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Volume 3 Issue 18…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race… May 12, 2000

Note: The DISH is based on themes from T.H.I.N.C. (Teaching Humanity In New Consciousness): The Chrysalis of Evolution. According to the President's Initiative on Race, "The issues that this book brings to the forefront are important in our efforts to achieve the goals set forth by the President for the Initiative. This work will serve as a solid resource for us as we begin to examine these critical issues." For your copy of T.H.I.N.C., The DISH or to submit comments, contact ICIM, Inc. at (404) 244-6023 or email us at icim@bellsouth.net. The DISH © 2000

by John Burl Smith

Turnout 75%, The Richard L. Kirksey, Jr. Memorial Foundation initiated an international effort to bring America before the International Court of Justice at The Hague by appealing to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in a letter from Yohannes Sharriff Smith dated November 7, 1997. On behalf of slaves' descendants, he requested UN assistance to bring charges of genocide against America for human rights violations. The Secretary-General has not acknowledged our pleas for assistance, nor have slaves' descendants gained a forum to press our grievances.

Rebuffed by the UN, the Foundation created a dialogue on race with THE DISH to Teach Humanity In New Consciousness (T.H.I.N.C.). Designed to discover how the value of black human capital is determined, Dot M. Smith's research shows Article 1 Section 2 of the United States Constitution is the base of institutionalized racism embedded in American society. Valuing blacks as 3/5 white, this relationship is demonstrated using median family incomes, which reflects a stable gap along the interval .5 to.65 that has existed since slavery. Lynching, massacres and other genocidal actions create such a hostile environment that blacks are intimidated into accepting 3/5ths as equality.

Providing a preponderance of the evidence, Smith's research supports the charge of genocide by America and begs the question of relief. However, shut out of all international dialogue, we are unrecognized as a voice to tell our own story. Unable to counter government claims that blacks agree with its policies, slaves' descendants are muzzled at international forums. Recent letters to Mr. Tony Blair, Prime Minster of England and EU President Romano Prodi asked support for our international boycott against states that officially display Confederacy symbols, especially Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina. Target date is May 20, 2000 the National Black Day Out. Our goal is to subsume and consolidate the myriad symbolic arguments into a coherent position and develop a common approach to core issues. Hypocritical claims of freedom, justice and equality for blacks merit international scorn and economic isolation for America, as it demanded for Austria.

Recognizing reparation owed African slave descendants the world over, blacks in America simultaneously join the drive for an African American Equal Rights Amendment (AAERA) to efforts to remove Confederate symbols under one boycott. The AAERA will repeal the 3/5ths value ascribed slaves' descendants, add to the Constitution principles of equality espoused in the Declaration of Independence, grant slaves' descendants reparations and create structures to reeducate and change Americans' mind-sets about America's slave history.

Either America is a nation where all citizens enjoy freedom, justice and equality or it is not. Slaves' descendants are beyond allowing whites to determine what rights blacks deserve and when. Our international appeals for support of our international economic boycott will continue until passage of the AAERA; its target date is 2004. AAERA ends debates on extending the Voting Rights Act! For more, click on the Genocide Chronicles. John 2000

Agnes Scott Rocks

A talented duo, vocalist Jodi Merriday and Yohannes Sharriff Smith teamed up to treat the faculty, staff, students and family members to a rare wedding of jazz and spoken word at Agnes Scott College's Black Students' Awards Program. Look for the chance to experience the soulful combination.

First of March Madness

by Shawna Kent

The 29 days of black history month passed, and all the feel good speeches of unity and equality ended. Promptly leaving our short-term memory at 12:01 A.M. March first, it is substituted with behaviors and attitudes we are most comfortable with. These attitudes keep Confederate symbols in places of honor, give black men prison time for petty crimes and imagined offenses, which keep us in a choke hold that started on slave ships bound for America.

Let this serve as a warning to anyone of color caught out after midnight March first! You may not be turned into a pumpkin, but you can be thrown in jail and cited for misdemeanor prowling and loitering in Cobb County, Georgia. It happened to two friends when their car broke down. Leaving the car in a public park, they went looking for a pay phone when Cobb County's finest pulled up and asked them to step over to the curb. Asked why they were out so late, the young men told them about the car problem and explained their search for a pay phone. Without verifying the location or condition of the car, charges of misdemeanor prowling and loitering were lodged against the young men. Instead of a ride to their car or home, they were arrested and escorted to jail. We will reveal how the judge sees this arrest after our friends' court appearance on these charges. (Shawna Kent is author of the book "WORDS." Email her at Shawna@webmail.bellsouth.net.)

Disgruntled feels: Blacks will recover from America's historic and ongoing racial discrimination when those who practice it cease, repent their wickedness and pay reparations!

