|
What Ails the Black Body Politic
Challenges to Movement Building
By James Thindwa
The direction the
Obama administration takes in the next two years depends
in part on the sources of popular pressure. A key
question to consider is: Can Black America, experiencing
newfound pride in the first black president—and scared
to death of Republicans!—challenge a Democratic Party in
the grip of neoliberal orthodoxy?
It is a tragic
irony of our time that those who suffer the most are the
least politically agitated. This disjuncture is evident
in the uncritical support President Obama receives from
large swaths of the black body politic. Polls show that
9 in 10 African Americans approve of the president’s job
performance, compared to 40 percent of white Democrats.
Measured against
indices of economic well-being, black support for the
president seems incongruous, even counterintuitive.
Black unemployment is a staggering 16.1 percent. Home
foreclosures will consume between 71 and 122 billion
dollars from black communities. Homelessness has
increased dramatically, with disproportionate impact on
black adults and children.
This grim reality
is mocked by historically high corporate profits,
skyrocketing CEO compensation, and renewed corporate
mergers and acquisitions, thanks to government bailouts.
Juxtaposed with administration concessions to the
right—tax giveaways to the wealthiest, a health bill
stripped of its redeeming progressive elements, freeze
on federal employee pay, moratorium on Social Security
tax, unending wars, and expansion of the national
security state—such a status quo should provoke anxiety,
not approval.
To be sure, there
is sympathy for the president across the board, with 71
percent of the electorate still blaming
G.W. Bush for
the economic crisis. Also, Obama inherited an economy in
crisis, and has endured scurrilous, often racially
charged torment from the right. And certainly, other
progressive forces have been too willing to
compromise—witness defeat of the
Dream Act and collapse
of comprehensive immigration, a watered down health
reform bill, unrelenting wars, and failure of climate
legislation.
The question of
black political engagement must be raised because it is
indispensable to the movement-building necessary for a
real progressive alternative. Throughout history,
African Americans have been a critical part of dissent,
advocacy and protest, and translating it into public
policy.
In the current
environment, that tradition faces a challenge. There is
resistance to criticizing the president. Black writer
Ishmael Reed portrays white, liberal and left critics of
Obama as affluent, racially insensitive and “out of
touch” with Obama’s base of blacks and Latinos. The New
York Times columnist
Charles Blow berates the “far left”
for “foaming at the mouth” over the 2010 budget
compromise, with its dramatic tax giveaways to the rich
and its threat to Social Security.
In These Times
columnist
Salim Muwakkil recalls a caller to his radio
show who mocks Obama's critics as fair-weather friends
who abandoned Obama “when it got tough.”
There are black
dissenting voices who feel stifled. CNN commentator
Roland Martin describes fissures in the “complex
relationship” between black leadership and President
Obama. Martin recalls how black leaders were angered by
Obama’s failure to seriously consider black women for
the Supreme Court. But the leaders, he says, avoid
direct criticism and aim at “those around the president”
fearing they will be “cut off from the administration”
or face community backlash.
Last July, seven
prominent civil rights organizations announced their
opposition to President Obama’s “Race to the Top,”
citing the education plan’s overreliance on “competitive
funding and hand-picking winners.” But that critique has
since evaporated. Word has it that the White House
quickly pressured these errant civil rights leaders to
tow the line.
It is worth noting
that the black electorate similarly indulged
Bill
Clinton, whose carefully managed stagecraft convinced
many he was one of them. Though the racial dynamics were
different, the results were just as tragic, as Clinton
almost singlehandedly repositioned the Democratic Party
to the right. That shift effectively jettisoned the
party’s historical commitment to social and economic
egalitarianism.
Indeed, Clinton
ushered in the era when Democrats would pay only lip
service to labor rights, promote “free trade” deals that
flout human rights, environmental and labor standards to
the disadvantage of American workers, impose neoliberal
“welfare reform” that further marginalized the poor,
champion financial deregulation—such as collapse of
Glass-Steagall—that gave way to the current financial
crisis, enact crime legislation that catalyzed the
prison boom, and ratify American imperial adventurism.
For their loyalty, black people saw a Democratic Party
in flight from core progressive principles.
“Black people saw a Democratic
Party in flight from core progressive principles.”
