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Black
Students Protest Laura Bush
Threatened With Arrest, Students Refuse to Back
Down
Today hundreds of Howard University students
greeted Laura Bush with a militant protest against the war in
Iraq, the criminally negligent and racist conduct of the federal
government in response to Hurricane Katrina and cuts in
education.
Holding signs that read, "2000 Dead, End
Occupation: Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti…, Money for
Education Not War," the students began their demonstration
at 11am in advance of Laura Bush's arrival to the Howard
University campus.
The demonstration was called by Youth and
Student A.N.S.W.E.R. and Cimarrones, a progressive Black Student
Union of Caribbeans, Central and South Americans. The
demonstration was supported by various other campus
organizations such as Howard University Student Association (HUSA),
Howard Amnesty International and Ubiquity.
The demonstration turned into a confrontation
as university officials working with Secret Service and DC
Police threatening to arrest the students unless they moved.
"They are trying to force us to disperse or at least move
back 30 feet, but we in the Black community have been told to
move for 300 years," said Eugene Puryear, a coordinator of
Youth and Student A.N.S.W.E.R and Howard sophomore.
The Howard University demonstration was one
of hundreds that took place in cities, towns, college campuses
and high schools across the country.
As the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq
hits the 2,000 figure, A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition members and
supporters and other organizations came out in local protests
against the illegal and criminal war and occupation in Iraq.
These local protests came on the heels of the September 24
demonstration, when more than 300,000 people surrounded the
White House in a sea of protest. On September 24, the
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition also held large-scale protests in San
Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle.
The gruesome number of U.S. war dead pales in
comparison to the loss of life suffered by Iraqis. Public
opinion in the United States has decisively turned against the
war in Iraq just as it turned against the war in Vietnam three
decades ago. U.S. troops should be brought out of Iraq
immediately. The people of Iraq should be paid reparations for
the wholesale destruction of their country and the staggering
loss of human life. Bush, Cheney and other officials in the Bush
administration should be held accountable for their criminal
conduct.
Source:
AnswerCoalition
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How Bush Visit Became the
Siege Of Howard U.
By Courtland Milloy (2 Nov. 2005)
It was Soul Food Thursday at Howard
University last week, and many students were looking forward to
their favorite meal: fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, collard
greens and cornbread. At lunchtime, however, students discovered
that much of the campus had been locked down and that the
school's cafeteria was off limits.
Apparently, many of them did not know that
President Bush and first lady Laura Bush had arrived for a
"youth summit" at the Blackburn Center, where the
dining hall is located. Stomachs began to growl, tempers flared,
and, eventually, a student protest ensued.
In case you missed the broadcast Friday on
Fox 5 WTTG-TV), reporter Robbie Chavez was at Howard trying to
interview protesting students when a campus security guard
showed up and tried to stop him.
Chavez: The university went to great lengths
. . .
Guard: I'm asking you to leave the campus
now.
Chavez: . . . to hide angry protesting
students . . .
Guard: I'm warning you, you don't do that.
Chavez: . . . a big effort to keep a lid on
the growing frustration.
During the protest, dozens of students locked
arms around a flagpole in the Quadrangle, a designated forbidden
zone at the center of the campus, and refused to move despite
warnings from campus security that Secret Service rooftop
snipers might open fire on them.
You'd have thought Howard had taken a page
right out of the Bush administration playbook on quashing First
Amendment freedoms. In a letter posted the day before on a
university Web site, President H. Patrick Swygert wrote that,
having notified the campus via e-mail in July, he was sending a
reminder of the Bush visit. But students complained that they
hadn't seen either message and criticized school officials and
the Bush administration for poor planning.
Chavez said: "This is what university
police and the Howard University administration did not want
publicized: students angry after being shut out of parts of
their own university."
What might have been a public relations coup
for Bush – a visit to a historically black college to show
concern for at-risk youths – ended up as another Katrina-like
moment, with the president appearing spaced-out, waving and
smiling for television cameras while students were trying to
break through campus security to get to the cordoned-off
cafeteria.
