

Heather Gray
August 28, 2018
Justice Initiative

Media release: Civil society responds to BioAfrica Convention

For immediate release:
African Centre for Biodiversity
28 August 2018

BioAfrica Convention: Open for the business of profit; closed to the questions that matter

This week the biotechnology industry meets at the Durban International Convention Centre. Themed “Africa – Open for business” the Convention will explore various ways in which African biodiversity can be exploited for agriculture, industry and health by providing a platform for stakeholders in the biotechnology environment.  The Convention is co-hosted by AfricaBio, the Technology Innovation Agency and the South African Department of Science and Technology, with primary sponsorship from DuPont, Syngenta and MSQ Health.  (See https://bioafricaconvention.com/ for details)

What is clear from the programme and exorbitant participation fees is that they will not be building the Bio-Economy together with the communities whose resources and knowledge will be exploited.  There has been no attempt to open the content or participation to civil society voices that might challenge the neo-colonial agenda, or the neoliberal approach to commodifying and privatising nature and traditional knowledge, an approach which also contravenes the essence of African belief systems which centralise communal ownership and benefit.

In co-hosting the event with industry mouthpiece AfricaBio – whose membership includes global biotech giants such as Bayer-Monsanto, Syngenta and DuPont – the South African government is ensuring that critical social, environmental, ethical, health and economic concerns are swept under the carpet.  These include concerns about genetically modified crops and related herbicides that have already been foisted on farmers and the public.  They include concerns about the obdurate belief that technological solutions are a “silver bullet”.  And they include concerns about the lack of imagination for alternative and decolonial agricultural futures that build on farmers’ knowledge rather than supporting Trojan Horse projects such as the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) Project, which present false solutions for drought tolerance.

In so doing, South Africa is complicit in pressuring other African governments to accept technology packages that ultimately benefit these multinationals, while society, the farmer and consumers bear the brunt of negative impacts.

We, the undersigned civil society organisations and individuals, reject this agenda to commodify our natural resources and traditional knowledge while displacing these with increasingly risky and untested technologies for the benefit of global capital.

ORGANISATIONS

• Biowatch SA
  For more information: Vanessa Black Cell: 082 472 8844
  Email: vanessa@biowatch.org.za

• African Centre for Biodiversity
  For more information: Mariam Mayet
  Cell: 083 269 4309
  Email: mariam@acbio.org.za

NETWORKS

• No GMO South Africa
• Seed Freedom SA
• Seed sovereignty South Africa
• Resistance is fertile SA
• Toxic Free community

INDIVIDUALS

• Busisiwe Mgangxela – agroecology farmer
• Rushka Johnson – small-scale farmer, environmental activist and seed guardian

The recent apparent escalation of insanity in the Trump Administration has led many pundits to speculate on the set of circumstances that could possibly have led to the current sad state of affairs in the capital city of the so-called Leader of the Free World.  Never before have they seen such audacious, boldfaced corruption in defense of a hypocritical and incompetent regime, they say.  They insist that the United States has reached a new low in mendacity with the criminal actions of members of the Trump Administration, possibly leading all the way to Trump himself.  Only impeachment, they say, followed by a pair of “extra-small handcuffs”, will tell.

These people have not been paying attention.