To be sure, then,
as now, key Democratic Party constituent groups opposed
the party’s rightward slide. The minority caucuses, for
example, opposed
Nafta, “welfare reform” and other
Clinton policies they deemed insufficiently progressive,
if not regressive. Many caucus members have expressed
misgivings about President Obama’s concessions to the
GOP on health care reform, extension of Bush-era tax
cuts, moratorium on Social Security tax and freezing of
federal workers’ pay, his lackluster support for
progressive immigration reform, and the escalation in
Afghanistan. And earlier in the term, they criticized,
albeit in measured fashion, the president’s choice of
Larry Summers and
Tim Geithner as economic advisers, and
the retention of
Ben Bernanke as
Federal Reserve Chair.
Other black leaders
and opinion makers, including writer-educator
Michael
Eric Dyson, New York Times columnist
Bob Herbert and
veteran civil rights activist
Harry Belafonte have also
criticized the president for policies weighted toward
Wall Street. Black Agenda Report’s
Glen Ford warned
during the 2008 election that Obama was a “corporate
politician” not committed to a progressive agenda.
Television host
Tavis Smiley has criticized “Race to the
Top” and warned that education “is not a race but a
right” [emphasis added]. Invoking how
Frederick Douglass
relentlessly pressured
Lincoln to free the slaves,
Smiley is challenging black Americans to “…push Obama to
address issues important to them.” Great presidents are
not born, he says, “Great presidents are made.”
When
scholar-activist
Cornel West told NPR he had “second
thoughts” about President Obama and questioned his
“obsession” with Wall Street, he said Obama “talked to
me like I was a cub scout and he was the pack master.”
West laments that too many black folk are too
“well-adjusted to Obama's presidency” and worries they
might be “well-adjusted to injustice.” He is
flabbergasted that the president does not talk about
“the new Jim Crow, the prison-industrial complex.”
Thus, a critique of
the left’s opposition to Obama focused on white critics,
though pertinent at times, belies a long history of
broad, multiracial opposition to conservative tendencies
within the Democratic Party. The party’s flight from
progressive values—not racial insensitivity—drives much
of the left’s criticism of President of Obama. Surely
Reed and others are not suggesting the president’s black
and Latino critics are racially insensitive!
But surely, there
is a way for African Americans to celebrate the
momentous symbolism of Obama’s presidency and still
honor the rich tradition of protest and agitation that
has enriched this country’s social, economic and
political life. By inhibiting criticism, Obama’
defenders insinuate a false choice that damages that
tradition. But even more troubling, they ignore serious
shortcomings in the way Obama has governed: his team of
top economic advisors does not include blacks or
progressives;
Guantanamo is still open for business, and
extraordinary rendition is alive and well; an official
policy of impunity has shielded Bush-era crimes from
investigation (contrast that with FBI raids against
antiwar demonstrators or
WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange); the White House is lukewarm toward any gun
control, even in the
aftermath of Arizona tragedy; now
Obama is reviewing the role of regulations in stifling
job creation—a standard canard of the right.
Then there is the
reluctance to acknowledge and talk about the
disproportionate impact of the economic crisis on
African Americans. But the statistics are so
overwhelming they speak for themselves. If he is
uncomfortable with a race-specific discourse, the
president could still make case for targeted action
based on the unimpeachable economic data.
At critical
moments, Obama has failed to capitalize on the mandate
of 2008 to stand up to the GOP and drum up public
support for his policies. To the dismay of progressives
and others who had hoped for a real fight against an
increasingly radical and marginal Republican Party,
Obama resorted to the same backdoor horse trading that
has turned off so many voters. Instead of rallying
voters in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Nebraska to get their
senators to stop opposing the public option, Obama
obliged the obstructionist lawmakers and showered them
with gifts.
As if that was not
enough, the president turned his sights on
Dennis
Kucinich, the Ohio Democrat who held out on principle
against his health plan. An ardent champion of single
payer or Medicare-for-all type program, the congressman
opposed the plan because it did not include a public
option. But Kucinich caved after Obama held a huge rally
in his district and urged the crowd to support his
health care plan. Having arrived at the rally on Air
Force One as the president’s guest, how could Kucinich
resist? If the president could go to such lengths to
strong- arm Kucinich, why couldn’t he similarly target
those defiant Blue Dog Democrats. It is obvious the
president knows how to use his bully pulpit. Sadly, he
uses it against the wrong targets—progressive critics.
Instead of
believing that a more progressive vision is achievable,
too many of Obama’s black defenders are accepting
limitations. They will not question the wisdom of a
president making an ideologically consequential budget
deal without consulting his own party’s elected
representatives. They will not question why Obama failed
to strong arm recalcitrant legislators by rallying their
constituents. Nor will they question why a crucial
policy debate was subjected to last minute, end-of-year
brinkmanship.