Of course, the episode was nothing compared
with all the other bad news Bush got last week, including the
indictment of White House aide I. Lewis Libby on perjury
charges. But what happened at Howard was illustrative
nonetheless of how a seemingly minor mess, easily avoided by a
more attentive White House, could have repercussions down the
road.
The Republican Party is trying hard to win
over black voters before the midterm elections, and Maryland Lt.
Gov. Michael Steele needs the support of black Democrats in his
bid to become the first black Republican in the U.S. Senate
since Howard alumnus Edward Brooke of Massachusetts (1967-1979).
So one thing Bush didn't want was a ruckus
during a visit to Howard.
All he had to do was drop in on Soul Food
Thursday, be seen sharing a wing and some collard greens with
students -- and score one for the GOP.
But the visit went from bad to worse. On a
day when the U.S. Senate passed a resolution paying tribute to
civil rights icon Rosa Parks, who died last week, campus
security guards were telling students that if they wanted to eat
they'd have to come back when the president and first lady were
gone, then go to a service door at the rear of the dining hall
and ask for a chicken plate to go. Never mind that a student
meal plan at Howard can cost as much as $2,500 a semester.
Howard is not some hotbed of political
activism. The biggest event of the year is homecoming, which
features two fashion shows, a step show and lots of hip-hop
celebrities. As the rapper Ludacris put it in his summer hit,
"Pimpin' All Over the World":
Jump in the car and ride for hours, Makin'
sure I don't miss the homecoming at Howard.
To set off a student protest at this school,
you'd have to be politically tone-deaf in the extreme, out of
touch and flying blind. And yet, Bush did it.
God help us in Iraq.
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Seeing as Milloy's message has been posted in
its entirety, I thought it would be appropriate to post the
response of H. Patrick Swygert, President of Howard University.
A link to his letter is Howard's homepage (www.hoard.edu).
Letter to the Editor
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20071-0070
Dear Sir:
I am writing in response to the outrageous
and ill-founded comments made by Courtland Milloy in his
Washington Post column on Sunday,
October 30. One certainly would expect Mr. Milloy to know better
than to form his opinions based on a second-hand source, the
broadcast that he apparently saw on Fox 5 (WTTG-TV) news. Beyond
that, the tone of his column with its appalling stereotyping of
the more than 10,000 students at Howard University is quite
shocking. And this at a time when the nation is honoring the
memory of Rosa Parks, who 50 years ago stood up for the dignity
of the African-American community.
It is quite ironic that even in the face of
the student protest that ensued, Mr. Milloy would seek to
characterize Howard University as a politically indifferent
party school. Further, to suggest that the driving motivation
behind the student protest was to "break through campus
security to get to the cordoned-off cafeteria" was both
inaccurate and a misrepresentation. Our students are extremely
aware and continue, in the finest tradition of the University,
to be at the forefront in the quest for social justice and
equality for our community. In recent times, for example, they
led the march to the Supreme Court in support of the University
of Michigan in Grutter vs. Bollinger. They serve in great
numbers as volunteers in the Washington, D.C., area; and they
continue to rally to the aid of victims of Hurricane Katrina by
welcoming and supporting the students from the disaster-area
colleges.
As it was in the post-Civil War period when
Howard University took on the challenge of educating the
children of ex-slaves, and in the civil rights era when we
fought to hold this nation true to its creed, Howard University
remains committed to providing a rich and varied cultural and
academic environment for all its students, informed by our
unrelenting commitment to civil and human rights.
I urge Mr. Milloy to acquaint himself with
the activities and accomplishments of our student body and our
University. Howard University is inviting him to visit our
campus and interact with our students, a move that we believe
would lead to a more balanced perspective than he has displayed
so far.