Disgruntled wants to know: President Clinton started a national race dialogue, then he abandoned the project. Given everyone is quiet about it, he must be gagging those who could speak to his Race Initiative's findings. Could this be why John Hope Franklin is silent?

Disgruntled says: Thank the maker! We are rid of that juju Desmond TuTu and his dodo! The last thing we need is a foreign house nigger proselytizing status quo voodoo!

America's financial markets continue to heat up the domestic economy. Americans are buying a lot on credit. Still, this unprecedented prosperity missed many. For those who were in on the good times at the margins, oil price increases and shorts could derail our pseudo-prosperity. This economic instability could lead to more than truckers demonstrating in Lafayette Park; angry Americans may demonstrate on the White House lawn.

If something does not happen soon, Clinton will wag the dog to lull the gullible into believing all is well with the world's greatest economy. Please no more Elian Gonzalez, bombing missions or goofy home videos. Heavens forbid the media gets the green light for more sex and debauchery. Can you imagine CNN mimicking Russia's stripe-tease artists reading the nightly news routine? As a way to get men's minds off the terrible domestic economic conditions? Do not laugh! We already have "Who wants to be a Millionaire?" or some such rot, which is a clear indication that we have indeed sunk low! Mark my words, we could go further by putting sex on the 6 o'clock news again, as a wag the dog diversion. Remember Monica Lewinsky and oral sex at the family dinner table?

Twice quoted in the DeKalb section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution touting the praises of buses, Gloria Gaines, MARTA's VP of planning and analysis, is a black woman. By design, she tries to justify the fact that MARTA plans do not include the long-promised rail line for South DeKalb. Gov. Barnes nullified that commitment with his great train robbery to satisfy sprawling economic development in Cobb, Clayton and Gwinnett Counties.

Since the early 1970's, South DeKalb paid for rail service through MARTA's sales tax, but its train will benefit Barnes' friends and special interests where MARTA's sales tax is not imposed. Blacks like Gaines, Marty King and too many others help perpetuate this kind of taxation without representation. To all blacks in high profile positions that rubber stamp bad decisions and then try to sell them as progressive ideas to the people, we recognize house niggery! Blah on you!

Hypocrisy 102: Confederate Democrats

Pretending there is no groundswell to change Georgia's flag, Governor Roy Barnes avoids the subject. Lying, he says, "there are more important issues to deal with." Fact is, Barnes sees the flag as his heritage and will resist efforts to change it.

At a conservative southern gathering, he promised to keep the Confederate battle emblem in Georgia's flag. Moreover, he made Georgia the firewall for keeping Confederate symbols in places of honor, such as in Georgia's flag.

As a Cobb County state legislator, Barnes led the fight to defeat efforts to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state symbol. However, like the state flag, as governor, he represents all the people. Clearly, his actions are aimed at appeasing the same narrow vested interest he served as state legislator. A Democrat, Barnes' narrow perspective on this subject does not bode well for statewide leadership for the new millennium in a state that is increasingly more diverse. His stonewall attitude about changing Georgia's flag reveals more than a commitment to his southern heritage; it shows the depth of his hypocrisy.

Having switched political parties a few times, whether Democrat or Republican, Barnes is a KKK man. He may claim not to be a Lester Maddox or John Rocker-type, but when it gets right down to it, he supported the redneck philosophy. Barnes needed black votes to become governor; black churches were regular campaign stumps. To secure his win, he bought the state's blacks of consequence. All Democrats, rather than work to change the flag, Barnes is silent and his house niggers are talking that "next year we might do something" crap

The Democratic Party does not represent black people; it uses them. In the south, it is the Confederacy Party; its standard bearer, the governor, supports the flag and all its racist implications. It is hypocrisy to pretend otherwise, but he will when seeking reelection.

Don't Forget the Georgia International Boycott starts May 20, 2000 National Black Day Out!

Burn Baby Burn?

Before the Industrial Revolution, skin darkened by the sun meant manual labor. When the working class went into factories, tans symbolized money and leisure. Tricia Couture at http://www.echoonline.emich.edu writes, "In the 1920s, tanning was all the rage. Touted as a cure for everything from acne to tuberculosis, Coco Chanel made tanning fashionable. By the 1930s, tans meant health, wealth and style. In the 1940s, sun tan lotion hit the market, designed to assist in the basting and roasting, not protection from sun.

Within ten years, the bikini became vogue, allowing women's bodies close to total exposure. In the 1960s, the sun lamp brought tanning to the living room. Throughout the 1970s and '80s, the fashion press promoted the sun tan as something to make you look and feel healthier and younger, despite the growing body of scientific evidence that it not only leads to deeper-etched wrinkles and reduces life expectancy, too. Modern beaches are as busy as ever, while people are generally more careful, the irony is that sales of fake tan products are booming. Pale skin has yet to make a real comeback. In most minds, brown is still beautiful."

