The DISH

Unbossed and unbought news and information you can use

Vol. 11 Issue 32…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…August 10, 2008

Bit of History

Fist of Freedom (1968)

"When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the president either." Jesse Owens, black American field and track star that won four gold medals in the 1936 Berlin Olympics and single-handedly destroying Adolf Hitler's propaganda about Aryan supremacy, commenting on all that was written about the fact that Hitler snubbed him on the medals platform.

"The Fist of Freedom" is a documentary by HBO TV on the silent gesture made by Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the victory stand in Mexico City at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games. Their silent salute, heard around the world, is considered one of the most memorable moments in the American Civil Rights Movement.

John Carlos was born on June 5, 1945, in Harlem, New York. A shopkeeper's son, he became a star athlete. He equaled the 9.1 second 100-yard world record and won a number of individual track titles in helping San Jose State University win its first national track and field title. His teammate, Tommie Smith, was born on June 6, 1944 in Clarksville, Texas. As an infant, Smith barely survived pneumonia. Like Carlos, Smith became a star athlete at San Jose State. As a sophomore, he began breaking world records in track, setting thirteen world records in all.

Away from the track, both athletes felt the sting of racial discrimination. Concerned about the plight of black Americans, these young men chose to silently protest against racial injustice and show solidarity with black people in the most public venue available to them. Their protest at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City is considered one of the most overtly political statements in modern Olympic history.

On October 16, 1968, Smith won the 200 meter race in the world-record time of 19.83 seconds. Peter Norman of Australia won the silver, while Carlos took the bronze. After the race, the three medalists stood on the ceremonial podium. Carlos and Smith received their medals shoeless, but wearing black socks. Smith wore a black scarf around his neck, while Carlos wore beads. Each athlete wore a black glove. All three athletes wore Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) badges, after Norman expressed sympathy with their ideals. Sociologist Harry Edwards, the founder of the OPHR, had urged black athletes to boycott the games.

When "The Star-Spangled Banner" was played, Carlos and Smith bowed their heads and raised their black-gloved fist in the black power salute. The symbolism was truly powerful. The shoeless feet and black socks the athletes wore represented black poverty in America, the scarf stood for black pride, while the beads Carlos wore "were for those individuals that were lynched, or killed that no-one said a prayer for, that were hung and tarred. It was for those thrown off the side of the boats in the Middle Passage."

Intuit's Vibe

The Blood

By Zhana

I am growing a new tongue that will tell me who I am,

Remind me of my stories

And sing to me the songs I have forgotten.

Strong backs and heads

Carried firewood and water over many miles

Arms and backs ploughed and harvested

Fingers planted...Wombs gave birth

Bleeding into the future, into remembering

Hands and hearts raised their young

Taught them the ways of their ancestors

Taught them to worship their gods

Spoke with tongues firmly rooted...In the blood

That carried their stories their poems their songs.

We shared the same tongue

Until it was ripped out

And we were left with the root

Bleeding into the past, into forgetting.

A million hands lying on the floor of the jungle,
Piled so high they threaten to reach the sun.
Men's women's tiny children's hands
That would not could not did not
Work fast enough chopping the rubber.
Steel blade slicing through,
Blood spurting, soaking the earth
Hands drying and baking in the heat,
Flesh rotting, fingers withering,
Never to paint or carve or sew or write,
Returning to the earth.

The blood, the blood soaking into the timbers of a ship
Splashing at the cut of a lash.
Dripping onto the auction block...Calling my name.
It screams, it shouts, it whispers, it sings to me.
Tracking sticky red footprints.
Drying, crusting on the back, the legs.
The blood that flows through my veins still.

The bones of a million people
Lie at the bottom of the sea.
Gleaming glistening rotting...Cleaned by the fish
While salt water swirls around them.
Voices cried out long ago,

Remember me, remember this,
Don't sail away and leave me lying here.
I can hear them still.

Starved whipped tortured
The blood called to them: I must be free.
Flowing, pumping, beating ...Day after day
Night after night...It would not let them rest.
So..They fought.
Mouths filled with fear, bellies burning with rage
Hearts demanding justice, hand grasping a cutlass
Arm raising a knife
Fingers kneading poison into bread
Stirring it into soup...The blood always remembered.
Flowing, pumping, dripping, pooling,
It called to them, shouted to them
Whispered to them, sang to them.
I WILL be free..They told their stories

Mother to daughter...Father to son...blood to blood.

My ears have been filled with lies

About my people and about me.

But the stories that told me who I was

Still lie nestled deep within my ears.

