At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.
Booker T. Washington
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
George Junius Stinney Jr. was born on October 21, 1929. He would have celebrated his 82nd birthday this Friday, but he did not live to see his 15th birthday. He was executed in South Carolina's electric chair on June 16, 1944.
The 5 foot 1 inch tall, 95 pound 14-year-old African American male child was arrested on March 23, 1944 accused of killing two White girls (11 and eight years old) with a rail-road spike. His trial, including jury selection, lasted just one day. The authorities said that he confessed to killing the two girls although there are no written records of a confession.
Stinney's court-appointed attorney was a tax commissioner preparing to run for office.
There was no court challenge to the testimony of the three White police officers who claimed that Stinney had confessed although that was the only evidence presented. Three witnesses were called for the prosecution; a White man who "found" the bodies of the two girls and the two White doctors who performed the post mortem. No witnesses were called for the defence.
The trial lasted from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. One report about the trial stated: "The jury retired at five minutes before five to deliberate. Ten minutes later it returned with its verdict: guilty, with no recommendation for mercy."
No legal appeals were filed on Stinney's behalf although the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), some church groups and labour unions appealed to the governor of South Carolina to stop the execution. No African Americans were allowed in the courtroom for the trial.
Stinney's father was fired from his job and his parents were given the choice of leaving town or being lynched. The family was forced to flee, leaving the 14-year-old child helpless with no support and in the clutches of a White supremacist system bent on his demise.
According to the records, it was standing room only in the courtroom (on April 24, 1944) with well over 1,500 White spectators. This was reminiscent of scenes where African American men, women and children were lynched for the entertainment of White men, women and children who gathered to watch the Black bodies twitch as they swung from trees until the life left them. It may just as well have been a lynching with his body hanging from a tree.
This African American male child, small for his age, had to sit on a stack of large books in the electric chair so that electrodes could be attached to his head. Stinney, at 14, is the youngest person to have been executed in the U.S. in the 20th century. It has been reported that during the electrocution, the electric shock that shook his small frame knocked the adult size mask off his head as tears streamed down his face which was contorted in the throes of death.
As in the case of Lena Baker who was executed by the state of Georgia in a dreadful miscarriage of justice and received a posthumous pardon in 2005, now, 67 years after his execution, there is a campaign on to clear Stinney's name. In an article published January 18, 2010 by the Associated Press the story of the attempt to exonerate Stinney included this information: "A community activist is now fighting to clear Stinney's name, saying the young Black boy couldn't have killed the two White girls.
George Frierson, a 56-year-old member of the school board and a textile inspector, believes Stinney's confession was coerced, and that his execution was just another injustice Blacks suffered in Southern courtrooms in the first half of the 1900s.
South Carolina lawyers Steve McKenzie, Shaun Kent and Ray Chandler are supporting Frierson in the fight to obtain a posthumous pardon for Stinney.
In 2011 Canada, young African Canadian males may not be at risk of execution in the electric chair but they are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. Many African Canadian youth who should not have been captured by the system are trapped there because of their race.
The recent case (August 12, 2011) of a 6' tall, 60-year-old African Canadian man who was locked in a cruiser and aggressively interrogated by a White female police officer who thought he fit the profile of a suspect described as "Black, in his 20s and 5' 6" illustrates this. Although the 60-year-old reportedly showed the police officer the long scar from his recent (May 2011) heart transplant surgery she refused to believe he was not the suspect.
If this is happening to a 60-year-old imagine what the experiences of the youth are. Those in our community who work with youth trapped in the criminal justice system have told some horror stories of what they have witnessed.
With this happening in 2011 imagine what happened to African Canadians at the time Stinney was executed in South Carolina and even before. While White Canadians believe the myth of a post-racial Canada and point accusing fingers at their relatives in the U.S., the reality is very different for racialized people in Canada, especially African Canadians. Even if Stinney had been born in Canada the chances are that he would have met a similar fate at that time on this side of the border.
In the novel, George and Rue, published in 2005, Dr. George Elliot Clarke wrote about the execution of brothers George Hamilton (23) and Rufus (22) in Fredericton, New Brunswick on July 27, 1949. The Hamilton brothers were found guilty of killing a White taxi driver as they robbed him.
George and Rue is a fictionalized work about the lives of two young men who travel from their birth place in Nova Scotia to Fredericton, New Brunswick, a town in which, even though African Canadians lived there, they were found to be "too suspiciously White to be trusted". The character, Rue, was so disturbed by the Whiteness of the town that he "schemed to apply black paint to the statue of Bobby Burns on the Green - either that or smash it to bits".
In telling the story of George and Rufus Hamilton Clarke humanizes the two young men whose lives were reduced to a criminal act and the revenge of the White society that surrounded them. At the end of the book Clarke writes of a similar crime committed by two White men in Quebec just six months (December 1949) after the Hamilton brothers were executed in New Brunswick. However, these two White men went a step further, they bought guns and ammunition with the stolen money and went on to rob a bank. The two White men were not executed because, as Clarke writes in George and Rue, "Ninety minutes before their hangings, word came their sentences'd been commuted to life in prison. George and Rue - black - had no such white luck."
Two wrongs never make a right. Nor can you right a wrong by committing another wrong. You may be able to justify your actions politically or socially, but spiritually you will be held accountable for what you do - why you do it doesn't count. The pendulum of life swings both ways and brings rewards at both ends of the spectrum. If you use your mind, time and energy to cause harm to anyone, the pendulum will sooner or later move in your direction. If your slate is clean, when it swings toward you, you will not have to worry about being knocked down.
From Acts of Faith: Daily Meditations for People of Color by Iyanla Vanzant, published in 1993.
"We came, we saw, he died," are the words that U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton reportedly chuckled when she was informed that Muammar Gaddafi had been killed by his captors.
The reports and images coming out of Libya of Gaddafi's last minutes of life are no laughing matter. According to an article in the South African newspaper, Mail and Guardian, Archbishop Desmond Tutu was moved to comment on Clinton's behaviour, saying that she could not be proud of calling for Gaddafi's killing.
"Nor is killing a human being something to be celebrated." http://mg.co.za/article/2011-10-21-sa-leaders-condemn-the-death-of-gaddafi.
The Archbishop condemned the killing in this reported statement: "The manner of the killing of Muammar Gaddafi on Thursday totally detracts from the noble enterprise of instilling a culture of human rights and democracy in Libya ... the people of Libya should have demonstrated better values than those of their erstwhile oppressor."
Tutu probably took part of his statement from Proverbs chapter 4, verse 31: Do not envy the oppressor, and choose none of his ways.
Gaddafi, who was killed on Thursday, October 20 after being captured by a group of his countrymen, was killed after a brutal beating that was proudly recorded and distributed online. Then came the dreadful, sickening images of his bloodied, half-naked body on display under lurid headlines such as: Moammar Gadhafi's body is stored in commercial freezer at shopping center as it awaits burial. http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/10/moammar_gadhafi_is_stored_in_c.html.
There are several articles in newspapers and posts on the Internet about the murder of Gaddafi and some of his children. The articles are almost gleeful in reporting that a group of men captured, brutalized and killed another human being. Admittedly, many considered him a dictator, a tyrant and various other unsavoury names but he should have at least been given an opportunity to defend himself in a court of law. Maybe he did not give the same opportunity to some of his enemies but two wrongs do not make a right. Killing the man makes his killers just like him.
Gaddafi had his detractors and his supporters. Some considered him a Pan-Africanist while others thought his plan was to eventually ensure the Arabization of the African continent. This is not to be confused with the colonization that the Europeans visited upon the continent where they eventually left and returned to Europe, but more like the European colonization and occupation of America, Australia, Canada and New Zealand where they in essence now own those countries.
Do the western powers that covet Libya's oil really think that they will be able to easily control the group that paraded a wounded Gaddafi through the streets as they gleefully brutalized him?
Do these western powers that turned a blind eye to the brutalization and murder of indigenous Africans in Libya (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/30/libya-spectacular-revolution-disgraced-racism) in spite of human rights groups like Amnesty International raising the alarm really care about more than getting their greedy hands on that country's oil?
While the so-called Libyan rebels labeled Africans "mercenaries" and immigrants/migrants, the fact remains that Libya is on the African continent and Africans lived there for millennia before the first Arab set foot on the continent. In the fight between the Arab Gaddafi forces and the Arab National Transitional Council (NTC) it seems that the world has lost sight of the fact that this is an African country and Africans not involved in the conflict have been brutalized and killed because of the colour of their skin.
In an article published in The Guardian on Tuesday, August 30, 2011, Richard Seymour wrote: A rebel slogan painted in Misrata during the fighting salutes "the brigade for purging slaves, black skin". A consequence of this racism has been mass arrests of Black men, and gruesome killings - just some of the various atrocities for which human rights organizations blame rebels.
This is what the world is celebrating as a victory, liberation, democracy? There are various anonymous quotes like this one from a Toronto Sun article http://m.torontosun.com/2011/10/21/moammar-gadhafis-final-hours published Friday, October 21: Another NTC official, speaking to Reuters anonymously, gave another account of Gadhafi's violent death: "They (NTC fighters) beat him very harshly and then they killed him. This is a war."
If the western powers think that this bunch will welcome them with open arms and open the oil wells for their pleasure and plunder they had better think again. The European and North American media, for the most part, have written about the downfall of Gaddafi as the removal of a tyrant. There are others who see this as a removal of Gaddafi to ensure that the oil companies from countries such as the U.S., Britain, France and Italy could control Libya's oil.
Gaddafi has been accused of atrocities; so have several American and European leaders, some of whom have once been great friends with Gaddafi. Even former U.S. President, George W. Bush, the "anti-terrorist activist" and seeker of non-existent weapons of mass destruction, embraced Gaddafi as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle in an article with the headline: Bush embraces Libyan terrorist Gadhafi, and all is forgiven. (Did someone say, "Oil"?). And Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, wrote in an article entitled "Gaddafi: first we fete them, then we bomb them - but that's politics" partly about former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's sycophantic relationship with Gaddafi, published in The Telegraph on September 5, 2011: "It was only a few years ago that Tony Blair himself came out to his tent, almost snogged the Mad Dog, and proclaimed a new era of cooperation between Britain and Libya."
At the time these men could not seem to get enough of Gaddafi. So how did it go from being his Best Friends Forever (BFF) to being his mortal enemies? The hypocrisy of all the players in this farce (all with their own agenda) is astounding. Now they are hunting his children and grandchildren (any guesses why?).
Whatever wrong Gaddafi has been accused of, the brutality to which he was subjected when he was captured and the eventual brutal and undignified end to his life was wrong. Those involved in taking his life should have heeded the words of the wise African American woman, Iyanla Vanzant.
During this month (October) Africans in Britain, whether they were born on the African continent, in the Caribbean, in Britain or elsewhere are celebrating African/Black History Month.
There is much to celebrate, commemorate and remember because the history of Africans in Britain is lengthy. As quiet as it is kept, there has been an African presence in the British Isles at least since the Roman occupation of Britain in 43AD.
In the publication Antiquity, which is a quarterly review of World Archeology, an article written by five archeologists from Britain's University of Reading published an article: A Lady of York: migration, ethnicity and identity in Roman Britain about an African woman who lived in York during the Roman occupation of Britain. These British archeologists, through their research and after studying her gravesite, have determined that this African woman was a member of a wealthy family. The young woman who they think was between 18 and 23 years old when she transitioned was not a servant as has been assumed whenever Africans are mentioned from those ancient times.
The Ivory Bangle Lady, as she was christened by the archeologists, was buried in a sarcophagus made of stone which was a sign of immense wealth in Roman occupied Britain. The discovery of a perfume bottle, a mirror and jewellery buried with the young woman suggests that her family was "absolutely from the top end of York society", according to a quote attributed to archeologist Dr. Hella Eckardt in an article published in the British newspaper, The Sunday Times. Dr. Eckardt also reportedly said: "Multicultural Britain is not just a phenomenon of more modern times. Analysis of the 'Ivory Bangle Lady', and others like her, contradicts assumptions about the make-up of Roman-British populations as well as the view that African immigrants were of low status, male and likely to have been slaves."
There is also evidence of African soldiers in the Roman army during the occupation of Britain. In Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain published in 1984, Peter Fryer, a White British author, wrote: "There were Africans in Britain before the English came here. They were soldiers in the Roman imperial army that occupied the southern part of our island for three and a half centuries. Though the earliest attested date for this unit's presence here is 253-8, an African soldier is reputed to have reached Britain by the year 210."
Africans did not disappear with the end of the Roman occupation of Britain. Fryer also mentions John Blanke, an African trumpeter who was a regular performer at the courts of British monarchs Henry VII and Henry VIII. Blanke is even listed as performing at the special tournament Henry VIII hosted at Westminster to celebrate the birth of his son in 1511.
By the time Elizabeth I inherited the throne from her father (Henry VIII), the presence of Africans in Britain had increased to a level that made the monarch uncomfortable. Although she was happy to have Africans entertain and clean for White Britons, the thought that not all of them were in those subservient roles seemed to give the British monarch some heartburn.
In an "open letter" dated July 11, 1596, Britain's Elizabeth I wrote to the Lord Mayor of London, aldermen, other Mayors, sheriffs and other public officers expressing that "there are of late divers blackmoores brought into this realme, of which kinde of people there are allready here to manie," and ordering that they be deported from the country.
Apparently, enough of the people she referred to as blackmoores were not deported out of her realm because, in 1601, she complained again about the "great numbers of Negars and Blackamoors which are crept into this realm."
The fact that by 1601 the British elite, including her majesty, had made a fortune buying, selling and working enslaved Africans to death in the colonies did not seem to bother her.
In 'Staying Power' Fryer makes the case that only a few Africans were deported and a number of Africans remained in Britain and by the middle of the 18th century were between one and three per cent of the population of London.
Africans were enslaved throughout the British Empire until August 1, 1834 (1838 in the Caribbean.) The famous decision by Chief Justice Lord Mansfield in 1772 in the case of enslaved African James Somerset (Somerset v. Stewart) against the slaveholder Charles Stewart did not free enslaved Africans in Britain. That decision made it illegal for owners to forcibly remove enslaved Africans from England. It is estimated that at that time between 14,000 and 15,000 enslaved Africans lived in England, most of them taken there as personal servants by White men and women who owned plantations in the British colonies.
In 2009, the number of Africans in Britain was 1,521,400 or 2.9 per cent of the population. This number includes those born in Britain and immigrants from the African continent, the Caribbean and elsewhere. The largest wave of African immigrants from the former British colonies in the Caribbean landed in Britain between 1948 and 1962 in what Jamaican poet Louise Bennett Coverly (Miss Lou) termed Colonization in Reverse, immortalized in a poem of the same name, http://louisebennett.com/newsdetails.asp?NewsID=8 [1].
Britain also colonized several countries on the African continent before and after the infamous "Scramble for Africa" and Africans from those countries immigrated to Britain, many considering Britain the "mother country" and were shocked when they encountered a White supremacist culture and rabid racism.
Sadly, although Africans have been living in Britain for centuries, they continue to face racism. They are stopped, searched, arrested and imprisoned at an alarming rate. In an article published in the British newspaper The Guardian on Monday, October 11, 2010 Randeep Ramesh wrote: "On the streets, black people were subjected to what the report describes as an "excess" of 145,000 stop and searches in 2008. It notes that black people constitute less than 3% of the population, yet made up 15% of people stopped by police."
Ramesh was writing about an Equality and Human Rights Commission report, How Fair is Britain? Ramesh also wrote: "The commission found that five times more black people than white people per head of population in England and Wales are imprisoned. The ethnic minority prison population has doubled in a decade - from 11,332 in 1998 to 22,421 in 2008. The problems may start at school. The commission points out that black children are three times as likely to be permanently excluded from education."
Africans in Britain have every right to celebrate the fact that they have a long history in Britain and have contributed to the society (which is mostly ignored). There are also plans to address other issues that concern Africans living in Britain. On Friday, October 14, the group National Afrikan People's Parliament http://www.blackhistorystudies.com/ [2] plan a community action including a demonstration at Downing Street (British Prime Minister's residence) to address the unlawful killing of Mark Duggan and the resultant uprisings, ongoing 'Black Deaths in Custody' and the reactionary state assault on our Community, especially our youths (and the wider social, political and historical context).
It would seem that regardless of where we live, Africans are subjected to the same oppression. That is why we need to know our history so that we can learn from those who went before us and struggled to get us to where we are today. The Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, father of the modern Pan African movement, taught us to remember that we are a mighty people with this quote: "Up you mighty people! You can accomplish what you will!!!"
Hence the experiment after the Second World War that saw communism imposed on China and Russia at a time when the two nations were heavily dependent on rural agrarian culture for their economies.
The notion of communism as laid our by Karl Marx implied that communism was an evolutionary form of economic movement, so that as society became more modernized and each person was receiving enough, there would be a natural progression away from pure capitalism toward shared ownership.
But the peoples of China and Russia did not have 'enough' to begin with, so to take what little they owned and nationalize it was not going to have the desired results.
First you have to feel that you have enough before you can begin to share. Either that or you have to have the kind of extraordinary compassion that we know exists but is definitely not commonplace as an everyday quality of humankind in a selfish and greedy world.
These days Russia and China have, to a significant extent, abandoned any notion of the old communism. They have to go backwards to get there, because the line of progress is first industrialism, then capitalism, then socialism, and then communism. Slowly but surely they came to accept that reality was a stronger master than political theory.
Similarly, when the economic tsunami came to Canada's shores as it threatened every other economy during the annus horriblis of 2009, the conservative philosophy of the Stephen Harper government had to stand down in response.
The budget that was brought forward to create jobs and to give welfare to big businesses 'too big to fail' was in stark contradiction to the 'less government, less state intervention' approach that typifies most political conservatives of the day. One wonders what kind of dissonance Harper and his Cabinet must have experienced when they realized that they would have to create a budget that was in direct opposition to their view of how government should function. Yet, they made it so.
We are turning a corner on the kind of rigid political view that has tended to polarize people as we see happening in United States politics today. If one good thing can come out of the ridiculous intransigence that Democrats and Republicans are displaying it's that refusal to compromise in recognition of what reality requires leads to bigger and worse problems.
Here in Toronto, we have to contend with the same situation as our municipal government is attempting to manage its budget, but is being challenged to do so while also battling along philosophical lines. What is it that the city government is supposed to do? Is it merely there to tax and control the money? Is it there with a vision to build and ensure a community's viability?
During the many debates leading up to today's provincial election, people were heard to say that they are not interested in discussing political ideology; what they want are practical solutions and answers to how we are going to manage as a community, as a city, as a province as a country during threatening economic times.
We don't want to hear old clichés about 'tax and spend liberals' or 'law and order' conservatives. We want to know that we are going to be okay regardless of what's ahead.
Even so, everyone has a point of view about how to make things right based in significant part on his or her politics.
But to paraphrase Rodney King as he tried to calm the L.A. Riots of 1992, we have to find a way to get along, and we need to do so for our mutual survival. We cannot have an ideology running roughshod over the most vulnerable in society, for instance, but we cannot make big business the bad guy all the time. Where are we going to compromise for the good of all?
