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National Student Walk-Out to rally and show
support for the Jena 6
We All Live in Jena! / National Call to
Action! / Monday,
October 1, 2007 / 12:00 Noon, Central Time
Mos Def call for
a National Student Walk-Out
Artist/ Activist Mos Def along
with M1, Talib Kweli, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement,
Sankofa Community Empowerment, Change the Game,
National Hip Hop Political Convention, Hip Hop
Association, and student leaders from 50 campuses
call for a National Student Walk-Out to rally and
show support for the Jena 6, who are being denied
their human rights by the Louisiana criminal justice
system.
The Case of the Jena 6
Last fall, when two Black high
school students sat under the “white” tree on their
campus, white students responded by hanging nooses
from the tree. When Black students protested the
light punishment for the students who hung the
nooses, District Attorney Reed Walters came to the
school and told the students he could “take [their]
lives away with a stroke of [his] pen.” Racial
tension continued to mount in Jena, and the District
Attorney did nothing in response to several
egregious cases of violence and threats against
black students. But when a white student–who had
been a vocal supporter of the student’s who hung the
nooses, taunted a black student, called several
black students “nigger”–sustained minor injuries
from a school fight, six black students were charged
with second-degree attempted murder. Last month, the
first young man to be tried, Mychal Bell, was
convicted. He faced up to 22 years in prison for a
school fight until the Black people began to
organize and his conviction was thrown out because
he was tried as an adult. However, the DA and the
Judge still refuse to set a reasonable bail or to
drop the charges in this case and Mychal is still in
jail!!
Mos Def is asking students worldwide to assist in the fight
against racial injustice and show solidarity for
these young people, who have been treated unequally
by the law. The prosecution of these young men
symbolizes a terrible miscarriage of justice, by
punishing students who opposed segregation in their
schools and disregarding the threatening acts of
others who advocate it.
As students and activists we say
enough is enough! What is happening in Jena is
happening all over this country. From Sean Bell to
Mychal Bell, the criminal justice system is killing
and incarcerating us. We will not be silent!
Demands
Judge J.P. Mauffray and District
Attorney Reed Walters have engaged in a string of
egregious actions, the most recent of which was the
denial of bail for Bell on Friday. We call for:
- All charges against the
Jena 6 be dropped;
- The immediate release of
Mychal Bell;
- The United States
Department of Justice to convene an immediate
inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the
arrests and prosecutions of the Jena 6;
- Judge Mauffray to be
recused from presiding over Bell ’s juvenile
court hearings or other proceedings;
- The Louisiana Office of
Disciplinary Counsel to investigate Reed Walters
for unethical and possibly illegal conduct;
- The Louisiana Judiciary
Commission investigate Judge Mauffray for
unethical conduct; and
- The Jena School District
superintendent to be removed from office.
Other Endorsers Include: Immortal Technique,
NyOil, Cynthia McKinney, Delta Sigma Theta, April
Silver/AKILA WORKSONGS.
For more info contact
info@mxgm.org /
To add your school to the list, email
assata@pitt.edu
or
spjlewis@hotmail.com
Source:
Nubian Waves
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Mos Def on YouTube
Mos Def—Life in Marvelous Times /
Mos Def + The Brooklyn Philharmonic -
"Revelations"
Mos Def—Coming Together /
Mos
Def- Coming Together 2
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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
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Ratification
The People Debate the Constitution,
1787-1788
By Pauline Maier
A notable historian
of the early republic, Maier devoted a
decade to studying the immense
documentation of the ratification of the
Constitution. Scholars might approach
her book’s footnotes first, but history
fans who delve into her narrative will
meet delegates to the state conventions
whom most history books, absorbed with
the Founders, have relegated to
obscurity. Yet, prominent in their local
counties and towns, they influenced a
convention’s decision to accept or
reject the Constitution. Their
biographies and democratic credentials
emerge in Maier’s accounts of their
elections to a convention, the political
attitudes they carried to the conclave,
and their declamations from the floor.
The latter expressed opponents’
objections to provisions of the
Constitution, some of which seem
anachronistic (election regulation
raised hackles) and some of which are
thoroughly contemporary (the power to
tax individuals directly). Ripostes from
proponents, the Federalists, animate the
great detail Maier provides, as does her
recounting how one state convention’s
verdict affected another’s. Displaying
the grudging grassroots blessing the
Constitution originally received, Maier
eruditely yet accessibly revives a
neglected but critical passage in
American history.—Booklist |
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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
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
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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
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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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posted September 2007
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