I can barely hear the drums

That beat, beat, beat...In rhythm with my heart

And with the hearts of my people.

But my feet remember we shared

One rhythm one step.

I am cleaning out the lies that have filled my ears

So that I can hear the drums again.

My eyes no longer see the pictures,

The shapes, the colours...The curve of wood,

The bright fabric twirling around my head,

In colours of the sun

But the pictures sleep behind my eyes.

Pictures that tell me who I am.

Our feet trace the steps that our ancestors trod

And step where theirs once stood

As we are working out where we are now

And how we got here

My dance has steps that have never been danced before.

I paint with colours that have never been seen.

My tongue caresses your ears with notes that have never been sung.

My stories tell of heroes and villains,

Of pain, of loss, of courage....Bits have been left out

A finger an eyelid a drop of blood

But still we gather our stories, our pictures our songs.

Our laughter our joy our tears our rage

We create something new as the blood seeps through.

We have lost a line, a word, a note

A colour a shade...A hemline a stone

A corner an angle or a page

But we are gathering up the stories

Of who we are, where we have been and are now.

And what we may become.

The Salute Seen Around the World

By John Burl Smith

Studying America's history, the Battle at Lexington and Concord (1775) during the Revolutionary War is said to be "The shot heard around the world!" For me, a slave descendant, a picture taken at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City was "The salute seen around the world!" To put everything into perspective, I became a black power activist and organized a group of young blacks called The Invaders in Memphis, Tennessee.

The Invaders supported striking sanitation workers when they walked off the job in protest over inhumane working conditions. We met with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and joined his "Poor Peoples Campaign" the day he was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel (4-4-68). Civil rights and black power leaders were locked in a desperate struggled for the hearts and minds of black people as the Poor Peoples mule train headed for Washington D.C. amidst national turmoil.

That year, US college campuses erupted and students died in protests against the war in Vietnam. President Lyndon B. Johnson escalated the war and then announced he would not seek re-election. Vowing to continue the war to victory, Vice President Hubert Humphrey entered the race against Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy, while "Tricky Dick" Richard Nixon brought skullduggery back into the game as the Republican nominee. Overnight Robert Kennedy (6-15-68) became a ray of hope, but just as quickly, he was assassinated. The "Summer of Rage" moved on to Chicago, where in August, police attacked anti-war protesters and sparked a bloody riot during the Democratic Convention.

By October, things turned really ugly for those committed to the black power struggle. J. Edger Hoover's Co-Intel-Pro agents infiltrated our ranks and then marked most leaders for death or prison. Sitting in a jail cell in Memphis, things seemed pretty bleak as I watched the Olympic awards ceremony for the 200 meter race. Like a ray of sunlight showing through dark clouds, Tommie Smith and John Carlos stood on the podium with heads bowed, while 'The Star Spangled Banner' played in the background, and raised their black-gloved fists.

Their action created the most memorable shot in Olympic history. Not only did it become the most popular medal ceremony of all time, but for slave descendants, it became a milestone in the struggle for black liberation. Their "silent protest" was voted the sixth most memorable event of the century. Their audacious act gave me hope and courage that we would endure!

Prior to their salute, the Olympics conjured up visions of Jesse Owens winning gold in Berlin in 1936 before an amazed Adolf Hitler, maybe Wilma Rudolph winning 4 gold medals or most definitely Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) dominating the Russians in Rome in 1960. Now, the defiant stand against US racism by these two intrepid black men had taken center stage!

IOC President Avery Brundage was enraged by two black men who defied the status quo; he demanded immediate retribution. The white world closed ranks behind him, claiming, "The Olympic Games were apolitical" and that "The basic principle of the Olympic Games is that politics plays no part whatsoever in them." Smith and Carlos were expelled. Brundage's hard line was not taken against Czechoslovakian gymnast Vera Cáslavská, who twice bowed her head and turned away as the Soviet national anthem played, when she collected her medals. Russia had invaded Czechoslovakia.

Today, no one really doubts that the Olympics is all about politics, because this year everyone is kissing China's derriere, the IOC included. The IOC awarded Beijing the games to ingratiate itself, despite China's human-rights record, dumping lead tainted toys on the world, as well as, releasing enough smog to choke a horse. Also, looking the other way to avoid dealing with Russia, which as the Soviet Union doped a whole generation of Cold War athletes with massive doses of steroids and other chemicals designed to improve performances, the IOC oozes hypocrisy. Hitler staged the 1936 Olympiad as a tribute to the dominance of the "Aryan" master race. But in 2000, whites went berserk when black runners draped themselves in the US flag. Other than they were black, I'm not sure why this was viewed derogatorily.