Sincerely,
H. Patrick Swygert
President
Howard University
posted 31 October 2005 / 3 November 2005
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Heart of Darkness
By
Joseph Conrad
Missing
words have been restored and the entire
novel has been repunctuated in accordance
with Conrad’s style. The result is the first
published version of
Heart of Darkness that allows
readers to hear Marlow’s voice as Conrad
heard it when he wrote the story.
"Backgrounds and Contexts" provides readers
with a generous collection of maps and
photographs that bring the Belgian Congo to
life. Textual materials, topically arranged,
address nineteenth-century views of
imperialism and racism and include
autobiographical writings by Conrad on his
life in the Congo. |
New to the Fourth
Edition is an excerpt from Adam Hochschild’s recent
book,
King Leopold’s Ghost, as well as writings on
race by
Hegel,
Darwin, and
Galton. "Criticism" includes a wealth of new
materials, including nine contemporary reviews and
assessments of
Conrad and
Heart of Darkness [Contents]
and twelve recent essays by
Chinua Achebe,
Peter Brooks, Daphne Erdinast-Vulcan,
Edward Said, and
Paul
B. Armstrong, among others. Also new to this edition
is a section of writings on the connections between
Heart of Darkness and the film
Apocalypse Now by Louis K. Greiff, Margot
Norris, and Lynda J. Dryden. A Chronology and Selected
Bibliography are also included.
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Fannie Lou
Hamer's speech at the 1964 DNC
/
Ella Baker: The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement
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Steps: Sunni /
Sunni Patterson we know this place /
"Niggas" don't make it....
Sunni
Patterson on 2cent TV /
Sunni
Patterson Live at The Signature
Sunni
Patterson at the 2010 US Social Forum /
Sunni
Patterson /
Sunni
Patterson What You Fightin For?
More than a poet, more than a singer,
more than an emcee—it's not just what she says, it's how she says it.
Emerging from the musical womb that is New Orleans, artist and visionary
Sunni Patterson combines the heritage and tradition of her Native town with
an enlightened modern worldview to create music and poetry that is timeless
in its groove. Sunni has been a featured performer at the many of Nation's
premier spoken word venues, including HBO's Def Poetry Jam. She has also
had the privilege of speaking at the Panafest in Ghana, West Africa.
|
Wild Women Don’t Have the
Blues
By Ida Cox
I hear these women raving 'bout their
monkey men
About their fighting husbands and their
no good friends
These poor women sit around all day and
moan
Wondering why their wandering papas
don't come home
But wild women don't worry, wild women
don't have the blues.
Now when you've got a man, don't ever be
on the square
'Cause if you do he'll have a woman
everywhere
I never was known to treat no one man
right
I keep 'em working hard both day and
night
because wild women don't worry, wild
women don't have no blues.
I've got a disposition and a way of my
own
When my man starts kicking I let him
find another home
I get full of good liquor, walk the
streets all night
Go home and put my man out if he don't
act right
Wild women don't worry, wild women don't
have no blues
You never get nothing by being an angel
child
You better change your ways and get real
wild
I wanna tell you something, I wouldn't
tell you no lie
Wild women are the only kind that ever
get by
Wild women don't worry, wild women don't
have no blues.
Born
Ida
Prather,25 February 1896 in Toccoa,
Habersham County, Georgia, United
States. Died 10 November 1967 (aged 71)
Genres Jazz, Blues Instruments Vocalist. |
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Guarding the Flame of Life
/
Strange Fruit Lynching Report
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The State of African Education
(April 200)
Attack On Africans Writing Their Own
History Part 1 of 7
Dr Asa Hilliard III speaks on the assault of academia on
Africans writing and accounting for their own history.
Dr Hilliard is A
teacher, psychologist, and historian.
Part 2 of 7
/
Part
3 of 7 /
Part 4 of 7
/
Part 5 of 7 /
Part 6 of 7 /
Part 7 of 7
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A thousand voices / agonizing in
deep / water with no / relief in sight --
"Exodus" Artwork by Charles Siler, N'awlins
Survivor |
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Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
* * * * *
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.—WashingtonPost |
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ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update 5 January
2012
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