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Unpacking ‘White Lies’ From an Evil Past

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NPR Promises Answers on ‘Unsolved’ Rights Murder

7-Year Project Documents Syria’s Extreme Torture

Print, TV, Online Media Widen Their Differences

Latino Media Weather Downturn Better Than Many

Illegal Immigration Does Not Mean More Crime

Is Priority Free Speech or Inclusion? No Consensus

FCC Urged to Reinstate Station Reports on Diversity

Chinatowns Were Created in Response to Racism

Warren Turns Down Fox as ‘Hate-for-Profit Racket’

N.Y. Times Puts Diverse ‘Lens’ Blog on Hiatus

Short Takes

Remarks by Activist, Journalist Don Rojas

 

A 1965 memorial march for James Reeb in his hometown of Casper, Wyo.

NPR Promises Answers on ‘Unsolved’ Rights Murder

“More than 50 years after Unitarian Reverend James Reeb was murdered during the voting rights movement in Selma, two native Alabamians return to that city to expose the lies that kept his murder from being solved, and uncover a story about guilt, memory, and justice that says as much about America today as it does about the past,” Allyssa Pollard reported Tuesday for NPR.

James Reeb (Credit: Dorchester Historical Society)

“In a place where a legacy of impunity and silence conspires against them, Andrew Beck Grace and Chip Brantley scour Selma for living witnesses, guided by an unredacted copy of an old FBI file. They meet people who know the truth about the murder but have lied for decades — until now.

“Ahead of White Lies’ first episode today, [May] 14, we spoke with Chip and Andy about what it was like to report on a crime many decades old, what their discovery meant to them as white southerners, and what they hope listeners take away from their reporting.

“How did you learn about this case, and what sparked your interest in it?

“The James Reeb murder is a well-known Civil Rights-era cold case, and we were initially interested in it simply because it was unsolved. Reeb was killed in March 1965, and in December of that year, three men were tried and acquitted for his murder by an all-white, all-male jury. Given the way the justice system worked, it’s not at all surprising that no one was convicted for Reeb’s murder. But what was shocking once we started looking into it was the defense’s argument that civil rights activists had themselves conspired to kill Reeb because they needed a white martyr. And that lie still exists today. We heard the conspiracy theory on our first reporting trip to Selma, and we’ve heard versions of it countless times since.

“What significance does the unsolved murder of the Rev. Jim Reeb — a white man — have for our current conversations about race relations and civil rights?

“When Reeb died, Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his eulogy at a memorial service in Selma. In it, he said that it’s important to focus not just on who killed Reeb, but also what allowed it — the system, the philosophy, the way of life that produced the murder. We’ve absorbed this formulation into our reporting: It’s not just the who, but the what. And in doing so we’ve seen the many ways in which the cover-up of Reeb’s murder extends all the way from 1965 to today. . . .”

7-Year Project Documents Syria’s Extreme Torture

“The brutal civil war in Syria is now in its ninth year. Hundreds of thousands are dead, millions more displaced or forced out of Syria as refugees,” Judy Woodruff said Monday on the “PBS NewsHour.”

“Through it all, Bashar al-Assad and his regime survive.

“Amna Nawaz now has a conversation about the extraordinary system of cruelty that has made that possible.

“Amna Nawaz: ‘The peaceful protests that spread across Syria as part of the 2011 Arab Spring quickly ran into the already existing prison and torture system in Syria.

” ‘That was part of Bashar al-Assad’s cruel inheritance from his father, who ruled the country before him. That system would become an industrial-sized obscenity, pulling in hundreds of thousands of Syrians, forced to suffer in squalor and endure extreme torture. More than 120,000 have been murdered in these prisons by Assad’s regime and never returned.

“This was all chronicled in Sunday’s New York Times, the result of seven years of work by the paper’s former Beirut bureau chief, Anne Barnard. She’s now spending a year as the Edward R. Murrow fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, and she joins me here now. . . .

“Amna Nawaz: So, this isn’t the first time we have seen evidence of this kind of torture or these kinds of killing inside the Assad regime.

“What was it about now that made you want to pull together seven years’ worth of reporting into this one?

“Anne Barnard: ‘Well, I think it’s the fact that now the general consumer of news about Syria might feel that the war is coming to an end.

” ‘And it certainly is coming to the end of one phase. And now countries are starting to think about normalizing with the government. And there might be an impression that this system would ease up. Maybe the government would be magnanimous in victory, would not feel the need to arrest so many people.