A note on the fall colours...
The funny thing about fall is that you know the temperature is getting colder but the beauty of nature as it moves into sleep mode is truly awesome; no one does dying and death like the trees in the fall. Bittersweet, we call it. Now, if we could just move through that and go right back to spring some of us would be just that much happier.
By MURPHY BROWNE (Abena Agbetu)
The lynching of black America is taking place in the criminal justice system where nearly one-third of black men between the ages of 18 and 28 are in prisons and jails, on parole, or waiting for their day in court. One-half of the two million people in prisons are black. That is one million black people behind bars, more than in colleges. Through private prisons, whites have turned the brutality of their racist legal system into a profit-making venture for dying white towns and cities throughout America. One can lynch a person without a rope or tree.
Excerpt from Strange Fruit: The Cross and the Lynching Tree
On October 19, 2006 James Cone, Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary, presented the 2006 Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard Divinity School, the title of which was "Strange Fruit: The Cross and the Lynching Tree."
Although Cone gave this lecture in October 2006 he could very well have been talking about the case of Troy Anthony Davis when he spoke about the similarity of the cross and the lynching tree http://www.hds.harvard.edu/multimedia/video/strange-fruit-the-cross-and-the-lynching-tree.
Davis was born on October 9, 1968. He grew up in Savannah, Georgia and was executed by the state of Georgia - sanctioned by the U.S. government - on September 22, 2011.
He was a 20-year-old on August 19, 1989 when the criminal act for which he was accused was committed. In 1991, Davis was tried, convicted and sentenced to death for the fatal shooting of a White police officer although he has maintained his innocence since he was arrested. There was enough doubt about his presumed guilt to garner the support of celebrities, very important people, ordinary folks and human rights groups.
Among those calling for a re-trial and/or clemency were Amnesty International, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), former U.S. president, Jimmy Carter, Reverend Al Sharpton, Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Bob Barr, a former federal prosecutor and former member of the U.S. House of Representatives (Republican-Georgia.)
Davis' case garnered international attention especially because of the obviously racially charged overtones. Here was an African American male who was accused of shooting a White police officer and found guilty even though there was no physical evidence to link him to the shooting. Of the nine witnesses from 1991, seven recanted their statements citing police coercion at the time and at least one witness has confessed that he was illiterate and was forced to sign a document he could not read. A group of White men in power turned deaf ears to the pleas of the world to reconsider their determination to kill this African American male in what seems like a modern day lynching.
In an opinion piece published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on September 15, entitled Should Davis be executed? No! (http://www.ajc.com/opinion/should-davis-be-executed-1181530.html) William S. Sessions, a former director of the FBI, a former federal judge and federal prosecutor wrote: What the hearing demonstrated most conclusively was that the evidence in this case -- consisting almost entirely of conflicting stories, testimonies and statements -- is inadequate to the task of convincingly establishing either Davis' guilt or his innocence. Without DNA or other forms of physical or scientific evidence that can be objectively measured and tested, it is possible that doubts about guilt in this case will never be resolved. However, when it comes to the sentence of death, there should be no room for doubt.
Following Davis' execution, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, citing serious concerns that the rights of Davis to due process and a fair trial were not respected, said that killing Davis may have violated international law. Three independent United Nations human rights experts had called on the United States government to stop the execution amid concerns that Davis did not receive a fair trial.
UN Special Rapporteur on arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Gabriela Knaul and the Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan Méndez, deplored that the case mainly relied on the testimonies of witnesses which contained "serious" inconsistencies. The U.S. government was reminded of its obligation to ensure that anyone under its jurisdiction receives a fair trial, as required under article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR.)
The experts stated in their appeal: "Not only do we urgently appeal to the Government of the United States and the state of Georgia to find a way to stop the scheduled execution, but we believe that serious consideration should be given to commuting the sentence. We recall that the death penalty may only be imposed when the guilt of the person charged is based upon clear and convincing evidence, leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts. Given the irreversible nature of the death penalty, it is crucial that fair trial standards are fully respected in all judicial proceedings related to offences punishable with the death penalty."
Davis is not the first African American killed by the state of Georgia whose presumed guilt was in question. His story reminded me of a woman I wrote about in 2005 when she received a posthumous pardon from Georgia 60 years after she was killed in the electric chair. On March 5, 1945, Lena Baker became the only woman to be killed by Georgia in the electric chair. Like Davis whose reported last words were "those about to take my life, may God have mercy on your souls, may God bless your souls," Baker who maintained her innocence to the end said: "What I done, I did in self-defence or I would have been killed myself. Where I was, I could not overcome it. I am ready to meet my God."
Baker had been repeatedly raped by the White man (23 years older than she was) who was killed with his own gun during a struggle as he tried to rape her again. She had been hiding from this man who had kept watch at her house overnight and grabbed her when she went home the following morning to take care of her three children who had been left in their grandmother's care overnight. It is a dreadful story illustrating the manner in which the lives of African Americans were constrained by White people. After dragging Baker over to a barn on his property where he raped her again, the White man went to a prayer meeting with his adult son, locking her in the barn. When he returned from his prayer meeting and attempted to rape her at gunpoint there was a struggle during which he was killed.
Baker was sentenced to death by a White all male jury after a four hour trial. Although she was the victim in more ways than one, her family was forced to uproot their lives and flee their hometown. Her community was refused the right to bury her properly and mourn her passing. They were terrorized by the White community. In 2001, Baker's great nephew, Roosevelt Curry, began the campaign to clear her name and a pardon was granted by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles on August 30, 2005.
Although Canada no longer has the death penalty, the rate at which African Canadian males are incarcerated is indeed alarming. The racial profiling of African Canadians is a reality in spite of the many studies that have been done, the many reports that have been written and recommendations that have been made to address this scourge. During this International Year for People of African Descent we need to recognize that the oppression continues and must be addressed.
The year I turned ten
I missed school to march with other children
For a seat at whites-only lunch counters
Like a junior choir, we chanted "We Shall Overcome."
Then, police loosed snarling dogs and fire hoses on us,
And buses carted us, nine hundred strong, to jail.
Excerpt from the poem Birmingham 1963 by Carole Boston Weatherford published 2007
On September 15, 1963 White American Christian terrorists bombed an African American Christian church, the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The bomb blast tore through the church basement killing four African children. The four African American girls whose bodies were shattered in that act of terrorism were Addie Mae Collins (1949-1963) Denise McNair (1951-1963) Carol Robertson (1949-1963) and Cynthia Wesley (1949-1963.) An estimated 22 other African Americans members of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church were injured in the bomb blast.
It was Sunday morning and according to reports published at the time: At about 10:22 a.m., twenty-six children were walking into the basement assembly room to prepare for the sermon entitled "The Love That Forgives," when the bomb exploded.
This act of terrorism is considered one of the worst of the 20th century targeted at African Americans during the Civil Rights struggle. There were countless (many never made public) incidents of terrorism against African Americans including the massacre of African Americans in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921 (Black Wall Street) and Rosewood, Florida in 1923. Many were labeled "Race Riots" when in fact, in dreadful acts of terrorism, White people lynched African Americans, destroyed their businesses, churches, homes and schools in jealous rage that in spite of the oppression they suffered there were African American individuals and communities that managed to carve out contemporary successful existences.
When the terrorists are White Christians the religion of the perpetrators is ignored but every act of terrorism against African Americans has been carried out by White Christians. In some cases, they are not recognized as acts of terrorism or the perpetrators identified as terrorists. However, in the case of the September 15, 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama even former U.S. National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that incident and the bombing of African American businesses, churches and homes were acts of terrorism.
Rice was an eight-year-old living in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 at the time of the church bombing and in her 2010 book, Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family, writes of the several incidents of bombing in Birmingham, Alabama: As terrorists still do today, bombers exploded the first device in hopes a crowd would gather. They detonated the second bomb filled with shrapnel and nails - in order to injure as many innocent onlookers as possible.
September 15, 1963 was not the first bombing incident or act of terrorism by White Christians to which African Americans were subjected that year. In her 2007 book, Birmingham 1963, Carole Boston Weatherford explains: In the 1960s, Birmingham, Alabama was one of the most racially divided cities in the United States. While Civil Rights protesters pressed for equality and integration, the staunchest racists resorted to violence to resist change. Racists had set so many bombs in Birmingham's black neighborhoods that the city was nicknamed "Bombingham."
White Christian Americans were desperate to keep African Americans in a place of second class citizenship in the country which was built on the blood, sweat and tears of enslaved Africans. So desperate that on Good Friday, April 12, 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and approximately 80 other African Americans were arrested for taking part in a peaceful protest. Dr. King wrote his famous Letter from a Birmingham jail while he was incarcerated in reply to a group of White religious leaders (seven pastors and one rabbi) who exhorted Dr. King and all African Americans to continue to wait for their Human Rights and Civil Rights to be recognized by White Americans.
The mass arrests on Good Friday led to the Children's Crusade on May 2, 1963 where over 1,000 children (many as young as six) gathered at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church before marching to downtown Birmingham. They were all arrested and hauled off to jail in police cars and school buses. On May 3, more African American children gathered and, as they left the church, Commissioner of Public Safety Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor directed the local police and fire departments to use massive force to stop them. The world saw the evil of White supremacy when images of African American children being blasted by high-pressure fire hoses, clubbed by police officers and attacked by police dogs appeared on television and in newspapers internationally http://www.crmvet.org/images/imgbham.htm .
The scene was repeated on May 4 and on May 6 almost 2,500 youth were arrested. By then the children were being held at the state fairgrounds because the jails were full. On May 10 after eight days of unrest an agreement was reached with the City of Birmingham to desegregate drinking fountains, lunch counters and restrooms within 90 days and to release those in jail on bond or their own recognizance. However that was an agreement with City officials and the good Christian White people of Birmingham refused to treat African Americans as their equal and the terrorist activities against African Americans continued.
For African American families and communities there was the added trauma of being forced to live beside these terrorists. In the case of the murder of the four children on September 15, 1963, the terrorists continued to live in Birmingham, Alabama and were not brought to justice until the 21st century. Since 1963 an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had identified four White Christians as the terrorists responsible for the bombing of the African American church and the murder of the four girls. Robert Chambliss, Herman Cash, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry continued to live in Birmingham, Alabama where the African American community was forced to deal with the fact that these terrorists walked among them daily as free men.
In September 1963 a witness identified Robert Chambliss as the man who placed the bomb at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. He was arrested and charged with murder and possessing a box of 122 sticks of dynamite without a permit. On October 8, 1963 Chambliss was found not guilty of murder and received a hundred-dollar fine and a six-month jail sentence for possession of dynamite. It was not until the 1970s that the case against Chambliss was reopened. The then recently elected attorney general of Alabama requested the original FBI files on the case and discovered that evidence against Chambliss that might have led to a conviction had not been used in the original trial. In November, 1977 Chambliss was tried once again for the September 15, 1963 bombing, was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. By the time the FBI got around to pursuing action against the other terrorists on May 18, 2000, only two were still alive. Cash was dead (1994) but Blanton and Cherry were arrested, tried and convicted (Blanton 2001 and Cherry 2002.) Cherry's trial was delayed because he was deemed mentally incompetent. However according to This Day in Civil Rights History published in 2009, "The evidence against him, including testimony from his own granddaughter, painted a picture of an unrepentant former Klansman who was a close associate of Chambliss and Blanton and was linked to the bombing."
Why did it take almost four decades for these White Christian terrorists who devastated the African American community of Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963 to be brought to justice? After all, we have seen how quickly the American government can move against suspected terrorists in other countries inhabited by racialized people who are not Christian.
One midnight in eternity a mighty ancient wind blow from the Kalahari to the Gobi and sweep through the Sahara and there I form and rise out of the belly of the pit of hell. I is the Scorpion King! Androctonus Crassicauda, master of the isms, schisms and flesh eating dwellers. I am the last word of the iron bird laid to rest at Piarco, the father of the fatherless who have no roof over their heads. Famine, tsunami, aides, when the dust blow I does cause wars, earthquakes. Revenge is mine and ah reach Trinidad ah reach! I have no beginning and I have no end. No muddah make me. Hooves like ten thousand camels across the Atlantic in a heartbeat sprinkling Sahara dust. Grains settle in grown man eye and turn children lungs to husk! Dust cannot cover the rising or setting sun and curdle the blood of all dem wining woman . When that upstart Baby Bush try to outsmart, ah send my handmaidens Osama and Saddam but I come to Trinidad, ah show myself in person. Watch meh ah was cley, doh make joke with upstarts.
Excerpt from Midnight Robber speech (Robber Talk)
The Midnight Robber is one of several characters that play a part in the famous Trinidad Carnival on which Toronto's Caribana festival has been modeled. I was introduced to many of these characters on Friday, July 30 through the work of Rhoma Spencer, Artistic Director of Theatre Archipelago who was supported by several Trinidadians living in Toronto. The Midnight Robber character really made an impression because of the costume, the pageantry and the play with words. I also learned more about Jouvay (J'ouvert) and other traditional Jouvay characters.
I volunteered to be a member of the Jouvay celebration on July 30 at the Harbourfront Centre not realizing how much there was to learn about the various characters. Assembling the costume of a Dame Lorraine was an education in itself. Coordinating the exaggerated bosom and backside almost required attending a remedial class in science (at least for balance.) I wasn't sure I could remember to fetch all the pieces of my Dame Lorraine costume down to Harbourfront and I did not want to leave home wearing the thing. I managed by carrying the various pieces in two bags and only forgot to take my elaborate fan. The camaraderie was amazing, especially since I was the only Guyanese there and the Trinidadians seemed to all have known each other for years and were familiar with the stories being told about various places and people.
There were quite a few hilarious stories, especially one about a bullying police officer known as "Bag Ah Lions" who was put in his place by a magistrate after one too many instances of bullying ordinary citizens.
Being involved with the Jouvay celebration at Harbourfront gave some context to many of the calypsoes I had heard during my youth. The play of words on the placards we carried was hilarious and I could imagine where the calypsonians received their education and inspiration. It is unfortunate that the majority of visitors to this city during the recent festivities did not have an opportunity to learn about the history of Jouvay and Carnival.
This celebration has also been transported to Britain where the Notting Hill Carnival was established by Claudia Jones. According to information in the biography Left of Karl Marx (published 2007) written by Carol Boyce Davies, Jones was born on February 21, 1915 in Belmont, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and moved to New York City on February 9, 1924. She was treated to aggressive surveillance by the FBI because of her political beliefs and after being imprisoned several times was ordered deported to England on December 5, 1955. She left on December 9, arriving in London on December 22, 1955.
Jones promptly became involved in political activity in London including cofounding the West Indian Workers and Students Association, founding a newspaper the West Indian Gazette and organizing racialized communities in London. Her work led to the organizing of the first London Caribbean Carnival on January 30, 1959 in St. Pancras Hall (forerunner of the Notting Hill Carnival now celebrated at the end of August) and the Afro-Asian Caribbean Conference in 1961 and the formation of the Committee of Afro-Asian and Caribbean Organizations.
It is not surprising that someone with the credentials of Claudia Jones would see the value of organizing an event like the London Caribbean Carnival and that its successor, the Notting Hill Carnival includes the Midnight Robber character.
Information on this character from the National Library of Trinidad and Tobago (NALIS) states: The Midnight Robber is one of the most beloved characters in traditional carnival. Both his costume and his speech are distinctive. His "Robber Talk" is extravagant and egocentric, and boastful. He brags about his great ancestry, exploits, strength, fearlessness and invincibility. This "Robber Talk" is derived from the tradition of the African Griot or storyteller, and the speech patterns and vocabulary are imitative of his former master. He wears a black satin shirt, pantaloons, influenced by the American cowboy tradition, and a black, flowing cape on which the skull and cross bones are painted. Also painted on the cape is the name by which the robber goes. He also wears a huge black, broad-brimmed, fringed hat on which a coffin is often superimposed. In his hand he carries a weapon - either a dagger, sword or gun - and a wooden money box in the shape of a coffin. He carries a whistle which he blows to punctuate his tales of valour.
Spencer conducted a workshop at Harbourfront about the Midnight Robber character and encouraged participants to compose their own "Robber Talk." I tried my hand at composing "Robber Talk" because I want to play the Midnight Robber character at next year's Jouvay. Can you see me in the Midnight Robber costume delivering this "Robber Talk"? Yes you can!
I am Abena the grand-daughter of the famous Obeah Man from Berbice. I sprouted fully formed and clothed from my grandfather's brain. In 1763 we advised Kofi and his lieutenants, Akkabre, Akkara and Atta who defeated the Dutch enslavers in Berbice. After my grandfather joined the ancestors the leaders of the Berbice Revolution refused to listen to a mere woman so I brought down confusion on their heads and they all perished. In 1791 when Boukman send message I fly to Haiti in the form of a Canje Pheasant and because Boukman and the Africans in Haiti take my advice they defeated the French. I come here now to help allyuh people solve the confusion in this city, so heed my advice. Remember, I am the mighty Abena from Berbice history so don't cross me and don't try my patience or I will call down the ancient plagues of Egypt on allyuh head.
"All children start off as 'gifted' and at risk! What diminishes these gifts are the lack of inspired teachers; classrooms that impose restrictions on who they are and what they learn; and parents who leave their children's potential and destiny to all of the above."
Michelle Brown-Stafford Parental Involvement Coach.
Michelle Brown-Stafford is the African American woman whose son Stephen Stafford Jr. entered university when he was 11 years old.
Brown-Stafford and her husband Stephen Stafford Sr. made the decision to withdraw their two children from the public school system and home school them. Brown-Stafford made the sacrifice with the support of her husband to leave her job and become the educator of her children. The family lived on the one income of Stafford senior, an electrical engineer, to ensure that their children received the best possible education at home with mom as teacher. Today, their 19-year-old daughter, Martinique Stafford, who entered university at 17 is a member of Phi Eta Sigma National Honour Society and their 15-year-old son will graduate next year with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in psychology (major) and computer science (minor) and then he is off to medical school (at a mere 16 years old).
Brown-Stafford and her husband decided that home schooling was best for their children after losing confidence in the education system. This is not possible for all parents who may only have one income to begin with or who need both parents' incomes just to survive.
Brown-Stafford has advice for parents who by necessity must have their children educated in the public school system. She urges parents to work with their child's teacher to identify if the child is an auditory, a visual or a kinesthetic learner. Kinesthetic learners learn best by moving their bodies, activating their large or small muscles as they learn. These are the "hands-on learners" or the "doers" who actually concentrate better and learn more easily when movement is involved. Some kinesthetic learners are mistakenly labelled "hyperactive." It is very unfortunate that some educators who do not have the training or the dedication needed to work with children do more harm than good when working with kinesthetic learners. This is especially true when the kinesthetic learner is an African American or African Canadian male child.
In a June 2010 interview published in the St. Petersburg Times when explaining that Stephen was homeschooled more than his older sister Brown-Stafford is quoted: "We had to keep track of Stephen because he is an African-American male, and we didn't want to lose him and we didn't want him to become a statistic."
