The DISH
Unbossed
and unbought news and information you can use
Volume
10 Issue 31…Dedicated
to the Dialogue on Race…August 3, 2007
Intuit's
Vibe
Baroque Down Blankety-blank
By B. Nice
Democracy broke down by the side of the
road
Glaring beams of headlights
mark time while waiting to be towed
One man one vote
A slogan someone wrote on the shithouse
wall
Before the fall
Falling leaves prophesied the coming
winter
Freeze the day...Sleaze the way
From Kings and Queens
To men of means and property
The torch passes sloppily often falling
on the floor
Setting fire to the Bushes
Smoldering underneath the fresh
Gore of slain princes and kings
The rule law ...Lawless rulers
Preparing gruel to feed the scholars
who school free blind mice to get ready
to pay
the price padded with requisite
inflation
Spilling blood to feed our nation
Changing the station I could suddenly
hear
JC playing a love supreme
We voted for Utopia
Eventually, we will win
Whitney Moore Young, Jr.
"Every man is our brother, and every man's burden is
our own. Where poverty exists, all are poorer. Where hate flourishes, all are
corrupted. Where injustice reins, all are unequal."
Whitney Moore Young, Jr. was born July 31, 1921 in Lincoln Ridge, Kentucky. He
was raised, educated and graduated valedictorian from the Lincoln Institute,
where his father served as president. His mother, Laura, was the first black
American postmaster in Kentucky and the second in the United States. Young
received his B. S. degree at Kentucky State College (1941).
During World War II, Young received training in electrical engineering at MIT.
He was assigned to a road construction crew of black soldiers supervised by
Southern white officers. After just three weeks, he was promoted from private
to first sergeant. Despite the tension his promotion created, Young was an
effective mediator between the white officers and black soldiers angry about
their poor treatment. After the war, Young joined his wife, Margaret, at the
University of Minnesota, where he earned a Masters Degree in social work
(1947).
From 1947-1949, Young served as the industrial relations secretary of the St.
Paul, Minnesota branch of the National Urban League. He moved to Omaha,
Nebraska and assumed duties as executive secretary of that branch. In 1950, he
became the Omaha branch president.
From 1954 to 1961, Young served as dean of the Atlanta University School of
Social Work. He pushed for federal aid to cities, proposing a domestic
"Marshall Plan," which was partially incorporated into President
Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty. He described his proposals for integration,
social programs and affirmative action in his two books, To Be Equal (1964) and Beyond Racism (1969).
As executive director of the National Urban League (1961-1971), Young focused
on gaining equality for blacks in business and politics and improving
opportunities for the urban poor. He appealed to corporate leaders to support
job programs, low-income housing and education for blacks. He advised
presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon on race.
Young was president of the National Association of Social Workers and the
National Conference on Social Welfare. He served on the boards and advisory
committees of the Rockefeller Foundation, Urban Coalition and Urban Institute.
In 1969, Young received the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian
award. Young's many friendships with US business and political leaders caused
considerable controversy in the black community. But, Young believed it was
important to maintain communication with the centers of financial and political
power, no matter how these race relations might be in the nation's streets and
schools.
On March 11, 1971, Young drowned while swimming with friends in Lagos, Nigeria,
where he was attending a conference sponsored by the African-American
Institute. (Sources: www.aaregistry.com, http://en.wikipedia.org/ and www.infoplease.com/)
Segregation and Racism in Jena
On
Tuesday, July 31, 2007, hundreds of people gathered in Jena, a little central
Louisiana town, to protest the conviction of a sixteen year-old black student
and the indictments of five others that resulted from months of racial tension
at the local high school. The protest and march were the culmination of a
series of racial incidents that began in September 2006, when a black student
at Jena High School asked permission from school administrators to sit under
the "white tree." School officials advised them to sit wherever they
wanted. The irony is that 134 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, 43
years after Brown v. Board of Education and 33 years after passage of the 1964
Civil Rights Act, segregation and racism are alive and thriving in the Unites
States of America.
The day after several black students sat under the "white tree" three
nooses painted in the school's colors were left hanging from the "white
tree." Dismissing the nooses as just a youthful stunt - "Adolescents
play pranks"-- the white superintendent of schools over-ruled the
principal, who recommended expulsion of the three white students responsible,
and gave them a three day suspension. Black students organized a sit-in under
the "white tree" to protest the light suspensions given the white
students involved in the noose-hanging.
The white District Attorney accompanied by law enforcement officers addressed a
school assembly. According to testimony, he threatened black students who were
protesting. "If they did not stop making a fuss about this 'innocent
prank'… 'I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen.'"
Back on Friday, December 1, 2006, a black student was beaten up by whites at a
party. On Monday, December 4, a white student - who had been calling black
students "niggers," while supporting the students who hung the nooses
and who was involved in the fight at the off-campus party - fought with black
students again at school. Six black students were arrested and charged with
attempted second degree murder and expelled from school. The six charged were:
17-year-old Robert Bailey, Jr., 17-year-old Theodore Shaw, 18-year-old Carwin
Jones, 17-year-old Bryant Purvis and 16 year old Mychal Bell, who was charged
as an adult. Their bail was a combined $528,000.