Skin cancer, which is believed to be caused by the sun's harmful ultra-violet (UV) rays, is the most common cancer in the United States, and it is the most rapidly increasing form. All people, regardless of their skin color can develop skin cancer or melanoma. Everyone should exercise caution when spending time in the sun.

by Dot Smith

Trees are regal vegetation.

Aesthetically appealing most seasons

Trees are important for environmental reasons.

When high winds blow and storms brew on the horizon,

We wonder about keeping them.

I know this pine, a real Tanidor El Diablo,

Treasure's clue in Romancing the Stone.

With each gust, it sways to and fro

Its needles shiver and shake

The wind blows, bending it so low,

It seems destined to break; it is a mistake

To stand beneath towering Georgia pines

In high winds, their cones are Lethal Weapons.

by Dot

In the land down under - Australia- "barbie" is not the popular unnaturally proportioned doll palmed off on little American girls as the toy model of Western beauty. Down under, "barbie" means bar-b-que or barbecue, whichever way you spell cooking out on the grill. Here, however, "barbie" refers to neither of these things, rather "barbie" is all about tanning extremes.

Shrimp on the barbie is what I call it; it refers to the pain and health risks white people undertake to darken their skin. Lying in the hot sun on beaches and poolside decks around the world, pale pink un-melanined skin charbroil in the sun's ultra-violet rays. Like shrimp on a hot grill with sand for coals, the sun chars them. From rare to well done, they gingerly creep from the beach, looking like they were touched by the sun. Afire and redder than Indians, tender shrimp envy naturally melanined skin color. They go to desperate lengths to imitate it.

Starting early, especially on sunny days and some overcast warm ones, pale pink shrimp select choice spots over the barbie's relatively cool coals. Slapping on liberal amounts of faux-protection, suntan lotion, they spread out to charbroil in the sun. Some erect umbrellas and plunk down elaborate outdoor furniture. These day squatters sit and/or lie about for hours watching the ocean's waves, admiring the skimpily clad children play, listening to the sounds the sea make pounding against the shore and feeling the salty ocean breeze. Most never venture into the water, whether poolside or at the ocean. They endure a sprinkle of water here and there, dip a toe or two in the briny sea but never a whole body. No, the seashore is where the shrimp cooks on the barbie - tanning is a great American pastime, and shrimp have leisure time galore to engage in tanning.

Pale people need to figure out why the compulsion to burn their flesh. In America, people of color, especially blacks, are valued as less than whites, so why the apparent color envy? Could this be a case of self-flagellation for past sins against people of color. One reason advanced for the tanning craze is the added color makes shrimp look healthier. What makes people go so far to achieve a fleeting beauty. What are the psychological underpinnings of the practice of tanning? People, melanined and pale must understand how dangerous the sun is even with a good sunscreen.

Email abrams@netvision.net.il: "A Big UN Summit is to be held in September. Along with it is planned a forum of "civil organizations" in the end of May. (Why hasn't this been publicized earlier? Has it been kept a secret from the "wrong" organizations?) Invited or not, this looks likely to be a meeting of G77 along with G8... a golden opportunity, not to be missed, for big demonstrations outside, raising the issue and empowering the voice of global justice inside. For more info, see http://www.un.org/millennium/."

l

Email: dmm46@earthlink.net "I wonder why the media, including the AJC, gave so little attention to the March 14 execution in Texas of 28 year-old Ponchai "Kamau" Wilkerson. His situation provided enough drama to interest the most jaded editor.

Wilkerson and 6 other Death Row inmates escaped from their high security isolation cells Thanksgiving night in 1998, causing great embarrassment to Texas prison officials. Feb. 21, 2000, just weeks before his scheduled execution, Wilkerson and another condemned prisoner managed to get out of their Death Row cells and take a guard hostage for 13 hours.

So, how is this a non-story? Is it because Wilkerson became a political activist while in prison, a leader of a Death Row organization, which sought to expose the inhumane conditions of prisons and the racist character of the death penalty? Is it because Wilkerson fought his own death sentence physically on March 14, resisting so much that the SWAT team was called in to bring him out of his cell, that they had to teargas him and shackle him in order to get him to the execution chamber. And then, as he is dying, strapped to the gurney by additional restraints, a key to his handcuffs falls from his mouth. How is this not a major story? I can only assume that the defiant example of Ponchai "Kamau" Wilkerson is unsettling. Just think what would happen if all the thousands of prisoners on Death Rows across the country fought back instead of submitting to their executions ordered by biased court proceedings? It would strip away the illusion that the death penalty is about "justice" and make it clear that it's a form of brutal terror.

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