The Stafford family and other African Americans are not alone in their disenchantment with the education system. In 2006 British educator Ken Robinson spoke about the lack of diversity in the education system which leads to the misdiagnosing of some children who are kinesthetic learners and the stifling of their creativity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbty.
Parents have a role to play in the education of their children. Some of the activities in which parents can engage with their children include taking them to the library to borrow books (to read with and to them) and educational DVDs and encouraging them to play educational games. You can choose to turn off the television or limit the time spent watching television shows that are not educational. Have regular chats with your child's teacher about his or her progress and address any concerns before it becomes a big deal. Document any concerns you may have and questions that are not answered satisfactorily must be addressed in writing. When attending formal meetings have an advocate or support person to take notes. Volunteer at your child's school whether on a regular basis or for special occasions, attend Parent Council meetings as often as you can and run for office on the Council if you have the time to commit. You and your child need to know the names of any one who works with your child including the principal, vice principal, class room assistant and volunteers, office administrative assistant and caretaker.
We pay taxes to fund, among other things, education and health care so we should expect that the education our children receive is appropriate to their learning style. We should expect and demand that the education system works for us, to educate our children effectively. If the system does not serve us appropriately then we need to hold the politicians and educators accountable. Make this an election issue.
Michelle Brown-Stafford hosts a website at www.gifted-spirit.com where she shares the knowledge she has gained from successfully homeschooling her two children. She encourages parents to be involved in their children's education. Her advice and the knowledge she willingly shares is invaluable because both of her children have done well under her tutelage.
Her son Stephen Stafford Jr. will graduate from Morehouse, the alma mater of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who entered Morehouse (one of the USA's 105 Historically Black Colleges and Universities) as a 15-year-old in 1944. On Sunday, August 28, the 48th anniversary of the March on Washington and his famous I Have A Dream speech King will be honoured when a monument is dedicated with a larger than life size sculpture of King. The memorial honouring King which includes a 9-metre-tall sculpture of King emerging from a 137-metre-long granite wall inscribed with 14 quotations from his speeches sits on the National Mall between memorials honouring Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson. The monument is a fitting tribute to a man who dedicated his life to a worthy cause and lost his life in that struggle.
It is almost the end of the summer vacation and time spent away from formal education. What have you and your children been reading during the two-month summer break? The summer is not over until after Word on the Street on Sunday September 25, 2011 at Queen's Park, from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm http://www.thewordonthestreet.ca/wots/toronto.
It has been an amazing summer with glorious weather and many opportunities to visit festivals galore and learn about Toronto. Unfortunately, there has not been much to learn about our history in this fast disappearing International Year of People of African Descent. However, do not despair, we have the opportunity to educate the teachers in the schools our children attend when schools re-open on September 6. You still have about 10 days to either borrow books from the Toronto Public Library about the history of Africans from the continent and the Diaspora or visit the bookstores and buy some books.
Practice the 4th Kwanzaa principle Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) by buying your books from Accents on Eglinton, A Different Booklist, Nile Valley Books and any other bookstores whose owners support our community.
We need to speak up!
Pardon sought for youth executed in U.S. 67 years ago
By MURPHY BROWNE (Abena Agbetu)George Junius Stinney Jr. was born on October 21, 1929. He would have celebrated his 82nd birthday this Friday, but he did not live to see his 15th birthday. He was executed in South Carolina's electric chair on June 16, 1944.
The 5 foot 1 inch tall, 95 pound 14-year-old African American male child was arrested on March 23, 1944 accused of killing two White girls (11 and eight years old) with a rail-road spike. His trial, including jury selection, lasted just one day. The authorities said that he confessed to killing the two girls although there are no written records of a confession.
Stinney's court-appointed attorney was a tax commissioner preparing to run for office.
There was no court challenge to the testimony of the three White police officers who claimed that Stinney had confessed although that was the only evidence presented. Three witnesses were called for the prosecution; a White man who "found" the bodies of the two girls and the two White doctors who performed the post mortem. No witnesses were called for the defence.
The trial lasted from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. One report about the trial stated: "The jury retired at five minutes before five to deliberate. Ten minutes later it returned with its verdict: guilty, with no recommendation for mercy."
No legal appeals were filed on Stinney's behalf although the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), some church groups and labour unions appealed to the governor of South Carolina to stop the execution. No African Americans were allowed in the courtroom for the trial.
Stinney's father was fired from his job and his parents were given the choice of leaving town or being lynched. The family was forced to flee, leaving the 14-year-old child helpless with no support and in the clutches of a White supremacist system bent on his demise.
According to the records, it was standing room only in the courtroom (on April 24, 1944) with well over 1,500 White spectators. This was reminiscent of scenes where African American men, women and children were lynched for the entertainment of White men, women and children who gathered to watch the Black bodies twitch as they swung from trees until the life left them. It may just as well have been a lynching with his body hanging from a tree.
This African American male child, small for his age, had to sit on a stack of large books in the electric chair so that electrodes could be attached to his head. Stinney, at 14, is the youngest person to have been executed in the U.S. in the 20th century. It has been reported that during the electrocution, the electric shock that shook his small frame knocked the adult size mask off his head as tears streamed down his face which was contorted in the throes of death.
As in the case of Lena Baker who was executed by the state of Georgia in a dreadful miscarriage of justice and received a posthumous pardon in 2005, now, 67 years after his execution, there is a campaign on to clear Stinney's name. In an article published January 18, 2010 by the Associated Press the story of the attempt to exonerate Stinney included this information: "A community activist is now fighting to clear Stinney's name, saying the young Black boy couldn't have killed the two White girls.
George Frierson, a 56-year-old member of the school board and a textile inspector, believes Stinney's confession was coerced, and that his execution was just another injustice Blacks suffered in Southern courtrooms in the first half of the 1900s.
South Carolina lawyers Steve McKenzie, Shaun Kent and Ray Chandler are supporting Frierson in the fight to obtain a posthumous pardon for Stinney.
In 2011 Canada, young African Canadian males may not be at risk of execution in the electric chair but they are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. Many African Canadian youth who should not have been captured by the system are trapped there because of their race.
The recent case (August 12, 2011) of a 6' tall, 60-year-old African Canadian man who was locked in a cruiser and aggressively interrogated by a White female police officer who thought he fit the profile of a suspect described as "Black, in his 20s and 5' 6" illustrates this. Although the 60-year-old reportedly showed the police officer the long scar from his recent (May 2011) heart transplant surgery she refused to believe he was not the suspect.
If this is happening to a 60-year-old imagine what the experiences of the youth are. Those in our community who work with youth trapped in the criminal justice system have told some horror stories of what they have witnessed.
With this happening in 2011 imagine what happened to African Canadians at the time Stinney was executed in South Carolina and even before. While White Canadians believe the myth of a post-racial Canada and point accusing fingers at their relatives in the U.S., the reality is very different for racialized people in Canada, especially African Canadians. Even if Stinney had been born in Canada the chances are that he would have met a similar fate at that time on this side of the border.
In the novel, George and Rue, published in 2005, Dr. George Elliot Clarke wrote about the execution of brothers George Hamilton (23) and Rufus (22) in Fredericton, New Brunswick on July 27, 1949. The Hamilton brothers were found guilty of killing a White taxi driver as they robbed him.
George and Rue is a fictionalized work about the lives of two young men who travel from their birth place in Nova Scotia to Fredericton, New Brunswick, a town in which, even though African Canadians lived there, they were found to be "too suspiciously White to be trusted". The character, Rue, was so disturbed by the Whiteness of the town that he "schemed to apply black paint to the statue of Bobby Burns on the Green - either that or smash it to bits".
In telling the story of George and Rufus Hamilton Clarke humanizes the two young men whose lives were reduced to a criminal act and the revenge of the White society that surrounded them. At the end of the book Clarke writes of a similar crime committed by two White men in Quebec just six months (December 1949) after the Hamilton brothers were executed in New Brunswick. However, these two White men went a step further, they bought guns and ammunition with the stolen money and went on to rob a bank. The two White men were not executed because, as Clarke writes in George and Rue, "Ninety minutes before their hangings, word came their sentences'd been commuted to life in prison. George and Rue - black - had no such white luck."
Way Gaddafi was killed is wrong
By MURPHY BROWNE (Abena Agbetu)Two wrongs never make a right. Nor can you right a wrong by committing another wrong. You may be able to justify your actions politically or socially, but spiritually you will be held accountable for what you do - why you do it doesn't count. The pendulum of life swings both ways and brings rewards at both ends of the spectrum. If you use your mind, time and energy to cause harm to anyone, the pendulum will sooner or later move in your direction. If your slate is clean, when it swings toward you, you will not have to worry about being knocked down.
From Acts of Faith: Daily Meditations for People of Color by Iyanla Vanzant, published in 1993.
"We came, we saw, he died," are the words that U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton reportedly chuckled when she was informed that Muammar Gaddafi had been killed by his captors.
The reports and images coming out of Libya of Gaddafi's last minutes of life are no laughing matter. According to an article in the South African newspaper, Mail and Guardian, Archbishop Desmond Tutu was moved to comment on Clinton's behaviour, saying that she could not be proud of calling for Gaddafi's killing.
"Nor is killing a human being something to be celebrated." http://mg.co.za/article/2011-10-21-sa-leaders-condemn-the-death-of-gaddafi.
The Archbishop condemned the killing in this reported statement: "The manner of the killing of Muammar Gaddafi on Thursday totally detracts from the noble enterprise of instilling a culture of human rights and democracy in Libya ... the people of Libya should have demonstrated better values than those of their erstwhile oppressor."
Tutu probably took part of his statement from Proverbs chapter 4, verse 31: Do not envy the oppressor, and choose none of his ways.
Gaddafi, who was killed on Thursday, October 20 after being captured by a group of his countrymen, was killed after a brutal beating that was proudly recorded and distributed online. Then came the dreadful, sickening images of his bloodied, half-naked body on display under lurid headlines such as: Moammar Gadhafi's body is stored in commercial freezer at shopping center as it awaits burial. http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/10/moammar_gadhafi_is_stored_in_c.html.
There are several articles in newspapers and posts on the Internet about the murder of Gaddafi and some of his children. The articles are almost gleeful in reporting that a group of men captured, brutalized and killed another human being. Admittedly, many considered him a dictator, a tyrant and various other unsavoury names but he should have at least been given an opportunity to defend himself in a court of law. Maybe he did not give the same opportunity to some of his enemies but two wrongs do not make a right. Killing the man makes his killers just like him.
Gaddafi had his detractors and his supporters. Some considered him a Pan-Africanist while others thought his plan was to eventually ensure the Arabization of the African continent. This is not to be confused with the colonization that the Europeans visited upon the continent where they eventually left and returned to Europe, but more like the European colonization and occupation of America, Australia, Canada and New Zealand where they in essence now own those countries.
Do the western powers that covet Libya's oil really think that they will be able to easily control the group that paraded a wounded Gaddafi through the streets as they gleefully brutalized him?
Do these western powers that turned a blind eye to the brutalization and murder of indigenous Africans in Libya (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/30/libya-spectacular-revolution-disgraced-racism) in spite of human rights groups like Amnesty International raising the alarm really care about more than getting their greedy hands on that country's oil?
While the so-called Libyan rebels labeled Africans "mercenaries" and immigrants/migrants, the fact remains that Libya is on the African continent and Africans lived there for millennia before the first Arab set foot on the continent. In the fight between the Arab Gaddafi forces and the Arab National Transitional Council (NTC) it seems that the world has lost sight of the fact that this is an African country and Africans not involved in the conflict have been brutalized and killed because of the colour of their skin.
In an article published in The Guardian on Tuesday, August 30, 2011, Richard Seymour wrote: A rebel slogan painted in Misrata during the fighting salutes "the brigade for purging slaves, black skin". A consequence of this racism has been mass arrests of Black men, and gruesome killings - just some of the various atrocities for which human rights organizations blame rebels.
This is what the world is celebrating as a victory, liberation, democracy? There are various anonymous quotes like this one from a Toronto Sun article http://m.torontosun.com/2011/10/21/moammar-gadhafis-final-hours published Friday, October 21: Another NTC official, speaking to Reuters anonymously, gave another account of Gadhafi's violent death: "They (NTC fighters) beat him very harshly and then they killed him. This is a war."
If the western powers think that this bunch will welcome them with open arms and open the oil wells for their pleasure and plunder they had better think again. The European and North American media, for the most part, have written about the downfall of Gaddafi as the removal of a tyrant. There are others who see this as a removal of Gaddafi to ensure that the oil companies from countries such as the U.S., Britain, France and Italy could control Libya's oil.
Gaddafi has been accused of atrocities; so have several American and European leaders, some of whom have once been great friends with Gaddafi. Even former U.S. President, George W. Bush, the "anti-terrorist activist" and seeker of non-existent weapons of mass destruction, embraced Gaddafi as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle in an article with the headline: Bush embraces Libyan terrorist Gadhafi, and all is forgiven. (Did someone say, "Oil"?). And Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, wrote in an article entitled "Gaddafi: first we fete them, then we bomb them - but that's politics" partly about former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's sycophantic relationship with Gaddafi, published in The Telegraph on September 5, 2011: "It was only a few years ago that Tony Blair himself came out to his tent, almost snogged the Mad Dog, and proclaimed a new era of cooperation between Britain and Libya."
At the time these men could not seem to get enough of Gaddafi. So how did it go from being his Best Friends Forever (BFF) to being his mortal enemies? The hypocrisy of all the players in this farce (all with their own agenda) is astounding. Now they are hunting his children and grandchildren (any guesses why?).
Whatever wrong Gaddafi has been accused of, the brutality to which he was subjected when he was captured and the eventual brutal and undignified end to his life was wrong. Those involved in taking his life should have heeded the words of the wise African American woman, Iyanla Vanzant.
October is Black History Month in Britain
By MURPHY BROWNE (Abena Agbetu)During this month (October) Africans in Britain, whether they were born on the African continent, in the Caribbean, in Britain or elsewhere are celebrating African/Black History Month.
There is much to celebrate, commemorate and remember because the history of Africans in Britain is lengthy. As quiet as it is kept, there has been an African presence in the British Isles at least since the Roman occupation of Britain in 43AD.
In the publication Antiquity, which is a quarterly review of World Archeology, an article written by five archeologists from Britain's University of Reading published an article: A Lady of York: migration, ethnicity and identity in Roman Britain about an African woman who lived in York during the Roman occupation of Britain. These British archeologists, through their research and after studying her gravesite, have determined that this African woman was a member of a wealthy family. The young woman who they think was between 18 and 23 years old when she transitioned was not a servant as has been assumed whenever Africans are mentioned from those ancient times.
The Ivory Bangle Lady, as she was christened by the archeologists, was buried in a sarcophagus made of stone which was a sign of immense wealth in Roman occupied Britain. The discovery of a perfume bottle, a mirror and jewellery buried with the young woman suggests that her family was "absolutely from the top end of York society", according to a quote attributed to archeologist Dr. Hella Eckardt in an article published in the British newspaper, The Sunday Times. Dr. Eckardt also reportedly said: "Multicultural Britain is not just a phenomenon of more modern times. Analysis of the 'Ivory Bangle Lady', and others like her, contradicts assumptions about the make-up of Roman-British populations as well as the view that African immigrants were of low status, male and likely to have been slaves."
There is also evidence of African soldiers in the Roman army during the occupation of Britain. In Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain published in 1984, Peter Fryer, a White British author, wrote: "There were Africans in Britain before the English came here. They were soldiers in the Roman imperial army that occupied the southern part of our island for three and a half centuries. Though the earliest attested date for this unit's presence here is 253-8, an African soldier is reputed to have reached Britain by the year 210."
Africans did not disappear with the end of the Roman occupation of Britain. Fryer also mentions John Blanke, an African trumpeter who was a regular performer at the courts of British monarchs Henry VII and Henry VIII. Blanke is even listed as performing at the special tournament Henry VIII hosted at Westminster to celebrate the birth of his son in 1511.
By the time Elizabeth I inherited the throne from her father (Henry VIII), the presence of Africans in Britain had increased to a level that made the monarch uncomfortable. Although she was happy to have Africans entertain and clean for White Britons, the thought that not all of them were in those subservient roles seemed to give the British monarch some heartburn.
In an "open letter" dated July 11, 1596, Britain's Elizabeth I wrote to the Lord Mayor of London, aldermen, other Mayors, sheriffs and other public officers expressing that "there are of late divers blackmoores brought into this realme, of which kinde of people there are allready here to manie," and ordering that they be deported from the country.
Apparently, enough of the people she referred to as blackmoores were not deported out of her realm because, in 1601, she complained again about the "great numbers of Negars and Blackamoors which are crept into this realm."
The fact that by 1601 the British elite, including her majesty, had made a fortune buying, selling and working enslaved Africans to death in the colonies did not seem to bother her.
In 'Staying Power' Fryer makes the case that only a few Africans were deported and a number of Africans remained in Britain and by the middle of the 18th century were between one and three per cent of the population of London.
Africans were enslaved throughout the British Empire until August 1, 1834 (1838 in the Caribbean.) The famous decision by Chief Justice Lord Mansfield in 1772 in the case of enslaved African James Somerset (Somerset v. Stewart) against the slaveholder Charles Stewart did not free enslaved Africans in Britain. That decision made it illegal for owners to forcibly remove enslaved Africans from England. It is estimated that at that time between 14,000 and 15,000 enslaved Africans lived in England, most of them taken there as personal servants by White men and women who owned plantations in the British colonies.
In 2009, the number of Africans in Britain was 1,521,400 or 2.9 per cent of the population. This number includes those born in Britain and immigrants from the African continent, the Caribbean and elsewhere. The largest wave of African immigrants from the former British colonies in the Caribbean landed in Britain between 1948 and 1962 in what Jamaican poet Louise Bennett Coverly (Miss Lou) termed Colonization in Reverse, immortalized in a poem of the same name, http://louisebennett.com/newsdetails.asp?NewsID=8 [1].
Britain also colonized several countries on the African continent before and after the infamous "Scramble for Africa" and Africans from those countries immigrated to Britain, many considering Britain the "mother country" and were shocked when they encountered a White supremacist culture and rabid racism.
Sadly, although Africans have been living in Britain for centuries, they continue to face racism. They are stopped, searched, arrested and imprisoned at an alarming rate. In an article published in the British newspaper The Guardian on Monday, October 11, 2010 Randeep Ramesh wrote: "On the streets, black people were subjected to what the report describes as an "excess" of 145,000 stop and searches in 2008. It notes that black people constitute less than 3% of the population, yet made up 15% of people stopped by police."
Ramesh was writing about an Equality and Human Rights Commission report, How Fair is Britain? Ramesh also wrote: "The commission found that five times more black people than white people per head of population in England and Wales are imprisoned. The ethnic minority prison population has doubled in a decade - from 11,332 in 1998 to 22,421 in 2008. The problems may start at school. The commission points out that black children are three times as likely to be permanently excluded from education."