” ‘But, in fact, it is still continuing. It is doubling down on the system. And all indications are that there is no hope any time soon for the people who are still missing in these prisons to surface or for the system to be reformed or changed.’ . . .”

Print, TV, Online Media Widen Their Differences

“It’s easy to make broad claims about the American media,” Laura Hazard Owen wrote Tuesday for Nieman Lab. “ ‘They’re all just a bunch of leftists!’ ‘It’s all run by fat-cat corporations!’ ‘They don’t report the facts like they used to — now it’s all their opinion!’

“The people making these claims aren’t always responsive to facts, but a broad new linguistic analysis out today tries to produce them. How is media today different from what it used to be, back in that simpler pre-web age?

“The report, from the global policy nonprofit RAND, includes a host of fascinating findings, but the broad strokes are these:

“Newspapers haven’t changed much. Television news has changed a lot, putting more focus on emotion, first-person perspective, and immediacy. Cable news is like TV news squared, with more argument, personal opinion, and dogmatic positions. And online news shares qualities with both newspapers and TV news, favoring subjective views and argument but also ‘heavily anchored in key policy and social issues’ and ‘report[ing] on these issues through personal frames and experiences.’ . . .”

The Latino Media Summit in 2018. This year’s is scheduled for June 21 and 22 at the Craig Newmark School of Journalism in New York.

Latino Media Weather Downturn Better Than Many

“ ‘This is a fickle country. They take you in one generation and want to deport you the next,’ Alfredo Corchado, the Dallas Morning News’ Mexico-U.S. border correspondent, said at a conference about covering the 2020 election last month,” Christine Schmidt reported Monday for Nieman Lab.

“Hispanic media in the U.S. serves one of the fastest-growing demographics in the country, but is trying to find its way as its customers’ habits and preferences shift. While newspapers’ circulation has fallen and accessible radio struggles to secure funding, some experiments in Spanish-language TV investments are bearing out. And digital media like Mitú (which describes its audience as ‘the 200 percent: youth who are 100 percent American and 100 percent Latino’) is working on straddling the divide between much of the older, Spanish-speaking generations who immigrated and younger generations who rely on the internet and seek media that reflect their own shared identities.

“Well, that’s all according to a new report from Democracy Fund on the state of Hispanic media, assembled by California State University Northridge associate professor Jessica Retis. (She requested the interchangeable use of Hispanic and Latino in the report. We’ll follow that guideline here too.) This report joins others on the states of African-American media and American Indian media.

“Also relevant: The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY is working on a similar report, to be published next month. They have a handy map of the existing landscape out now.

“ ‘Latino media…must take into account the complex diversity of the Hispanic population, which means that local audiences can differ from the shared history and culture of the Spanish-speaking outlet which serves that region,’ Retis writes. ‘In spite of these struggles, Hispanic media has weathered the downturn better than many mainstream media because of its deep connection to community.’ . . .”

Illegal Immigration Does Not Mean More Crime

“A lot of research has shown that there’s no causal connection between immigration and crime in the United States,” Anna Flagg wrote Monday for the Marshall Project. “But after one such study was reported on jointly by The Marshall Project and The Upshot last year, readers had one major complaint: Many argued it was unauthorized immigrants who increase crime, not immigrants over all.”

In this follow-up story, also published in collaboration with the New York Times’ Upshot, “An analysis derived from new data is now able to help address this question, suggesting that growth in illegal immigration does not lead to higher local crime rates. . . .”

(Credit: John S. and James L. Knight Foundation)

Is Priority Free Speech or Inclusion? No Consensus

“As college students across the United States continue to test the limits and protections of the First Amendment, a new report by College Pulse reveals that students show support for these rights, but are divided on whether it’s more important to promote an inclusive society that welcomes diverse groups or to protect the extremes of free speech,” the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation reported Monday.

“Opinions sharply diverge by gender, race, sexual orientation, political affiliation and religion.

“Supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the report used a mobile app and web portal to survey 4,407 full-time college students enrolled in four-year degree programs in December 2018. It builds on previous surveys of college students and their views on the First Amendment supported by Knight in 2016 and 2018.

