Unbossed and
unbought news and information you can use
Vol. 13 No.
31…Dedicated
to the Dialogue on Race…August 1, 2010
Bit of History
The MOVE Massacre
MOVE
was founded in 1972 as the Christian Movement for Life by charismatic leader
John Africa. Little is known about him and his family, except economic hardship
and other survival issues during childhood caused him to leave school early.
Facing the harsher side of life, he developed the survivalist philosophy around
which he organized the MOVE family-hood. Composed mostly of African-Americans
who wore dreadlocks, MOVE advocated a green hunter-gatherer lifestyle that
opposed science, medicine and technology. Like John Africa, most family members
changed their last name to identify with and show reverence for mother
Although the name is not an
acronym, MOVE members spelled the word with capital letters. MOVE is described
variously as a loose-knit radical black liberation group. The family lived in a
communal house owned by Donald Glassey located in the
Police took a very aggressive
stance against MOVE and used every encounter as an incident to provoke
confrontation. Understanding the social dynamics at work in
Rizzo demonized MOVE to
consolidate his political base in
Next, MOVE was portrayed as a health hazard to the community. Although rodent
infestations were common throughout the black community in
MOVE brought in experts to investigate their living conditions and their reports refuted the claims of the City, but the news media never presented this information to the public. After several years of bad publicity, Mayor Rizzo and the City sought to evict MOVE from their compound. This set up the confrontation Rizzo had sought.
Frustrated with the resiliency of MOVE, Mayor Rizzo ordered a blockade of the MOVE compound in 1977. The Philadelphia Police Department erected barricades around MOVE's village but was unable to substantiate any of the charges made through the news media. Determined to crush MOVE, Mayor Rizzo sent agents into the community to generated unrest among residents. MOVE erected speakers around their compound and broadcasted directly to the community to counter the media blitz and misinformation campaign from City Hall. Baffled by MOVE's ability to circumvent the City's eviction efforts after almost a year of negotiation, Mayor Rizzo ordered police to enter the MOVE compound and "drag them out by the scruff of their necks and demolish the structure" in August 1978.
The police attempted to enter the
MOVE compound and during the ensuing firefight, Officer James J. Ramp was
killed. Seven other police officers, five firefighters, three MOVE members, and
three bystanders were injured. Nine MOVE members were found guilty of
third-degree murder in the shooting death of a police officer.
MOVE relocated to the Cobbs Creek area of
On May 13, 1985, supposedly in response to months of complaints by neighbors regarding the health hazards MOVE's compost pile posed, the police claimed that they were attempting to clear the MOVE building when they were fired upon. A confrontation ensued as police lobbed tear gas canisters at the building and the fire department battered the roof of the house with two water cannons. The police fired 10,000 rounds at the house in two hours. A police helicopter flew over and dropped a four-pound bomb made of C-4 plastic explosive and Tovex, a dynamite substitute, onto the roof of the house without any prior warning.
The resulting explosion caused the house to catch fire, igniting a massive blaze which eventually destroyed 65 houses. Eleven people, including John Africa, five other adults and five children, died in the fire. The firefighters were stopped from putting out the fire based on allegations that firefighters were being shot at, a claim that was contested by the lone adult survivor Ramona Africa, who says that the firefighters had earlier battered the house with two deluge pumps when there was no fire. Ramona Africa and one child, Birdie Africa, were the sole survivors.
Philadelphia Mayor W. Wilson
Goode, who ordered the bombing, set up an investigative commission that issued
its report on March 6, 1986. It denounced the actions of city government,
stating that "Dropping a bomb on an occupied row house was
unconscionable." No one from city government was charged criminally. A
jury in the civil suit in
On the 25th anniversary of the 1985 police bombing, the Philadelphia Inquirer
created a multimedia site containing retrospective articles, archived articles,
videos, interviews, photos, and a timeline of the events. Seven of the nine
members convicted in the 1978 shootout became eligible for parole in the spring
of 2008; all seven were denied parole.
By John Burl Smith
The bomb dropped on the MOVE
Compound was the first time it was acknowledged that a governmental body
committed such an atrocious act. It has been rumored that during white mob
violence in
Black residents, who complied with police orders to evacuate and carry only a change of clothing, did not think that what was going to happen to MOVE had anything to do with them. The next day, as they returned to see their homes in rubble and all their possessions destroyed, they could only ask, how could such a thing happen?
