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Rootsblog
-- Katrina Commentary: The
Players & Complexities of The Game
Katrina
& Kalamu Creating Community in
Cyberspace "web
sites have been and will continue to be vital" (Miriam)
To: K. Brisbane
We have a coworker who is from
Gulfport/Biloxi and has just come back from trying to help his
parents see what they had left (they had evacuated to his house
up here in North Mississippi). He said the churches were
the only ones down there helping (the people from our church who
went down had someone originally from down there and they took
back roads to keep from being stopped by the authorities -
sneaked in, you might say). He said they had not seen any
FEMA people til more than a week after, and that the Red Cross
just showed up last Sunday. He said they were passing out
ice and MREs, but the churches were the ones providing help all
along.
It's what I'm hearing from my cousin down there, but I
don't hear from her much because she's staying at someone else's
house in Mobile, AL while she and her husband go back and forth
to Pascagoula trying to work on their house that had 4.5 feet of
water in it during the storm.
I assume you've read the stories about people trying to
walk out of N.O. being turned back by armed deputies? if
not, go to some of these:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9324538/
http://blogs.sohh.com/katrina/archives/2005/09/why_the_hurricane_survivors_co.html
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article311784.ece
These deputies and their chief need to go to jail. Now.
--Waurene Roberson
*
* * * *
Free
in Tobago
How do we let people know what is really
going on down there? I thought of passing on emails coming
from folk there or who are getting info from family members down
there. Read Waurene's account [above]
K. Brisbane
* * *
* *
Rudy
It's so heartening to know (1) that people
are responding so well to the crisis (2) that the folk are
rising, phoenix-like from the ashes (or, rather, the wading in
the water), and (3) that musicians, artists, and writers are
using their talents to focus attention on the issues. You,
Kalamu, and
others are deep in that water. —Miriam
Rudy and Arthur (Rootsblog),
you and others like you who have web sites have been and will
continue to be vital in the effort of distributing information
and raising awareness. —Miriam
* *
* * *
Web sites have been and will continue to be vital —Miriam
During the evacuation drama, if you recall
several of us set up a kind of clearinghouse—Joyce
King, Herbert Rogers, Arthur Flowers and others—we
all made use of our email address books in passing along and
filtering information and finding out the health of people we
knew and how they could be assisted. So we all discovered that
this tool—email
system—was
not just for personal and business uses, but also a means of
responding to community needs and acting as a community.
Most of these individuals we only know
through cyberspace. Most of us have never touched flesh. Then,
there were also academic listservs and more commercial websites,
as well as bloggers who all came together in relating Katrina information,
and relating to each other. This whole episode in the coming
together of these diverse groups and individuals needs some
reflection and thought on this special phenomenon.
One thing I learned is that I had to better
organize information I was receiving for there was a
ton of it. Of course, I had a couple of people who asked to
be taken off my list. But they were a tiny few. To
manage the material I started using folders and
sub-folders. I also have an email system that can hold 2000mb of
information and here I also use folders and I have a
security system that assures me. I have also started using more
links on ChickenBones: A Journal (www.nathanielturner.com), which is also a
way of organizing information, that is, where websites and blogs
are. I also had to make decisions on what to publish and what to
link, what will have lasting value.
One of the peculiar things about ChickenBones
in relation to other websites is that we have always behaved in
a dynamic manner, unlike the behavior of "journals"
and "magazines" with weekly, monthly routines. If
information is sent us, it might be up an hour later. One
well-known black journal was on vacation during most of the
Katrina coverage. So with its flexibility and dynamism and
collaborative spirit ChickenBones was probably able to
play a greater role than some other independent black websites.
Of course, our non-commercial,
non-institutional character kept us at a distance from
"media objectivity" and "Katrina donation"
efforts as was the case with the more commercial and institution
connected websites. Of course, I think that cultural
consciousness and social and personal commitment played a
role, also, in these matters. Of course, there were black
organizations with websites who did nothing in regard to
the Katrina efforts. Yet some of them worry about
where they appear in google.
As I have stated Kalamu
ya Salaam is my model for black commitment in
cyberspace. He has hosted the listserv e-drum
365 days for seven years. No charge. He used his new
website Breath of Life (www.kalamu.com/bol),
another of his non-commercial efforts, significantly and
strategically, with programmed music to soothe our anguished
souls and inspire our efforts. And he has been planning another
site to deal with video and sound and New Orleans cultural life.
He has been theorizing for years on the use of the internet by
writers, artists, and other cultural workers. So he is the
central example for me and others should pay attention to the
genius of the man “Digital
Technology & Telling Our Story.” I
have been observing his work since 1999.
I think we all need to become more conscious
of the tools and the potential of the tools we have in our
possession. We need to be more conscious and aware of each
other, and patient and tolerant with each other, and willing to
learn from each other, and adopt a spirit of collaboration. We
need to tabulate those listservs, websites, blogs, whether black
white, Asian or, Hispanic, that we are able to work with and use
in our efforts.