“The report showed that more than half (53 percent) of students favor protecting free speech rights, while nearly as many (46 percent) say it’s important to promote an inclusive and welcoming society. At the same time, 58 percent of students said that hate speech should continue to be protected under the First Amendment while 41 percent disagree. The report’s exploration of perceptions by race, gender, sexual orientation and religion further highlight stark differences in student views on these issues. . . .”

Among the more specific findings, the report said:

FCC Urged to Reinstate Station Reports on Diversity

“A pair of Democrats have called on FCC chair Ajit Pai to start collecting data again on workforce diversity,” John Eggerton reported Monday for Multichannel News.

“It has been well over a decade since the FCC collected information (form 395-B) from broadcasters on the gender and diversity of their staffs — stretching over Republican and Democratic Administrations — a point the FCC’s Democratic commissioners made back in February when the FCC voted to eliminate an EEO reporting form.

“The holdup has been whether or not to keep that info confidential, with the data collection suspended since 2004. The Dems say that should have been resolved by now, and should be resolved, and the form reinstated, before the FCC weighs in again on diversity, as Pai has signaled it will do via a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on EEO compliance and enforcement.

” ‘Earlier this year, the commission decided to review certain of its equal employment opportunity (EEO) rules for the broadcasting sector,’ wrote Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) to Pai. ‘We are writing to express concern that this review has thus far failed to address the status of FCC Form 395-B. Any conversation regarding the FCC’s EEO practices is incomplete if it does not contemplate the full reinstatement of Form 395-B, which is essential to allow the Commission to fulfill a long-ignored statutory mandate to collect data about broadcast workforce diversity.’ . . .”

New York’s Chinatown (Credit: CC/Flickr/Mobilus in Mobili)

Chinatowns Were Created in Response to Racism

“Scroll through any travel guide of San Francisco, and Chinatown, one of the oldest and largest Asian neighborhoods in the U.S., is usually listed near the top,” Caitlin Yoshiko Kandil wrote Monday for NBC Asian America. An editor’s note explains, “This first of three articles about Asian enclaves in the U.S. explores how the earliest Chinatowns and Japantowns were created in response to anti-immigrant laws.”

Kandil continued, “Today, visitors can shop for trinkets, step inside the country’s oldest Chinese temple, stop by the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Company, view the Chinatown Gate and taste a variety of Chinese treats. But the origins of San Francisco’s Chinatown — like other Chinatowns — were rooted in the widespread anti-Chinese racism of the late 1800s.

“ ‘The Chinatowns we know today — in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles — are really the consequence of the exclusion laws, which created the conditions, between racism and the law itself, for segregated, isolated Chinatowns,’ said John Kuo Wei Tchen, chair of public history and humanities at Rutgers University and co-founder of the Museum of Chinese in America in New York. . . .”

Meanwhile, “The Asian American population in the United States is now 22.2 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, based on their estimates for the year 2017,” Randall Yip reported Tuesday for AsAmNews.

“That is an 18% increase, or 4 million more than the 2010 census. Because [of] the community’s high immigration rate, Asian America is the fastest growing ethnic community in the U.S. . . .”

Warren Turns Down Fox as ‘Hate-for-Profit Racket’

“Elizabeth Warren turned down a Fox News invitation Tuesday for a televised town hall and denounced the cable network as a ‘hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracists,’ ” Alex Thompson reported for Politico.

“The network has been inviting Democratic presidential candidates to participate in town halls moderated by its news reporters. Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar [have] already done the events, while Pete Buttigieg and Kirsten Gillibrand are scheduled to. All of them have criticized the network’s coverage of the Trump administration but defended going on the network as a means to reach voters.

“Without mentioning her rivals, Warren argued that agreeing to go on the network would ultimately lend Fox News credibility and boost its revenue. . . .”

Meanwhile, Katie Sullivan reported Monday for Media Matters for America, “Fox News likes to tout the ‘hard news’ side of its operation, setting up a false distinction between its right-wing prime-time hosts and the members of its news team as a defense against those who flag the propaganda, lies, conspiracy theories, and bigotry that pervade the network.

“But a Media Matters investigation found that the ‘news side’ isn’t as inoculated as the network claims. We looked at Fox News and Fox Business programming for the first four months of 2019, and we documented examples of the ‘news’ division spreading misinformation on air every single day between January 1 and April 30.”

 

A day of horse racing at Kenilworth Racecourse in Cape Town, South Africa, in January 2017. (Credit: Sydelle Willow Smith)

N.Y. Times Puts Diverse ‘Lens’ Blog on Hiatus

“The New York Times made a big announcement today about their revered photography blog, Lens, and they shared it with News Photographer magazine,” Sue Morrow wrote Monday for the National Press Photographers Association.