The right is
disingenuous when it labels Obama “elitist” But it is
arrogant for any president to declare exclusive
knowledge of the parameters of a public policy debate,
based on his observations. But, question we must.
Blacks, who are disproportionately affected by
regressive tax policy, must hold Obama accountable for
his capitulation to corporate rightwing interests at
their expense. Now, how will Democrats let Bush-era tax
cuts and the freeze on Social Security taxes expire in
2012—a presidential election year?! How will they
overcome the predictable charge of “Democrats want to
raise your taxes?”
The issue of
Bush-era tax cuts is more than just a short-term
political debate. Tax policy sits on the ideological
fault line between progressive and conservative
political philosophy, and cuts to the core of what
Democrats should stand for. Compromising on it not only
cedes ground on a core principle, but it also gives
legitimacy to a discredited “trickle down” economic
theory. The verdict on that theory—what
George Bush Sr.
famously derided as “voodoo economics”—has been
rendered. George W. Bush’s massive tax cuts yielded a
meager 1 million jobs. By contrast, in one of its
redeeming accomplishments, the Clinton administration
created 22.5 million jobs after raising taxes.
In this moment, it
is worth recalling Martin Luther King’s declaration of
the “Poor People’s Campaign: "We are going to bring the
tired, the poor… those who have known long years of hurt
and neglect...to demand that the government address
itself to the problem of poverty.”
King was going to
Washington to demand a reorientation of the nation’s
priorities towards jobs and economic justice. Today, he
would be outraged by the obscene wealth divide, chronic
joblessness, homelessness, endless wars and bloated
military budgets, racism, and alienation of undocumented
immigrants. And he would certainly wonder how, in such
an environment, anyone would discourage protest.
Thirty years of
conservative dogma—regressive taxation, privatization,
deregulation, unbridled free trade, deficit
fundamentalism, assault on labor unions, frayed social
safety net, environmental roll back,
hyper-incarceration, and imperial adventurism—have taken
a toll, and urgent action is needed. Rather than spend
time defending “the most powerful office in the world”
victims of economic injustice—and those who purport to
care about them—should be fighting for social and
economic redress.
It is a cruel hoax
that those on the margins of society should derive
vicarious pleasure from the image of a black First
Family, no matter how compelling, when their material
condition continues to decline. Racial pride cannot be a
substitute for the material benefits—food, clothing,
shelter—and dignity that come from struggle. As King
said, "If a man doesn't have a job or an income, he has
neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the
pursuit of happiness. He merely exists."
Progressive critics
of President Obama are following a rich tradition of
challenging authority championed by King and others.
Like King, they should not let anything—not racial
solidarity, fear of the rightwing, or the
administration’s self-preservation interests—stand in
the way of the hell-raising, marching and organizing
needed to transform our world for the better.
The stakes are simply too high
Source:
BlackAgendaReport
* * *
* *
Bill Moyers Interviews with James Thindwa
Bill Moyers:
Organizing is James Thindwa's
mission in life, what he considers his calling.
Thindwa's been at it for nearly thirty years. Organizing
takes him all over town—the
South Side, the West Wide, City Hall, any place where
working people are fighting to get ahead. Thindwa heads
Chicago's Jobs with Justice, one of over 40 coalitions
nationwide, largely funded by labor unions and allied
with religious organizations, veterans and other
community groups. Here he is at the Teamster's hall,
with steel workers, pipe fitters, brick layers, even
musicians, planning a rally. . . .
He was in the thick of things
recently when local factory workers stood up to a
deadbeat employer. The company they worked for,
Republic Windows and Doors, suddenly announced it
was closing up shop and leaving town. By law, Republic's
unionized employees were entitled to 60 days notice and
some parting benefits. Instead, the owners gave them
three days notice and cut off their health insurance.
The angry workers took over their factory. Backed by
their union, the
United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America
or U.E., they called it a "peaceful occupation" and
announced they wouldn't budge until the company did
right by them. . . .
James Thindwa first
saw the power of organizing when he was growing up in
Rhodesia, now
Zimbabwe. . . . Thindwa won a scholarship
to Kentucky's
Berea College and went on to a master's
degree at
Miami University in Ohio, protesting as a
student against the Ku Klux Klan and apartheid in South
Africa. Soon he moved to Chicago, where he advocated for
senior citizens before joining Jobs with Justice. These
days he's deeply involved in organized labor's campaign
to pass the
Employee Free Choice Act, EFCA, now pending
in Congress. He says the bill—simplifying how workers
can sign up for a union—will
do more than anything to strengthen their collective
voice in the workplace. Union organizing can be a tough
sell, even among workers Thindwa thinks it would help.