Gerri Bostic lost all her
material possessions 25 years ago, perhaps her biggest losses were her peace of
mind and sense of community. Her
Then Mayor W. Wilson Goode said,
"As Mayor of this city I accept full and total responsibility. There was
no way to avoid it. I would approve such a bombing again in a similar
situation." Claiming to be "devastated" by the destruction,
Goode promised the city would rebuild the houses gutted by the blaze, which
left 200 people homeless. Mayor Goode vowed to a group of burned-out residents
to "make you whole again. Your ruined homes will be rebuilt, free, within
a year."
Theodore Price, 50, a retired military man who lives on
After more than a year living in temporary housing, residents returned to their
rebuilt homes in the fall of 1986. That winter, the roofs started leaking.
Next, they discovered defective plumbing and wiring, bad flooring, nails
popping out of walls, burst pipes, broken appliances, basements and backyards
that flooded. Replacement trees have since uprooted parts of sidewalks and are
strangling pipes. "We've been victimized twice," says resident Milton
Williams, 61. "I've had five stoves, four roofs and two living room
ceilings." Today, his front and back windows look out on boarded-up homes.
Today, after spending more than $43 million on redevelopment, the city has two
blocks of boarded-up eyesores to show for its efforts. The homes built to
replace those lost in the bomb-ignited inferno were so shoddy that officials
stopped making repairs and offered buyouts. After 14 years of unending repairs
in 2000, then-Mayor John Street decided that the houses were beyond salvage. He
offered owners $125,000 each plus $25,000 in moving expenses; 37 people took
him up on it. The homes were then worth about $75,000 each.
However, 24 residents sued for breach of contract for stopping the repairs,
which had been promised by Street's predecessor (Mayor W. Wilson Goode). A
federal jury awarded each homeowner $534,000, but a judge slashed it to $250,000.
An appeal brought the settlement to $190,000 per house in 2008.
Sixteen homeowners, including Williams and Bostic, accepted the deal. Bostic,
though, said it was not enough money to move off Osage and, in any case, she is
too old to start over. She turns 90 in September. "I think if I have to
move it will kill me," Bostic said. "Why couldn't they fix the houses
like they should have?" Milton Williams said, "I'm not going to
invest any more in this place not knowing what they're going to do with these
homes,"
Eight homeowners - including Gerald and Connie Renfrow - have refused to accept
the settlement, saying to do so would wrongly imply the city had made things
right. The Renfrows say the money would not allow them to buy an equivalent
house in an area with the amenities they have now - a park, public
transportation and proximity to downtown, shopping and entertainment. Even
though they have paid off their mortgage, they cannot tap the home's equity.
The house needs repairs, sitting amid blight, it is valueless and unsellable.
Connie, 63, says, "They promised to make us whole. They haven't even made
us halfway whole."
Mayor Michael Nutter, the fourth
city leader to deal with fallout from the bombing, has done little to address
the bombed out residents' plight. A spokesman for Mayor Nutter said,
"Unfortunately, the city has many blighted areas demanding attention"
But, there is only one blighted area that resulted from the City of
Most people ask why did it happen
or what did MOVE do to cause the city to retaliate with such force, since they
were not murderers, robbers or a threat to national security. What one must
understand is that John Africa broke the unwritten law of white society. He was
a black man, who dared to try and exist independently of white society. He
developed a philosophy that attracted young black men and women that society
had rejected and written off - drug addicts, prostitutes, homeless, social
predators and other derelicts. John Africa was turning such individuals into
productive family members. For a black man to do that in
Have I No Glory?
By Kosi Dedey
You cannot miss me
Melanin in my skin makes it impermeable to light
At night my teeth give me away
My ancestors built the pyramids
I have survived the slave raiders
I survived the long voyages in bondage,
Darkness and pain
I have survived the greatest holocaust in human history
But the world denies me
The world denies me glory
My shame, their quilt, is wished away.
The holocaust of the 6,000,000 is more enduring than the holocaust of 60,000,000
Yesterday, I was
shamefully bound and forced to leave
Today, I shamelessly
flee
After apartheid I was encouraged to forgive and forget
I was encouraged to form a RAINBOW nation while Nazi war criminals are still pursued
My land and its resources nourish and enrich the world but I remain poor
The world; East, West, North and South gang up against me and I see it
But my leaders say otherwise
My leaders sit, dine and wine with my oppressors
My leaders connive, steal, cheat and oppress me
My leaders have become my oppressor
My spirit is low
I have learnt to survive,
My spirit is lifted with voices from the past
Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr.