At least from Day One of the Trump Administration, it was clear that truth and competence were not highly valued, despite Trump’s claims during his campaign that he would find “the best people”.  His then-press secretary, Sean Spicer, would angrily insist that the public coronation of his president was the largest to ever witness such an event ever, “period”, in spite of clear visual evidence to the contrary.  The only thing that was perhaps more shocking than that assertion was the fact that, before the year was out, Spicer would be replaced by someone who appears to be even more comfortable angrily dispensing disinformation to the public in Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Rudolph Giuliani, formerly (and improperly) dubbed “America’s Mayor” merely because he happened to be entrenched in New York’s City Hall when the September 11 terrorist attack took place, was long known to Pan-Afrikan activists and Black communities in New York as a racist mayor who never thought twice about enabling the brutality of his police, from the Abner Louima attack in a police station bathroom to the Amadou Diallo murder by police in the vestibule of his own home to the repressive tactics used against the 1998 Million Youth March in Harlem.  Giuliani had used the month leading up to the Million Youth March to turn up the heat in New York’s racial drama, threatening march organizer Dr. Khalid Muhammad and lying about Dr. Muhammad’s intentions right up to the immediate aftermath of the march, insisting that he had exhorted followers to “go out and murder people” during the march when in fact no such statement was ever made (I personally made tapes of everything that was said, and there was no such exhortation at any time during the march).  He had used these false assertions to justify the use of his riot police to attack the march organizers as they were ending the march three minutes late.  Thus, Giuliani’s current antics in support of an unlawful “law-and-order” president were anticipated by his critics who knew of his behavior as Mayor of New York City.

Alt-right enthusiasts have been discussing the racist credentials of former adviser Steve Bannon and current adviser Stephen Miller since they emerged from the shadows and joined the Trump campaign.  From Miller’s first public words that Trump’s edicts “will not be questioned”, we were duly informed that his boss was nothing if not a megalomaniac, and that he had in Miller a willing acolyte who seemed to relish any opportunity to lead the Stormtroopers forward into the “lawless rabble”.

Omarosa Manigault-Newman, his once-loyal “Apprentice” reality-star adviser, has recently come out to acknowledge her own (allegedly unwitting) complicity in enabling Trump’s destructive policies (perhaps the only one to have done so, at least until onetime Trump attorney Michael Cohen finally turns State’s evidence), but she has been known as an opportunist for years, one who was more than ready to embrace a man whose historical image is that of an unrepentant racist, and to whom she had bragged that his opponents would be forced to “bow down” after he was elected president.

Trump’s choices for the Department of Energy (Rick Perry, who could not even remember the name of the agency as he was campaigning on eliminating it four years earlier), Housing and Urban Development (the apparently narcoleptic Ben Carson, whose commitment to increase rents in federal housing for poor people caused many to wish he had stuck to brain surgery), Environmental Protection (the anti-environment Scott Pruitt, followed by the equally anti-environment Andrew Wheeler), Education (Betsy DeVos, whose lack of public school experience has led some to question whether she ever went to school at all) and Homeland Security (Kristjen Nielsen, who claims not to have known that Norway was a White country and whose incompetence and heartlessness led to her public harassment at dinner one evening) have smacked of a level of cronyism that is the only possible explanation for the appointment of individuals who are so woefully unqualified for those positions.

It appears the only members of Trump’s Cabinet who are actually qualified to do their jobs are Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, who ironically goes by the  nickname “Mad Dog”.

The United States Legislative Branch has completely failed to serve the American people as a “check” on the Trump Administration, from the obstruction of the Republicans to many Obama Administration policies, to their current efforts to obstruct all investigations into the crimes of Trump Administration and campaign officials, to their pushing of tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans at the expense of the working and underclasses, to the relative fecklessness of too many in the Democratic Party.  As a result of the Legislature’s dysfunction and even treachery (Congress, the opposite of progress), the Supreme Court now is composed of a majority that will likely back any Trump Administration excess, and thus all of the so-called “checks and balances” that we were so proudly taught were the hallmark of American governance and a guarantee against dictatorship are now gone.