Represented
by an appointed public defender, who did not call a single witness, Mychal
Bell's trial was swift. The all-white jury deliberated less than three hours
and found him guilty on the maximum possible charges of aggravated second
degree battery and conspiracy. He faces a maximum of 22 years in prison. None
of the whites involved received more than a slap on the wrist, if that.
This story is being reported across the world in papers in China, France and
England. It provides more proof for slave descendants' charges of ongoing
racism in the US and that the George W. Bush regime is re-segregating the US
without black and white signs. LaSalle Parish, Louisiana, where Jena is
located, is solid Bush and David Duke Country. Marcus Jones, Mychal bell's
father, said, "It's all about those nooses; the charges are racially
motivated." The white superintendent used the noose incident to send a
message of white superiority and racial separation to blacks.
With the US wagging its finger at the rest of the world claiming to be the
'greatest democracy,' it is amazing that in 2007, in a former slave state like
Louisiana where blacks are 40% of the population, that blacks are still being
tried by all-white juries, prosecutors and judges, while whites deny racism is
involved. There is no way such all-white systems could still exist without
discrimination keeping blacks locked out of the socioeconomic and political
system.
Louisiana ACLU's Tory Pegram said, "People know if they don't demand equal
treatment now, they will never get it. People's jobs and livelihoods have been
threatened for attending Jena 6 Defense meetings, but people are willing to
risk that. One person told me: 'We have to convince more people to come rally
with us…..What's the worst that could happen? They fire us from our jobs? We
have the worst jobs in the town anyway. They burn a cross on our lawns or burn
down my house? All of that has happened to us before. We have to keep speaking
out to make sure it doesn't happen to us again, or our children will never be
safe.'"
The message from Jena to slave descendants is, we have had all of this done to
us before and survived by banding together. They have lynched us, assassinated us
and railroaded us into jail, but we refused to quit; we endured. Blacks who
believe things have changed since the 1940s need to visit Jena, Walton County,
Georgia, and Sumter, South Carolina to see what racism and segregation look and
feel like today 2007-style!
For more details on this story, go to www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/03/2260.
Support Jena 6
Black
people in Jena, Louisiana are fighting for justice, and they need legal and
financial support. Since the 6 black teenagers were arrests, a group of family
members have been holding meetings, and have also created a defense fund - the
Jena 6 Defense Committee. With combined bail bonds of more than half a million dollars,
some of these young men stayed in jail for months. Few families can afford bail
bonds or private attorneys.
Members of the protest group presented an almost two-foot high stack of
signatures on petitions asking Gov. Kathleen Blanco to intervene in the case
and they accused District Attorney Reed Walters of not pursuing the case
impartially. James Rucker, executive director of colorofchange.org, which
spearheaded the petition drive said, "Family members and members of the
community presented the petitions containing more than 45,000 signatures to an
assistant district attorney. State officials like Gov. Blanco, US Senators Mary
Landrieu and David Vitter have avoided commenting on the racist situation in
Jena."
The committee said it has received verbal support from the NAACP, the Louisiana
ACLU and Friends of Justice. People interested in supporting these young men
need to contact: the Jena 6 Defense Committee, PO Box 2798, Jena, LA 71342 or
email jena6defense@gmail.com;
Friends of Justice, 507 North Donley Avenue, Tulia, TX 79088, visit their site
at www.fojtulia.org; or contact the ACLU of
Louisiana, PO Box 56157, New Orleans, LA 70156, visit their site at www.laaclu.org or 417-350-0536.
What's next? The rest of the Jena 6 is awaiting similar trials. Theodore Shaw
is due to go on trial shortly. Mychal Bell is scheduled to be sentenced July
31. If he gets the maximum sentence, he will not get out of prison until he is
nearly 40. Meanwhile, the "white tree" outside Jena High sits quietly
in the hot sun, while six black boys sit terrified in jail. Deja vu Genarlow
Wilson, they are locking up black boys because incarceration is big business on
the NY Stock Exchange. For more on this latest miscarriage of justice, go to www.fojtulia.org. Help!
Letter to Judge J.P. Mauffray
Dr. Donald H. Smith
Dear
Judge Mauffray: I join thousands of people of goodwill and justice in the
United States who call upon you to free the Jena 6. These six African American
school boys acted to defend themselves against the racial hostility of hanging
nooses and the cold indifference of school authorities who would not intervene
in the racial epithets to which they were frequently subjected. I have no doubt
that the hanging nooses were a message of the old South history of lynching
Black men. Clearly the Jena 6 understood the message and sought as any people
under attack would to protect themselves.
What began as a school incident in your small town has become a national
example of bigotry. I prevail upon you to not allow this case to become a
Scottsboro case of the 1930s or a Central Park Five case of the 1980s in which
the lives of young Black men who had committed no crime were devastated by
being wrongly convicted by the criminal justice system. In the Jena 6 case the
young men who were overwhelmingly outnumbered in their school and their
community acted to protect themselves when the school and civil authorities
would not do so. The Jena 6 were convicted by an all-white jury persuaded by an
all-white prosecution. The potential sentences they face are unconscionable.
