The DISH
Unbossed and unbought news and information you can use
Vol. 11 Issue 10…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…March 7, 2008
The Invaders: The Beginning
By John Burl Smith
The Invaders grew out of an incident that occurred on July 1, 1967 at a white-owned gas station in South Memphis. A confrontation with the owner resulted in my summoning the police. Upon their arrival, the police saw my black face and my complaint lost all merit. Consequently, the police simply ignored my plea for justice.
Charles Cabbage, a passenger in my car, and I were brutalized and arrested for
disorderly conduct. Following our release from jail, we tried to address the
harsh and degrading treatment we received at the hands of the Memphis Police
Department. We filed complaints with the NAACP, city hall and talked to the
press, all to no avail.
Our problem was, we had been profiled as black militants and since the owner of
the gas station was white, our story was ignored. Complaints by blacks against
whites carried no weight in segregated Memphis and that went double for
"niggers" identified as black power activists. Charles understood that, he had
been trained by SNCC (Student Non-violence Coordinating Committee), but I was
not a part of the black movement, so I was in unchartered waters.
Just returning to Memphis from Vietnam, a disabled veteran with an honorable discharge in May 1966, I felt I had proven myself as a man. I had served my country. So, I had earned the right to be treated like an American. After laying my life on the line, unlike this white man, who had stayed home and enjoyed the protection people like me fought to provide him, I deserved to share in the bounty of America. I had rights, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights made me equal to that white man. But, nobody cared about any of that in segregated Memphis -- Boss Crump's town.
It was clear, Charles was right when he said, "The constitution does not apply
to you and me." I was like thousands of black men, who went to war to defend the
USA hoping things would be different in a grateful America. However, I was still
black and that was all that mattered. Never mind that the white man was a thief
and a liar. Charles and I were niggers, which meant we were wrong. That was what
mattered.
Nothing was ever quite as clear for me before that moment. Being black
outweighed everything; fighting for America in Vietnam made me a dupe. With that
realization, the only thing that made sense was to wholeheartedly embrace black
power, because I could not change the color of my skin. Rather than putting my
life on the line protecting people who hated me because I was black, I should
fight segregation which discriminated against me and my people for being black.
Charles and I organized a community group of young people from Riverside and
started trying to improve our neighborhood. We used my apartment as our
headquarters and began recruiting young people to help spread the word about
black power in Memphis. Our first target was Memphis State University (now
University of Memphis). We invaded the campus one October day in 1967. We went
to its old cafeteria where all the blacks were gathered in one corner, playing
cards. I gave them my best H. Rap Brown imitation. I challenged them to demand a
meeting with then-President Cecil C. Humphreys about being a real part of the
university. Campus security escorted us off campus, but that act was the
beginning of the black student movement, because President Humphreys met with
some black students in November.
After that incident, the Invaders became a target of the Memphis police and the
FBI. At first, when we began attending meetings and speaking out, dressed in
black, sporting big Afros, amulets, dark shades and army jackets with the word
Invaders written across the back in segregated Memphis, the Invaders were a real
novelty. However, in February 1968, the Memphis sanitation workers' strike began
and everything changed. The novelty wore off quickly as confrontations with
police became daily occurrences during marches to city hall. The Invaders turned
out a different high school every Tuesday to fill the city council chambers in
support of striking sanitation workers. Fighting segregation, standing up to
police, and trying to stop garbage trucks from rolling became the fodder for
news stories that made the Invaders larger than life heroes to black youth. As
our image grew in the media, most young people in Memphis were calling
themselves Invaders by the time Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to town on
March 16, 1968.
The defiant attitude of the Invaders became a mind-set of young blacks. Four hundred years of slavery and fifty years of Boss Crump's iron-fisted rule came to a head for a generation demanding freedom. No more being calm, patient or taking a back seat. It seemed all the rage I felt that July night at that gas station was somehow transferred to them and with their identification they exploded.
Blaming the Invaders for that riot was like blaming a match for an explosion
because it was put to a fuse in a powder keg. It was the same when some named
the Invaders in connection with Dr. King's assassination because we met with him
a few hours before he was murdered. I have always felt that Dr. King's meeting
with us, which was to unite civil and black power for his "Poor People's
Campaign," is what caused his assassination.