When he came to America as a student, his classmates
equated unions with the notorious
Jimmy Hoffa, the mob
and corruption.
Now he's making the
case that in hard times workers need to stand together
more than ever. Over 100 thousand people have lost their
jobs in Chicago over the past year. Around town, long
lines of people look for work, and Thindwa says a
destructive spiral is gathering momentum. . . .
Then . . .Thindwa was taken aback when civil rights hero
Andrew Young rode into town on Wal-Mart's side. Young
had been with
Martin Luther King when King was
assassinated after marching with striking sanitation
workers in Memphis, and had gone on to become mayor of
Atlanta, three-term congressman, and ambassador to the
United Nations. Now the world's largest discount store
had hired him to head a group called
Working Families
for Wal-Mart, funded by the company and its suppliers.
Young's argument was that Wal-Mart's low-paying jobs
could put working people on a path up the economic
ladder.
James Thindwa
Speaks
I'm a community
organizer because I believe that people need a voice.
They need to have institutions that speak for them. . .
. Institutions through which their own concerns, their
grievances, their interests, can be represented. . . .
Lobbying for
Working People
You know, you take
folks who live in communities on the South Side of
Chicago, West Side of Chicago. Your average person is
getting up every day to go to work, and to care for a
family, doesn't have a lobbyist in Washington. They
don't have a lobbyist in the city council. They don't
have a lobbyist at the state legislature. The community
organization gathers facts for them. They call meetings.
They invite people to come. They invite elected
officials to come, attend those meetings, so that they
can listen to the community's grievance. It makes for
participation. It creates opportunity for individuals to
participate in the political process who otherwise might
not have the wherewithal to show up at City Hall, or to
show up at the doorsteps of Congress to agitate and
organize. . . .
Struggle with
Republic Windows and Doors
|
We were going to
use
Republic Windows as an example.
That if
you're thinking about walking away from
workers, you know, walking away from your
obligation to pay workers wages and their
benefits, and that you're going to have a
fight on your hands. That we're going to
bring the entire community—the
wrath of the community was going to come and
express itself. Chicago is a union town. And
we like to say that here. And so we drew a
line in the sand and said- it was snowing
outside, we drew a line in the snow, and
said that you can't do this in Chicago. . .
.
The
Republic Windows and Doors
struggle here was so momentous, was such an
important event, that we don't want to lose
that momentum. We really think that this is
a story that needs to be told. So
Jobs
with Justice has mounted—has
launched a tour of the workers, to take them
around the country to speak to groups, speak
to union members and speak to community
people. . . . |
 |
Family Influence
Activism, I think,
is in my DNA. I don't know too many people who grow up
in
Zimbabwe or any of those countries that have
experienced the, sort of, the rough-and-tumble of our
racial politics who emerge out of it without being
politically conscious.
This is me, James
[pointing to a family portrait]. This is my twin
brother, Geoffrey. This is my dad. My dad was born in
the country of
Malawi
and he actually migrated to
Zimbabwe.
My parents, you could say, they were clearly middle
class by African standards. They just were very serious
people, well read. They loved to read, and they taught
us how to take education seriously. . . .
Federal Laws
Against Labor
Right now the
environment for workers is very, very difficult. Workers
are facing intimidation when they try to join unions.
One out of five workers in the United States is fired
for trying to organize a union. . . . There are rallies
planned right here in Chicago. And across the country,
Jobs with
Justice is collecting cards intended to demonstrate
the public support for the
Employee Free Choice Act. It's a card that says, "I,
as a resident of this country, am in favor of passage of
the
Employee Free Choice Act and I want Congress to move
quickly to pass that law."
I just found this
hostility, this antipathy, towards unions. I think what
I've tried to, when pushing back in these debates, was
to say, "Fine. Certain leaders are corrupt. But you're
not suggesting that unions are not relevant in society,
are you?" And then so we'd have the debate about the
importance of having a counter-weight to what I think
clearly has been growing corporate power that really
conspired for a long time to demonize and undermine
unions. . . .