“Ten years is a long time in the era of digital and we celebrate that resourceful endeavor with the founders of Lens. There are changes ahead that will help Lens evolve into an even better position within the New York Times and for the photojournalism community.

” ‘Lens will go on a temporary hiatus at the end of this month,’ Meaghan Looram, director of photography, said in a memo to the staff today.

” ‘We want Lens to evolve into an unrivaled source for those who want to read about and think about photography. We want to create a dynamic space to highlight more of the incredible photography that all of you produce on a daily basis,’ she said.”

The “Lens” blog was distinctive in its emphasis on diversity, depicting photographers from around the globe and, in particular, African Americans and Latinos.

The May 1 page, for example, featured the perspective of a white South African.

“As a white South African, Sydelle Willow Smith grew up keenly aware of her country’s tangled history of colonialism, race and privilege.” David Gonzalez wrote. “Though she was raised in a liberal Jewish family active in the movement against apartheid, Ms. Smith still felt uneasy when she went to take photographs in townships. It was as if the country’s colonial era’s exploitation of natural resources, which shaped the continent itself, was mirrored in the very act of making a photograph.”

Gonzalez also wrote, “Ms. Smith’s epiphany, which took place during her graduate studies at the University of Oxford, set her on a deeply personal project to examine identity, race and responsibility among white South Africans.

“Coming 25 years after the country’s first democratic elections, Ms. Smith’s photo project teases out the various points of view of her white compatriots who grapple with the question of national origin. In some ways, the debate echoes conversations about the kinds of responsibility white Americans should have for slavery or acts of racist violence committed by long-dead forebears. . . .”

Short Takes

 

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Remarks by Activist, Journalist Don Rojas

At May 11 Benefit/Tribute

Dear Sisters & Brothers, Colleagues, Friends and Comrades,

Good Evening to all!

I am truly humbled and honored, indeed, overwhelmed by your outpouring of love, support and solidarity tonight. I’m sure that on a fine Saturday in spring you could easily find other things to do and other places to be, but instead, you chose to come to this historic Brooklyn church and to participate in this uplifting and inspirational event.

To all those who have reached into your wallets to contribute to this fundraising benefit, let me express my most sincere gratitude and assure you that every dollar of financial support is a dollar less that we have to pay for very expensive anti-cancer medications that are not covered by medical insurance. To cite just one example, a single chemotherapy drug I’ve been taking every 21 days costs $18,000 or close to $1000 per pill. Yes, that’s correct, a single drug. And, I am on a therapy protocol that requires the taking of many more drugs.

After months of chemotherapy supplemented with a range of compatible medical and natural therapies including weekly acupuncture sessions with my daughter-in-law, Sharon Jennings Rojas, an expert in traditional Chinese medicine, the doctors tell me that I’m about to enter the early stages of remission but the treatment protocols will continue for the entire period of remission and that could be months or God willing, years.

However, remission is not a cure. There is no cure for cancer, not yet. A properly managed remission protocol simply buys us some more time in this ongoing battle. It staves off the inevitable.

Don Rojas

In between the regular chemo treatments and the daily drugs and their many debilitating side effects one has to deal with the fatigue, anxiety and depression that all cancer patients face each day. Nonetheless, I try to take time for self-reflection and meditation. Cancer is a monstrous affliction filled with pain, anguish and hardship.

In political terms, I liken cancer to a form of imperial aggression, an uninvited intruder that invades and occupies innocent bodies…. that are living, breathing organisms whose fundamental logic is to affirm and advance life in all its beauty and diversity. But cancer never leaves you. It never leaves you. Cancer’s occupation is permanent. It tests one’s faith and challenges one’s capacity to keep hope alive.

And in those private moments of solitude, thoughts turn to one’s own mortality and to the meaning of life but there are also key lessons I have learned about patience, tolerance and humility and about the awesome power of unconditional love, compassion and service to those in need and to those less fortunate.

Among the tough lessons that my cancer-based reflections have reminded me of is that servant leaders like us must make the most sacrifices while avoiding arrogance and pomposity. Selfless public service will always have more long-term benefits than our self-centered agendas.

As MLK, Amilcar Cabral, Maurice Bishop and several of our historical heroes have taught us, the masses of our people are the real drivers and makers of historical transformations, not this or that “great leader.”