New World Order
By Curtis Mayfield
Darkness no longer, a child is born
Mother shed tears of joy as baby test his lungs
My daddy's not there, where he ought to be
Somewhere in Georgia skinning
And shooting craps on his knees
Another victim born out here in the hood
And based on statistics it really ain't all good
Welfare takes the tab and daddy can't sign
And can't be seen, the family becomes a crime
The hunt is on and brother you're the prey
Serving time in jail, it ain't the way
I'm living so hard baby that my hair is gray
We got to make a change; it's a brand new day
Chorus:
A new world order, a brand new day
A change of mind for the human race
A new world order, a brand new day
A change of mind for the human race
Operation influx and it's on the way
We just marched a million plus the other day
Look we all witnessed the sweat rolling down Ms. Liberty's head
She knows the sleeping giant is no longer sleeping dead
Oh what a fulfillment of prophecy
Let us teach the children freedom's never been free
It's okay to cry, go ahead and cry
'Cause Jesus wept but hope and faith he kept
It's a new day
Chorus
The die has been cast and there's no need to fear
'Cause people, the answer to your prayers are here
Sister Mary don't you weep
And tell Martha not to moan
We need the love and daddy's coming home
There's no need to worry, the times dictate a plan
Mother Earth's given birth to a brand new man
Sister I know you're misunderstood
But hold on to your man
'Cause the future looks good...It's a new day
Chorus
Beware of the lies and false prophecies
We are many with eyes but don't all really see
You must be merciful my friend to obtain
So if you break the chain don't pass the blame
We should say unto all and I'll say it again
It's not just to win, shake a hand, make a friend
We who are pure at heart somehow might see
There's still light in the world,
Come rejoice with me...It's a new day
Chorus
University of Memphis: A Bold Step
During Black History Month and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration week, April 1-5, everything associated with the Memphis Sanitation Strike of 1968 will be revisited. One topic is the Invaders, a group of young men from the south side of Memphis, particularly the Riverside subdivision. Since the assassination of Dr. King, almost everyone connected to the incident with the ability to write or speak has presented their version of the Invaders and their involvement, except the Invaders. This year during the 40th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination the University of Memphis, the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the National Civil Rights Museum will give the Invaders an opportunity to tell the story of their involvement.
This bold undertaking is sponsored by the College of Communication & Fine Arts,
Marcus Orr Center for Humanities, and the Student Activity Council. The special
day-long forum will spotlight the Invaders' role in "The Memphis Civil Rights
Movement: The Missing Chapters." The goal of the commemoration is to provide a
greater understanding and deeper knowledge about the people and forces that
propelled the civil rights movement during those history-making days.
The forum will take a scholarly look at the players involved, illuminate their
revealing perspective and give students an opportunity to interact will
panelists. The morning session will examine the overlooked role of grassroots
activists as catalysts for change and as actors in this historic event. This
informative and enlightening forum will provide unique commentary from a
professional and civic perspective of an event that changed not only Memphis but
the world.
John
Burl Smith, a University of Memphis graduate, author of Archangel: A Hip Hop
Vision of Love and the Battle of Good Verses Evil and one of the founders
of the Invaders, is a panelist. Smith, who graduated magna cum laude with honors
in psychology and the recipient of the Milton C. Addington award as the top
student in psychology, also contributes weekly articles to The DISH, an
international e-magazine.
The forum will be held on April 2, 2008 at 1 PM in the Michael D. Ross Theater
on the University of Memphis campus. For more information on the weeklong
commemoration, contact the Memphis Tourism Education Foundation at 901-543-5300
or email
calvin@mcvb.org.
The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro is turning the page in an effort to
improve his grades. Clearly, he has not been putting his best foot forward.
After seeing his sidekick showered with special things, including money, for
making good grades, the Dark One/Ninja/Zorro vowed, "I'll do better; I want
something special too!"
Nathan McCall
"In school, the only time we'd really focused on the lives of black people was during Black History Week, which they set aside for us to learn the same old tired stories about Booker T. Washington and a few other noteworthy dead black folks I couldn't relate to. But in Native Son I found a book written about a plain, everyday brother like myself. It inspired me to look for more books like that. Before long, I was reading every chance I got, trying to more fully understand why my life and the lives of friends had been so contained and predictable, and why prison--literally--had become a rite of passage for so many of us." Nathan McCall
One of five children, Nathan McCall was born in 1955 in Portsmouth, Virginia. A
military brat, McCall's family lived in a number of places, including Morocco
and Norfolk, Virginia. He grew up in the middle-class neighborhood of Cavalier
Manor in a fairly normal household; his mother was a homemaker and his
stepfather worked in the local naval shipyard. Both parents stressed the
importance of working hard and getting an education.
Growing up in the south during the 1960s left an indelible mark on McCall's
mental. Convinced his eventual success would be circumscribed by a racist
society, McCall joined a neighborhood street gang that engaged in numerous
crimes, including rape, drug-dealing and robbery. Despite being surrounded by
violence and hopelessness and discouraged by the lack of male role models in his
neighborhood, where "everybody was unemployed or employed at the whim of white
people," McCall managed to graduate from Manor High School in 1973. He briefly
attended Norfolk State University before dropping out to pursue a life of
criminality.