And let us not forget the most egregious culprit of all, Donald Trump himself.  In the 1970’s, he and his father were consistently sued by Black residents of their apartment buildings for housing discrimination.  In the aftermath of the April 19, 1989 assault, rape and sodomy of the Central Park Jogger, Trisha Meili, Trump first called for the execution of the Central Park Five (Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, and Korey Wise), but then continued to insist on their guilt after they were cleared of the crime by DNA evidence and the detailed confession of the real attacker.  He embraced the “birtherism” conspiracy theory against Barack Obama from the time he had launched his 2008 candidacy for president.  His gleaming towers along the Atlantic City boardwalk loomed for decades over an inner city suffering from neglect and decay as his casinos flourished, apparently blissfully unaware and unconcerned about the public price being paid for their private success.  And his presidential campaign was replete with anti-Mexican, anti-immigrant, anti-disabled, anti-Muslim, anti-protester, anti-environment, racist and misogynistic screeds that only increased and were translated into official national policy when he was scandalously named president through an Electoral College victory that went against the actual popular vote.

Why are people so stunned and shocked about the loss of the soul of the US political system only now?

But this is not what is the most stupefying about all the hand-wringing that has been going on in analysts’ circles about the Trump Administration.  They speak as though this level of self-interested, incompetent opportunism is a new development.  This has been an ongoing trend for decades, centuries even. 

The 2000 Presidential election, with its politically-motivated “hanging chad” recount in the pivotal Florida polls courtesy of Catherine Harris, the Republican Secretary of State who had been an open supporter of George W. Bush, swung the election in Bush’s favor after a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that was made on partisan lines.  This, and Bush’s subsequent 2004 re-election (courtesy of fellow Bush supporter Ken Blackwell, the Republican Secretary of State in Ohio, through another contested process along partisan lines), were engineered, again in spite of losing the popular vote, with the assistance of the Electoral College and a systematic campaign of voter intimidation and vote-suppression in which Afrikan-American voters were disproportionately “scrubbed” from the voter rolls, robbing them of their Constitutionally-protected franchise.  During Bush’s presidency, Administration operatives used shadowy accomplices from private firms Blackwater (mercenaries) and the Corrections Corporation of America (jails and prisons) to extend a brutal war in Iraq that was largely considered illegal, expand mass incarceration in Iraq and the United States, raise the privatization of public resources to an art form and, as a result, rake in tons of illicit profits for their corporate cronies.  This was accomplished, again, through political strong-arm tactics and a relatively compliant Congress weakened by the growing-in-influence Tea Party.

Ronald Reagan launched the best-known War on Drugs when he was president in the 1980’s, aided by the importation of huge amounts of cocaine into South Central Los Angeles and other poor Black neighborhoods (all to help facilitate his “dirty wars” in El Salvador and Nicaragua).  His campaign to shrink government helped usher in a new wave of privatization that would enable the abuses of the George W. Bush Administration, and now Trump.

Bill Clinton, the once-dubbed “first Black president” because he picked up a saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show, race-baited Sista Souljah and Jesse Jackson in his two presidential campaigns, and then set us all up for the increased privatization of public resources (such as water) as he helped lead the Democratic Leadership Council in a political Race to the Right.  And even though he has since apologized for the catastrophic impact of his policies on the people of Ayiti (“Haiti”), he never enacted any policies or embraced any initiatives to reverse the damage his administration had caused there. 

But, of course, all we remember about Clinton’s misdeeds boiled down to a blue dress.  No wonder people are so shocked by revelations that should have been intuitively obvious to the casual observer.

Even Jimmy Carter, the former president who has done the most for the cause of humanitarian work through his various charitable organizations, backed dictatorial presidents in Indonesia (Suharto) and Iran (Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi), perhaps his most visible and famous misdeeds (“mistakes”?) as Head of State.

In the late 1960’s, Richard Nixon perfected the “Southern Strategy” that exploited Southern White fears of a Black Planet and then, as president, launched the first systematic War on Drugs that started Black America on a manufactured plunge into the abyss of mass addiction and mass incarceration. 

George Wallace openly campaigned on racial hatred before an assassin’s bullet magically seemed to transform him into a civil rights supporter.  His status as a Democrat reflects the onetime position of the Democratic Party as the party of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction.