The IOC should give Smith and Carlos a medal for their protest because it was one of the few times the Olympic Games actually symbolized true human values and ideals. However, after 40 years, the IOC is like Jonah Goldberg (Los Angeles Times), who castigated ESPN for giving this year's Arthur Ashe Courage Award to Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Goldberg called their protest, a "Nazi-like salute." Even after 40 years, some whites are still hyperbolic and would prefer Smith and Carlos be "tarred and feathered" on the White House lawn.

The next day I cut their picture from the newspaper cover story and pasted it to the bottom of the bunk above me, so the guards couldn't see it. I looked at it each night and each day; I saluted Smith and Carlos with a fist and silent prayer of hope that we would endure.

Hood Notes

'Bench by the Road:' Remembering Slavery

"There is no suitable memorial, or plaque, or wreath or wall, or park or skyscraper lobby...There's no 300-foot tower, there's no small bench by the road." Toni Morrison (1989)

On Saturday, July 26, 2008, Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison and more than 300 others held a memorial ceremony to dedicate a "bench by the road" in remembrance of slavery. The event took place on Sullivan's Island, home to Fort Moultrie, which served as a point of entry into North America for about 40 percent of the millions of Africans enslaved in the USA.

According to Carlin Timmons, a park ranger with the National Park Service, which secured the bench and laid the foundation that included a bronze plaque explaining its significance, "All the estimates were rough, but historians believe 12 million to 15 million Africans came to the Americas and the Caribbean. Of those, 4 to 10 percent were brought to North America."

Over the next five years, the "Bench by the Road" project, which is sponsored by the Toni Morrison Society, a nonprofit group of scholars and readers dedicated to examining Ms. Morrison's work, plans to call on individuals, corporations and community groups to help place benches at 10 sites. Those sites of significance in Ms. Morrison's books and black history include Fifth Avenue in Harlem, where the Silent Parade protesting the East St. Louis, Illinois riots was held in 1917, the site of Emmett Till's 1955 murder in Mississippi, which helped galvanize the civil rights movement and Oberlin, Ohio, a stop on the Underground Railroad near Ms. Morrision's hometown of Lorain.

Under a blazing sun, accompanied by African drums, Ms. Morrison and others spoke about the need to conduct research and acknowledge the past in order for there to be healing and reconciliation. Many attendees wept as they read the plaque beside the 6-foot-long, 26-inch-deep black steel bench, which faces the Intracoastal Waterway. The plaque's inscription says the bench honors the memory of enslaved Africans who arrived on Sullivan's Island and of those who died during the Middle Passage. "Nearly half of all African-Americans have ancestors who passed through Sullivan's Island." (Sources: www.tonimorrisonsociety.org/bench.html and www.nytimes.com/2008/07/28/arts/design/28benc.html)

Politics Y2K8

War on drugs costly for Blacks

By William Reed

When the draconian drug laws were being enacted African American legislators went along with "law and order" politicians with practices that would incarcerate millions of drug offenders from inner city neighborhoods and help rural politicians make the business of imprisonment a major industry in their districts.

Every passing year the drug problem gets worse and its time African Americans make legislative representatives face up to the impact the War on Drug has on us. The U.S. government spends $600 per second in a "war without end." Of the $19 billion the U.S. spent last year on drug laws, 61 percent went to criminal justice and just 30 percent for treatment and prevention programs.

The War on Drugs is a prohibition campaign intended to reduce the illegal drug trade - to curb supply and diminish demand for certain psychoactive substances deemed "harmful or undesirable" by the government. This initiative includes a set of laws and policies that are intended to discourage the production, distribution, and consumption of targeted substances.

Amid the frantic rhetoric of our leaders, we've become blind to reality: The war on drugs, as it is currently fought, is wasting unimaginable amounts of tax dollars, increasing crime and despair and severely and unnecessarily harming millions of peoples' lives. "Law and order" politicians have exacerbated drugs laws and practices. After all, drugs are bad so why not escalate the war against drugs?

Politicians get to look tough in front of voters and the drug war bureaucracy gets ever expanding budgets.

African Americans comprise 12 percent of the population and 13 percent of drug users, but make up 38 percent of those arrested for drug offenses and 59 percent of those convicted. Among the war's tragic consequences, by far the worst is the criminalization of a vast percentage of our population, destroying families and individuals by the millions. Since 1995, the U.S. prison population has grown an average of 43,266 inmates per year. It costs approximately $450,000 to put a single drug dealer in jail - costs of arrest, conviction, room and board. But, treatment is 10 times more cost effective than interdiction in reducing drug use in the US. Every additional dollar invested in substance abuse treatment saves taxpayers $7 in societal costs, and that additional law enforcement costs 15 times as much as treatment to achieve the same reduction in societal costs.