In 1974, a gun-toting McCall shot another young black man during an argument.
The young man survived, and McCall was fined $300 and sentenced to 30 days in
jail. The next year he and a couple of his friends were arrested for the
attempted robbery of a McDonald's restaurant. For brandishing a gun during the
commission of a crime, McCall was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Only 20 at
the time, he entered prison determined to change his life.
McCall created his own rehabilitation regime; he worked in the prison library
and went on a quest for knowledge. For the first time, he read books about black
people. He was impressed by author Richard Wright. McCall decided he wanted to
be a journalist. He researched the qualifications for the field and wrote a
letter of inquiry to the head of the journalism department at Norfolk State
University. The professor encouraged him to enter a scholarship contest
sponsored by the journalism department. McCall won the scholarship contest.
After serving three years of his sentence, McCall was paroled for good behavior,
and because he had a stable family and plans for college once he left prison.
In 1981, McCall graduated with honors from Norfolk State University with a
bachelor's degree in journalism. After graduating, he went to work as a general
assignment reporter for the Virginia Pilot Ledger Star. In 1983, he joined the
staff of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, where he worked for six years. When
he interviewed for a position at The Washington Post in 1989, McCall confessed
he had served time in prison. He was hired to cover city hall and the DC prison
system, and he wrote opinion pieces for the paper's "Outlook" section.
In Makes 
Me
Wanna Holler (1994), racial profiling, class differences and self-hatred
are issues examined by McCall in this autobiographical journey of
self-discovery. In 1995, it became a New York Times bestseller and was named 
Blackboard
Book of the Year. His second book, What's Going On (1997) is a series
of essays on the complex
social, cultural, and political issues of contemporary USA.
With the success of his books, McCall left The Washington Post. He lectures, writes and has taught journalism at Emory University. His first novel, Them, which deals with issues of gentrification in an Atlanta neighborhood, was published in 2007. (Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org, www.answers.com and www.baystatebanner.com)
Prison Nation
On Thursday, February 28, 2008, the Pew Center on the States' Public Safety Performance Project issued a new report on the US prison-industrial complex. According to the report, the US prison population increased substantially in 2007. For the first time in the nation's history, roughly 1 in 100 US citizens was in jail or prison at the start of 2008, making the US number one in this dubious category, surpassing the world's most often criticized repressive regimes, including Iran, China, Russia and Pakistan. Equally disturbing, "the land of the free and home of the brave" is also among the world's leaders when it comes to executions.
Ironically, the 2,319,258 US citizens locked up in jail or prison at the start
of 2008 do not reflect a growth in the national population and/or increase in
the crime rate. For example, the crime rate in the state of Kentucky increased
about 3 percent in 30 years, while inmate population increased 600 percent. The
PEW report attributes the growth in the nation's prison population to tough
sentencing laws, such as "three strikes," which mandates longer prison sentences
even for non-violent offenses. While the get tough on crime, law and order,
politics of the past three decades has resulted in more people in prison, little
has been done to improve recidivism or provide drug and alcohol treatment
programs for this growing segment of the prison population.
With increased incarceration, states' correction budgets rose from less than $11
billion in 1987 to more than $49 billion in 2007. According to the report, the
rate of increase in spending on incarceration was six times greater than
spending on higher education. States are looking for ways to reduce the cost of
incarceration. The Pew report also examines ways to reduce growth in prison
populations and lower costs while maintaining public safety.
The report also looked at racial disparities in incarceration rates. Like most
negative statistics in the USA, blacks and Hispanics make up a disproportionate
share of inmate populations. According to Justice Department incarceration
statistics for 2006, one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 were
incarcerated in 2006. For adult Hispanic men, one in 36 is behind bars. Even
more disturbing, one in 15 adult black men is imprisoned, and one in nine black
men ages 20 to 34. While one in 355 white women ages 35 to 39 is behind bars,
one in 100 black women is in prison.
For more information on the Pew Public Safety Performance Project, visit
www.pewcenteronthestates.org.
Disgruntled says: Born in the year of the Rat, a fiercely noble creature in the Chinese zodiac, Senator John McCain reminds me of Templeton, the rodent in E.B. White's children's book Charlotte's Web. According to the Chinese zodiac, the rat is associated with material prosperity, aggression, wealth, charm, and order, as well as death, war, the occult, pestilence and atrocities. Given these things, one does not know whether to cheer his presidential nomination or bemoan it. Like Templeton, McCain is highly ambitious and cunning, willingness to do whatever it takes to get whatever he wants; he wants to be president. In 2000, he criticized right wing religious nuts in his party, as well as the far left. Now, he willingly embraces them to win the presidency. He embraced George W. Bush and his abhorrent policies, even those he opposed, such as his lopsided tax cuts. McCain espouses trickle-down economics, remaining in Iraq a century, making Bush's tax cuts permanent, lessening regulation of business when greed and a lack of restraint has given us the credit crisis, and other things that show he is out of touch with the vast majority Americans do not bode well for the US with a rat in the Oval Office.