Work and
Education
Last July in 2008
in July, 62 young African-American men were shot dead in
their neighborhoods. Now the media can just dismiss this
as the acts of individuals who just want to be bad
people. But we know, as
Julius Wilson has written—the
sociologist from Harvard—has
written that much of this social instability can be
linked to disappearing work. What you're seeing right
now are parents who are working, oftentimes, two, three
jobs at the minimum wage. One of the consequences is
that they're going to be less and less invested in their
kids. Not because they're bad parents, but because
they've got to get out and work. And someone has to care
for those kids. And who's going to do that? They're
going to be out on the streets most of the time, and
ending up in trouble. So those are some of the
connections that we try to make. That the question of
good wages, decent wages for workers, isn't just a
question of economic justice, isn't just a question of
fairness for that worker, that it does have broad
implications for social stability. . . .
Wal-Mart and a
Living Wage
So there's this
phenomenon across the country of
Wal-Mart
family members who are having to be subsidized by
public dollars because they work for a corporation that
refuses to pay them a decent wage and provide healthcare
benefits. So we think that workers like that are kind of
forgotten. They're forgotten because their employers
have told everyone that they're part of a service
sector, and that the service sector somehow doesn't
matter. The service sector is inherently low wage. And
what we're saying is, "No, we need to focus on them,
because there're millions of these folks."
The opposition to
the living wage was based on a couple of things they
were saying. One of them was that if we passed a living
wage ordinance in Chicago, that we're going to drive
businesses away, the Wal-Mart would not build a store in
Chicago. . . .
The second one was
that when there is a job, and you're out of work, you
don't have the luxury to pick, you don't have the luxury
to choose. And so we had to convince people that, no, it
wasn't just about a job. The job has to be dignified,
has to have meaning, and furthermore, corporations don't
have a right to exploit people in a neighborhood just
because those people are desperate, just because they're
vulnerable, just because they're jobless. And so the
task for us was for us to go out and talk to our allies
and to convince them, to give them a good reason why
this was not an obstructionist proposal. But that in
fact this is in the long-term interest of the city and
of its communities. So it was a huge battle.
Opposition to
Living Wage
His job [civil
rights hero
Andrew Young] was to go across the country rallying
the troops, rallying clergy, community leaders, black
leaders, to oppose what, in effect, is really a pay hike
for workers. You know, in these cities when you're
talking about workers with big box stores, you're
talking about black workers, Latino workers. These are
people of color who work in these stores. So there's
very odd enterprise for him. But he came to Chicago and
he sponsored a big clergy luncheon on the South Side of
Chicago and invited some aldermen, invited clergy
members and tried to convince them to oppose the living
wage ordinance. . . . A few days after that, in fact,
one of the pastors on the South Side of Chicago actually
held a rally at his church. And a thousand people showed
up. . . .
 |
The
opposition to the living wage became so
intense that I can concede right now that I
had these private moments of doubt. I really
doubted whether we were going to pull this
off. But we continued. We had done our job.
We had we went out and talked to people. In
fact- Jobs with Justice and some of the
other organizations, we actually went door
to door. We went out and talked to people on
the West Side of Chicago about why we needed
a living wage. Most people thought it's fair
to ask to a corporation that makes $350
billion in sales every year, and makes a
profit of $12.5 billion every year, to pay a
living wage to the workers. . . .
And so
we won. It was a huge victory for us. As a
matter of fact, we were in the city counsel
when the vote was taken and there was just
jubilation. We just- we hugged each other.
And just- everybody was just really, really
happy. This is it, you know. We have won!
|
Living Wage
Ordinance in Chicago
The interesting
thing about the ordinance is that after the Mayor vetoed
it, the public actually got to have the last word,
because some of the aldermen in the African American
community who voted against the ordinance were
subsequently voted out of office. Activists just went
out in the neighborhoods back into the wards and
explained to people what happened, right? That you're
sending an alderman to downtown to the city counsel to
represent your interests. "Are your rents going up?"
"Yes." "Are your utility rates going up?" "Yes." "Gas
prices going up?" "Yes." "Well, your alderman voted
against a pay raise for workers. What do you think about
that?" And people decided that they were going to go out
and vote them out of office. And so several aldermen are
now unemployed as a result of that. . . .
Organizing
Communities
I think, for many
of us, we just get more and more motivated to get back
on the street, to get back in these communities and
organize people. Because we know that we're on the right
side of this debate. We think people should get work.
People should. It's good to get a job, but that job has
to pay a decent wage.