Africans in Britain have every right to celebrate the fact that they have a long history in Britain and have contributed to the society (which is mostly ignored). There are also plans to address other issues that concern Africans living in Britain. On Friday, October 14, the group National Afrikan People's Parliament http://www.blackhistorystudies.com/ [2] plan a community action including a demonstration at Downing Street (British Prime Minister's residence) to address the unlawful killing of Mark Duggan and the resultant uprisings, ongoing 'Black Deaths in Custody' and the reactionary state assault on our Community, especially our youths (and the wider social, political and historical context).
It would seem that regardless of where we live, Africans are subjected to the same oppression. That is why we need to know our history so that we can learn from those who went before us and struggled to get us to where we are today. The Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, father of the modern Pan African movement, taught us to remember that we are a mighty people with this quote: "Up you mighty people! You can accomplish what you will!!!"
Political ideology does battle with everyday reality
By PAT WATSON
Political philosophies like other types of theory work fairly well in abstract. The problem with them however is that no matter how logical they appear on paper, when applied to real life they fall short of perfection.Hence the experiment after the Second World War that saw communism imposed on China and Russia at a time when the two nations were heavily dependent on rural agrarian culture for their economies.
The notion of communism as laid our by Karl Marx implied that communism was an evolutionary form of economic movement, so that as society became more modernized and each person was receiving enough, there would be a natural progression away from pure capitalism toward shared ownership.
But the peoples of China and Russia did not have 'enough' to begin with, so to take what little they owned and nationalize it was not going to have the desired results.
First you have to feel that you have enough before you can begin to share. Either that or you have to have the kind of extraordinary compassion that we know exists but is definitely not commonplace as an everyday quality of humankind in a selfish and greedy world.
These days Russia and China have, to a significant extent, abandoned any notion of the old communism. They have to go backwards to get there, because the line of progress is first industrialism, then capitalism, then socialism, and then communism. Slowly but surely they came to accept that reality was a stronger master than political theory.
Similarly, when the economic tsunami came to Canada's shores as it threatened every other economy during the annus horriblis of 2009, the conservative philosophy of the Stephen Harper government had to stand down in response.
The budget that was brought forward to create jobs and to give welfare to big businesses 'too big to fail' was in stark contradiction to the 'less government, less state intervention' approach that typifies most political conservatives of the day. One wonders what kind of dissonance Harper and his Cabinet must have experienced when they realized that they would have to create a budget that was in direct opposition to their view of how government should function. Yet, they made it so.
We are turning a corner on the kind of rigid political view that has tended to polarize people as we see happening in United States politics today. If one good thing can come out of the ridiculous intransigence that Democrats and Republicans are displaying it's that refusal to compromise in recognition of what reality requires leads to bigger and worse problems.
Here in Toronto, we have to contend with the same situation as our municipal government is attempting to manage its budget, but is being challenged to do so while also battling along philosophical lines. What is it that the city government is supposed to do? Is it merely there to tax and control the money? Is it there with a vision to build and ensure a community's viability?
During the many debates leading up to today's provincial election, people were heard to say that they are not interested in discussing political ideology; what they want are practical solutions and answers to how we are going to manage as a community, as a city, as a province as a country during threatening economic times.
We don't want to hear old clichés about 'tax and spend liberals' or 'law and order' conservatives. We want to know that we are going to be okay regardless of what's ahead.
Even so, everyone has a point of view about how to make things right based in significant part on his or her politics.
But to paraphrase Rodney King as he tried to calm the L.A. Riots of 1992, we have to find a way to get along, and we need to do so for our mutual survival. We cannot have an ideology running roughshod over the most vulnerable in society, for instance, but we cannot make big business the bad guy all the time. Where are we going to compromise for the good of all?
A note on the fall colours...
The funny thing about fall is that you know the temperature is getting colder but the beauty of nature as it moves into sleep mode is truly awesome; no one does dying and death like the trees in the fall. Bittersweet, we call it. Now, if we could just move through that and go right back to spring some of us would be just that much happier.
Our harmful characterizations of one another
By PAT WATSON
A casual conversation with a fellow Jamaican became suddenly uncomfortable when the person made a reference to hair type that felt like being dragged a hundred years into the colonial past.
It can be difficult to acknowledge the ugly reality that far too many in our Black society see one another through the eyes of the dominant culture even as we struggle to reclaim pride in ourselves through Black consciousness. We relentlessly fight against those repellent connotations but have not yet escaped them.
We fight to hold on to our true selves while we are swayed by unconscious beliefs that people of African descent are not as deserving as other types of people. Often, without thinking, we allow an unacknowledged disdain as the measuring stick against what is considered superior, leaving us lacking in each others eyes whether we are willing to admit that or not.
What we must do for the sake of repairing our psyche as Black people is to continue in a rigorous effort to breakaway from the harmful messages about ourselves as a people that we have absorbed and which reside in our unconscious. We have internalized the atrocious interpretations projected on to us by the dominant culture even as such images jostle with the ones we know to be true about ourselves.
There is no pretense here of fully grasping the depths of the imprint carried in the myth of racial inferiority as it affects peoples of the African Diaspora, but this is to remind those of us who care that we must be alert within ourselves to that corrosive influence, even though it can be deeply camouflaged.
There are expressions of this deformation in many overt and subtle ways. So it is a mammoth task for many of us to push from our thinking the kind of negative messages that have been foisted on us over generations. To pretend that we are not influenced by it is to continue to live in denial that harms all of us.
This trauma plays itself out in a million ways in our daily lives such as the way we people of African descent still elevate those among us with features and skin tones that fall closer to that of Europeans. We reinforce these unconscious prejudices with sickening frequency in conversations like the one that somehow drew in mention of hair texture, giving unspoken status of social superiority to people with hair more closely resembling that of Europeans.
Those of us who are drawn from the Caribbean may have overcome the blinders of colonial class prejudice but there is still deep psychological dissonance in how we interpret each other. Too often it is by using the code of the former colonizers and slaveholders.
It is most wounding when our own people take those hateful ideas and apply them to ourselves. Despite the individual and collective achievements of people of African decent throughout the world, we continue to echo these denigrations.
Many of us have been able to pull ourselves away from these destructive characterizations, but then again far too many still have not.
There are no easy answers for how to dissolve these images, for how to view them with objectivity so that we can fully recognize them for the distortions they really are and disconnect from them. Except, that is, to stand ready for when they surface and commit to replacing them with what we know to be absolutely true about ourselves as a people.
Bob Marley said: "Emancipate yourselves from metal slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds." And Marcus Garvey called on us as well: "Up, up, you mighty race."
We must respond to these calls, for we see the damage that has come from accepting a definition of ourselves that is not organic.
A note on what were they thinking...
So there was no one at the Université de Montreal's elite business school, Hautes Etudes Commerciales, to put some historical context into explaining to first year students why donning blackface to become 'Jamaican' was not a good idea for frosh week - or any week for that matter? Mainstream news reports made a point of explaining that no harm was intended when the juniors decided to dress up as world record holder Usain Bolt, including one who reportedly costumed himself in shorts featuring monkeys. It was offensive - "in poor taste" - but no offence was meant. So that makes it forgivable?
Time for Université de Montreal to institute mandatory Black history courses for all first year students.
A casual conversation with a fellow Jamaican became suddenly uncomfortable when the person made a reference to hair type that felt like being dragged a hundred years into the colonial past.
It can be difficult to acknowledge the ugly reality that far too many in our Black society see one another through the eyes of the dominant culture even as we struggle to reclaim pride in ourselves through Black consciousness. We relentlessly fight against those repellent connotations but have not yet escaped them.
We fight to hold on to our true selves while we are swayed by unconscious beliefs that people of African descent are not as deserving as other types of people. Often, without thinking, we allow an unacknowledged disdain as the measuring stick against what is considered superior, leaving us lacking in each others eyes whether we are willing to admit that or not.
What we must do for the sake of repairing our psyche as Black people is to continue in a rigorous effort to breakaway from the harmful messages about ourselves as a people that we have absorbed and which reside in our unconscious. We have internalized the atrocious interpretations projected on to us by the dominant culture even as such images jostle with the ones we know to be true about ourselves.
There is no pretense here of fully grasping the depths of the imprint carried in the myth of racial inferiority as it affects peoples of the African Diaspora, but this is to remind those of us who care that we must be alert within ourselves to that corrosive influence, even though it can be deeply camouflaged.
There are expressions of this deformation in many overt and subtle ways. So it is a mammoth task for many of us to push from our thinking the kind of negative messages that have been foisted on us over generations. To pretend that we are not influenced by it is to continue to live in denial that harms all of us.
This trauma plays itself out in a million ways in our daily lives such as the way we people of African descent still elevate those among us with features and skin tones that fall closer to that of Europeans. We reinforce these unconscious prejudices with sickening frequency in conversations like the one that somehow drew in mention of hair texture, giving unspoken status of social superiority to people with hair more closely resembling that of Europeans.
Those of us who are drawn from the Caribbean may have overcome the blinders of colonial class prejudice but there is still deep psychological dissonance in how we interpret each other. Too often it is by using the code of the former colonizers and slaveholders.
It is most wounding when our own people take those hateful ideas and apply them to ourselves. Despite the individual and collective achievements of people of African decent throughout the world, we continue to echo these denigrations.
Many of us have been able to pull ourselves away from these destructive characterizations, but then again far too many still have not.
There are no easy answers for how to dissolve these images, for how to view them with objectivity so that we can fully recognize them for the distortions they really are and disconnect from them. Except, that is, to stand ready for when they surface and commit to replacing them with what we know to be absolutely true about ourselves as a people.
Bob Marley said: "Emancipate yourselves from metal slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds." And Marcus Garvey called on us as well: "Up, up, you mighty race."
We must respond to these calls, for we see the damage that has come from accepting a definition of ourselves that is not organic.
A note on what were they thinking...
So there was no one at the Université de Montreal's elite business school, Hautes Etudes Commerciales, to put some historical context into explaining to first year students why donning blackface to become 'Jamaican' was not a good idea for frosh week - or any week for that matter? Mainstream news reports made a point of explaining that no harm was intended when the juniors decided to dress up as world record holder Usain Bolt, including one who reportedly costumed himself in shorts featuring monkeys. It was offensive - "in poor taste" - but no offence was meant. So that makes it forgivable?
Time for Université de Montreal to institute mandatory Black history courses for all first year students.
Davis execution in Georgia may have violated international law
By MURPHY BROWNE (Abena Agbetu)
The lynching of black America is taking place in the criminal justice system where nearly one-third of black men between the ages of 18 and 28 are in prisons and jails, on parole, or waiting for their day in court. One-half of the two million people in prisons are black. That is one million black people behind bars, more than in colleges. Through private prisons, whites have turned the brutality of their racist legal system into a profit-making venture for dying white towns and cities throughout America. One can lynch a person without a rope or tree.
Excerpt from Strange Fruit: The Cross and the Lynching Tree
On October 19, 2006 James Cone, Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary, presented the 2006 Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard Divinity School, the title of which was "Strange Fruit: The Cross and the Lynching Tree."
Although Cone gave this lecture in October 2006 he could very well have been talking about the case of Troy Anthony Davis when he spoke about the similarity of the cross and the lynching tree http://www.hds.harvard.edu/multimedia/video/strange-fruit-the-cross-and-the-lynching-tree.
Davis was born on October 9, 1968. He grew up in Savannah, Georgia and was executed by the state of Georgia - sanctioned by the U.S. government - on September 22, 2011.
He was a 20-year-old on August 19, 1989 when the criminal act for which he was accused was committed. In 1991, Davis was tried, convicted and sentenced to death for the fatal shooting of a White police officer although he has maintained his innocence since he was arrested. There was enough doubt about his presumed guilt to garner the support of celebrities, very important people, ordinary folks and human rights groups.
Among those calling for a re-trial and/or clemency were Amnesty International, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), former U.S. president, Jimmy Carter, Reverend Al Sharpton, Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Bob Barr, a former federal prosecutor and former member of the U.S. House of Representatives (Republican-Georgia.)
Davis' case garnered international attention especially because of the obviously racially charged overtones. Here was an African American male who was accused of shooting a White police officer and found guilty even though there was no physical evidence to link him to the shooting. Of the nine witnesses from 1991, seven recanted their statements citing police coercion at the time and at least one witness has confessed that he was illiterate and was forced to sign a document he could not read. A group of White men in power turned deaf ears to the pleas of the world to reconsider their determination to kill this African American male in what seems like a modern day lynching.
In an opinion piece published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on September 15, entitled Should Davis be executed? No! (http://www.ajc.com/opinion/should-davis-be-executed-1181530.html) William S. Sessions, a former director of the FBI, a former federal judge and federal prosecutor wrote: What the hearing demonstrated most conclusively was that the evidence in this case -- consisting almost entirely of conflicting stories, testimonies and statements -- is inadequate to the task of convincingly establishing either Davis' guilt or his innocence. Without DNA or other forms of physical or scientific evidence that can be objectively measured and tested, it is possible that doubts about guilt in this case will never be resolved. However, when it comes to the sentence of death, there should be no room for doubt.
Following Davis' execution, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, citing serious concerns that the rights of Davis to due process and a fair trial were not respected, said that killing Davis may have violated international law. Three independent United Nations human rights experts had called on the United States government to stop the execution amid concerns that Davis did not receive a fair trial.
UN Special Rapporteur on arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Gabriela Knaul and the Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan Méndez, deplored that the case mainly relied on the testimonies of witnesses which contained "serious" inconsistencies. The U.S. government was reminded of its obligation to ensure that anyone under its jurisdiction receives a fair trial, as required under article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR.)
The experts stated in their appeal: "Not only do we urgently appeal to the Government of the United States and the state of Georgia to find a way to stop the scheduled execution, but we believe that serious consideration should be given to commuting the sentence. We recall that the death penalty may only be imposed when the guilt of the person charged is based upon clear and convincing evidence, leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts. Given the irreversible nature of the death penalty, it is crucial that fair trial standards are fully respected in all judicial proceedings related to offences punishable with the death penalty."
Davis is not the first African American killed by the state of Georgia whose presumed guilt was in question. His story reminded me of a woman I wrote about in 2005 when she received a posthumous pardon from Georgia 60 years after she was killed in the electric chair. On March 5, 1945, Lena Baker became the only woman to be killed by Georgia in the electric chair. Like Davis whose reported last words were "those about to take my life, may God have mercy on your souls, may God bless your souls," Baker who maintained her innocence to the end said: "What I done, I did in self-defence or I would have been killed myself. Where I was, I could not overcome it. I am ready to meet my God."
Baker had been repeatedly raped by the White man (23 years older than she was) who was killed with his own gun during a struggle as he tried to rape her again. She had been hiding from this man who had kept watch at her house overnight and grabbed her when she went home the following morning to take care of her three children who had been left in their grandmother's care overnight. It is a dreadful story illustrating the manner in which the lives of African Americans were constrained by White people. After dragging Baker over to a barn on his property where he raped her again, the White man went to a prayer meeting with his adult son, locking her in the barn. When he returned from his prayer meeting and attempted to rape her at gunpoint there was a struggle during which he was killed.
Baker was sentenced to death by a White all male jury after a four hour trial. Although she was the victim in more ways than one, her family was forced to uproot their lives and flee their hometown. Her community was refused the right to bury her properly and mourn her passing. They were terrorized by the White community. In 2001, Baker's great nephew, Roosevelt Curry, began the campaign to clear her name and a pardon was granted by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles on August 30, 2005.
Although Canada no longer has the death penalty, the rate at which African Canadian males are incarcerated is indeed alarming. The racial profiling of African Canadians is a reality in spite of the many studies that have been done, the many reports that have been written and recommendations that have been made to address this scourge. During this International Year for People of African Descent we need to recognize that the oppression continues and must be addressed.
One of the worse acts of terrorism against U.S. Blacks
By MURPHY BROWNE (Abena Agbetu)I missed school to march with other children
For a seat at whites-only lunch counters
Like a junior choir, we chanted "We Shall Overcome."
Then, police loosed snarling dogs and fire hoses on us,
And buses carted us, nine hundred strong, to jail.
Excerpt from the poem Birmingham 1963 by Carole Boston Weatherford published 2007
On September 15, 1963 White American Christian terrorists bombed an African American Christian church, the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The bomb blast tore through the church basement killing four African children. The four African American girls whose bodies were shattered in that act of terrorism were Addie Mae Collins (1949-1963) Denise McNair (1951-1963) Carol Robertson (1949-1963) and Cynthia Wesley (1949-1963.) An estimated 22 other African Americans members of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church were injured in the bomb blast.
It was Sunday morning and according to reports published at the time: At about 10:22 a.m., twenty-six children were walking into the basement assembly room to prepare for the sermon entitled "The Love That Forgives," when the bomb exploded.
This act of terrorism is considered one of the worst of the 20th century targeted at African Americans during the Civil Rights struggle. There were countless (many never made public) incidents of terrorism against African Americans including the massacre of African Americans in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921 (Black Wall Street) and Rosewood, Florida in 1923. Many were labeled "Race Riots" when in fact, in dreadful acts of terrorism, White people lynched African Americans, destroyed their businesses, churches, homes and schools in jealous rage that in spite of the oppression they suffered there were African American individuals and communities that managed to carve out contemporary successful existences.
When the terrorists are White Christians the religion of the perpetrators is ignored but every act of terrorism against African Americans has been carried out by White Christians. In some cases, they are not recognized as acts of terrorism or the perpetrators identified as terrorists. However, in the case of the September 15, 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama even former U.S. National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that incident and the bombing of African American businesses, churches and homes were acts of terrorism.
Rice was an eight-year-old living in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 at the time of the church bombing and in her 2010 book, Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family, writes of the several incidents of bombing in Birmingham, Alabama: As terrorists still do today, bombers exploded the first device in hopes a crowd would gather. They detonated the second bomb filled with shrapnel and nails - in order to injure as many innocent onlookers as possible.
September 15, 1963 was not the first bombing incident or act of terrorism by White Christians to which African Americans were subjected that year. In her 2007 book, Birmingham 1963, Carole Boston Weatherford explains: In the 1960s, Birmingham, Alabama was one of the most racially divided cities in the United States. While Civil Rights protesters pressed for equality and integration, the staunchest racists resorted to violence to resist change. Racists had set so many bombs in Birmingham's black neighborhoods that the city was nicknamed "Bombingham."
White Christian Americans were desperate to keep African Americans in a place of second class citizenship in the country which was built on the blood, sweat and tears of enslaved Africans. So desperate that on Good Friday, April 12, 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and approximately 80 other African Americans were arrested for taking part in a peaceful protest. Dr. King wrote his famous Letter from a Birmingham jail while he was incarcerated in reply to a group of White religious leaders (seven pastors and one rabbi) who exhorted Dr. King and all African Americans to continue to wait for their Human Rights and Civil Rights to be recognized by White Americans.