The War on Drugs thrives on the backs of minority populations. It has a big payroll, and everyone on that payroll has some interest in seeing the war continue. It supports the prison industry. Putting people behind bars, building, supplying, and running prisons have become big business. This alignment of government and business in running the prison system is sometimes called the prison-industrial complex. It's time African Americans acknowledge the cost, destruction, failure, and ultimate futility of the War on Drugs and take actions to end it. Black families are on the losing end of this fiasco and have to confront those in power currently benefiting and profiting from it. Support for the War on Drugs in this country is broad and deep, and the interests that it serves overlap and interlock in complex ways. Most of the people running the War on Drugs don't think they are doing something evil. Most of them think they are doing their jobs. And they think those jobs are important and necessary.

What Blacks need to do is call a check on politicians and insist on alternatives to the War on Drugs. A public-health action, sometimes called regulated distribution, would be better all around. Under this alternative the government sets up regulatory regimes to pull addicts into the public-health system. The government, not criminal traffickers, would control the price, distribution, and purity of addictive substances - which it already does with prescription drugs. This would take most of the profit - which drives the crime - out of drug trafficking. Addicts would be treated - and if necessary maintained - under medical auspices. (William Reed - www.BlackPressInternational.com)

Venue for an Artist

CNN's Black in America (Excerpts)

By Dr. Boyce Watkins

When I received the email about CNN's recent series "Black in America", I wasn't happy, I wasn't sad: I was indifferent. I watched the show the same way I normally watch CNN: between flights in random airports. I don't even watch CNN when I appear on the network; I stay pretty busy.

I won't say how I felt after the special; I'll just let you read my facial expression through these words. Imagine a modest-looking, youngish-oldish, blackish/brownish bald man with a twisted frown-like scowl, a twitching, squinted left eye, a curled up bottom lip and gritted teeth, viewing a TV screen between his two fingers. Sort of like the face you make when watching an Olympic gymnast fall crotch-first onto the balance beam right before breaking his leg.

"Black in America" was the socio-political lovefest between CNN and black people that just wasn't going to materialize. It was the day when middle class black America truly thought we were going to be vindicated and the world would finally learn to love us. Black America became Jeremiah Wright at The National Press Club, thinking that the same media that destroyed his image was going to be the source of image repair. But like Jeremiah Wright (whom I respect tremendously), we marched away angrily, kicking the cracks in the sidewalk, shocked that we'd all been bamboozled. We were finally invited into the game, but only so they could use our ball and make us the mascot.

I don't hate CNN, I've done a lot of work with them....I did not, however, feel CNN could pull off an honest conversation on race; I don't believe they wanted to. They were, like American Generals thinking they could muscle their way to peace in Iraq. They felt that if they spent enough money, engaged in enough viral marketing and got enough black people excited, they could create a ratings monster.

CNN achieved its goal. What made me feel bad for black people is that many of us thought that their goals were the same as our own. Here are some quick thoughts:

1) Black people were not the target audience of this series. CNN was not talking TO black people, they were talking ABOUT black people...Black people have always made good entertainment for the corporate news monster, which feeds itself from the number of eyeballs it gets on the screen. 2) Most of the content for a TV news show, guest selection, and everything else, comes from the mind of the producer(s). Most producers of cable news shows, and all of the hosts, are non-black. Their viewpoints, structured in a racist society, are going to manifest themselves in the content of the show. 5) Personally, I was a bit offended by the "Black in America" series, primarily because it gave me exactly what I expected: a series of shallow statistics and vignettes, featuring the most dramatically negative aspects of our existence, all provided without context to an audience that sits back and says "What's wrong with those people?"

Self-reflection is necessary. But I don't believe in self-hatred. To LIFT yourself, you must learn to LOVE yourself. CNN's "Black in America" didn't give us much to love.

About Me: Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Finance Professor at Syracuse University and author of "What if George Bush were a Black Man?" For the essay in its entirety and more information on the artist, please visit www.BoyceWatkins.net.

Disgruntled feels: Busted! Ron Suskind's new book, "The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism," is his third nonfiction on Washington under George W. Bush. It is created a great deal of flack from the hacks running this country, because Suskind's latest installment offers a narrative that shows the Bush cabal manufactured evidence to justify its decision to go to war against Iraq. We knew it all along, but Suskind's work connects more dots to solidify what we felt. And, even if Congress chooses not to act to bring the culprits to justice, Bush and the criminals running this country have been busted!