Indeed, when one goes all the way back to the founding of the United States on the mass murder of the Indigenous First Nations, the building of the new country’s economic base on the backs of enslaved Afrikans, the repeated broken treaties with the survivors of the genocide brought on by the Westward Expansion, the backing of slave states in the Caribbean and the subsequent support and rule of dictatorial regimes in South America, Afrika and Asia, and the dropping of not one, but two nuclear bombs on the two most heavily populated cities of Japan during World War II, killing 220,000 civilians (when Japan was retreating on all fronts and trying to find a way to surrender without losing face or sacrificing their Emperor), one can hardly miss the unifying thread of exploitation, genocide and terror that has supported the prosperity and the might of the United States to this day.

Those among us who continue to tout the fantasy that this is the “greatest country in the history of the world” conveniently overlook these mortal sins that were committed on the rest of the world to allow this nation to form and to prosper.  If it is to truly live up to the hype of its own self-proclaimed greatness, it has massive debts to pay, debts that were amassed by the same putrid, rotting soul that creates leaders such as Trump today. 

If, and when, the United States truly atones for those historic wrongs committed against so many around the world, it may finally earn the title “greatest nation on earth”, and then, finally, the shock many analysts proclaim upon seeing a regime as corrupt as this one may be justified.

 

 

EDITOR’S NOTE: Among the projects being developed by the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC), an Pan-Afrikan Diaspora organization dedicated to organizing the voice of the grassroots Pan-Afrikan Diaspora at the local level and merging them to take that voice to the World Stage through the African Union, United Nations and independent Afrikan Diaspora organizations, are a number of initiatives working toward the development of concrete institutions and services on the Afrikan Continent.  One of these is the Liberian Library Book Donation Project, being led by the South Carolina SRDC Organization and its State Facilitator, Mr. Joseph “Kumasi” Palmer.

As of this writing, there are no Public Libraries in Liberia, according to Mr. Palmer.  This comes as a surprise to many of us, partly because of our assumptions in the United States that a Library is so routine that we often ignore them, as well as the documented progress that Liberia has made since the removal of Charles Taylor as President in 2003 and the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as Afrika’s first woman head of state in 2006.  Mr. Palmer and several associates from South Carolina have met with Liberian officials to advance work on the development and supply of the first Public Library in Liberia.

Below is the public letter that has just been released by the South Carolina SRDC Organization concerning the project and the criteria for donating books.  Contact information for the South Carolina SRDC Organization is also included below.  If you have gently used books that you would like to donate, please feel free to contact them to arrange your donation.

July, 2018

Dear Friends and Associates,

The South Carolina branch of the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC) is embarking on a project to help establish a public library in Monrovia, Liberia, West Africa. We have endeavored to collect book donations, create a working inventory and database, and ship books to Liberia. The key to the success of this type of project is a good and dedicated ‘on the ground’ partner with a proven track record. We have that in SEHWAH, a local and international Liberian organization. The Director of SEHWAH, the Hon. Ms. Louise W. McMillan-Siaway, was the Assistant Minister for Culture (Ministry of Information, Cultural Affairs and Tourism) under the former Ellen Johnson Sirleaf administration. Ms. McMillan-Siaway is working closely with the current Liberian government to obtain a proper space and furnishings for the library.

“In America there is a public library in every community. How many public libraries are there in Africa? Every day there are new books coming out and new ideas being discussed. But these new books and ideas don’t reach Africa and we are being left behind.”
-George Weah, President of the Republic of Liberia, West Africa

This initiative though absolutely necessary, is not without its challenges. Still, SRDC considers it a major responsibility and is excited to be the pioneering element of this project. Public libraries are essential in the process of providing citizens access to knowledge. It is certain that a well-stocked public library will have a positive impact on Liberian literacy and development. For this reason, we are taking a grassroots approach and are reaching out to you to donate and/or purchase books to donate. Grassroots interest and involvement is a way to ensure that the library is solidly developed, sustainable, accessible and well-used.