The mass arrests on Good Friday led to the Children's Crusade on May 2, 1963 where over 1,000 children (many as young as six) gathered at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church before marching to downtown Birmingham. They were all arrested and hauled off to jail in police cars and school buses. On May 3, more African American children gathered and, as they left the church, Commissioner of Public Safety Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor directed the local police and fire departments to use massive force to stop them. The world saw the evil of White supremacy when images of African American children being blasted by high-pressure fire hoses, clubbed by police officers and attacked by police dogs appeared on television and in newspapers internationally http://www.crmvet.org/images/imgbham.htm .
The scene was repeated on May 4 and on May 6 almost 2,500 youth were arrested. By then the children were being held at the state fairgrounds because the jails were full. On May 10 after eight days of unrest an agreement was reached with the City of Birmingham to desegregate drinking fountains, lunch counters and restrooms within 90 days and to release those in jail on bond or their own recognizance. However that was an agreement with City officials and the good Christian White people of Birmingham refused to treat African Americans as their equal and the terrorist activities against African Americans continued.
For African American families and communities there was the added trauma of being forced to live beside these terrorists. In the case of the murder of the four children on September 15, 1963, the terrorists continued to live in Birmingham, Alabama and were not brought to justice until the 21st century. Since 1963 an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had identified four White Christians as the terrorists responsible for the bombing of the African American church and the murder of the four girls. Robert Chambliss, Herman Cash, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry continued to live in Birmingham, Alabama where the African American community was forced to deal with the fact that these terrorists walked among them daily as free men.
In September 1963 a witness identified Robert Chambliss as the man who placed the bomb at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. He was arrested and charged with murder and possessing a box of 122 sticks of dynamite without a permit. On October 8, 1963 Chambliss was found not guilty of murder and received a hundred-dollar fine and a six-month jail sentence for possession of dynamite. It was not until the 1970s that the case against Chambliss was reopened. The then recently elected attorney general of Alabama requested the original FBI files on the case and discovered that evidence against Chambliss that might have led to a conviction had not been used in the original trial. In November, 1977 Chambliss was tried once again for the September 15, 1963 bombing, was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. By the time the FBI got around to pursuing action against the other terrorists on May 18, 2000, only two were still alive. Cash was dead (1994) but Blanton and Cherry were arrested, tried and convicted (Blanton 2001 and Cherry 2002.) Cherry's trial was delayed because he was deemed mentally incompetent. However according to This Day in Civil Rights History published in 2009, "The evidence against him, including testimony from his own granddaughter, painted a picture of an unrepentant former Klansman who was a close associate of Chambliss and Blanton and was linked to the bombing."
Why did it take almost four decades for these White Christian terrorists who devastated the African American community of Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963 to be brought to justice? After all, we have seen how quickly the American government can move against suspected terrorists in other countries inhabited by racialized people who are not Christian.
Greed Is All Blade And No Handle
By LENNOX FARRELL
The Russian novelist, Tolstoy, in 'How much land does a man need?' wrote about a farmer named Pahom. Born very poor, Pahom developed an obsession with owning land. Eventually, the more he got, by fair means or foul, the less able was he to enjoy it, or to satisfy an insatiable greed driven by his former need.
Eventually, Pahom made a deal with some 'stupid peasants', the Bashkaris. For their best farmland, and paying them one thousand rubles, he'd obtain title to whatever land he could traverse that day. However, he had to return before nightfall to the spot where they awaited him, or lose his money.
At sun-up, Pahom began to walk. And walk. And walk. All morning. And all through the midday sun, no stopping, no eating, no drinking, no poopsing. Only walking, into the afternoon and evening, despite his feet bleeding, his heart pounding like a blacksmith's hammer. And desperate, the sun pole-vaulting the horizon, he stumbled back to the spot where he'd left the Bashkaris.
Pahom got land, all right. The six feet in which the 'stupid peasants' laughingly buried his corpse.
While one can see some justification for Pahom's fate, one still understands the need to escape the poverty that had driven him. Unfortunately, his obsession with himself, even to the detriment of others, ultimately drove him to disaster.
Is it possible that these two motivations, greed and need, are the heart-attack of chaos affecting all in our community associated with Queen Caribana? Her challenges, in my opinion, also form a matrix. Its lines are greed and need, its columns ownership and control. To the extent that the latter strengthen or weaken each other is also the extent to which there is clarity or chaos.
This matrix, a dance of blessings and demons, will be explored at another time. And especially with the recent shooting of the young man, will these issues clarify themselves in a court of law if his family launches a civil lawsuit.
To return to the issue of unmet needs and underfunding, one can also understand the unfairness of this to those who assist in producing these billion dollar festivities and have to settle for scraps. It is, however, even more unfair and destabilizing and disrespectful to force the Black community to subsidize this lack, again.
Are there wholesome options?
In considering the probability of moving the Jane Finch Children's carnival out of the community, how much more useful and creative would it be if, instead of gutting it to make more money for a few, the Carnival Arts were brought more intimately into the community?
In other words, instead of cutting the Carnival Arts out of Jane Finch, bring Jane Finch even deeper into them; into tuning and playing more steel pan; into learning how to bend wire and turn papier mache into masquerade, etc? Who knows if it is from here that the next George Bailey will come, ensuring fewer 'made in China' and 'imported from Trinidad' costumes.
In fact, the Jane Finch community has previously been blessed with many of the leading pannists in Toronto providing services for free as teachers and community builders. And Jane Finch has given back galore, providing young pannists, male and female, for many, if not all of the steel orchestras in Toronto.
Russell Charter, a former mas' bandleader and CCC board member spent endless late night hours assisting mas' bands in Jane Finch. It is left now, only for the hosting of its first kaiso-jam!
Is this not what the Caribana founders in 1967 had in mind? That the carnival would be of service, first to community? Not that individuals who contribute would be impoverished by their efforts, oh, no. The founders expected, after they saw the carnival's inherent possibilities, that the carnival would bless both individuals and organizations in our community.
An example of what is suggested and the way it could bless the community occurred recently. Share newspaper carried an article of a mas' bandleader cited as doing something akin to this. When a former section leader told him she was going to create her own band, what did he do? Unselfishly turn around and give her the encouragement and support she needed ... even to eventually compete against him.
It is in this spirit that the earliest expectations of the Caribana founders were intended. After 44 years, these expectations are still, as the poet, Langston Hughes, would put it, "a dream deferred".
How did the 1994 CCC board try to assist in making these expectations become reality by creating these children's carnivals, strengthening and building the Carnival Arts in communities like Jane-Finch? And what's so 'dangerous' about that?
More than merely hoping, here's working diligently towards returning the carnival to its rightful ownership, and beginning preparation for the 50th anniversary in 2017, thereby ensuring that our Caribana and its Carnival Arts do not also end up six feet under.
Farrell is a retired educator and a former board member and chair of the Caribbean Cultural Committee, the owners of Caribana.
The Russian novelist, Tolstoy, in 'How much land does a man need?' wrote about a farmer named Pahom. Born very poor, Pahom developed an obsession with owning land. Eventually, the more he got, by fair means or foul, the less able was he to enjoy it, or to satisfy an insatiable greed driven by his former need.
Eventually, Pahom made a deal with some 'stupid peasants', the Bashkaris. For their best farmland, and paying them one thousand rubles, he'd obtain title to whatever land he could traverse that day. However, he had to return before nightfall to the spot where they awaited him, or lose his money.
At sun-up, Pahom began to walk. And walk. And walk. All morning. And all through the midday sun, no stopping, no eating, no drinking, no poopsing. Only walking, into the afternoon and evening, despite his feet bleeding, his heart pounding like a blacksmith's hammer. And desperate, the sun pole-vaulting the horizon, he stumbled back to the spot where he'd left the Bashkaris.
Pahom got land, all right. The six feet in which the 'stupid peasants' laughingly buried his corpse.
While one can see some justification for Pahom's fate, one still understands the need to escape the poverty that had driven him. Unfortunately, his obsession with himself, even to the detriment of others, ultimately drove him to disaster.
Is it possible that these two motivations, greed and need, are the heart-attack of chaos affecting all in our community associated with Queen Caribana? Her challenges, in my opinion, also form a matrix. Its lines are greed and need, its columns ownership and control. To the extent that the latter strengthen or weaken each other is also the extent to which there is clarity or chaos.
This matrix, a dance of blessings and demons, will be explored at another time. And especially with the recent shooting of the young man, will these issues clarify themselves in a court of law if his family launches a civil lawsuit.
To return to the issue of unmet needs and underfunding, one can also understand the unfairness of this to those who assist in producing these billion dollar festivities and have to settle for scraps. It is, however, even more unfair and destabilizing and disrespectful to force the Black community to subsidize this lack, again.
Are there wholesome options?
In considering the probability of moving the Jane Finch Children's carnival out of the community, how much more useful and creative would it be if, instead of gutting it to make more money for a few, the Carnival Arts were brought more intimately into the community?
In other words, instead of cutting the Carnival Arts out of Jane Finch, bring Jane Finch even deeper into them; into tuning and playing more steel pan; into learning how to bend wire and turn papier mache into masquerade, etc? Who knows if it is from here that the next George Bailey will come, ensuring fewer 'made in China' and 'imported from Trinidad' costumes.
In fact, the Jane Finch community has previously been blessed with many of the leading pannists in Toronto providing services for free as teachers and community builders. And Jane Finch has given back galore, providing young pannists, male and female, for many, if not all of the steel orchestras in Toronto.
Russell Charter, a former mas' bandleader and CCC board member spent endless late night hours assisting mas' bands in Jane Finch. It is left now, only for the hosting of its first kaiso-jam!
Is this not what the Caribana founders in 1967 had in mind? That the carnival would be of service, first to community? Not that individuals who contribute would be impoverished by their efforts, oh, no. The founders expected, after they saw the carnival's inherent possibilities, that the carnival would bless both individuals and organizations in our community.
An example of what is suggested and the way it could bless the community occurred recently. Share newspaper carried an article of a mas' bandleader cited as doing something akin to this. When a former section leader told him she was going to create her own band, what did he do? Unselfishly turn around and give her the encouragement and support she needed ... even to eventually compete against him.
It is in this spirit that the earliest expectations of the Caribana founders were intended. After 44 years, these expectations are still, as the poet, Langston Hughes, would put it, "a dream deferred".
How did the 1994 CCC board try to assist in making these expectations become reality by creating these children's carnivals, strengthening and building the Carnival Arts in communities like Jane-Finch? And what's so 'dangerous' about that?
More than merely hoping, here's working diligently towards returning the carnival to its rightful ownership, and beginning preparation for the 50th anniversary in 2017, thereby ensuring that our Caribana and its Carnival Arts do not also end up six feet under.
Farrell is a retired educator and a former board member and chair of the Caribbean Cultural Committee, the owners of Caribana.
The Midnight Robber an integral part of old time carnival
By MURPHY BROWNE (Abena Agbetu)
One midnight in eternity a mighty ancient wind blow from the Kalahari to the Gobi and sweep through the Sahara and there I form and rise out of the belly of the pit of hell. I is the Scorpion King! Androctonus Crassicauda, master of the isms, schisms and flesh eating dwellers. I am the last word of the iron bird laid to rest at Piarco, the father of the fatherless who have no roof over their heads. Famine, tsunami, aides, when the dust blow I does cause wars, earthquakes. Revenge is mine and ah reach Trinidad ah reach! I have no beginning and I have no end. No muddah make me. Hooves like ten thousand camels across the Atlantic in a heartbeat sprinkling Sahara dust. Grains settle in grown man eye and turn children lungs to husk! Dust cannot cover the rising or setting sun and curdle the blood of all dem wining woman . When that upstart Baby Bush try to outsmart, ah send my handmaidens Osama and Saddam but I come to Trinidad, ah show myself in person. Watch meh ah was cley, doh make joke with upstarts.
Excerpt from Midnight Robber speech (Robber Talk)
The Midnight Robber is one of several characters that play a part in the famous Trinidad Carnival on which Toronto's Caribana festival has been modeled. I was introduced to many of these characters on Friday, July 30 through the work of Rhoma Spencer, Artistic Director of Theatre Archipelago who was supported by several Trinidadians living in Toronto. The Midnight Robber character really made an impression because of the costume, the pageantry and the play with words. I also learned more about Jouvay (J'ouvert) and other traditional Jouvay characters.
I volunteered to be a member of the Jouvay celebration on July 30 at the Harbourfront Centre not realizing how much there was to learn about the various characters. Assembling the costume of a Dame Lorraine was an education in itself. Coordinating the exaggerated bosom and backside almost required attending a remedial class in science (at least for balance.) I wasn't sure I could remember to fetch all the pieces of my Dame Lorraine costume down to Harbourfront and I did not want to leave home wearing the thing. I managed by carrying the various pieces in two bags and only forgot to take my elaborate fan. The camaraderie was amazing, especially since I was the only Guyanese there and the Trinidadians seemed to all have known each other for years and were familiar with the stories being told about various places and people.
There were quite a few hilarious stories, especially one about a bullying police officer known as "Bag Ah Lions" who was put in his place by a magistrate after one too many instances of bullying ordinary citizens.
Being involved with the Jouvay celebration at Harbourfront gave some context to many of the calypsoes I had heard during my youth. The play of words on the placards we carried was hilarious and I could imagine where the calypsonians received their education and inspiration. It is unfortunate that the majority of visitors to this city during the recent festivities did not have an opportunity to learn about the history of Jouvay and Carnival.
This celebration has also been transported to Britain where the Notting Hill Carnival was established by Claudia Jones. According to information in the biography Left of Karl Marx (published 2007) written by Carol Boyce Davies, Jones was born on February 21, 1915 in Belmont, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and moved to New York City on February 9, 1924. She was treated to aggressive surveillance by the FBI because of her political beliefs and after being imprisoned several times was ordered deported to England on December 5, 1955. She left on December 9, arriving in London on December 22, 1955.
Jones promptly became involved in political activity in London including cofounding the West Indian Workers and Students Association, founding a newspaper the West Indian Gazette and organizing racialized communities in London. Her work led to the organizing of the first London Caribbean Carnival on January 30, 1959 in St. Pancras Hall (forerunner of the Notting Hill Carnival now celebrated at the end of August) and the Afro-Asian Caribbean Conference in 1961 and the formation of the Committee of Afro-Asian and Caribbean Organizations.
It is not surprising that someone with the credentials of Claudia Jones would see the value of organizing an event like the London Caribbean Carnival and that its successor, the Notting Hill Carnival includes the Midnight Robber character.
Information on this character from the National Library of Trinidad and Tobago (NALIS) states: The Midnight Robber is one of the most beloved characters in traditional carnival. Both his costume and his speech are distinctive. His "Robber Talk" is extravagant and egocentric, and boastful. He brags about his great ancestry, exploits, strength, fearlessness and invincibility. This "Robber Talk" is derived from the tradition of the African Griot or storyteller, and the speech patterns and vocabulary are imitative of his former master. He wears a black satin shirt, pantaloons, influenced by the American cowboy tradition, and a black, flowing cape on which the skull and cross bones are painted. Also painted on the cape is the name by which the robber goes. He also wears a huge black, broad-brimmed, fringed hat on which a coffin is often superimposed. In his hand he carries a weapon - either a dagger, sword or gun - and a wooden money box in the shape of a coffin. He carries a whistle which he blows to punctuate his tales of valour.
Spencer conducted a workshop at Harbourfront about the Midnight Robber character and encouraged participants to compose their own "Robber Talk." I tried my hand at composing "Robber Talk" because I want to play the Midnight Robber character at next year's Jouvay. Can you see me in the Midnight Robber costume delivering this "Robber Talk"? Yes you can!
I am Abena the grand-daughter of the famous Obeah Man from Berbice. I sprouted fully formed and clothed from my grandfather's brain. In 1763 we advised Kofi and his lieutenants, Akkabre, Akkara and Atta who defeated the Dutch enslavers in Berbice. After my grandfather joined the ancestors the leaders of the Berbice Revolution refused to listen to a mere woman so I brought down confusion on their heads and they all perished. In 1791 when Boukman send message I fly to Haiti in the form of a Canje Pheasant and because Boukman and the Africans in Haiti take my advice they defeated the French. I come here now to help allyuh people solve the confusion in this city, so heed my advice. Remember, I am the mighty Abena from Berbice history so don't cross me and don't try my patience or I will call down the ancient plagues of Egypt on allyuh head.
Educate teachers on how to teach our children
By MURPHY BROWNE (Abena Agbetu)"All children start off as 'gifted' and at risk! What diminishes these gifts are the lack of inspired teachers; classrooms that impose restrictions on who they are and what they learn; and parents who leave their children's potential and destiny to all of the above."
Michelle Brown-Stafford Parental Involvement Coach.
Michelle Brown-Stafford is the African American woman whose son Stephen Stafford Jr. entered university when he was 11 years old.
Brown-Stafford and her husband Stephen Stafford Sr. made the decision to withdraw their two children from the public school system and home school them. Brown-Stafford made the sacrifice with the support of her husband to leave her job and become the educator of her children. The family lived on the one income of Stafford senior, an electrical engineer, to ensure that their children received the best possible education at home with mom as teacher. Today, their 19-year-old daughter, Martinique Stafford, who entered university at 17 is a member of Phi Eta Sigma National Honour Society and their 15-year-old son will graduate next year with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in psychology (major) and computer science (minor) and then he is off to medical school (at a mere 16 years old).
Brown-Stafford and her husband decided that home schooling was best for their children after losing confidence in the education system. This is not possible for all parents who may only have one income to begin with or who need both parents' incomes just to survive.
Brown-Stafford has advice for parents who by necessity must have their children educated in the public school system. She urges parents to work with their child's teacher to identify if the child is an auditory, a visual or a kinesthetic learner. Kinesthetic learners learn best by moving their bodies, activating their large or small muscles as they learn. These are the "hands-on learners" or the "doers" who actually concentrate better and learn more easily when movement is involved. Some kinesthetic learners are mistakenly labelled "hyperactive." It is very unfortunate that some educators who do not have the training or the dedication needed to work with children do more harm than good when working with kinesthetic learners. This is especially true when the kinesthetic learner is an African American or African Canadian male child.
In a June 2010 interview published in the St. Petersburg Times when explaining that Stephen was homeschooled more than his older sister Brown-Stafford is quoted: "We had to keep track of Stephen because he is an African-American male, and we didn't want to lose him and we didn't want him to become a statistic."
The Stafford family and other African Americans are not alone in their disenchantment with the education system. In 2006 British educator Ken Robinson spoke about the lack of diversity in the education system which leads to the misdiagnosing of some children who are kinesthetic learners and the stifling of their creativity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbty.
Parents have a role to play in the education of their children. Some of the activities in which parents can engage with their children include taking them to the library to borrow books (to read with and to them) and educational DVDs and encouraging them to play educational games. You can choose to turn off the television or limit the time spent watching television shows that are not educational. Have regular chats with your child's teacher about his or her progress and address any concerns before it becomes a big deal. Document any concerns you may have and questions that are not answered satisfactorily must be addressed in writing. When attending formal meetings have an advocate or support person to take notes. Volunteer at your child's school whether on a regular basis or for special occasions, attend Parent Council meetings as often as you can and run for office on the Council if you have the time to commit. You and your child need to know the names of any one who works with your child including the principal, vice principal, class room assistant and volunteers, office administrative assistant and caretaker.