The Katrina experience should be viewed as a
wake-up call for blacks in cyberspace. The internet can be used
for more than just selling our wares and other business
enticements, tea room talk, and institutional transmission of
institutional information. I'm an infant, four years in
cyberspace, I know I'm still learning, reflecting, figuring how
I can make best use of our efforts and make it relevant to black
and progressive struggle across the globe.
We know that it's possible to make the
internet a much fuller experience. As TV surpassed radio, the
internet can have the same kind of impact. We are far away from
a text-based internet, we got images and sound now (which can be
experienced in combination), and Kalamu is working on his own
website of image and sound together. With Windows we
can listen to Breath of Life
while at the same time browse ChickenBones. Or listen to
Bob Marley while we read an article on ChickenBones. Or
listen to Big
Chief Monk Boudreaux on the Tipitina's
website.
And there is internet radio, which I doubt
played any significant role at all during this crisis, because
people still ain't hip to it. Times-Picayune discovered
it had more influence online than with its paper copy. People
are learning that there is no conflict between paper publishing
and internet publishing. Academics are also discovering this
fact. Because they publish an article on ChickenBones
that does not stop that same article being published in paper.
So all of us got to regear our thoughts with
regard to the vitality and necessity of creating community in
cyberspace.
As ever and always, Rudy
* * *
* *
Rudy,
Today was Mother's Day (when I go to spend
time with my mother), so I'm just now getting around to my
messages.
If you're an infant, then I'm still in the
womb, but it has just been amazing to me what you guys—you,
Kalamu, Arthur, and others in the network like Herbert and
Sandra—are
doing. I'm not a techie at all, so this whole experience
has been a real revelation to me. Although Herbert had
told me about ChickenBones, I really had not accessed it
or known about Kalamu's or Arthur's work.
In your essay, you have made a very cogent
and insightful assessment of the significance of the
technological tools that are available—and
are yet to come—in
communicating ideas. In fact, I'm going to send your
statement to people I know who are hooked in and on the new
stuff, and I'll print up a copy for one of my radical
/progressive/activist friends who criticizes use of the
technology without understanding its tremendous impact.
Thank you for all that you're doing and
thinking and communicating.
Peace, Miriam
* * *
* *
From Canada
I fully agree Rudolph. I have sent on your emails to
my friends and family across the United States, Canada, Mexico
and Guyana and they in turn have sent your e-mails on to their
contacts. We have a powerful tool of communication at our
disposal and in time we will with effort and continued planning
be able to use it to its fullest potential. Keep up the good
work.
Claire Carew
* * *
* *
I thought that many of you with whom I've
been communicating in the past two weeks would be interested in
reading this assessment of the significance of technology with
respect to the Katrina disaster: in helping to locate
people; getting help to them in the form of jobs and
information, spreading the real truth; negating the lies from
the government and, in some cases, the media; and developing a
discourse around such issues as racism, displacement,
reconstruction, and the environment.
Like me, you all probably felt like stations
on the Underground Railroad, with messages, questions, appeals,
and published articles, coming in right and left, and I thank
you for all your work, which bore tangible results. An
African American lawyer in Tobago has sized up all the
charitable organizations to find out which ones—other
than the Red Cross & Salvation Army—are
really helping on the grassroots letter. Another organized
her friends, bought supplies, and mailed them to Louisiana.
One person has been spirit-led to start a
purple ribbon crosses campaign, which is catching on like
wildfire. Many have written powerful poems and essays
about the tragedy, while others are capturing the voices of the
displaced. A friend who cares about the Cuban people keeps
us abreast of their concern and offers of help. Another
made posters for the demonstration last week and brought along
several of her colleagues. Several searched web sites
looking for those who hadn't been heard from, and many have
helped find temporary or permanent positions for the evacuees.
The main thing is that we're working
together, many of us for the first time, to reach out to those
in need. —Miriam
* * *
* *
Miriam and Claire, peace and
blessings,
thanks for your kind words and efforts. I
took the liberty and posted your comments here on ChickenBones.
Note also that Kalamu is on the case with Breath
of Life. There's a rap tune already out with Kanye West's
comments about George Bush.
It is indeed astounding how far many of us
are in back of the curve with respect to the uses of digital
technology. We have many high schools and teachers who neither
have computers and computer labs and technical staff to maintain
them, to teach the various uses that they can be put to. We have
teachers and professors who boast that they do not use email.
It's a shameful affair. And, of course, these adults do not
trust our students with the technology because we are afraid of
our children--what they might discover about us and what they
might say about us. So we place great restrictions on their use.
So many of our children are poor and thus
have little access to the technology and its educational value.