SUBJECTS NEEDED
History (World History/African History/African American History/Caribbean History/History of Blacks in Europe, etc.); Political Science; English (Grammar/Writing); Music; Arts; Literature/Novels; Geography; Education; Math; Finance; Banking; International Trade; Health; Hygiene; Wellness; Science; Ecology; Medicine; Nursing; Farming; Gardening; Agriculture; Animal Husbandry; Law; Business; Computer Technology; Construction and Building Technology; Electrical; Plumbing; Engineering; Electronics; Photography; and Children/Young Adult books.

We will accept “For Dummies” book titles (e.g., Digital Photography for Dummies).
See link for list of titles: https://www.dummies.com/store/All-Titles.html

GUIDELINES
•We seek gently used books – books that are in good condition.
•Books or novels that have “explicit” sexual content (pornography) will NOT be accepted and/or shipped to Liberia.
•Books that evangelize/proselytize/promote a particular religion will NOT be accepted and/or shipped to Liberia, unless we can determine historical value.
•Books will be accepted through December 31, 2018.
•Please send a listing of all books, along with your name, organization, email address and contact phone number to the email address listed below.
•Pack books carefully and deliver or mail to our warehouse:

Mr. Joseph Palmer
901B Long Point Road
Mount Pleasant, SC 29464
Phone: 843.452.4880
Email: ProjectLiberiaLibrary@gmail.com

In the future, we will need to set up a Board in order to oversee the development and supervision of staff and interns for the library; to create a proper atmosphere and establish methods to measure and maintain the progress of the library. Contact us with any questions or concerns. We will keep all of our book donors posted on all developments pertaining to the library (so please send us the list of books you are donating as well as your name and contact information).

Monetary donations in any amount can be made via PayPal at www.yaaba.org. YAABA is our 501c(3) charitable partner organization. Any donated funds will be used to defray costs and materials needed to ship the books to Liberia.

Please remember, A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life, so kindly assist us by becoming a benefactor of this important initiative.

Sincerely,
Joseph Palmer
Facilitator
SRDC – South Carolina
www.srdcinternational.org

Exactly how is it that Voter Suppression is not considered a CRIME?

That is all.

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.  Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.” – Benjamin Franklin, 1959

The Maryland primary election season is fully upon us, with early voting already underway in the state of Maryland.  Political races are often confusing to the public, part of the reason voting turnout is so low.  We hear and see so many contradictory messages from candidates for office, and those currently in elective office seem destined to become embroiled in one scandal or another (with a few notable exceptions), resulting in a level of cynicism that has inspired many citizens, young and old, to simply swear off the electoral process altogether.

We are thankful to research efforts like those of the organization Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS), who recently published their 2018 Maryland Legislative Report Card (see accompanying post on this Web site) to grade and assess the effectiveness of the current crop of Maryland State Delegates and Senators, concentrating on those legislators from districts with large Afrikan or Afrikan-Descendant populations.  Their efforts and those of other local activists, publishers, broadcasters and commentators like the National Black Unity News, the Black Think Tank, BMoreNews.com‘s Doni Glover, and David Johnson Sr. do much to help  inform the community and counter the confusion and resulting apathy that often allow feckless and mendacious public officials to maintain their illicit grip on power.  But even with these stalwarts sounding one alarm after another, the political landscape often remains unnecessarily clouded by disinformation and innuendo, usually from the candidates themselves.

Since this particular post is more or less off the top of my head, I won’t present much in the way of researched material here.  But there are two examples of political primary races in the state of Maryland that spring immediately to mind that seem to exemplify the circumstances that have had a chilling effect on the will of the people to accept, or even believe in, the leadership and integrity of elected officials and would-be candidates.  We’ve also made a brief comment below on the Maryland Senate primary in the 41st District.

Update: Who is the “People’s Champion”?

