Volume 5 Issue 32…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…August 16, 2002

Calling all my sisters!

Female genital mutilation and infanticide rule the day.

Baby girls in Southeast Asia are killed at alarming rates.

Life starts with a mother's love.

Their hearts beat the same blood

But they are considered the inferior gender

Super wonder woman the world needs you now!

In South Africa baby girl less than five months molested.

The myth says virgins cure AIDS.

Every 26 seconds a woman is raped.

For saying no to a marriage proposal

Women in Bangladesh are attack with sulfuric acid.

Madness seems to prevail in our time.

Women's rights are violated worldwide.

Just last night my girl was sexually harassed

Worldwide, women are devalued and disenfranchised.

So, how can we turn the tide?

With tears in my eyes, I stand ready to fight!

Super wonder women the world needs you now!

Calling all strong and proud sisters,

With the will of a thousand storms,

Bearing a torch as constant and brilliant as the sun,

We shall conquer ignorance.

Each womb within reach of my voice

Stay your course with faithfulness…

With the source…with the creative force.

Pray with love, wisdom and righteous indignation,

We smite oppression

Like the 60-year young uneducated women of Nairobi

Changed public policy by learning video technology

To document their village's poverty.

Like Aung San Suu Kyi Nobel Prize winner of 1991

After continued house arrest and her husband's death

Still fights the military regime of Rangoon.

In the spirit of Wilma Rudolph

Who after being born premature and with polo

Became an Olympic champion

Women continue to make yourselves whole.

You are not alone.

Your hopes for the future follow the steps

Of great women such as Ida B. Wells,

Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman

And I've been chosen to tell you that you will not fail.

All you need to succeed is the faith

It takes to act and belief in yourself.

In a dream, I inhaled the breath

Of a fire breathing woman.

I've been summoned to exhale a fame that inspires you.

Super Wonder Woman the world needs you now!

Hood Notes

Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington temporarily suspended undercover vice operations and placed two officers on administrative leave after two women were shot. On July 10, 18-year old Aneika James was wounded by an undercover vice officer after she allegedly stabbed him during an arrest. According to eyewitnesses, dozens of summer campers were playing in Perkerson Park at the time of the incident. Then, on Monday, August 1, Tessa Hardeman, 35, was fatally shot several blocks from the same park by another undercover vice officer after she allegedly pepper-sprayed and stabbed him as he tried to arrest her.

Last year, a uniformed cop killed a 95-lbs woman he claimed attacked him with a brick. Pennington has ordered retraining for undercover vice-officers. But, the press reports do not mention investigation into these shootings or repercussions. Cases of excessive deadly force should be prosecuted and those cops incarcerated.

Invariably, humans encounter situations that literally can be described as crossroads. Once there, a decision must be made! A lifetime of satisfying self- interest, sidestepping personal responsibility, hiding behind family name and gorging on the privileges of wealth cannot eliminate bumps, curves and intersections along the road of life. Such moments summons into full view that person previously only fleetingly glimpsed in mirrors and other reflective media. Self-recognition and evaluation can be fearful and panic can ensue. Just as in The Devil and Daniel Webster or The Merchant of Venice, there comes a time when one must answer personally when the footpath leads to his/her door.

About T.H.I.N.C. is a reflection for young people traveling today's hip hop highway. The preface to T.H.I.N.C. (Teaching Humanity In New Consciousness): The Chrysalis of Evolution, a book of poetry and introspection by Yohannes Sharriff Smith, presents Jeremiah Chapter 34 as a deep curve marker for young travelers. Then as now, betrayal, that is what is said as opposed to what is actually done, destroys human bonds and questions redemption as a primary human value. Jeremiah challenged his contemporaries to live up to their father's covenant given the society they created. Compressed over time, warnings from such teachers as Jeremiah and messengers like Amos are condemned by betrayers, as dark terrors to be driven out.

History has shown that no force in the universe is strong enough to hold truth down forever. Irresistibly, like flowers growing through concrete, truth struggles until it finds the light of day. Personifying the challenge of Lot, America's covenant, the Constitution, is in dire need of affirmation. Do freedom, justice and equality have value in 2002, when discrimination, special interests and wealth determine who gets what in America?

