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New
Orleans is Modern America
By Derek Seidman
I highly recommend people go to cnn.com and
listen to the segment "Mayor: "Get off your
assess." It's a 20 minute interview with the mayor of New
Orleans, and it's the most honest and candid interview I've ever
heard from a US politician.
European papers are awed at (in their own
words) how the US is still living in the 1960s in terms of race.
Tens of thousands of black people, not able to leave because
they couldn't afford to, being stranded to just die. What an
indictment of this country. This disaster is revealing in such
stark simplicity how those rich white assholes have mismanaged
everything, the whole country.
Actually, I take that back: they've managed
everything quite well: they've wanted to cut public funding,
repeal and cut taxes, forget about the well-being of black
people, make the political climate hostile to compassionate
ideas, etc., for a long time. New Orleans is revealing their
astounding success.
My friend Pat Resta called me yesterday, an
hour after he heard that he's being deployed to New Orleans.
He's in the guard, and this is the third time in four years he's
being deployed. For guard duty, this is insane.
He got back from Iraq just a year ago. Now he's dropping
out of school again, getting ready for a six-month tour. He was
on the Cindy Sheehan bus tour when he heard he was being
deployed. 35% of the Louisiana guard is in Iraq.
Yesterday it was announced that 800,000 more
poor people are losing their Medicaid benefits. The day before
that, the census bureau announced a rise in poverty on the US
for the fourth straight year (and this according to their
dishonest poverty indicators).
What a disgrace. This is still a Jim Crow
country. Jim Crowed by race, Jim Crowed by class, Jim Crowed by
the fact that, in reality, in policy, in funding, in tax policy,
in housing policy, in media coverage, etc., some people are
clearly worth more than others.
It's been this way all along, and the New
Orleans disaster is just revealing what many people knew and
lived, but which was either covered up or denied so middle class
America could live in a bubble of moral innocence and so the
government could drum up support to do whatever the hell it
wanted.
posted 2 September 2005
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Hopes and Prospects
By Noam Chomsky
In this urgent new book, Noam Chomsky
surveys the dangers and prospects of our
early twenty-first century. Exploring
challenges such as the growing gap
between North and South, American
exceptionalism (including under
President Barack Obama), the fiascos of
Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S.-Israeli
assault on Gaza, and the recent
financial bailouts, he also sees hope
for the future and a way to move
forward—in the democratic wave in Latin
America and in the global solidarity
movements that suggest "real progress
toward freedom and justice." Hopes and
Prospects is essential reading for
anyone who is concerned about the
primary challenges still facing the
human race. "This is a classic Chomsky
work: a bonfire of myths and lies,
sophistries and delusions. Noam Chomsky
is an enduring inspiration all over the
world—to millions, I suspect—for the
simple reason that he is a truth-teller
on an epic scale. I salute him." —John
Pilger
In dissecting the rhetoric and logic of
American empire and class domination, at
home and abroad, Chomsky continues a
longstanding and crucial work of
elucidation and activism . . .the
writing remains unswervingly rational
and principled throughout, and lends
bracing impetus to the real alternatives
before us.—Publisher's
Weekly
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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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)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest / Black World
Browse all issues
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1965
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____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The
Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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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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ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update 20
January 2012
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