We pay taxes to fund, among other things, education and health care so we should expect that the education our children receive is appropriate to their learning style. We should expect and demand that the education system works for us, to educate our children effectively. If the system does not serve us appropriately then we need to hold the politicians and educators accountable. Make this an election issue.
Michelle Brown-Stafford hosts a website at www.gifted-spirit.com where she shares the knowledge she has gained from successfully homeschooling her two children. She encourages parents to be involved in their children's education. Her advice and the knowledge she willingly shares is invaluable because both of her children have done well under her tutelage.
Her son Stephen Stafford Jr. will graduate from Morehouse, the alma mater of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who entered Morehouse (one of the USA's 105 Historically Black Colleges and Universities) as a 15-year-old in 1944. On Sunday, August 28, the 48th anniversary of the March on Washington and his famous I Have A Dream speech King will be honoured when a monument is dedicated with a larger than life size sculpture of King. The memorial honouring King which includes a 9-metre-tall sculpture of King emerging from a 137-metre-long granite wall inscribed with 14 quotations from his speeches sits on the National Mall between memorials honouring Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson. The monument is a fitting tribute to a man who dedicated his life to a worthy cause and lost his life in that struggle.
It is almost the end of the summer vacation and time spent away from formal education. What have you and your children been reading during the two-month summer break? The summer is not over until after Word on the Street on Sunday September 25, 2011 at Queen's Park, from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm http://www.thewordonthestreet.ca/wots/toronto.
It has been an amazing summer with glorious weather and many opportunities to visit festivals galore and learn about Toronto. Unfortunately, there has not been much to learn about our history in this fast disappearing International Year of People of African Descent. However, do not despair, we have the opportunity to educate the teachers in the schools our children attend when schools re-open on September 6. You still have about 10 days to either borrow books from the Toronto Public Library about the history of Africans from the continent and the Diaspora or visit the bookstores and buy some books.
Practice the 4th Kwanzaa principle Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) by buying your books from Accents on Eglinton, A Different Booklist, Nile Valley Books and any other bookstores whose owners support our community.
Jack Layton's legacy
Posted on Wednesday August 31, 2011
By Jean Hodgkinson
Somehow, Jack connected with Canadians in a way that vanquished the cynicism that corrodes our political culture -Stephen Lewis
After a week of public grief, now begins the task of determining and building upon Jack Layton’s legacy. The eulogy delivered by Stephen Lewis, in which he praised Jack’s life-long ambition of delivering “a more generous and inclusive Canada,” was a good start. But it was only a start and now the rest of us must go back to living in the Canada that is, instead of the one we would like it to be. Achieving this goal will be a formidable task without Layton but, says my inner optimist, things could be worse. A lot worse.
Imagine if the May 2 election had been pushed into autumn by the politically motivated strategy of one of the four parties then seated in the House of Commons: the NDP would have limped into the contest like a rudderless ship. At least the party can properly regroup, select a new leader and be prepared for the next election nearly four years away. Of course, it will be impossible to replace Layton on the campaign trail since it was largely his personal charisma which vaulted the NDP into the Official Opposition this past spring, but at least he had the good sense to build a team instead of a cult of personality around himself. And then there’s the French Question.
The NDP is the Official Opposition because of Québec, where the party went from one lonely seat to 59. English Canada was shocked, but it needn’t have been. Although the political career began in Toronto, his formative years were spent in Québec and Layton was absolutely fantastic in the French debate (the one English Canadians can’t be bothered to watch) as his fluency in French embellished the passion without diluting the arguments. It was this performance which began the shift of voter opinion in la belle province. But there was more to the May 2 miracle than Layton’s ability to properly conjugate the verb “falloir” and thus begins the project he entrusted to us.
“Jack Layton came from a politically powerful family,” Toronto Councillor Pam McConnell said last week, “and he used that legacy to give voice to the powerless. I don’t know of many who would have done that.” This fact, together with his very real love for and intimate knowledge of Québec, is what resonated and finally exploded onto the political stage May 2. As Parti Québécois founder René Lévesque explained, it was the only place where he, a unilingual French-speaking person, truly felt at home. (Try ordering a meal in French at the Calgary Stampede and see what you get.) From day one Layton faced this challenge head-on as NDP leader and, more importantly, he knew well the circumstances motivating it and appreciated its nuances.
It was said last week (by someone at Sun TV if memory serves) that Layton had been cozying up to the separatists and was saying one thing to Québec and another to the rest of the country, both during the election and since. But he understood something the commentator evidently didn’t: separatists are people too, people who, until they started screaming about wanting their sovereignty, were essentially voiceless in this country beyond their own province. As our most progressive province Québec is now isolated from the rest of Canada for reasons beyond just language and culture, but Layton tapped into this fact as well and offered an option: progressive policies without the separatist manifesto of the Bloc Québécois. (Note: Of their 11 Québec seats going into the election, the governing Conservatives lost six, three of them held by cabinet ministers.)
It was depressingly predictable how some of our more famous conservative politicians reacted. When Rob Ford was asked what he thought Layton’s major contribution to the city was, the Toronto mayor said: “Helping out ... I think, umm [awkward pause] the poor people, really.” (Note: helping out poor people really isn’t high on the mayor’s official list of priorities.) The PM was in the high north announcing that environmental concerns cannot (nay, will not) prevent us from exploiting all those juicy mineral resources buried beneath all that melting tundra. So progressive Canadians must take the energy created from mourning Layton’s death and convert it into a galvanizing force for the political contests they must now fight without him.
As one of those progressives (and a non-believer) I will (compromise and) borrow from one of humanity’s great religious traditions, as both tribute and call to arms. “I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act,” said Buddha. “But I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.”
We need to speak up!
By ARNOLD A. AUGUSTE, Publisher/Editor
The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) has reinstated the principal of the Africentric School after suspending her for about a month following a complaint from a parent. In fact, TDSB officials announced the reinstatement of Thando Hyman-Aman last week, one day after a boisterous meeting with parents who demanded the principal be returned to the school.
The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) has reinstated the principal of the Africentric School after suspending her for about a month following a complaint from a parent. In fact, TDSB officials announced the reinstatement of Thando Hyman-Aman last week, one day after a boisterous meeting with parents who demanded the principal be returned to the school.
From what we understand, the principal was placed on home assignment following a complaint that she had abused a student. We also understand that the student, who is about six years old, was also suspended. But, there is more to this story.
As we understand it, this parent has made a number of complaints regarding staff at this school to board officials over the past year, none of which has been substantiated. Still, board officials chose to send the principal home and launch a month-long investigation. Why?
That investigation suddenly ended only when parents spoke up.
The mother of this child has said that this is the kind of school her child needs. Why? Is there something happening here that is not spoken of. Why was he suspended? Is he disruptive? And, if so, are board officials aware of this? And, if they are, what kind of assistance and resources are they providing to the school to help this child? What kind of assistance are they providing to the parent? To the child? Also, and with due respect to the parent, maybe this is not the kind of school this child needs. Maybe, if the school board was paying attention or maybe if they cared a proper environment with the resources to help this child would have been found a long time ago.
Or are they content to just suspend staff when a problem arises? Don't TDSB officials understand how devastating their actions could be on the staff (including on their mental health) - both those who are suspended and those who are left to pick up the pieces - and on the young children themselves? Do they care?
And where is the union in all of this? Teachers have one of the most powerful unions in this province. How are they allowing all of this to happen? Where is the protection for the staff at the Africentric School? Where are the representatives of the association which is supposed to protect principals? Or are they all only interested in supporting and protecting White staff?
Come on. We have heard the stories of Black teachers and principals (and other workers in other unions) who have been hung out to dry with little or no help from their unions.
What is even more troubling is that just about all the stories we have heard regarding school staff are from their friends (and parents) as we understand employees of the school board are not allowed to speak to the media in these situations.
Are you kidding me? Are these human beings supposed to suffer in silence what might even be arbitrary actions on the part of school board officials and not be able to speak about it? Not be able to ask for help?
I was quite annoyed initially when we tried to speak to staff at the Africentric School only to discover later that they were under some kind of a gag order and couldn't speak to us. All we have been able to gather is from friends who also seemed reluctant to speak to us on their behalf and parents who were more forthcoming? No wonder Hyman-Aman was off the job for almost three weeks before it came to our attention.
In fact, after some parents complained to us of another teacher who has been suspended from the school and we asked about it, I heard that this individual was unhappy with us for raising the issue.
Don't blame us, friend. The parents want you back at the school. Their children want you back. They all say that you are a very good teacher. Now we understand why you haven't spoken to us.
What is going on at the TDSB with Black staff?
Another thing. As we have noted before, the Africentric School has been under attack (for want of a better phrase) almost from the beginning. Apparently, some of the people who helped to get this school established are not happy with how it is being run. We understand that some of these folks feel shut out as they have no say in 'their' school now that it has become a reality.
You folks did an amazing job of forcing the board's hand after so many years to get this thing going. But, before you, there were scores of other people who, for going on 30 years, have been working on this and other matters related to the education of our children. I remember, as a young (younger?) reporter many years ago standing outside the board offices which were then on College Street on cold, wet evenings with people from this community while representatives met with board officials upstairs, waiting for word on one issue or another. This is not your school, it belongs to all of us and, if truth be told, it belongs to all those people who have fought for it over the years. More importantly, it belongs to our/your children and grandchildren. You were just the ones in the right place at the right time to close the deal.
Get over it and let the people who are trained as educators do their jobs in peace. It is very sad to hear some of what has taken place over the past year.
Finally, we may need, as a community, to get back to our activist roots. Nothing we have gained has been given to us willingly. We have had to fight for every gain our community has ever made. Other communities have also benefitted for our struggles. And it might serve us well to remember that while our gains were hard won, they can be easily lost. If we choose to be complacent.
The lesson from those parents at the meeting last week should be one to which we pay special attention. Hyman-Aman might still have been sitting at home waiting on the TDSB if those parents hadn't raised their voices. We need to speak up for other teachers, principals and school staff who are being gagged by this school board. But, in order to do so, we have to hear your stories.
Having Black officials at the school board also does not guarantee that our professionals and students will be treated with fairness. We have to hold their feet to the fire and call them out when necessary.
It might be time for us to begin to raise our voices again and even go out on the streets if we have to. There are still some of us who remember how to stand in the rain outside the school board office to demand fairness for our educators and our children.
Maybe we need to get those umbrellas out.
Black community urged to ‘rise up’
Raymond ChangBy RON FANFAIR
What will it take for our collective Afro-Canadian family to unite, rise up and claim our rightful place in Canadian society?
Senator Donald Oliver posed the question last Saturday night in his keynote address at the 29th annual Harry Jerome awards that celebrate excellence in Canada's Black community.
Considered an expert in corporate governance, Oliver noted that members of the Black community - one of the largest minority groups in Canada - still experience difficulty in acquiring quality jobs and promotions and Black motorists are more likely to get pulled over by the police.
"We remain woefully under-represented in the corner offices of Canadian companies," said Oliver who recently raised $500,000 to lead the first ever national study in Canada that proves the business case for diversity. "There are not enough Black leaders in our colleges and universities and we have lost ground in the last two decades on the political front too. Afro-Canadians are barely represented in the federal, provincial and municipal governments."
"Why is it taking so long for Afro-Canadians to gain the full recognition that we so richly deserve? What has been holding us back?
Oliver listed three things he claims are impeding the progress of Blacks.
"Our contributions to Canadian society remain virtually unknown; we don't seem to believe enough in our ability to shake up the status quo and old and tired stereotypes about our capabilities and aspirations remain," he said.
"As long as they (stereotypes) exist, we will never be free and truly equal...We have got to get Canadians to think that we are Black people of today and not Black stereotypes of yesterday...My message tonight is although we have come very far, we still have a long way to go."
Oliver added the day has come for the community to work together and celebrate each other's accomplishments like those of Harry Jerome who passed away just days before being invited to deliver the keynote address to celebrate the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games record performances of a new breed of Caribbean-born athletes who left an indelible mark on the sport in Canada.
The late track star, who in the summer of 1962 ran the 100 yards in 9.2 seconds to equal the world record set by Bob Hayes and Frank Rudd earlier that year, is a "Person of National Historical Significance" in Canada.
Jerome equaled Percy Williams' national high school record with a 10-second run in the 100-yard dash in March 1959, won gold medals in the 100-metre sprint at the 1966 Commonwealth and 1967 Pan American Games, set seven world records, defended his national 100-metre sprint title in his last official race in August 1969 and established the parameters for the creation of the federal Ministry of Sport before succumbing to a brain aneurysm at age 42 in December 1982.
"He fought the same prejudices each of us has confronted in the path of our lives and with faith, perseverance, ambition and drive, he succeeded and we can too as soon as we embrace our own heritage, our real potential today and our hope for the future," said Oliver.
Former Progressive Conservative Party of Canada leader John Tory, who was recognized with the first ever Diversity award, was among 16 Harry Jerome award recipients.
Federal Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney, said this year's award winners are tremendous examples for young people while Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty applauded the recipients for striving for excellence, for persevering and for serving others like Jerome did.
"In the life, service and the memory of Harry Jerome, Ontarians have inherited a great and shining example," said McGuinty. "Tonight's award winners, like those before them, inspire us. Most importantly, they encourage us, they urge young people to stand up, to hold their heads high, reach high and they demand excellence of themselves in whatever they do."
Provincial ministers Margarett Best and Dr. Eric Hoskins also attended the awards gala. Hoskins, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, presented his ministry-sponsored Media award to Planet Africa magazine founder and Afroglobal TV chief executive officer, Moses Mawa.
Other winners were retired social worker/therapist Ileen Howell (community service); 2007 University of Toronto Economics graduate Isaac Olowolafe who created the university's largest endowment fund for students in the African Studies program, pledging $25,000 last year to set it up (business); University of Albert professor emeritus Dr. John Akabutu who established the Alberta Cord Blood Bank that remains Canada's only public cord blood bank outside of Quebec, with samples of stem cell blood from umbilical cords frozen in large tanks of liquid nitrogen (technology & innovation); Hospital for Sick Children Division of Infectious Diseases chief Dr. Upton Allen (health science); Canadian Armed Forces chief warrant officer Kevin Junor (professional excellence); music teacher and percussionist Muhtadi Thomas (entertainment) and award-winning author Kayla Perrin (arts).
Canada's first Black female mayor, Dr. Daurene Lewis and Ryerson University chancellor and philanthropist Dr. Raymond Chang, were recognized with Trailblazer and President's awards respectively while retired trade unionist and human rights activist, Bromley Armstrong, who migrated to Canada from Jamaica in 1947, was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement award.
This year's youth winners are University of Toronto Master of Science graduate Michelle McFarlane (academics), Jade's Hip Hop Academy founder Jade Jager-Clark (young entrepreneur), University of Western Ontario freshman LaShawn Murray who co-founded the Invisible Children Book Drive that collected over 39,000 books to support literacy programs for children in Uganda and organized an AIDS run that raised $10,000 for the Stephen Lewis Foundation (leadership) and Manitoba high school basketball player and volunteer Kenecia Pingue-Giles (athletics).
Friday, 27 May 2011 15:15
By Jasminee Sahoye
A three-year study currently underway among racialized groups in the Black Creek area is
showing that there is a clear connection between low income and health status as a result of
precarious employment.
This is according to one of the two social investigators, Ryerson University’s Associate
Professor, Grace-Edward Galabuzi. He told The Camera that the study resulted from previous
research which found that there is a direct connection between low income and health status.
1 / 3
Study shows racialized people are poorer, sicker
Friday, 27 May 2011 15:15
“The question is what does that means for groups that are disproportionately impacted by low
income like racialized groups, particularly in a community such as this (Black Creek). So what
we have decided to do is a sort of a three-year study, do interviews, do focus groups and do
interviews with particular families to see whether there is a direct connection between their
experiences with precarious employment, impact in terms of low income and impact in terms of
their health. What we have been finding out is that there is very clear connection between
precarious employment, low income and poor health.”
The Black Creek area was chosen because it has a higher percentage of low income and
racialized people, as well as immigrants, than the rest of the population.
“If you are going to look at the experience of low income, race, precarious employment and
health, this is a very good sample area,” Galabuzi said.
He added that the study has helped them to understand how the experience of precarious
employment impacts on the well-being of these racialized groups. Focus groups include Blacks,
Canadian-born and service providers as well as people who speak Spanish, Arab, Urdu and
Vietnamese.
“Their own perception of well-being and health is much higher than the average for the rest of
the Canadian population. What we are suggesting is that can be attributed to the experience of
precarious employment and to the fact that they are racialized and also because they live in this
community, which is a stigmatized community and that can have an impact on them.”
The study is funded by The Wellesley Institute and Metcalf Foundation through Access Alliance
Community Health Centre.
Meanwhile, The Wellesley Institute said the data from the last long form Census survey points
“to an entrenchment of the racialization of poverty, a phenomenon where poverty becomes
disproportionately concentrated and reproduced among racialized group members, in some
cases inter-generationally. The emergence of precarious work as a major feature of Canadian
labour markets is an important contributor to this phenomenon.”
2 / 3
Study shows racialized people are poorer, sicker
Friday, 27 May 2011 15:15
Black community urged to ‘rise up’
Raymond ChangWhat will it take for our collective Afro-Canadian family to unite, rise up and claim our rightful place in Canadian society?
Senator Donald Oliver posed the question last Saturday night in his keynote address at the 29th annual Harry Jerome awards that celebrate excellence in Canada's Black community.
Considered an expert in corporate governance, Oliver noted that members of the Black community - one of the largest minority groups in Canada - still experience difficulty in acquiring quality jobs and promotions and Black motorists are more likely to get pulled over by the police.
"We remain woefully under-represented in the corner offices of Canadian companies," said Oliver who recently raised $500,000 to lead the first ever national study in Canada that proves the business case for diversity. "There are not enough Black leaders in our colleges and universities and we have lost ground in the last two decades on the political front too. Afro-Canadians are barely represented in the federal, provincial and municipal governments."
"Why is it taking so long for Afro-Canadians to gain the full recognition that we so richly deserve? What has been holding us back?
Oliver listed three things he claims are impeding the progress of Blacks.
"Our contributions to Canadian society remain virtually unknown; we don't seem to believe enough in our ability to shake up the status quo and old and tired stereotypes about our capabilities and aspirations remain," he said.
"As long as they (stereotypes) exist, we will never be free and truly equal...We have got to get Canadians to think that we are Black people of today and not Black stereotypes of yesterday...My message tonight is although we have come very far, we still have a long way to go."
Oliver added the day has come for the community to work together and celebrate each other's accomplishments like those of Harry Jerome who passed away just days before being invited to deliver the keynote address to celebrate the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games record performances of a new breed of Caribbean-born athletes who left an indelible mark on the sport in Canada.
The late track star, who in the summer of 1962 ran the 100 yards in 9.2 seconds to equal the world record set by Bob Hayes and Frank Rudd earlier that year, is a "Person of National Historical Significance" in Canada.