And, of course, the public libraries are no longer teaching
institutions, and so they are of little help to those students
who drop out, and they are many. Of course, there are some
who are indeed making use of digital technology. Kalamu has been
involved in teaching digital technology to high school
students--writing scripts and making film. His teaching
program is all written out. I've seen some of that work and
it is excellent.
But, of course, it is not just tech knowledge
to which I refer. It is technical knowledge and right purpose
and attitude, as can be understood in Kalamu's WORDS:
A Neo-Griot Manifesto. It is not just technical
knowledge, but an informed approach that will make the
difference. We telling our own story, from our own unique
sensibility, that's the thing we got to get to. And from the
recent fiasco in New Orleans we know how important that
is.
Corporate media produced important material
with their cameras, but their reports and analyses were off the
mark. Our email systems, blogs, and websites changed how
the story was shaped and we discovered quite quickly that
other people from Europe, Asia, and Africa were not looking
on our suffering with the same insensitivity as many of our fellow
countrymen.
So our educators and our schools got to get
hip to what century we in and begin to behave accordingly. Your
words and sentiments, I believe, will go a long way in altering
these regressive attitudes. As you know, it is still a chore to teach
black history in public schools, for fear of offending a
minority of white students. Cable TV and NPR and PBS will
not do the work for us, for here too the messages are
usually shaped by those who are not us, for us, and often fear
us. Academics at colleges and universities have the technology.
But there are only a few that are making full use of it for
their professors or for their students or for the general
community. Again, shameless.
But cyberspace is much more democratic,
cheaper and thus accessible for those who don't have
corporate or foundation backing. Thus there are many more
opportunities and greater possibilities of shaping
our world as we need it to be shaped and when we need it shaped.
These efforts depend on individual initiative, commitment,
and enduring consciousness. What Kalamu, Ethelbert,
Arthur Flowers,
and I do today is only pioneering work. We are still at the
early stages. We still learning the technology and the
technology is improving and we still learning how to work it and
work with each other.
But I am hopeful and expect great things to
happen. As ever and always, Rudy
posted 18 September 2005*
* * * *
music website >
http://www.kalamu.com/bol/
writing website >
http://wordup.posterous.com/
daily blog >
http://kalamu.posterous.com
twitter >
http://twitter.com/neogriot
facebook >
http://www.facebook.com/kalamu.salaam
Men
We Love, Men We Hate
SAC writings from Douglass, McDonogh 35, and McMain high
schools in New Orleans.
An anthology on the topic of men and relationships with men
Ways of
Laughing
An Anthology of Young Black Voices
Photographed & Edited by
Kalamu ya Salaam
*
* * * *
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Basil Davidson
obituary—By Victoria Brittain—9 July 2010—Davidson [(9
November 1914 – 9 July 2010) a
British
historian, writer and
Africanist] was enthused early on by the end of British
colonialism and the prospects of pan-Africanism in the
1960s, and he wrote copiously and with warmth about newly
independent
Ghana and its leader, Kwame Nkrumah. He went to work for
a year at the University of Accra in 1964. Later he threw
himself into the reporting of the African liberation wars in
the Portuguese colonies, particularly in Angola,
Mozambique, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. . . . In the
1980s, with most of the African liberation wars now
won—except for South Africa's— Davidson turned much of his
attention to more theoretical questions about the future of
the nation state in Africa. He remained a passionate
advocate of pan-Africanism. In 1988 he made a long and
dangerous journey into Eritrea, writing a persuasive defence
of the nationalists' right to independence from
Ethiopia, and an equally eloquent attack on the
revolutionary leader Colonel Mengistu and the regime that
had overthrown Haile Selassie.
Guardian |
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* * * *
*
Basil Davidson's "Africa Series"
Different
But Equal /
Mastering A Continent /
Caravans
of Gold /
The King and the City /
The Bible and The Gun
West Africa Before the Colonial Era: A
History to 1850
African Slave Trade: Precolonial History,
1450-1850
John Henrik Clarke—A Great and Mighty Walk
* * *
* *
* *
* * *
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The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
By Ilan Pappe
It
is amazing, according to Pappe, how the
media had not managed to see the
similarities between the ethnic
cleansing that was happening in Bosnia
with the one that is happening in
Palestine. According to Drazen Petrovic
(pg.2-3), who has dealt with the
definition of ethnic cleansing, ethnic
cleansing is associated with
nationalism, the making of new nation
states and national struggle all of
which are the driving force within the
Zionist ideology of Israel. The
consultancy council had used the exact
same methods as the methods that were
later to be used by the Serbs in Bosnia.
In fact Pappe argues that such methods
were employed in order to establish the
state of Israel in 1948.