If you talk to most of the Baltimore area’s community activists, there is one candidate in this Democratic primary who has been a truly consistent presence at grassroots meetings and a regular supporter of what many would call the “people’s agenda”.  That candidate is Jill Carter (pictured, below), daughter of legendary Maryland civil rights leader Walter P. Carter and the current front-runner for the Maryland Senate in the 41st District.  She is looked to by some to bring a measure of sanity and commitment to grassroots community issues, particularly those that impact the Afrikan and Afrikan-Descendant community, to the Maryland Legislature.  (Examples include stands against mass incarceration of youth, advocacy for police oversight, and her opposition to the Maryland Comprehensive Crime Bill.)  Her candidacy is being contested by 27-year-old J.D. Merrill, a former local teacher and school administrator and son-in-law of former Baltimore mayor and Maryland governor Martin O’Malley.  A June 7 article in the Baltimore Sun and a June 21 article in the Baltimore Brew discuss some of the issues that have made this a contentious campaign.

Jill Carter has the backing of current Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh, current City Council president Bernard C. “Jack” Young, several members of the Baltimore area clergy such as Dr. Heber Brown III and most of the prominent grassroots activists in the Baltimore area, earning an “A” grade in the recently-released 2018 Legislative Report Card issued by Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle.  However, as Merrill professes that he will build coalitions among Baltimore area constituents (something Carter’s supporters insist she has already done), he has gained the support of a number of relatively powerful local foundations, former Baltimore mayor Sheila Dixon, Baltimore City Council member Brandon Scott and one nationally known local activist in former Black Lives Matter organizer DeRay McKesson.

McKesson’s decision to endorse Merrill has led to some critical reaction from some local activists who questioned his decision to back Merrill as well as his commitment to local issues.  Apparently, McKesson had worked with Merrill in the Education Department and was impressed with his energy and grasp of the issues.  But Merrill is seeking the nomination against perhaps the candidate with the strongest record of community commitment in Carter.  His relationship to former mayor and governor O’Malley, who, despite his Democratic Party credentials and image as a liberal, had initiated the “broken windows” policing model that led to thousands of “stop-and-frisk”-style encounters and arrests of Black youth by police, have revived concerns by some that he might mirror O’Malley’s political platform.

As this campaign has veered into increasingly negative territory with Merrill impugning Carter’s voting record and Carter’s supporters accusing Merrill of trying to stir up fights to mask his own inexperience, the tension between the Carter and Merrill campaigns has heated up, as well as some conflict between community activists who have taken sides.  What impact will this have on the race?  We shall soon find out.

A Very Litigious State’s Attorney Race

The first is to be found in the race for the Democratic nomination for State’s Attorney for Baltimore City.  The two front-runners are the incumbent, Marilyn Mosby (pictured, left), and her main primary challenger, attorney Ivan Bates.  I know of respected people in the community, and among activists, who back both candidates. 

Mosby is held in high regard by some in the community because they see someone they can trust, perhaps in part stemming from her highly touted effort to indict and convict the six Baltimore police officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray in April 2015.  Her detractors, however, have claimed that she had indicted the officers knowing the charges would not stick and result in all six going free, and others impugned her for appearing to target the three Black officers for greater responsibility for Gray’s death while the two White officers who chased him down on bicycles (immediately after which Gray appeared to have been seriously injured before even being placed in the police van) evaded the most serious charges.  Those detractors have implied that, in spite of the public repudiation of her efforts by the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the police union’s alleged financial contributions to her campaign had supposedly influenced her actions all along.

Meanwhile, supporters of Bates (pictured, right) note his decision to leave a prosperous legal career to become State’s Attorney as evidence of his selfless commitment to serve the people.  His campaign commercials tout the fact that he had “never lost a case” when he was a prosecutor, as opposed to Mosby’s lack of experience as a District Attorney.  However, some backers of Mosby and the third candidate in this primary, former Baltimore City and federal prosecutor and Supreme Court clerk Thiru Vignarajah (also the brother of Maryland gubernatorial candidate Krish Vignarajah), have claimed that cases in which Bates was a prosecutor that were dropped should count as losses.  Supporters of Bates have countered that when the defendant was determined to be innocent, and the District Attorney chose to drop charges as a result, these cases were a victory for the justice system.  (We agree with this last sentiment, but district attorneys have long been criticized by activists because they were often graded on their conviction rates, not on their success at finding the truth even if it meant the acquittal of a suspect.)