Jerome equaled Percy Williams' national high school record with a 10-second run in the 100-yard dash in March 1959, won gold medals in the 100-metre sprint at the 1966 Commonwealth and 1967 Pan American Games, set seven world records, defended his national 100-metre sprint title in his last official race in August 1969 and established the parameters for the creation of the federal Ministry of Sport before succumbing to a brain aneurysm at age 42 in December 1982.
"He fought the same prejudices each of us has confronted in the path of our lives and with faith, perseverance, ambition and drive, he succeeded and we can too as soon as we embrace our own heritage, our real potential today and our hope for the future," said Oliver.
Former Progressive Conservative Party of Canada leader John Tory, who was recognized with the first ever Diversity award, was among 16 Harry Jerome award recipients.
Federal Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney, said this year's award winners are tremendous examples for young people while Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty applauded the recipients for striving for excellence, for persevering and for serving others like Jerome did.
"In the life, service and the memory of Harry Jerome, Ontarians have inherited a great and shining example," said McGuinty. "Tonight's award winners, like those before them, inspire us. Most importantly, they encourage us, they urge young people to stand up, to hold their heads high, reach high and they demand excellence of themselves in whatever they do."
Provincial ministers Margarett Best and Dr. Eric Hoskins also attended the awards gala. Hoskins, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, presented his ministry-sponsored Media award to Planet Africa magazine founder and Afroglobal TV chief executive officer, Moses Mawa.
Other winners were retired social worker/therapist Ileen Howell (community service); 2007 University of Toronto Economics graduate Isaac Olowolafe who created the university's largest endowment fund for students in the African Studies program, pledging $25,000 last year to set it up (business); University of Albert professor emeritus Dr. John Akabutu who established the Alberta Cord Blood Bank that remains Canada's only public cord blood bank outside of Quebec, with samples of stem cell blood from umbilical cords frozen in large tanks of liquid nitrogen (technology & innovation); Hospital for Sick Children Division of Infectious Diseases chief Dr. Upton Allen (health science); Canadian Armed Forces chief warrant officer Kevin Junor (professional excellence); music teacher and percussionist Muhtadi Thomas (entertainment) and award-winning author Kayla Perrin (arts).
Canada's first Black female mayor, Dr. Daurene Lewis and Ryerson University chancellor and philanthropist Dr. Raymond Chang, were recognized with Trailblazer and President's awards respectively while retired trade unionist and human rights activist, Bromley Armstrong, who migrated to Canada from Jamaica in 1947, was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement award.
This year's youth winners are University of Toronto Master of Science graduate Michelle McFarlane (academics), Jade's Hip Hop Academy founder Jade Jager-Clark (young entrepreneur), University of Western Ontario freshman LaShawn Murray who co-founded the Invisible Children Book Drive that collected over 39,000 books to support literacy programs for children in Uganda and organized an AIDS run that raised $10,000 for the Stephen Lewis Foundation (leadership) and Manitoba high school basketball player and volunteer Kenecia Pingue-Giles (athletics).
Study shows racialized people are poorer, sicker
Friday, 27 May 2011 15:15
By Jasminee Sahoye
A three-year study currently underway among racialized groups in the Black Creek area is
showing that there is a clear connection between low income and health status as a result of
precarious employment.
This is according to one of the two social investigators, Ryerson University’s Associate
Professor, Grace-Edward Galabuzi. He told The Camera that the study resulted from previous
research which found that there is a direct connection between low income and health status.
1 / 3
Study shows racialized people are poorer, sicker
Friday, 27 May 2011 15:15
“The question is what does that means for groups that are disproportionately impacted by low
income like racialized groups, particularly in a community such as this (Black Creek). So what
we have decided to do is a sort of a three-year study, do interviews, do focus groups and do
interviews with particular families to see whether there is a direct connection between their
experiences with precarious employment, impact in terms of low income and impact in terms of
their health. What we have been finding out is that there is very clear connection between
precarious employment, low income and poor health.”
The Black Creek area was chosen because it has a higher percentage of low income and
racialized people, as well as immigrants, than the rest of the population.
“If you are going to look at the experience of low income, race, precarious employment and
health, this is a very good sample area,” Galabuzi said.
He added that the study has helped them to understand how the experience of precarious
employment impacts on the well-being of these racialized groups. Focus groups include Blacks,
Canadian-born and service providers as well as people who speak Spanish, Arab, Urdu and
Vietnamese.
“Their own perception of well-being and health is much higher than the average for the rest of
the Canadian population. What we are suggesting is that can be attributed to the experience of
precarious employment and to the fact that they are racialized and also because they live in this
community, which is a stigmatized community and that can have an impact on them.”
The study is funded by The Wellesley Institute and Metcalf Foundation through Access Alliance
Community Health Centre.
Meanwhile, The Wellesley Institute said the data from the last long form Census survey points
“to an entrenchment of the racialization of poverty, a phenomenon where poverty becomes
disproportionately concentrated and reproduced among racialized group members, in some
cases inter-generationally. The emergence of precarious work as a major feature of Canadian
labour markets is an important contributor to this phenomenon.”
2 / 3
Study shows racialized people are poorer, sicker
Friday, 27 May 2011 15:15
·
·
Senator takes at-risk youths, students to parliament
By Jasminee Sahoye
Senator Don Meredith believes that young people, especially from communities that are
considered at-risk should get involved in politics. He has been advocating for youth, especially
from the Black community, to strive for political and parliamentary leadership.
And recently he hosted several dozen high school, college and university students from the
Regent Park and St. James Town neighbourhoods in Toronto on Parliament Hill, Ottawa.
The young people, part of a leadership development program sponsored by Toronto’s Yonge
Street Mission, visited the Senate and House of Commons Chambers, the parliamentary library,
the Senate Speaker’s Salon and the Prime Minister’s Centre Block office. They also participated
in a round table discussion on youth and leadership issues moderated by the Senator and a
colleague, Senator Anne Cools. (Senators Meredith and Cools are two of three black people in
the Upper Chamber. The third is Senator Don Oliver of Nova Scotia.)
It was the second such student Parliamentary visit this year, hosted by Senator Meredith.
Earlier this month, grade eight students from Herbert H. Carnegie Public School in Maple,
Ontario, had made a similar trek to the Capital.
The Senator noted his strong belief in the value of such visits, emphasising that they encourage
young people to actually envision themselves, someday, as possibly becoming involved in
1 / 3
Senator takes at-risk youths, students to parliament
Friday, 27 May 2011 15:12
political and parliamentary leadership.
While in the Senate, the group of 38 were seated at government and opposition desks. They
had opportunity to listen to and interact with the Clerk of the Senate, Dr. Gary W. O’Brien and
Senate Speaker Noël Kinsella.
In commenting on Parliamentary law-making procedures, Dr. O’Brien spoke of the significance
of the “three readings” that every bill must pass through in each Chamber, before being signed
into law or given “Royal Assent” by the Governor General.
They are called “readings” he explained, because in the early years of parliamentary history,
when many of the elected politicians lacked reading skills, the Clerk would read the bills aloud,
line by line. Those processes permitted members to debate the bills and propose amendments,
in both the chambers and through each house’s standing committees.
The idea was, he suggested, that the thorough line-by-line process would provide ways of
considering every possible implication held in the wording of legislation, and prevent errors that
might result from hasty passage.
Speaker Kinsella, for his part, pointed out the historic significance of the large murals, relating to
past military battles in which Canada was engaged.
During the round table, the two Senators, the students and their leaders talked about some of
the social issues that prevail in some Toronto neighbourhoods – and possible solutions to those
issues. Senator Meredith pointed out that young people do not have to wait until they have
political leadership positions to exercise their voices in the interests of building stronger and
safer communities and families.
Referring to youth-oriented initiatives developed under the aegis of such groups as the Yonge
Street Mission, 614 and the Salvation Army, Senator Meredith pointed out that the people in the
round table room could be “agents of change”.
2 / 3
Senator takes at-risk youths, students to parliament
Friday, 27 May 2011 15:12
There appeared to be general agreement in the group that there is a need to understand the
rage and anger present among some younger people in large city communities – and to
respond proactively.
For some of the young people, at least, the Hill visit provided a new picture of how busy,
multi-faceted and productive a Senator’s office could be in the pursuit of community service.
African history should be taught to all students
Senator Don Meredith believes that young people, especially from communities that are
considered at-risk should get involved in politics. He has been advocating for youth, especially
from the Black community, to strive for political and parliamentary leadership.
And recently he hosted several dozen high school, college and university students from the
Regent Park and St. James Town neighbourhoods in Toronto on Parliament Hill, Ottawa.
The young people, part of a leadership development program sponsored by Toronto’s Yonge
Street Mission, visited the Senate and House of Commons Chambers, the parliamentary library,
the Senate Speaker’s Salon and the Prime Minister’s Centre Block office. They also participated
in a round table discussion on youth and leadership issues moderated by the Senator and a
colleague, Senator Anne Cools. (Senators Meredith and Cools are two of three black people in
the Upper Chamber. The third is Senator Don Oliver of Nova Scotia.)
It was the second such student Parliamentary visit this year, hosted by Senator Meredith.
Earlier this month, grade eight students from Herbert H. Carnegie Public School in Maple,
Ontario, had made a similar trek to the Capital.
The Senator noted his strong belief in the value of such visits, emphasising that they encourage
young people to actually envision themselves, someday, as possibly becoming involved in
1 / 3
Senator takes at-risk youths, students to parliament
Friday, 27 May 2011 15:12
political and parliamentary leadership.
While in the Senate, the group of 38 were seated at government and opposition desks. They
had opportunity to listen to and interact with the Clerk of the Senate, Dr. Gary W. O’Brien and
Senate Speaker Noël Kinsella.
In commenting on Parliamentary law-making procedures, Dr. O’Brien spoke of the significance
of the “three readings” that every bill must pass through in each Chamber, before being signed
into law or given “Royal Assent” by the Governor General.
They are called “readings” he explained, because in the early years of parliamentary history,
when many of the elected politicians lacked reading skills, the Clerk would read the bills aloud,
line by line. Those processes permitted members to debate the bills and propose amendments,
in both the chambers and through each house’s standing committees.
The idea was, he suggested, that the thorough line-by-line process would provide ways of
considering every possible implication held in the wording of legislation, and prevent errors that
might result from hasty passage.
Speaker Kinsella, for his part, pointed out the historic significance of the large murals, relating to
past military battles in which Canada was engaged.
During the round table, the two Senators, the students and their leaders talked about some of
the social issues that prevail in some Toronto neighbourhoods – and possible solutions to those
issues. Senator Meredith pointed out that young people do not have to wait until they have
political leadership positions to exercise their voices in the interests of building stronger and
safer communities and families.
Referring to youth-oriented initiatives developed under the aegis of such groups as the Yonge
Street Mission, 614 and the Salvation Army, Senator Meredith pointed out that the people in the
round table room could be “agents of change”.
2 / 3
Senator takes at-risk youths, students to parliament
Friday, 27 May 2011 15:12
There appeared to be general agreement in the group that there is a need to understand the
rage and anger present among some younger people in large city communities – and to
respond proactively.
For some of the young people, at least, the Hill visit provided a new picture of how busy,
multi-faceted and productive a Senator’s office could be in the pursuit of community service.
African history should be taught to all students
By MURPHY BROWNE
Modern (wo)man originated on the African continent some 115 million years ago so African history goes back further than the history of any other place on earth. Scientists are convinced that these first people originated in Southeast Africa, which covers an extensive area including several countries, e.g., Botswana, Burundi, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
Genetic evidence shows that until about 60,000 years ago, Africa was the only place on earth where modern people lived. Then some people began to migrate, going around the Arabian pensula. [1] and India [2] and as far as Australia. Researchers from the universities of Leeds and Glasgow, analyzing DNA samples from remote populations in Southeast Asia, propose that early humans may have moved steadily eastwards along the coast, through India and Southeast Asia and onto Australasia.
However, most people lived in Africa until an Ice Age set in. As a result, people began to drift into West Asia, following herds of animals. By 3,000 BC, the people living in Africa began to develop kingdoms which included Egypt, Ethiopia and Nubia in the North and East; Mali, Ghana and Songhay in the West and Zimbabwe in the South.
During this month when we in North America celebrate African Heritage Month (people in the UK celebrate in October), much of the information about African history is centred on the enslavement of Africans or the history of those in the Diaspora. The kidnapping, forced removal of Africans from their home continent and their enslavement (the Maafa) is a fact and has been acknowledged by the United Nations as a crime against humanity.
The effects of the Maafa are felt in the 21st century because many of the people who live with the results of those centuries of enslavement are reluctant to acknowledge the spirit injury that remains to haunt us. Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary has documented some of the lasting effects in her book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.
Those who continue to benefit because their ancestors were enriched on the backs of enslaved Africans' unpaid, coerced labour, continue to resist the call for reparations. The slave holders were paid reparations in the 1830s when they lost their "property" through the Emancipation Act that ended chattel slavery.
However, our history did not begin with slavery and we need to celebrate our glorious past, including the contributions to civilization. We also need to move beyond the food and dance aspect of African Heritage Month celebrations and do some educating or, at least, edutaining.
It is alarming to note the number of Africans, especially in the Diaspora, who do not know their history but they know European history because this is the education they received. This is one of the reasons why we need to be vigilant to ensure that the Africentric Alternative School (which will open in September in Sheppard Public School) is a success.
The Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey (father of the modern Pan-African movement) said: "A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots". Many of us who are the descendants of those Africans who were ripped away from their homes in Africa and scattered around the world do not identify with the African continent because of Eurocentric mis-education.
The "formal" education received by those who were enslaved, then colonized by the British, mis-educated those Africans into believing that they were British, until they arrived in Britain to study or work and suffered the rabid White supremacist culture and anti-African racism.
The informal education or brainwashing which was transmitted through Tarzan movies, comic books and similar types of material convinced Africans in the Diaspora that their origin was something of which to be ashamed. The work of the enslaver and colonizing European was thorough since there are Africans in the Diaspora who today in the 21st century still believe those images to be an accurate portrayal of their ancestral home.
Far from being the "dark continent" with natives who needed Tarzan and other White men to teach them about civilization, African students and others were attending the Sankore University (founded in 989) in Timbuktu, Mali, West Africa, when there were no universities in Europe. African emperors, kings and queens ruled empires and kingdoms when Europeans lived in the Dark Ages.
Yet, our children learn about Medieval Europe and nothing about the African empires and kingdoms. World history is taught from a Eurocentric viewpoint with Europe being the centre from which all things emerged. Mathematics, geography, social studies, etc. are all taught from a Eurocentric place of privilege.
Now that an Africentric school is a reality, our community can begin to work towards making sure that our history is included in the regular curriculum in all schools. Since quite a few of the people in power who were against the establishment of the Africentric school said that they were willing to work towards an inclusive curriculum, we can now urge or challenge them to put their money where their mouths are.
Students in the education system need to learn about Queen Nzingha of Angola, Emperor Mansa Musa of Mali, Queen Makeda of Ethiopia, Piankhy of Nubia and Egypt and the kingdoms they ruled. The same care that is taken to teach Canadian students of all races about the people of Europe, their cultures, languages and achievements must be taken to teach our students about Africa, its history, cultures, languages and achievements.
There were important differences between African and European societies; ancient African societies did not involve the huge differences between rich and poor people that plagued Europe. Africans lived in well ordered societies within clean well-kept towns and villages where craftsmen and women, farmers, religious leaders, healers and scholars co-existed.
This history we must ensure is taught not only to African Canadian children in the Africentric school, but it should be included in the curriculum for all students. This history must be as well known as the history of Europe not only during African Heritage Month, but all year. We are almost at the end of February but we do not have to stop learning about our history.
Despite Desmond apology racism still a threat
Modern (wo)man originated on the African continent some 115 million years ago so African history goes back further than the history of any other place on earth. Scientists are convinced that these first people originated in Southeast Africa, which covers an extensive area including several countries, e.g., Botswana, Burundi, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
Genetic evidence shows that until about 60,000 years ago, Africa was the only place on earth where modern people lived. Then some people began to migrate, going around the Arabian pensula. [1] and India [2] and as far as Australia. Researchers from the universities of Leeds and Glasgow, analyzing DNA samples from remote populations in Southeast Asia, propose that early humans may have moved steadily eastwards along the coast, through India and Southeast Asia and onto Australasia.
However, most people lived in Africa until an Ice Age set in. As a result, people began to drift into West Asia, following herds of animals. By 3,000 BC, the people living in Africa began to develop kingdoms which included Egypt, Ethiopia and Nubia in the North and East; Mali, Ghana and Songhay in the West and Zimbabwe in the South.
During this month when we in North America celebrate African Heritage Month (people in the UK celebrate in October), much of the information about African history is centred on the enslavement of Africans or the history of those in the Diaspora. The kidnapping, forced removal of Africans from their home continent and their enslavement (the Maafa) is a fact and has been acknowledged by the United Nations as a crime against humanity.
The effects of the Maafa are felt in the 21st century because many of the people who live with the results of those centuries of enslavement are reluctant to acknowledge the spirit injury that remains to haunt us. Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary has documented some of the lasting effects in her book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.
Those who continue to benefit because their ancestors were enriched on the backs of enslaved Africans' unpaid, coerced labour, continue to resist the call for reparations. The slave holders were paid reparations in the 1830s when they lost their "property" through the Emancipation Act that ended chattel slavery.
However, our history did not begin with slavery and we need to celebrate our glorious past, including the contributions to civilization. We also need to move beyond the food and dance aspect of African Heritage Month celebrations and do some educating or, at least, edutaining.
It is alarming to note the number of Africans, especially in the Diaspora, who do not know their history but they know European history because this is the education they received. This is one of the reasons why we need to be vigilant to ensure that the Africentric Alternative School (which will open in September in Sheppard Public School) is a success.
The Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey (father of the modern Pan-African movement) said: "A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots". Many of us who are the descendants of those Africans who were ripped away from their homes in Africa and scattered around the world do not identify with the African continent because of Eurocentric mis-education.
The "formal" education received by those who were enslaved, then colonized by the British, mis-educated those Africans into believing that they were British, until they arrived in Britain to study or work and suffered the rabid White supremacist culture and anti-African racism.
The informal education or brainwashing which was transmitted through Tarzan movies, comic books and similar types of material convinced Africans in the Diaspora that their origin was something of which to be ashamed. The work of the enslaver and colonizing European was thorough since there are Africans in the Diaspora who today in the 21st century still believe those images to be an accurate portrayal of their ancestral home.
Far from being the "dark continent" with natives who needed Tarzan and other White men to teach them about civilization, African students and others were attending the Sankore University (founded in 989) in Timbuktu, Mali, West Africa, when there were no universities in Europe. African emperors, kings and queens ruled empires and kingdoms when Europeans lived in the Dark Ages.
Yet, our children learn about Medieval Europe and nothing about the African empires and kingdoms. World history is taught from a Eurocentric viewpoint with Europe being the centre from which all things emerged. Mathematics, geography, social studies, etc. are all taught from a Eurocentric place of privilege.