Steve Biko, Amilcar Gabral, Kwame Nkrumah, Bob Marley.
STOP!
Are all my heroes dead?
Mandela's resilience and Obama's achievement give me hope
It tells me, 'Yes We Can'
Today I saw a Bolt of lightning
As if to re-assure me, it flashed 100 times
Then it flashed 200 times
I smiled for that Bolt of lightning shook Hitler in his grave
That Bolt of lightning made Jesse Owens smile
Subsequent bolts were all of my kind
Impervious to light, strengthened by years of hard labor
Emboldened by years of discrimination
Run, my brethren, run
In this race, there can be no doubt who the victor is
Maybe some DNA test will prove that you are not one of us
Until then, I say, run like no bodies business
Bolt like thunder and flash like lightening
For in you, I see my
glory today.
About
Me: This poem, written in 2009, was dedicated to Usain Bolt and all
black athletes, whose sterling performances served as its inspiration.
Where Race Isn't Off-Limits
By Jamelle Bouie
In
the aftermath of high-profile racial incidents --Shirley Sherrod, Henry Louis
Gates, heck, the election of Barack Obama-- mainstream pundits and writers have
wondered aloud about the country's inability to talk sensibly about race.
Perhaps most representative of this confusion was Matt Bai's lament in The New
York Times: "Why haven't we moved beyond the old, stultifying debate in
the age of Obama?"
Here is my guess. As Americans, we insist on treating race as its own "thing" to be separately dealt with. Instead of a continuing dialogue, we have the occasional forum for grievance inspired by the controversy du jour. Indeed, it's safe to say that we only ever talk about race when it's impossible not to: in 2008, when the presidential election brought Jeremiah Wright into the spotlight; last year, when President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court; and again, when Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested at his Cambridge home. At each point, race rushed into public view, vanishing as soon as the public lost interest in the story.
Of course, you can't treat race as a box to be checked off. Not only is race a crucial part of American identity; it's impossible to talk about policy in this country without also, somewhere, mentioning race. Indeed, to talk about race as if it were some "thing" apart is to deny the central role it plays in nearly every aspect of American life.
In short, the problem with our "national conversation on race" is that we refuse to acknowledge race as a basic fact of American life. We bury our heads in the sand and pretend to live in a country where there isn't systemic, institutionalized racism and where talking about race is somehow counterproductive to governing.
So, to answer Bai's question,
we'll finally move beyond those old, stultifying debates, when we learn to
integrate race into our normal discussions of policy and focus on the
substantive questions that make race an incredibly pressing concern.
Take financial reform: African American and Hispanic communities were
devastated by the foreclosure crisis and subsequent recession. According to the
Center for Responsible Lending, 7.9 percent of African Americans and 7.7
percent of Hispanics who were new owners or had newly refinanced lost their
homes to foreclosure between 2007 and 2009. By contrast, only 4.5 percent of
whites suffered similarly. And that's to say nothing of the fact that the
recession has all but wiped out recent wealth gains made by blacks, greatly
exacerbating the wealth gap between African Americans and their white
counterparts. According to a recent report by the Institute on Assets and
Social Policy at
Or take health-care reform, which dominated the national conversation for
almost a year. Countless studies have documented the stark disparities in
access and treatment for minorities; according to a 2008 report by the Office
of Minority Health, the "uninsured rate" was 19.5 percent for African
Americans and 32.1 percent for Hispanics. For whites, that rate was 10.4
percent. In 2005, African American adults were twice as likely as white adults
to have been diagnosed with diabetes, and 2.2 times as likely to die from it.
The American Cancer Society has found that for most cancers, blacks are
diagnosed at advanced stages, and that HIV/AIDS continues to be one of the
leading causes of death for young African Americans.
In a world where race is part of each discussion, these facts would be out in
the open. During congressional hearings, questioners would -- in addition to
everything else -- ask about the effect of proposed legislation on minority
communities. Legislators would be aware of the unique circumstances faced by
historically disenfranchised minorities, and seeking legislative ways to
alleviate disparate effects wouldn't be beyond the pale.