Disgruntled says: On July 29, a swat team raided the home of Cheye Calvo, the mayor of Berwyn Heights, a small upscale community in Prince George's County, Maryland. Apparently, the police had intercepted a FedEx package addressed to Calvo's wife that contained 32 pounds of marijuana, delivered it to their home and waited for someone to retrieve it from their front porch. On arriving home, Calvo took the package inside. All hell broke loose; he was handcuffed in his boxers and his two dogs, which were like the couple's children, were killed on the spot. Less than twenty-four hours later, the mayor, a white man, was cleared; his property was not confiscated and he spent no time incarcerated. While the couple lost a bit of dignity and their dogs, no human lives were lost in this police intervention. Now, compare this to what happened to Kathryn Johnson, a grandmother who died in a botched drug raid in Atlanta or an unarmed Tarika Wilson, who was shot and killed by Ohio police while holding her son, and the countless other unarmed black men all across the US that have died as a result of overly aggressive police action. In most cases, all the police have to say is they feared for their lives to be exonerated of any wrongdoing. Now, perhaps the mayor and his wife can relate to black mothers and others that have lost sons and loved ones at the hands of police that are supposed to serve and protect them.

Disgruntled wants to know: Of late, like many folks trying to save a dime, I spend lots of time navigating the vagaries of public transportation. The experience certainly affords one plenty of opportunities to observe people up close; sometimes uncomfortably so. One of the things I have noticed is the widespread use of cell phones. Sometimes it is downright embarrassing to listen to their side of personal conversations. I feel like an eavesdropper, when I would rather be a stopper, as in put a stop to all this useless talk. Folks on cell phones are a public nuisance, whether they rely on public transportation or use personal vehicles. You can always tell when a driver is on his/her cell. Driving slowly and/or erratically, they are obviously preoccupied with their conversations rather than paying attention to the road. Disturbing the peace and breaking verbs, most of the folks I see and hear on cell phones need to be schooled on phone etiquette and the English language. While the verdict may still be out on whether or not cell phones kill brain cells, I know for a fact that those found with cell phones attached to the side of their heads are the ones that can least afford to lose any brain function. I cannot help but wonder; what the hell did these folks do before the cell?

Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls

Email www.msn.com Jobless Rate Climbs to 5.7% as 51,000 Jobs Lost in July ...By Michael Grynbaum...The nation's employers eliminated 51,000 jobs in July, the seventh consecutive contraction in the labor market. And the unemployment rate rose 5.7 percent, a sign that the pressure on business owners and consumers is likely to continue. The number of layoffs was less than the 75,000 that economists had expected, and while the economy has lost jobs every month this year, the declines have softened. Businesses cut fewer jobs in June and May than the government had previously reported, for a net gain of 26,000 jobs for those two months. Still, the unemployment rate has steadily moved higher; in July, it rose to 5.7 percent from 5.5 percent in June, its highest level since March 2004. The steepest losses came among the manufacturing, construction and trade industries. Administrative and retail workers also slipped.

Email www.latimes.com..Los Angeles - Four food manufacturers agreed to reduce levels of a cancer-causing chemical in their potato chips and French fries under a settlement announced by the state attorney general's office. California sued H.J. Heinz Co., Frito-Lay, Kettle Foods Inc., and Lance Inc. in 2005, alleging they violated a state requirement that companies post warning labels on products with carcinogens. The companies avoided trial by agreeing to pay a combined $3 million in fines and reduce the levels of acrylamide in their products over three years. Acrylamide forms naturally when starchy foods are baked or fried. Studies have shown the chemical causes cancer in lab animals and nerve damage to workers who are exposed to high levels. The Food and Drug Administration is researching whether acrylamide in food poses a health risk.

Email www.BusinessWeek.com ...Are cell phones the next cigarettes? By Jay Yarow...It took years for the hazards of smoking to come to light. Now there's debate over the safety of mobile phones. Mobile phones have been around for more than 20 years, and they're now used by more than 3 billion people. Yet questions linger over whether they can contribute to health problems, including cancer. The most recent alarm came from the director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, who warned school employees to limit their cell phone use based on early unpublished data from scientific studies. "Although the evidence is still controversial, I am convinced that there are sufficient data to warrant issuing an advisory to share some precautionary advice on cell-phone use," Ronald Herberman wrote in a memo to 3,000 faculty and staff members in late July.