The
book is divided into 12 chapters with 19
illustrations in black and white, with 7
maps of Palestine and 2 tables. These
include old photographs of refugee
camps, and maps of Palestine before and
after the ethnic cleansing of 1948.
|
Pappe continues his writing as a
revisionist historian with the intention
of stating the bitter truth to his
Israeli contemporaries and the fact that
they have to face the truth of their
nation being built upon an ethnic
cleansing of the population of
Palestine. One
can sense an optimistic hope in Pappe’s
writing when he talks about the few who
are in Israel who are aware of their
country’s brutal past especially 1948
and the foundation of the state upon
ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.—PaLint
* *
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
|
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As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
* *
* * *
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. |
"Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London
* * * * *
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Aké: The Years of Childhood
By Wole Soyinka
Aké: The Years of Childhood is a
memoir of stunning beauty, humor, and
perception—a
lyrical account of one boy's attempt to
grasp the often irrational and
hypocritical world of adults that
equally repels and seduces him. Soyinka
elevates brief anecdotes into history
lessons, conversations into morality
plays, memories into awakenings. Various
cultures, religions, and languages
mingled freely in the Aké of his youth,
fostering endless contradictions and
personalized hybrids, particularly when
it comes to religion. Christian
teachings, the wisdom of the ogboni, or
ruling elders, and the power of
ancestral spirits—who
alternately terrify and inspire him—all
carried equal metaphysical weight.
Surrounded by such a collage, he notes
that "God had a habit of either not
answering one's prayers at all, or
answering them in a way that was not
straightforward."
In writing from a child's perspective,
Soyinka expresses youthful idealism and
unfiltered honesty while escaping the
adult snares of cynicism and
intolerance. His stinging indictment of
colonialism takes on added power owing
to the elegance of his attack.
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Faces At The Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism
By Derrick Bell
In nine grim metaphorical sketches, Bell, the black former Harvard law professor who made headlines recently for his one-man protest against the school's hiring policies, hammers home his controversial theme that white racism is a permanent, indestructible component of our society. Bell's fantasies are often dire and apocalyptic: a new Atlantis rises from the ocean depths, sparking a mass emigration of blacks; white resistance to affirmative action softens following an explosion that kills Harvard's president and all of the school's black professors; intergalactic space invaders promise the U.S. President that they will clean up the environment and deliver tons of gold, but in exchange, the bartering aliens take all African Americans back to their planet. Other pieces deal with black-white romance, a taxi ride through Harlem and job discrimination. |
Civil rights lawyer Geneva
Crenshaw, the heroine of Bell's And We Are Not Saved (1987), is back in some of these ominous allegories, which speak from the depths of anger and despair. Bell now teaches at New York University Law School.—Publishers
Weekly
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So Rich, So Poor: Why It's So Hard to End Poverty in America
By Peter Edelman
If the nation’s gross national income—over $14 trillion—were divided evenly across the entire U.S. population, every household could call itself middle class. Yet the income-level disparity in this country is now wider than at any point since the Great Depression. In 2010 the average salary for CEOs on the S&P 500 was over $1 million—climbing to over $11 million when all forms of compensation are accounted for—while the current median household income for African Americans is just over $32,000. How can some be so rich, while others are so poor? In this provocative book, Peter Edelman, a former top aide to Senator Robert F. Kennedy and a lifelong antipoverty advocate, offers an informed analysis of how this country can be so wealthy yet have a steadily growing number of unemployed and working poor. According to Edelman, we have taken important positive steps without which 25 to 30 million more people would be poor, but poverty fluctuates with the business cycle. |
 |
The structure of today’s economy has stultified wage
growth for half of America’s workers—with even worse
results at the bottom and for people of color—while bestowing billions on those at the top. So Rich, So Poor delves into what is happening to the people behind the statistics and takes a particular look at the continuing crisis of young people of color, whose possibility of a productive life too often is lost on their way to adulthood.—DemocracyNow
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Allah, Liberty, and Love
The Courage to Reconcile Faith and Freedom
By Irshad Manji
In Allah, Liberty and Love, Irshad Manji paves a path for Muslims and non-Muslims to transcend the fears that stop so many of us from living with honest-to-God integrity: the fear of offending others in a multicultural world as well as the fear of questioning our own communities. Since publishing her international bestseller, The Trouble with Islam Today, Manji has moved from anger to aspiration. She shows how any of us can reconcile faith with freedom and thus discover the Allah of liberty and love—the universal God that loves us enough to give us choices and the capacity to make them. Among the most visible Muslim reformers of our era, Manji draws on her experience in the trenches to share stories that are deeply poignant, frequently funny and always revealing about these morally confused times. |
What
prevents young Muslims, even in the West, from
expressing their need for religious
reinterpretation? What scares non-Muslims about
openly supporting liberal voices within Islam? How
did we get into the mess of tolerating intolerable
customs, such as honor killings, and how do we change that noxious status quo?
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
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1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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* *
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ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update 14 July 2012
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