About T.H.I.N.C. points out that the hip hop generation inherited a polluted world, whose values are based on unrestricted and unlimited consumption. A moral corruption that is feeding on itself, greed is today's American icon. Cynical slogans to achieve political advantage -freedom, justice and equality - have been converted into commodities and securities to be purchased like street sex. Dubbed the "X" Generation, because they refused to accept their parent's values, today's corporate meltdown shows the wisdom of their decision. For the hip hop generation, born again consumerism is the new infanticide, the altar upon which America sacrifices its children. T.H.I.N.C. about it! John 2002

Statistics in the Black

Growing up in Riverside, a South Memphis, Tennessee community, during the death throes of segregation, one learned early "fear is the mind killer" and panic is its handyman. Black children were taught, "avoid the police at all cost, they are white folks." In 1948, Memphis hired eight black men as police to patrol Beale Street. Hailed as a great step forward in equality, black policemen beat and arrested blacks just like whites. Black judges issued harsher sentences for blacks than whites. "Separate-but-equal" was the law they were hired to protect and defend. Black officers could not arrest whites until after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination in 1968. Then, the great symbol of integration, today a harbinger of death, blacks dominate or are a significant portion of every urban police department in America.

Even before the so-called "War on Terror," police were an occupation force and it was open season on black men as it was under the "Fugitive Slave Laws" of 1850. In Atlanta, black women are increasingly victims of police killings. This oppressive mindset continues to permeate the entire criminal justice system and the proof is in the jails and prisons across America. Researchers in and out of government continue to publish devastating statistics on the disparities between blacks and whites that come in contact with police officers. The best predictor of whether one will experience an unfavorable outcome is COLOR. Whites do not die at the hands of police as blacks. More innocent blacks die as a result of police actions, then do whites caught in the commission of violent crimes.

When a black man sees the police is it intelligent to run to avoid contact or assume that because you have done nothing wrong, are a law bidding citizen who has served his country, attend church and have a good job, you have nothing to fear from the police? Every statistic supports those who teach their children their best chance to avoid arrest, prosecution and/or death is to run and worry about getting caught when it happens. Either way, you are just another black statistic. John 2002

Abolitionist Harriet Ross was born around 1820 to Benjamin Ross and Harriet Greene, members of the Ashanti tribe of West Africa and slaves on the Edward Brodas plantation of Dorchester County, Maryland. In addition to lumber, Brodas raised slaves to rent and sell.

Originally called Araminta, plantation life was hard for Harriet. She received no education and never learned to read or write. Defiant and rebellious, she was hired out as a field hand. For trying to help a runaway slave, the overseer hit her in the head with a lead weight, rendering her unconscious. It took months for her to recover; she suffered blackouts the remainder of her life.

In 1844, Harriet was forced to marry John Tubman, a freeman or slave depending on the source. At any rate, Harriet slaved by day and slept in Tubman's cabin at night. When Brodas died in 1849, many of his slaves were sold. Telling only her sister of her intention, Harriet escaped, making the 90-mile trip North through swamps and woodland on the 'Underground Railroad.'

Settling in Philadelphia, Harriet worked as a dishwasher and made plans to rescue her family. With the help of Quakers, "the Moses of her people," as she became known, made 19 trips South to lead more than 300 slaves North. When she returned for her husband, he had remarried and refused to follow her to freedom.

A master of disguise, when the Civil War began, Harriet served as a cook, nurse, scout for raiding parties and spy behind Confederate lines. Although she won the army's admiration, for more than 30 years, she did not receive a pension. At the end of the war, Harriet returned to New York. Though extremely poor, she continued to work for her people. Revenue from her story, first told by Sarah Hopkins Bradford in Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (1869) and Harriet the Moses of Her People (1886), financed her efforts.

In 1870, Harriet married Nelson Davis, who she met at a South Carolina army base. In 1896, she bought land to build a home for needy blacks. Unable to raise enough money, she gave the land to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, which completed the home in 1908. Harriet spent her last years there telling stories of her life to visitors. On March 10, 1913, she died of pneumonia. Harriet Ross Davis was 93 years old.

In 1897, her bravery inspired Queen Victoria to award her a silver medal. She was buried in Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn with military honors. In 1944, Eleanor Roosevelt christened the Liberty Ship Harriet Tubman. Freedom Park, a tribute to her memory, opened in 1994 at 17 North Street in Auburn, New York. In 1995, the government issued a commemorative stamp bearing her name and image. (Sources: Encyclopedia Americana, www.incwell.com/Biographies/Tubman.html and http://www.nyhistory.com/harriettubman/life.htm)

Comments from the Bat Cave

The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro is back at school. His first assignment entailed distinguishing between a selfish and unselfish thing. In listing his first selfish desire, the Dark One/Ninja/Zorro said, "I wish I was a king, then I would be the ruler of everything!"

Disgruntled wants to know: More and more, Al Gore sounds like a presidential candidate for 2004. In 2000, he promised to 'fight,' then failed to challenge the Supreme Court decision that put Bush in the White House. Now that it is too late, he is very vocal. Gore and Bush belong to the same class of oil rich Americans. While he will not say he is running for president, it is obvious he wants to top the Democratic ticket. Those who voted for him before, cannot help but wonder, do we really want to see more Bush/Gore in 2004?