So, who is speaking the truth here?  Is Mosby a champion of the people for her pursuit of the officers in the Freddie Gray case, or do her detractors, some of whom say she had failed them in their own quests for justice, have a strong point against her?  Does Bates represent a positive change for the pursuit of criminals and the subsequent reduction of a murder rate that has been steadily increasing, or do those who have voiced their own reasons for distrusting him present a strong argument?  And what impact will be felt if Thiru Vignarajah, who is reportedly trailing both of them by a wide margin in the polls and who some have accused of working against Bates, chooses to throw support behind one candidate or the other?

Mud Slinging in Baltimore County

The other race that seems not to have provided any clarity from public campaign efforts is that for Baltimore County Executive.  Specifically, the apparent pissing match between candidates Vicki Almond and Jim Brochin.

Almond (pictured, below) appeared to strike first with ads claiming Brochin was, essentially, “trying to fool the voters” into seeing him as a progressive Democrat, despite the fact that he supposedly had voted against gun-control legislation up to ten times and had received an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association (NRA), along with significant campaign contributions from them.  Brochin’s campaign struck back with ads that first touted his support for gun control measures that led to his “proud” receipt of an “F” from that very same NRA, and then alleged that Almond’s campaign was attempting to distort his record (“trying to fool the voters”) because of the massive contributions her campaign supposedly is receiving from developers and other big businesses.

A commentary  by Vincent DeMarco in the Baltimore Sun (“Brochin has been a friend to the NRA”, April 6, 2018, available at the Sun’s Web site, http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/readersrespond/bs-ed-rr-brochin-guns-letter-20180406-story.html) seems to back Almond’s claim that Brochin is not the progressive that his campaign paints him to be, stating that his early votes on gun-control measures, votes that severely weakened many of the provisions, allowed him to finally vote in favor of the legislation as “window dressing” without alarming NRA supporters.  Firmin DeBrabander, however, in an April 5 commentary in the same Baltimore Sun (“Could the Baltimore County executive race come down to NRA support?”, at http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-op-0406-brochin-olszewski-20180404-story.html) states that Brochin (pictured, right) had once been a backer of the NRA but that changed after the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012.  The same commentary claims that Johnny Olszewski Jr.’s support for the NRA continued even as Brochin was rejecting the NRA’s “increasingly reckless” positions against gun control.

Brochin’s attacks on Almond were bolstered for some by her support of the development of the Foundry Row shopping center in Owings Mills, as a number of community groups had opposed the rezoning of that area for what is now a shopping center anchored by a Wegman’s grocery store and features several other medium-sized chain stores and eateries.  Almond points to the success (so far) of Foundry Row and her re-election to the County Council as an indication that, in the end, the voters supported that project.  She also brushed off Brochin’s attacks (“Democrat Vicki Almond seeks to complete rise in politics by becoming Baltimore County executive”, http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/bs-md-co-almond-profile-20180604-story.html).   

So, again, who is speaking the truth here?  Which one is the true “progressive”, if either of them is?  And will either of them do anything on behalf of the Afrikan and Afrikan-Descendant communities in Baltimore County?