Source:
Bill Moyer’s Journal / 27 March 2009
* * *
* *
James Thindwa—Jobs
with Justice
This interview was
conducted by a fellow participant at the US
Human Rights Network National conference in Chicago
April 17th-20th, 2008. James Thindwa discusses the work
of "Jobs with Justice.
Jobs with Justice
engages workers and allies in campaigns to win justice
in workplaces and in communities where working families
live. JwJ was founded in 1987 with the vision of lifting
up workers’ rights struggles as part of a larger
campaign for economic and social justice. We believe in
long-term multi-issue coalition building , grassroots
base-building and organizing and strategic militant
action as the foundation for building a grassroots
movement, and we believe that by engaging a broad
community of allies, we can win bigger victories. We
reach working people through the organizations that
represent them—unions, congregations, community
organizations—and directly as JwJ activists. Nearly
100,000 people have signed the Jobs with Justice pledge
to Be There at least five times a year for someone
else’s struggle as well as their own.
In more than 40 cities in 25 states across the country,
we are building coalitions of labor, religious, student
and community organizations that are committed to each
other for the long haul. Our campaigns make a difference
for workers facing hostile bosses, knowing they are not
alone in their struggle. At JwJ, solidarity is a two-way
street: when communities come out for unions, they can
expect unions to come out for them. Union victories are
crucial, but they are not enough. We must maintain a
strong commitment that our coalitions will weigh in on
community fights.
In 2005, Jobs with
Justice coalitions worked on 197 workplace justice
campaigns affecting more than 243,400 workers. JwJ
Coalitions supported more than 135,000 workers in 107
organizing and first contract campaigns, we denounced
employer harassment of immigrant workers, and we
resisted cost-shifting of health care benefits. Local
coalitions also worked on 169 social justice campaigns
on critical issues, supporting community organizations’
efforts to secure affordable housing and defend public
services, and leading proactive campaigns that can only
be won when we fight together—such
as economic development policies, living wage
ordinances, and statewide fights to win health care for
all.
* * *
* *
|
Unequal Protection
The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the
Theft of Human Rights
By
Thom Hartmann
Corporations rule the
world, claims Thom Hartmann, and they are
despoiling it for profit. He traces the
historical friction between individual
rights and the corporation, culminating in a
landmark 1886 court case that altered the
course of constitutional protection forever.
Since then corporations have steadily
acquired power, shifted an unfair share of
the tax burden, taken control of the media,
and co-opted the regulatory process for
their own purposes, according to Hartmann.
Hartmann cites examples of the absurd and
frightening power: sterile streams and
undrinkable water, poisonous neighborhoods,
deathtrap trucks for an extra $2 in profit.
To end the abuses, Hartmann calls for a
grassroots revolution. He says its time to
understand the true costs of our consumerist
society, take back the government, and shift
to a values-based economy. Pre-drafted legal
templates encourage individuals to begin
work at the local level.—Rodale
Books (October 4, 2002) |
 |
* * *
* *
Amiri Baraka:”Resistance and The Arts”
live interview at Boulder, CO
Resistance_and_The_Arts.mp3
* * *
* *
 |
Digging
The Afro-American Soul of American Classical
Music
By
Amiri Baraka
For almost half a
century, Amiri Baraka has ranked among the
most important commentators on African
American music and culture. In this
brilliant assemblage of his writings on
music, the first such collection in nearly
twenty years, Baraka blends autobiography,
history, musical analysis, and political
commentary to recall the sounds, people,
times, and places he's encountered. As in
his earlier classics, Blues People
and Black Music, Baraka offers essays
on the famous—Max Roach, Charlie Parker,
Miles Davis, John Coltrane—and on those
whose names are known mainly by jazz
aficionados—Alan Shorter, Jon Jang, and
Malachi Thompson. Baraka's literary style,
with its deep roots in poetry, makes
palpable his love and respect for his jazz
musician friends. His energy and enthusiasm
show us again how much Coltrane, Albert
Ayler, and the others he lovingly considers
mattered. He brings home to us how music
itself matters, and how musicians carry and
extend that knowledge from generation to
generation, providing us, their listeners,
with a sense of meaning and belonging.—University
of California Press |
* * * * *
Archival Documentary 1-2 The Black Power Mixtape
Scarred Justice: the Orangeburg Massacre
1968 (video)
* * *
* *
* * * * *
 |
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
|
* * * * *
|
The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
 |
* * * * *
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
1990
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
* * * * *
* *
* * *
ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
posted 10 February 2010
|