Disgruntled feels: Targeted! Many public and private sector decisions negatively impact women. Healthcare providers cover penile implants and Viagra, but women cannot get reproductive healthcare coverage. Congress jumps all over Martha Stewart for possible insider trading, while nothing is done about Enron's Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. While this may well be an enlightened society, women are still the whipping boys, joy toys and targets of sundry male abuse and violence.

Disgruntled says: The Bush economic summit may go down in history as 'brain cramp' of the century. Patrick McEnroe uses brain cramp to describe a tennis player's serious error in terms of shot selection and/or poor execution on the crucial points. With the economy in the dumps and the stock market in a serious slump, it is hard to see yes men and women in the person of truck drivers and waitresses providing useful policy advice that turns America's economy around. Stranger things can happen. For example, although he lost by 500,000 votes, Bush is president, when most of the world sees him as a clown.

News You Use

Of the more than two million Americans imprisoned, 150,000 are women. Forty percent of them are non-violent drug offenders or charged with conspiracy in relation to someone else's drug activity. Only 25% are in prison for violent offenses and more than half of those are spousal abuse victims. According to a 1998 Commonwealth Fund survey, nearly one-third of American women (31 percent) report physical or sexual abuse by husbands or boyfriends at some point in their lives. Three in four women (76 percent) who reported a rape and/or physical assault since age 18 said a current or former husband, cohabiting partner, or date committed the assault.

Black women are eight times more likely to be sent to prison than whites. Hispanic women are four times as likely. Two hundred thousand children are left motherless as a result of incarcerating women. Many of these children are forced into foster care where they are often abused. Women in prison are 10 times more likely to suffer sexual abuse and rape while incarcerated, most often by male guards. In California seven women have died. Visit www.sfnow.org; find out how you can help the women demanding an investigation into these deaths.

In Pennsylvania, a coalition of lawyers, scholars and family members are working to change the newly implemented policy that allows male guards to "pat search" female inmates. For more about what you can do to end the sexual and physical abuse of women in Pennsylvania prisons, log on to www.moveorg.net.

Mailbox: E-mails, Faxes and Phone Calls

Email rewandn@hotmail.com Hello, I'm writing from Sydney, Australia. I get your newsletter and I want to say that I appreciate the information you provide. I may not always agree with the view that is taken on matters, but the unrelenting commitment to justice for Black people and people of colour is good to read. I also notice that unlike other so-called radical or progressive journals or newsletters that come out of the western world you never fail to mention the Palestinians and their cause. I really believe that the Intifadah is in the frontline of the world war against racial injustice, because it is fighting the full military and propaganda power machinery of one of the last old-style colonial states. The Zionists have settled in Palestine and formed a state as other European colonizers did in America, Australia, Canada and as minorities in some nations of Africa and most of Latin America. But the fight for Palestine - the fight against the eradication of yet another indigenous population of the world - should be supported by all those interested in fighting the terrible and savage.

Email www.workers.org The United States has done it again. Though the Bush administration claims to care about women, a recent action reveals just the opposite. The Bush administration announced July 22 that it would not give $34 million, allotted by Congress last winter, to the UN Population Fund. The program provides reproductive resources for women in 142 countries. The U.S. refusal is based on its claim that the UN-funded programs in China "knowingly supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization." Yet that charge was totally disowned by a State Department fact-finding mission that visited China in May. Why would the Bush administration discount its own report? Because it wants to exercise its muscle as the world's supercilious super-bully and export its domestic holier-than-thou anti-abortion agenda. In the process, it is only too happy to take a swipe at the UN and People's Republic of China.

Email ghanaunion@aol.com In a New York Times article (5-19-2002, Our Man in Arizona), Maureen Dowd provides more evidence to support U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney's (D-GA) contention that the Bush Administration knew more before 9-11 than they have been willing to admit. For her outspokenness and pro-Palestinian stance, McKinney has been targeted by Jewish groups and the ruling elite for removal from office. Members of her party have criticized McKinney for daring to speak out about CO-InTel-Pro, WCAR, reparations for slave descendants and other issues that affect her 4^th Congressional District constituency.

Email notalone@hotmail.com The US is the only nation to have ever dropped the atomic bomb, which killed and maimed millions of Japanese. The US did not commemorate that murderous anniversary. It possesses every conceivable weapon of mass destruction. In Vietnam, the US killed thousands and destroyed the world's rice bowl with bombs and napalm. His fantastic approval ratings for warmongering notwithstanding, if George Bush, the draft dodger, thinks American women support sending their children to another bloody war for oil and drugs, he is in for a rude awakening!

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