Surely you would not want the town of Jena and the State of Louisiana to be
twenty-first century continuations of the brutality of the old South, and
surely you would not want your own history to be that of a judge who showed no
mercy. Free the Jena 6.
About Me:
Donald H. Smith, Ph.D. is former chairman of the New York City Board of
Education's Commission on Students of African Descent and past president of the
National Alliance of Black School Educators.
Disgruntled
feels: Dismal! The rich are getting richer.
The more you have, the more you can get, whether it is greater access, larger
agricultural subsidies, bigger tax cuts, more tax credits or tax breaks, they
all disproportionately favor the wealthy. The US economy is great for the
filthy rich and the moderately well off. Contrary to all the happy talk coming
from the Bush administration economic team, the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll
aptly captured the real American sentiment. The vast majority of Americans
feels the US economy is gloomy, because it is. Bankruptcies are up,
foreclosures are up, and repossessions are up. And while the government claims
inflation is tame, everything we buy is up. More important, everybody knows
someone who is unemployed, underemployed or discouraged. Under these
conditions, the state of the economy is dismal.
Disgruntled says: US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson
recently returned from another trip to China. His mission to secure a more
flexible Chinese currency would certainly benefit the US by improving its
current account balance. However, like his previous forays to the Far East, Mr.
Paulson did not achieve his publicly stated goal of getting the Chinese to
revalue their currency. While the two-hundred years old plus upstart - the US -
would like to finance its hegemonic ambitions on the backs of Chinese peasants,
they are unwilling to bear that burden. In response to US pressure, China, a
many centuries old culture, has been steadfast; it will pace itself; there is
no need to rush. The Chinese's message is clear..."the oxen may be slow,
but the earth is patient."
Disgruntled wants to know: The legacies of black civil rights
activists, such as Whitney Young, Jr. and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., are
debatable. Young believed change was possible by working within the system; he
called on the government and white businessmen to do the right thing. Dr. King
chose non-violent civil disobedience to highlight the injustices and force the
nation to change the way blacks are treated. All the empirical evidence shows,
neither man succeeded in achieving real socioeconomic and political change for
black people. Question is, what will it take to end institutionalized racism?
Mailbox:
E-Mails, Faxes and Phone Calls
Email
www.safehaven.com Why is Our Government Trying
to Sell Our Sub-primes to China?..by Marty Chenard...A
few months ago, the sub-prime problem seemed to be a mammoth problem to many
investors. But ... nothing bad happened, so investors thought that this was
another over-hyped problem that really amounted to nothing. Besides, the Fed
was being proactive as our big market-protectors, so there was nothing to worry
about ... Mighty Mouse was here to save the day. A week ago, Bloomberg had a
little news items that was hardly noticed. In the article, they described how
our US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development Secretary (Alphonso Jackson) was
in Beijing. His US Government mission was to meet with Chinese banking
authorities and ask them to BUY U.S. Mortgage backed securities. That should
have been a "red flag" to American investors. For our government to
try and sell our sub-prime mortgages to China suggested that "they are
scared as hell" and that they know the sub-prime problems are finally
starting to filter down at a visible level.
Email
www.ft.com Globalisation
backlash in rich nations...By Chris Giles in London...A popular backlash
against globalisation and the leaders of the world's largest companies is
sweeping all rich countries, an FT/Harris poll shows. Large majorities of
people in the US and in Europe want higher taxation for the rich and even pay
caps for corporate executives to counter what they believe are unjustified
rewards and the negative effects of globalisation.
Email
www.alternet.org From the Mirage of a
Middle-Class Life to the Slavery of Debt...By Joshua Holland...America is a
very wealthy country, but one has to wonder how much of our wealth is in fact a
chimera, spun of a consumerist ideal and given the appearance of solidity by a flood
of easy credit? How much poverty and real economic pain is covered up by an
endless succession of pay-day loans and EZ-finance rip-offs that eventually
just bury people under mountains of debt from which they have little chance of
digging themselves out. Today's bankruptcy rate is ten times what it was during
the Great Depression, foreclosures are at a 37-year high and the United States
has a negative savings rate, yet we're told every day that the economy is going
gangbusters. George W. Bush often points out that more Americans own their own
homes today than ever before. He doesn't mention that they also have less
equity in those homes than ever before. Every day brings news of the potential
scope of the emerging "sub-prime" loan scandal -- what Robert Kuttner
called "deregulation's latest gift" -- and new indicators that the
housing market that's driven so much of the economy for the past five years is
a bubble that's begun to burst right before our eyes. Compounding our personal
debt problems are our representatives, equally profligate spenders who are just
as happy to run up enormous budget deficits and who reflexively guarantee and
subsidize trillions of dollars of new loans to already strapped American
businesses and consumers.
|| 2007 Issues || The DISH ||