Disgruntled feels: Afraid! This is a wake-up call for meat-eaters. US citizens used to believe the USDA stamp of approval meant the product was of the highest quality. That is a naive assumption. If you eat meat, downers, animals too sick to walk that could be suffering from mad cow, are part of your consumption; the USDA does not ban their inclusion in the meat supply. Even the meat that goes to public schools contains these sick animals. No testing prevents them from being served in school lunches or on your dinner table. Under the Bush administration, the USDA does not ban downers, so meat suppliers make mad profits and could well be committing murder, by selling tainted meat. I am afraid that even the recent 143 million pound beef recall is not guarantee that all the meat will actually be destroyed.
Disgruntled wants to know: Similar to Israel's targeted assassinations, the US recently conducted an air strike in Somalia, ostensibly to kill an alleged Islamic terrorist linked to al-Qaeda. According to news reports, at least eight people, including children, were seriously injured. Somalia is one of those African countries plagued with disease and violence; it has oil, but the vast majority of the people are poor. Wherever oil and gas are natural resources, the US has a national security interest. It even supports despots in promoting that interest. It makes one wonder, is the US looking for terrorists in Somalia or seeking to destroy opposition to its desire to manifest its oil/gas hegemony?
Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and
Telephone Calls
Email
http://upsidedownworld.org/...Washington's
role in the current conflict between Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador...by Cory
Fischer-Hoffman...On Saturday March 1st Colombia's Air Force carried out a
military operation in Ecuador, violating the sovereignty of its western neighbor
nation. The bombing resulted in at least 17 deaths. One of the people reported
to be among the victims is Raúl Reyes, commander and spokesperson for the
Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). This attack is the
continuation and escalation of an on-going war in Colombia that has persisted
for 40 years due to US military funding and training of Armed Forces in
Colombia. The United States has a long history of intervention in Latin America,
ranging from military occupations, to financial support for the overthrow of
democratically elected presidents to economic sabotage to military trainings of
state and private death squads. In Colombia, the United States has taken
particular interest in the oil, land, water, and agricultural resources as well
as the ports and profitable cocaine trade, and more recently Colombia's
strategic location in relation to Venezuela and Ecuador.
Email
www.msnbc.msn.com ....The number of homes
facing foreclosure jumped 57 percent in January compared to a year ago, with
lenders increasingly forced to take possession of homes they couldn't unload at
auctions. Nationwide, some 233,001 homes received at least one notice from
lenders last month related to overdue payments, compared with 148,425 a year
earlier, according to Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac Inc. The worsening
situation came despite ongoing efforts by lenders to help borrowers manage their
payments by modifying loan terms, working out long-term repayment plans and
other actions
Email
Media@wcc-coe.org...WCC "Absolutely
Condemns" Attacks on Civilians in Gaza and Israel...Absolute condemnation for
the "deadly attacks on civilians by the Israeli military on Gaza and by
militants firing rockets from Gaza" was expressed by the World Council of
Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia today. Claiming that "the
path to peace stands open but empty," he called for an end of the "incessant
violations of life and of human rights" and of the "blockade that has
systematically deprived Gazans of almost all their rights." Attacks across the
Gaza-Israeli border have killed more then 110 Palestinians and three Israelis
since the middle of last week. One third of the mostly civilian dead are
reportedly children. In his letter of 3 March, Kobia calls on the WCC member
churches to join in education, advocacy and public witness activities during a
week of International Church Action for Peace in Palestine and Israel, 4-10 June
2008. A worldwide prayer for peace, with central events in Jerusalem and
Bethlehem, is to be held on Sunday, 8 June 2008.
Email www.msnbc.msn.com...Good and bad times for black women...National Urban League report delves into economic, societal ups and downs...This is a triumphant time for black women: Condoleezza Rice in the global diplomatic spotlight, Michelle Obama captivating campaign crowds as a potential first lady, billionaire Oprah Winfrey playing political kingmaker. It's also a traumatic time: Rutgers University basketball players disparaged by radio host Don Imus, a black woman kidnapped and tortured by whites in West Virginia, the home-owning dreams of black women disproportionately dashed by foreclosures. That remarkable mix is the focus of this year's State of Black America report, issued Wednesday by the National Urban League. It features essays looking at the array of challenges faced by African-American women: economic, social, psychological and medical. "The one thing that is certain is the need to hear and amplify the voices of black women," longtime civil rights activist Dorothy Height writes in the foreword. "Too often, our needs, concerns, struggles, and triumphs are diminished and subordinated to what is believed to be the more pressing concerns of others."