These two campaigns, in particular, present a contrast to the Maryland gubernatorial race, which seems to have concentrated on the leading candidates — former NAACP Executive Director Ben Jealous (pictured, left) and Prince Georges County executive Rushern Baker (pictured, below) — and those seeking to catch them in later polling (former Michelle Obama aide Krish Vignarajah, author and former Obama administration official Alec Ross, state senator Rich Madaleno, and the Baltimore-based Jim Shea-Brandon Scott team) emphasizing their campaigns’ commitments to reverse the more objectionable aspects of current governor Larry Hogan’s direction for Maryland by backing gun control, legalization of marijuana, aid for the schools and improvements in the training and behavior of police rather than attacking each other.  But the odds are, even if the candidates for governor do not resort to negative campaigns against each other in the primaries, that tone could well change in the general election when the victor goes up against a Republican incumbent governor who has received an unusual amount of support from Democratic voters and Afrikan-American citizens and community activists.

The tone that had been set in the 2016 presidential campaign, replete with the name-calling, race-baiting, fear-mongering and hyperbole, apparently still has not worn off, with more and more candidates slinging mud at opponents in the apparent hope that the voters will stumble to the polling booth and cast a vote for them based on little more than confusion and the emotion-based decisions that spring from it.  While the race between Carter and Merrill seems to be swinging mainly on experience vs. youth and Carter’s respect among activists vs. Merrill’s connection to powerful local interests, both Bates and Mosby have followers and detractors among community organizers, those who see each of them as a hero or shero and those who have voiced distrust of their motives or outrage at their results in pursuit of justice.  Each of them can boast supporters from the ranks of community activists and community-based commentators and media personalities who have earned respect among the grassroots and from this Web site.  This only makes the task of assessing them more difficult without a healthy sum of hard and fast data that can be applied to both candidates.  Even in cases where one can research a candidate’s record, as with Brochin’s onetime status as an NRA favorite, one still emerges with some trepidation as to whether or not his post-Sandy Hook break with the gun lobby is a permanent one, or simply an expedient political calculation. 

It seems that, whenever the mud starts being slung, the primary casualty is clarity for the electorate.  Far too often in such cases, it is the principle of representative democracy that is the loser.  With each of the candidates accusing the other of trying to deceive the voters to “pump up” their effectiveness as fighters for the people, which in the end is just to win at any cost and to satisfy the big business and special interests that are allegedly bankrolling them, which, if either of them, can be trusted to tell us the truth once they are elected to a position of political power?

Saturday, April 21 was the memorial service for New Ancestor Reggie “Ruffmic” Logan, also known as Bro. Anpu Ptah Amen.  The event was held at the Towanda Center, the primary meeting space of the Pan-Afrikan Liberation Movement (PLM), one of the most important Pan-Afrikan organizations in the city, an organization with whom he had worked closely over the years, and the primary sponsors of the event.

Bro. Ruffmic and Bro. Heru Ptah “Freedomwriter” MeriTef had formed the Conscious Hip-hop group Precise Science and exploded onto the scene with their CD release “Everybody’s Not Gonna Make It” in 2007.  The fusion of Hip hop styled raps with spoken-word poetry, mad beats with classic riffs and samples, and street cred with Pan-Afrikan wisdom created a unique blend of the History of Black Struggle and the bright future that lay before us if we would simply heed their words.

Bro. Ruffmic’s journey was tragically cut short on March 8th  at the young age of 47 years by a fierce battle with cancer, but his spirit remains alive with the strong organizers of PLM and all those who remember and loved him.  A number of local Pan-Afrikan activists young and old, attended the Memorial Service to pay respects to Bro. Ruffmic and lend support to his family.  Our words pale in comparison to those of Bro. Ruffmic himself, so here we share several photos from the event, including the shrine to Bro. Ruffmic that was built for the memorial service.

The Memorial Service Program.

Baba Imhotep Asis Fatiu speaks about Bro. Ruffmic.

From one of Precise Science’s videos.

Nana Akua Akomfo Ngingha Nyamekye pays tribute to Bro. Ruffmic.

Two lyrics from the Precise Science song “Fear”, perhaps one of their better-known tracks.

The Shrine to Bro. Ruffmic.

Lyrics from Precise Science’s “Mixtape” and “Love and Sacrifice”.

The Family shares a moment.