I will never forget the last words Maurice Bishop said to me, mere minutes before his assassination, “Don, go to the main telephone office and get the word out to the world that those criminals will turn their guns on the masses.” I did, as Maurice had instructed, and I made the first set of regional and international calls alerting the world to the counter-revolution that was going on that fateful day in October 1983.

Let me pause the philosophical musings and historical memories for a moment and return to heartfelt expressions of gratitude to so many who are with us tonight and you have contributed immeasurably to the success of this event.

To the countless souls across the country and the world who have added my name to their prayer circles, folks who I’d probably never see or meet in this life. I say THANK YOU and to all the generous souls who made monetary contributions to our GoFundMe campaign, many leaving notes of inspiration on the Web page, I say THANK YOU.

To all the speakers, and to those who sent audio and video messages, THANK YOU for your words of wisdom and for your resolve to continue the struggle for a better world for our people. Thanks to Danny Glover, David Abdulah, Verene Shepherd, David Commisiong and Michael McEachrane.

To Bro. Ta-Nehisi Coates, many thanks for sending your greetings…… and heartfelt thanks also go out to Comrade Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, prime minister of St. Vincent & the Grenadines, for his message, and to the prime minister’s representative Amb. Rhonda King thanks so much for joining us this evening.

To Revs. Herb and Karen Daughtry and the entire congregation of the House of the Lord Church, THANK YOU for opening up the doors of this venerable community institution to us. We are honored to be back at a pillar of Brooklyn’s black community, a cherished shrine that has birthed so many racial and social justice movements over the years, including the Black United Front, of which I had the honor to be a member of the founding team. Please give a warm hand to the Revs. Herb and Karen Daughtry for their many years of service to New York’s black communities. You are both indispensible assets to our movement.

To Sir Hilary Beckles, who traveled all the way from the Caribbean to join us, THANK YOU for your brilliant presentation and for your steadfast leadership in the global reparations movement and congrats to you and your leadership team that has catapulted the University of the West Indies into the highest stratas of higher education in the entire world. Congratulations and Asante for the opportunity to be part of the making of UWI-TV.

To Miriellie Mendes-France, daughter of the great revolutionary and Pan-Africanist Frantz Fanon, a proud son of Martinique in the Caribbean, THANK YOU for traveling across the Atlantic Ocean to be with us this evening. Your father’s classic book “Wretched of the Earth” was one of the books that helped shape my politics back in the 1960s and 1970s. I commend you for your consistent and principled work as an international Human Rights expert lifting up the critical importance of this U.N. Decade for People of African Descent and to the growing global reparations movement.

To my Dear Friend and Comrade of many years, going back to our days as college roommates, one of the great Caribbean economists of my generation, who traveled all the way from Jamaica to be here with us tonight, THANK YOU to Dr. Michael Witter.

To Assemblyman Charles Barron, Thank You for coming and for the wonderful citation from the New York State Assembly. I am truly honored. You and your wife represent an unbroken revolutionary legacy from the Black Panthers in the ’60s and ’70s to the state assemblies and city councils of today. They have never compromised on their revolutionary principles and I thank them for that, as well.

To Bros. Talib Kweli, Ahmed Abdullah and others who provided us with cultural entertainment and spiritual enrichment thanks for bringing lots of light and love to this event.

To Dr. Ron Daniels, master organizer and visionary, THANK YOU for your wise leadership of the Institute of the Black World and for your pioneering efforts at the convening helm of the National African American Reparations (NAARC). Now that you’ve retired from the academic world, you carry the distinction of Professor emeritus at the City University of New York. But we know that deep in your heart of hearts you are an activist, a Pan-Africanist, a seasoned veteran who has always been of the people and for the people.

To Herb Boyd, my “big brother,” friend and comrade-in-arms in many a battle over the years and one of America’s greatest authors, journalists and historians, THANK YOU, “Brotherman” for your all the organizing efforts you’ve invested in tonight’s program. Thanks for your friendship to me and to the entire Rojas family over many years. You will always be a “brother by another mother.”

And thanks to all the sisters and brothers who volunteered to serve with Herb on the organizing committee for this event, to Sis. Nkechi, Sis. Roz, Bro. Lenny, Bro. Rick, Bro. Maurice, Bro. Jemil and many others.