In fact, given how race permeates nearly everything, you can easily imagine
race playing out with every issue that enters public discussion: Our discussion
of unemployment insurance would include regular reference to the fact of 15.4
percent joblessness among African Americans (compared to 8.6 percent for
whites). Our discussion of housing policy would make specific reference to the
isolated, hyper-segregated neighborhoods of the inner city, and our discussion
of crime would spark a broader conversation on the staggeringly high numbers of
black and Hispanic men in prison.
None of this is to say that we would avoid racial controversies. Rather, as is
the case with everything, practice makes perfect. The more we can talk about
race in a substantive context, the more comfortably we can talk about race,
period. Indeed, by regularly engaging with race, and on matters of policy
especially, we can train ourselves to move beyond the typical arguments --
"This is racist! No it isn't!" -- and toward a more nuanced
discussion of racial issues.
Admittedly, this is a somewhat
idealized vision of the national conversation -- Americans have never been
particularly enthusiastic about race or policy -- but it gives us something to
aim for: an
Black Farmers: Victims of USDA Discrimination
By Earl Ofari
Hutchinson
Agriculture
Secretary Tom Vilsack was direct, forceful and blunt when he said that the USDA
does not tolerate racial discrimination. This was Vilsack's widely circulated
public explanation for firing Shirley Sherrod. There are two problems with
this. One, the world now knows that Sherrod did not do or say anything to merit
being branded a bigot and sacked. Vilsack and President Obama subsequently
apologized to Sherrod and offered her her job back.
The second problem is more
troubling. Vilsack should have been talking about the shameful and disgraceful
treatment of black farmers by his agency, and the equally shameful and
disgraceful treatment of the farmers by Congress. The day after Vilsack issued
his lofty pronouncement about zero tolerance for racial discrimination, Gary
Grant, President of the 20,000 member Black Farmer & Agriculturalists
Association, flatly called Vilsack's statement "a complete lie." He
had good reason. During the past quarter century, tens of thousands of black
farmers have lost their land, homes, and livestock, due to the blatant refusal
by the USDA to make or guarantee loans to them.
The farmers have filed individual and class lawsuits, staged sit-ins, held
protests marches and rallies challenging the naked discriminatory lending
practices of the USDA. Shirley Sherrod was one of them. She and her husband and
a cooperative of black farmers were refused loans and their farms were
foreclosed on in 1985. They filed a suit. It took more than two decades of
legal wrangling but finally Sherrod and her husband and the other farmers won
their suit and were awarded damages $13 million in damages.
The USDA has revamped its
operations, has an active civil rights division, and says it carefully
scrutinizes its lending program to prevent bias. This doesn't mean that the
USDA has totally righted its past racial wrongs. In a statement, the black
farmer's association notes that the USDA has not punished any of its agents or
officials that encouraged or turned a blind eye to discriminatory lending. A
decade ago the USDA shelled out $2.3 billion to the farmers to settle the
discrimination suits. But that didn't end the injustice. Thousands of black
farmers that lost their land did not get a nickel. They were excluded from the
settlement through bureaucratic bungling, technicalities, and challenges by
Bush Justice Department officials.
A decade later, with the approval of President Obama, Vilsack, agreed to a
second settlement of $1.25 billion. This again didn't end the injustice.
Congress had to approve release of the funds. It set a deadline of March 31 for
approval. The deadline came and went. Congress went on spring vacation without
approving the money. It set another deadline of May 31 for approval. That date
also came and went with no action.
GOP conservatives and the right-wing talking heads then went to work. They railed that the settlement was a deficit buster, was unjustified, and a political giveaway by the Obama administration to appease black Democrats. The presumption being that all the black farmers are Democrats and dutiful Obama voters.
Even as Vilsack loftily intoned
about clamping down on racial discrimination at the USDA (in reference to
Sherrod), Congress again stonewalled the approval of the funds. GOP Senators
demanded, and with the Democrats consent, got the money stripped from the
unemployment insurance extension bill. This was part of the price the Democrats
paid to break the GOP filibuster against the extension.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently vowed that he and the Democrats
would make a determined effort to get the settlement money approved in this
month's war supplemental appropriations bill. That effort failed just last
night.
Vilsack says that Sherrod because of her horrific family history of suffering,
a white farmer murdered her father and was never prosecuted, and her long fight
for justice for farmers is in a unique position especially to tell the story of
the farmer's battle for justice. Unfortunately despite his subsequent apology
and offer of reinstatement, Vilsack's firing of Sherrod gave the right-wing
smear machine the ammunition it needs to blast the settlement as a political
scheme by the Obama administration to payoff black Democrats. New York
Congressman Steven King, even less charitably, called it a fraud.