And, finally, to my beloved family, to my four children, eight grandchildren, one great grandson, Samori, how can I adequately say THANK YOU for everything you’ve meant to me, Thank You for standing shoulder to shoulder with me as I traveled this long and winding road of activism all those years, thanks for your unconditional love, your loyalty, your patience, your understanding, your discipline. You, collectively, are the ultimate pride of my life.

And, please allow me to send a very special word of gratitude this evening to my companion, partner, friend and devoted wife of over 40 years and my main caregiver. Karen Marcia Codrington Rojas, you continue to be my anchor and my rock of Gibraltar. You have put up with all my faults and foibles over these many years, mothered our children and grandchildren in exemplary fashion, with support with tenderness and unconditional love. I love and admire your strength of character. You inspire me every day. Thank You for being the wind beneath my wings. I love you with all the strength I can muster.

Sisters and Brothers, friends and comrades, please bear with me for a few more minutes. I have a couple of burning concerns that I’d like to get off my chest tonight.

This Is a Titanic Struggle

At this moment in history, we find ourselves at a crucial juncture in the road, one at which the structures of liberation and the structures and institutions of authoritarianism are contesting each other on a global stage to shape what the future will look like. This is a global response to the deepening crisis of modern-day capitalism and its empire which have no lasting solutions to the deepening economic inequalities spreading rapidly across the globe.

This is a Titanic struggle between those who are ready to boldly step into the future, to shape human society into one where truly democratic principles and practices prevail and those (here in the Western Hemisphere) who have been duped by the lies and tricks of a toxic social disease we call “Trumpism,” a political and cultural phenomenon rooted in a sordid mix of White Supremacist ideologies, manufactured lies, fake news and corrupt opportunism.

This phenomenon is bent on cowardly turning back the hands of time to “Make America Great Again” through the exercise of wanton dictatorial control over all the organs of the capitalist state. Trump’s fixation with reversing whatever legacy Pres. Barack Obama left a couple years ago borders on the pathological and is profoundly racist.

A Much More Dangerous Social Cancer

You all are here to support my own fight against cancer and for that effort I will be eternally grateful but there is a much more dangerous social cancer that needs our urgent collective attention, one that is nothing short of mass terrorism against black and brown people.

This social cancer of Trumpism has metastasized and has infected every organ of the American body politic. Trumpism is the great white supremacy experiment of the 21st Century and its basic playbook is the warped ideology of fascism as was attempted in the 20th Century by Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in France, Franco in Spain, Batista in Cuba and other so-called ‘strongmen.’

I’m not trying to be alarmist, folks, but Fascism is once again on the march not only in Europe but also throughout the Americas….from Washington, DC to Brazil, to Chile, to Argentina and other Latin countries and making serious inroads into respectable institutions inside the USA.

Trump, the protector and defender of these new American fascists, himself has no moral compass, no soul, no defined ideology, no loyalty to anyone or any set of ideas, no conviction to anything beyond his narcissistic and egotistical needs.

He is one of history’s great frauds. In a country filled with con-men, this megalomaniac stands on top of that pile of trash as America’s Con-artist-in-chief. Yet, sadly, a small percentage of black and brown people have fallen for Trump’s tricks and lies. I’m pretty confident that The Ancestors will deal with these lackeys when the right time comes.

From the very beginning of this country, White Supremacy provided the ideological underpinnings for slavery. The rallying slogans of today’s fascist right-wing like, “Make America Great Again” and “America First” are premised on hatred for the other, especially for black, brown and Jewish people, all of whom the racists label as “mud people” who have been punished by God and the Christian bible.

As wannabe dictator Trump nods, winks and tweets to these hate mongers who have falsely claimed a white race-based authority, the white supremacists here feel ever more emboldened to use hatred of “the other” as their weapon of choice these days, especially against non-white people and non-Christian people,

To all the writers and journalists among us tonight, let me say that White Supremacy even hates memory, it hates history, it hates truth, it hates objective facts. And we, whose weapons are pens, not guns, those of us who fight for reparatory justice, those of us who dream of a truly fair society and a just economy, must never forget those billions of black and brown people who work hard each day here and across the continents yet are robbed by the ruling elites of the wealth and value they have created with their blood, sweat and tears.

Tell the Inconvenient Truths

Yes, indeed, we writers and journalists have a sacred duty to tell the inconvenient truths of history to our people and to the world, and chief among these inconvenient truths are the living legacies of enslavement as manifested in the rapidly growing social and economic disparities in the USA, the Caribbean and Latin America.

And on an evening when we are talking about reparations, there is no denying that slave trading gave birth to the capitalist mode of production and that the warped and sick ideas of White Supremacy were used by the rising bourgeois classes in Europe and America, by believers of the so-called free market, by respected scientists, politicians, academics, clergymen and even the monarchy and the nobility to morally and spiritually justify the hideous crimes of slavery.

Over time and over many generations the sick ideas of White Supremacy became embedded into the very DNA of every major social, political, economic, legal and clerical institution and structure in society.

In America, White Supremacy built an empire based on theft of the lands and natural resources of the Native Americans and the theft of the collective labor of enslaved Africans.

The stolen labor of enslaved Africans remains a debt America owes to their descendants and this enormous historical debt can never be accurately measured in pounds, dollars or francs.

So we are clear: The historical debt owed to us has not been paid. The physical and psychological damages and the collective trauma that has been passed on from generation to generation have not been repaired.

Reparations is undoubtedly the most powerful moral issue of our times and we welcome the expressed interest in the topic on the part of many mainstream politicians who have called for a national discussion on slavery reparations.

Engagement with the reparations movement will educate the masses of our people that White Supremacy and its proponents are the real terrorists in our midst, people born, bred and mis-educated right here in the home of baseball, motherhood and apple pie.

Fellow writers, journalists and documentarians, we must place the consequences of the trans-Atlantic slave trade at the center of our analysis of the social cancer we call “Trumpism.” We must continue to play a key role in shaping the public narrative and the popular conversation around reparations and, in so doing, continue to champion the new and updated version of legendary Cong. [John] Conyers’s HR40 bill in the US Congress.

The new version, which is being led by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, calls for remedies, not just studies of the living legacies of African enslavement in the Americas.

The time for action-oriented reparations is now. Let’s seize the time.

Finally, sisters and brothers, friends and comrades, I pledge to you all this evening to be by your side as together we fight the inter-related social cancers of Trumpism, globalized White Supremacy, neo-liberalism and austerity forced onto the backs of working people everywhere. I may not always be on the frontlines with you in the future, but I’ll always be there behind the scenes offering my unqualified support as I continue to fight my own battle against cancer.

Remember, the fight against Empire, the fight for truth and righteousness is heating up and we need all on board. Join us as we continue to fight for reparations in the USA, the Caribbean and the Americas writ large. Add your voices in support of the revised HR40 bill, which is now picking up momentum in the US Congress.

In wrapping up, my conscience dictates that I dig deep down and tap into some of that radical energy that still resides in my soul and find a militant voice to say to Trump, Bolton, Pompeo and the other hawks:

— quit banging the drums of war in the Caribbean and Latin America,
— stop with the bellicose threats towards Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua
– — Hands off the Cuban Revolution

Caribbean Region Should Be ‘Zone of Peace’

Tonight, I call on the political leaders of the Caribbean to reject any revival of the Monroe Doctrine, to defend the sacred principle of self-determination and to oppose any and all attempts by Trump and his cohorts to interfere in the domestic affairs of our sovereign states. Don’t be bamboozled into accepting the false promises of Trumpism. Stand firm and defend the Caribbean region’s right to be recognized and treated as a “Zone of Peace.”

I call on our scholars, writers and activists here and across the Black World to step up the production of intellectual critiques of neo-liberal orthodoxy. Such a comprehensive and ongoing analysis of the false values and discredited logic of capitalism today must address the political economy of slavery and in so doing we will act out the imperatives of reparatory justice.

Sad to say but we are living in a dark and scary moment. Despairing as it may be, we do not have the luxury of simply battening down the hatches and riding out Hurricane Trump. These troubled times call for us to be proactive, to resist and to push back against the onslaught of white supremacy in all its odious manifestations.

And when we fight together as a well-coordinated and disciplined global movement we will win, we will advance and we will surely please the Ancestors in whose name we struggle.

Asante sana, to all for your generous support and solidarity and for the beautiful vibrations that you have brought to this historic church this evening. I leave you tonight with utterances from one of my favorite prayers, one in which I find great solace, especially in moments of reflection and meditation:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference.”

Long Live the reparations movement!

Long Live the power of the people!

Long Live the spirit of Maurice Bishop and all our people’s martyrs!

Long Live the House of the Lord Church! Forward Ever, Backward Never

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