Given the fierce GOP opposition
to any financial compensation for the beleaguered black farmers, and the long
history of USDA racism, black farmers aren't holding their breath that Congress
will do the right thing and approve the settlement. Given her experience with
USDA, Sherrod probably isn't either. (Source: www.thegrio.com)
Disgruntled says:
According to a report released by Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for
the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the US Treasury's $700
billion bank-investment program represents only a fraction of the federal
support to rescue the financial system and shore up the economy. The final
taxpayer tab could be as much as $23.7 trillion, which includes $6.8 trillion
in aid offered by the Federal Reserve, $2.3 trillion in programs offered by the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), $7.4 trillion in TARP and other
aid from the Treasury and $7.2 trillion in federal money for Fannie Mae,
Freddie Mac, credit unions, Veterans Affairs and other federal programs.
Downplayed by the Treasury Department as hypothetical maximums, Treasury
officials noted that to date less than $2 trillion has been spent and $70
billion in TARP capital investments have already been repaid. That aside,
Barofsky's quarterly report criticized the handling of TARP funds, especially
the lack of accountability and oversight. His office has nearly three dozen
ongoing criminal and civil investigations related to abuse of TARP programs. As
a show of gratitude to taxpayers for the unprecedented assistance that has been
given the financial system, banks have restricted consumer and small business
lending and raised fees and interest rates.
Disgruntled
feels: Skepticism! Stocks are up somewhat! Big business balance sheets
are flush with cash. Earnings are skyrocketing, but businesses are not hiring.
Consumer confidence is in the tank. The housing market remains in the doldrums.
These contradictory sentiments are enough to make anyone following the economy
a skeptic. After all, this is a free enterprise economy. When stocks and
profits are up, one would expect businesses to invest in plant and equipment,
which one expects would be followed by hiring workers and an improvement in
housing. But, that is not happening here. My guess is, businesses are buying
back their own stock and engaging in mergers and acquisition. This atmosphere
does not bode well for the
Disgruntled wants to know: Shirley Sherrod, the
black women falsely accused of racism and forced to resign as USDA Director of
Rural Development in
Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls
Email
www.reuters.com ...Four S. Africans to pay fine
for racist video...By Jon Herskovitz …JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Four
white South African men reached a deal to pay fines for making a video showing
elderly black cleaners being humiliated. The video shot by the four former
students at the University of the Free State in a conservative Afrikaner
farming region came to light about two years ago, sparking outrage in a country
working to heal the wounds of its apartheid past. The four pleaded guilty; the
victims worked at a university dormitory. The video showed four women and one
man running a race barefoot while wearing their cleaning uniforms and being
taken to a bar where they drank alcohol and danced to Afrikaans music in what
was portrayed as an initiation ceremony. The video also showed one student
urinating into a container of soup. He said: "This is the final
ingredient," before giving it to the elderly cleaners. A lawyer for the
defendants said that what appeared to be urine was juice. The video's discovery
in 2008 led to campus protests and scuffles with riot police. University
officials asked people to move on, saying the four had shown genuine
contrition, allowing the case to linger deepened the humiliation of the
victims. Some whites in the region rallied behind the students, saying they
should not be punished for what was a common prank and protest over the
school's desegregation policies.
Email chblow@nytimes.com ...Obama's
'Race' War...By Charles M. Blow...Americans are engaged in a war over a word:
racism....Mature commentary on the subject has descended into tribal tirades, hypersensitive
defenses and rapid-fire finger-pointing. The very definition of the word seems
under assault, being bent and twisted back on itself and stretched and pulled
beyond recognition. Many on the left have taken an absolutist stance, that the
anti-Obama sentiment reeks of racism and denial only served to confirm guilt.
Many on the right feel as though they have been convicted without proof -- that
tossing "racism" their way is itself racist. The "racists crying
racism" meme is being pushed hard, on multiple fronts, all centered around
the president. Blacks, stunned by this new topsy-turvy world of racial
politics, continue to rally around Obama. In opinion polls, they consistently
rate his performance and policies highly; I suspect as much out of solidarity
as conviction. Whether the president likes it or not, he's the nexus of this
debate. I, for one, think that he should stand up and redirect it from the
negative to the noble. There will be some grumbling to be sure, but there
already is. It's your choice, Mr. President. I say stand up -- for
Email yipzzz@gmail.com ... "In