Now that an Africentric school is a reality, our community can begin to work towards making sure that our history is included in the regular curriculum in all schools. Since quite a few of the people in power who were against the establishment of the Africentric school said that they were willing to work towards an inclusive curriculum, we can now urge or challenge them to put their money where their mouths are.
Students in the education system need to learn about Queen Nzingha of Angola, Emperor Mansa Musa of Mali, Queen Makeda of Ethiopia, Piankhy of Nubia and Egypt and the kingdoms they ruled. The same care that is taken to teach Canadian students of all races about the people of Europe, their cultures, languages and achievements must be taken to teach our students about Africa, its history, cultures, languages and achievements.
There were important differences between African and European societies; ancient African societies did not involve the huge differences between rich and poor people that plagued Europe. Africans lived in well ordered societies within clean well-kept towns and villages where craftsmen and women, farmers, religious leaders, healers and scholars co-existed.
This history we must ensure is taught not only to African Canadian children in the Africentric school, but it should be included in the curriculum for all students. This history must be as well known as the history of Europe not only during African Heritage Month, but all year. We are almost at the end of February but we do not have to stop learning about our history.
Despite Desmond apology racism still a threat
By PAT WATSON
Within the same week that the family of late anti-segregation activist Viola Desmond received an apology and pardon from the Government of Nova Scotia in recognition of her human rights stand six decades ago, someone set fire to the car owned by an inter-racial couple who had already been the target of a hate crime.
Shayne Howe, the only Black man in Poplar Grove, located some 50 kilometers northwest of Halifax, and his partner Michelle Lyon, who is White, have been living in fear since the earlier incident on Feb. 21 when in the pre-dawn hours they found a cross with a noose tied to it burning on their front lawn. Howe and Lyon, who have five children, also report that they heard racial taunts at that time.
Curiously, the two young men arrested and charged with public incitement of hatred, criminal harassment, uttering threats and mischief are said to be cousins of Lyon. The younger of the brothers, Justin Rehberg, 19, has pleaded not guilty. Nathan Rehberg, 20, has not yet entered a plea.
With good reason, Nova Scotia has been labeled by some as 'the Mississippi of the North'. On Nov. 8, 1946, a then 32-year-old beautician, Viola Desmond, experiencing car trouble in New Glasgow while on her way from Halifax to Sydney, went to watch a movie at the Roseland Theatre while waiting for her car to be repaired. Unbeknown to her, the theatre had a segregated seating policy. Black people were allowed only balcony seating, but Desmond sat in the White-only section. Refusing to move once she was informed, she was dragged from the theatre by a police officer and the theatre manager.
For her 'crime' she spent a night in jail and was convicted of tax evasion. Court records show that she was charged for not paying the full price for the seating she occupied - apparently, Whites paid a higher price for premium seating - and she was sentenced to 30 days in jail and given a $20 fine.
But Desmond fought the charge with the help of the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. She lost the first appeal but later won on a technicality. American Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus occurred nine years later, on Dec. 1, 1955.
It remains to be seen how the case against the Rehberg brothers will end. After the incident in late February, the small town rallied to support the Howe-Lyon family, but since the latest incident the couple is now considering moving away from the area.
When many think of racism, this kind of stereotypical cross-burning act of hatred is what they recognize. But that is at the militant end of the spectrum. This kind of exaggerated expression is not unlike the notion of a 'real' drunk - a scruffy man sitting on a bench drinking cheap alcohol out of a paper bag - when in fact far more real drunks live in nice homes and have good jobs while making a mess of their lives.
In much the same way, most who are living within the more mundane aspects of racism don't see themselves as associated to the extremist cross burner, and so reject that they fit somewhere along the spectrum. But, racism, like other social diseases, pervades our society.
So when the National Post ran a feature a few weekends ago in which one of its editors detailed his experience of attending an anti-racism program with other White people, apparently facilitated by a White person, the editor's commentary was at best mocking, and at worst meant to discredit the attempts by some Whites to address racism in their midst.
It might have been helpful to credit the group with wanting to address the issue and at least trying. But again, because the exaggerated stereotype of a racist is the yardstick against which many measure themselves, the easy answer is to discredit efforts such as that workshop. For if such efforts can be discredited or made to appear ridiculous then beneficiaries of this system can keep right on going with the same old songs.
A note on TTC town halls...
The second in a series of three town halls hosted by the Amalgamated Transit Workers Union took place last weekend in Scarborough, a rapidly growing and much-underserved area. The audience, mainly members of the public, was a bit rowdier than the first meeting and held a stronger line in calling TTC frontline workers to task for poor customer service.
A front page Toronto Star article detailed customer complaints of "crude, rude TTC staff" in a system "troubled by a culture of indifference and disdain toward customers
Horrific life experiences helped shape Malcolm X
Within the same week that the family of late anti-segregation activist Viola Desmond received an apology and pardon from the Government of Nova Scotia in recognition of her human rights stand six decades ago, someone set fire to the car owned by an inter-racial couple who had already been the target of a hate crime.
Shayne Howe, the only Black man in Poplar Grove, located some 50 kilometers northwest of Halifax, and his partner Michelle Lyon, who is White, have been living in fear since the earlier incident on Feb. 21 when in the pre-dawn hours they found a cross with a noose tied to it burning on their front lawn. Howe and Lyon, who have five children, also report that they heard racial taunts at that time.
Curiously, the two young men arrested and charged with public incitement of hatred, criminal harassment, uttering threats and mischief are said to be cousins of Lyon. The younger of the brothers, Justin Rehberg, 19, has pleaded not guilty. Nathan Rehberg, 20, has not yet entered a plea.
With good reason, Nova Scotia has been labeled by some as 'the Mississippi of the North'. On Nov. 8, 1946, a then 32-year-old beautician, Viola Desmond, experiencing car trouble in New Glasgow while on her way from Halifax to Sydney, went to watch a movie at the Roseland Theatre while waiting for her car to be repaired. Unbeknown to her, the theatre had a segregated seating policy. Black people were allowed only balcony seating, but Desmond sat in the White-only section. Refusing to move once she was informed, she was dragged from the theatre by a police officer and the theatre manager.
For her 'crime' she spent a night in jail and was convicted of tax evasion. Court records show that she was charged for not paying the full price for the seating she occupied - apparently, Whites paid a higher price for premium seating - and she was sentenced to 30 days in jail and given a $20 fine.
But Desmond fought the charge with the help of the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. She lost the first appeal but later won on a technicality. American Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus occurred nine years later, on Dec. 1, 1955.
It remains to be seen how the case against the Rehberg brothers will end. After the incident in late February, the small town rallied to support the Howe-Lyon family, but since the latest incident the couple is now considering moving away from the area.
When many think of racism, this kind of stereotypical cross-burning act of hatred is what they recognize. But that is at the militant end of the spectrum. This kind of exaggerated expression is not unlike the notion of a 'real' drunk - a scruffy man sitting on a bench drinking cheap alcohol out of a paper bag - when in fact far more real drunks live in nice homes and have good jobs while making a mess of their lives.
In much the same way, most who are living within the more mundane aspects of racism don't see themselves as associated to the extremist cross burner, and so reject that they fit somewhere along the spectrum. But, racism, like other social diseases, pervades our society.
So when the National Post ran a feature a few weekends ago in which one of its editors detailed his experience of attending an anti-racism program with other White people, apparently facilitated by a White person, the editor's commentary was at best mocking, and at worst meant to discredit the attempts by some Whites to address racism in their midst.
It might have been helpful to credit the group with wanting to address the issue and at least trying. But again, because the exaggerated stereotype of a racist is the yardstick against which many measure themselves, the easy answer is to discredit efforts such as that workshop. For if such efforts can be discredited or made to appear ridiculous then beneficiaries of this system can keep right on going with the same old songs.
A note on TTC town halls...
The second in a series of three town halls hosted by the Amalgamated Transit Workers Union took place last weekend in Scarborough, a rapidly growing and much-underserved area. The audience, mainly members of the public, was a bit rowdier than the first meeting and held a stronger line in calling TTC frontline workers to task for poor customer service.
A front page Toronto Star article detailed customer complaints of "crude, rude TTC staff" in a system "troubled by a culture of indifference and disdain toward customers
Horrific life experiences helped shape Malcolm X
By MURPHY BROWNE
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. He would have been 86 years old on Thursday May, 19, 2011 but he was assassinated on February 21, 1965 three months before his 40th birthday.
His parents Earl Little and Louise Norton Little met in Montreal at a United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) convention. The UNIA was the Pan-African organization founded by the Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey.
El-Shabazz who at various times carried the names Malik Shabazz, Malcolm X and Omowale is an iconic human rights activist whose various name changes was a bid to rid himself of the "slave name" Little. Recognizing that the name he was given at birth was forced on his ancestors by the White people who at some point had owned his ancestors he choose African (Omowale) and Arab (Malik) names to distance himself from the European name he was given at birth.
Omowale is a Yoruba name meaning "the child has come home" and Shabazz was given this name when he visited Nigeria. Jack Rummel and Heather Lehr Wagner write in their 2005 book, Malcolm X Militant Black Leader: "In Nigeria, students flocked to mass assemblies to hear the famed American activist speak, and they bestowed still another name on him: Alhadji Omowale Malcolm X."
Very fittingly, Malik is the Arabic word for king. For some African Americans, Shabazz was as venerated as any member of royalty. The late African American actor Ossie Davis (December 18, 1917 - February 4, 2005) who gave the eulogy at the funeral on February 27, 1965, referred to El-Shabazz as "a Prince, our own Black, shining Prince."
Some of the horrific experiences of his family and his early life shaped the person that El-Shabazz eventually became. In the 1965 The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Shabazz shared several of those experiences including one told to him by his mother. "When my mother was pregnant with me, she told me later, a party of hooded Ku Klux Klan raiders galloped up to our home in Omaha, Nebraska, one night. Surrounding the house, brandishing their shotguns and rifles, they shouted for my father to come out. My mother went to the front door and opened it. Standing where they could see her pregnant condition, she told them that she was alone with her three small children and that my father was away, preaching, in Milwaukee. The Klansmen shouted threats and warnings at her that we had better get out of town because 'The good Christian white people' were not going to stand for my father's 'spreading trouble' among the 'good' Negroes of Omaha with the 'back to Africa' preachings of Marcus Garvey."
In Malcolm X, The Man and His Times, published in 1990, African-American scholar and historian Dr. John Henrik Clarke, states: "The racist society that produced and killed Malcolm X is responsible for what he was and for destroying what he could have been. He had the greatest leadership potential of any person to emerge directly from the black proletariat in this century. In another time under different circumstances he might have been a king - and a good one. He might have made a nation and he might have destroyed one. He was a creation of the interplay of powerful and conflicting forces in mid-century America. No other country or combination of forces could have shaped him the way he was and ultimately destroyed him with such unique ruthlessness."
In 1929, when Shabazz was four years old, a White supremacist group burned the family's home leaving the Littles, with several small children, homeless. Two years later, in 1931 when he was six, his father suffered a particularly gruesome, racially motivated death. Louise Little, traumatized by the horrific murder of her husband, cheated of the insurance money she should have received at his death and unable to find work to support her children was further victimized when the government imprisoned her in a mental institution, seized and scattered her children into various foster homes.
El-Shabazz spoke about his time spent in White foster homes where he was treated as if he was a pet.
"What I am trying to say is that it just never dawned upon them that I could understand, that I wasn't a pet, but a human being. They didn't give me credit for having the same sensitivity, intellect, and understanding that they would have been ready and willing to recognize in a white boy in my position. But it has historically been the case with white people, in their regard for black people, that even though we might be with them, we weren't considered of them. Even though they appeared to have opened the door, it was still closed. Thus they never did really see me."
Given the history of his family's involvement with the UNIA and the influence of the philosophy of the Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, it is hardly surprising that El-Shabazz eventually became the iconic human rights activist whose words are quoted by all and sundry even today in the 21st century. The phrase "by any means necessary" has been used and misused by individuals and groups whose actions and philosophies are in opposition to all that El-Shabazz represents. He continues to be an inspiration for oppressed people internationally, his name invoked in their struggle. It is also not surprising that he was under constant surveillance by the American government (FBI) which sought to destroy any and all African-American individuals or groups working to address the unequal and oppressed position to which African-Americans have been relegated since they were first taken to what is now the USA.
In the preface to The Autobiography of Malcolm X, M. S. Handler commented: "No man in our time aroused fear and hatred in the white man as did Malcolm, because in him the white man sensed an implacable foe who could not be had for any price - a man unreservedly committed to the cause of liberating the black man in American society rather than integrating the black man into that society."
During this year of the International Year for People of African Descent as we remember those who have gone before us, our ancestors on whose shoulders we stand, on whose backs we crossed over, it is also important to educate ourselves as much as possible about who these people really were. Reading several books about our ancestors (more than 40 books have been written about El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) and thinking critically about the biases of the authors or commentators is an excellent start. In his 1994 book, Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary, Walter Dean Myers reminds us: "People do not just 'happen' in history. They come along at a certain time, and in a certain place. They react to ideas that have come before them, and to people who have expressed those ideas. The man we know as Malcolm X was no exception."
Immigration practitioners blast Conservative Party
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. He would have been 86 years old on Thursday May, 19, 2011 but he was assassinated on February 21, 1965 three months before his 40th birthday.
His parents Earl Little and Louise Norton Little met in Montreal at a United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) convention. The UNIA was the Pan-African organization founded by the Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey.
El-Shabazz who at various times carried the names Malik Shabazz, Malcolm X and Omowale is an iconic human rights activist whose various name changes was a bid to rid himself of the "slave name" Little. Recognizing that the name he was given at birth was forced on his ancestors by the White people who at some point had owned his ancestors he choose African (Omowale) and Arab (Malik) names to distance himself from the European name he was given at birth.
Omowale is a Yoruba name meaning "the child has come home" and Shabazz was given this name when he visited Nigeria. Jack Rummel and Heather Lehr Wagner write in their 2005 book, Malcolm X Militant Black Leader: "In Nigeria, students flocked to mass assemblies to hear the famed American activist speak, and they bestowed still another name on him: Alhadji Omowale Malcolm X."
Very fittingly, Malik is the Arabic word for king. For some African Americans, Shabazz was as venerated as any member of royalty. The late African American actor Ossie Davis (December 18, 1917 - February 4, 2005) who gave the eulogy at the funeral on February 27, 1965, referred to El-Shabazz as "a Prince, our own Black, shining Prince."
Some of the horrific experiences of his family and his early life shaped the person that El-Shabazz eventually became. In the 1965 The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Shabazz shared several of those experiences including one told to him by his mother. "When my mother was pregnant with me, she told me later, a party of hooded Ku Klux Klan raiders galloped up to our home in Omaha, Nebraska, one night. Surrounding the house, brandishing their shotguns and rifles, they shouted for my father to come out. My mother went to the front door and opened it. Standing where they could see her pregnant condition, she told them that she was alone with her three small children and that my father was away, preaching, in Milwaukee. The Klansmen shouted threats and warnings at her that we had better get out of town because 'The good Christian white people' were not going to stand for my father's 'spreading trouble' among the 'good' Negroes of Omaha with the 'back to Africa' preachings of Marcus Garvey."
In Malcolm X, The Man and His Times, published in 1990, African-American scholar and historian Dr. John Henrik Clarke, states: "The racist society that produced and killed Malcolm X is responsible for what he was and for destroying what he could have been. He had the greatest leadership potential of any person to emerge directly from the black proletariat in this century. In another time under different circumstances he might have been a king - and a good one. He might have made a nation and he might have destroyed one. He was a creation of the interplay of powerful and conflicting forces in mid-century America. No other country or combination of forces could have shaped him the way he was and ultimately destroyed him with such unique ruthlessness."
In 1929, when Shabazz was four years old, a White supremacist group burned the family's home leaving the Littles, with several small children, homeless. Two years later, in 1931 when he was six, his father suffered a particularly gruesome, racially motivated death. Louise Little, traumatized by the horrific murder of her husband, cheated of the insurance money she should have received at his death and unable to find work to support her children was further victimized when the government imprisoned her in a mental institution, seized and scattered her children into various foster homes.
El-Shabazz spoke about his time spent in White foster homes where he was treated as if he was a pet.
"What I am trying to say is that it just never dawned upon them that I could understand, that I wasn't a pet, but a human being. They didn't give me credit for having the same sensitivity, intellect, and understanding that they would have been ready and willing to recognize in a white boy in my position. But it has historically been the case with white people, in their regard for black people, that even though we might be with them, we weren't considered of them. Even though they appeared to have opened the door, it was still closed. Thus they never did really see me."
Given the history of his family's involvement with the UNIA and the influence of the philosophy of the Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, it is hardly surprising that El-Shabazz eventually became the iconic human rights activist whose words are quoted by all and sundry even today in the 21st century. The phrase "by any means necessary" has been used and misused by individuals and groups whose actions and philosophies are in opposition to all that El-Shabazz represents. He continues to be an inspiration for oppressed people internationally, his name invoked in their struggle. It is also not surprising that he was under constant surveillance by the American government (FBI) which sought to destroy any and all African-American individuals or groups working to address the unequal and oppressed position to which African-Americans have been relegated since they were first taken to what is now the USA.
In the preface to The Autobiography of Malcolm X, M. S. Handler commented: "No man in our time aroused fear and hatred in the white man as did Malcolm, because in him the white man sensed an implacable foe who could not be had for any price - a man unreservedly committed to the cause of liberating the black man in American society rather than integrating the black man into that society."
During this year of the International Year for People of African Descent as we remember those who have gone before us, our ancestors on whose shoulders we stand, on whose backs we crossed over, it is also important to educate ourselves as much as possible about who these people really were. Reading several books about our ancestors (more than 40 books have been written about El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) and thinking critically about the biases of the authors or commentators is an excellent start. In his 1994 book, Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary, Walter Dean Myers reminds us: "People do not just 'happen' in history. They come along at a certain time, and in a certain place. They react to ideas that have come before them, and to people who have expressed those ideas. The man we know as Malcolm X was no exception."
Immigration practitioners blast Conservative Party
In a recent statement, leading immigration lawyers, practitioners and academics refuted the arguments of the Conservative Government that their policies have been favourable to New Canadians. They noted that the Conservative Party has been telling visible minority immigrant communities, which it calls the "ethnic vote", that it is improving the immigration system.
A review of their record shows the contrary, according to the immigration practitioners.
For example:
-Since the Conservative Party took power, the total time for processing sponsorship applications and visa applications for parents and grandparents has increased dramatically. Meanwhile, the number granted visas annually has dropped by 44 per cent since 2006. This year only 11,500 visas will be issued in this category. New Canadians who hope to be reunited in Canada with their parents or grandparents, or who have any empathy for families that want to be reunited, should vote for another party.
-The backlog of skilled worker applicants waiting for a decision has gone up from 487,000 in 2005 to 508,000.
-What is actually being done to process any type of application remains a guessing game for many applicants.
-The Conservative Party has cut settlement funding for immigrants and refused to fund many well-established groups, often because of political considerations.
-The Conservatives claim they will get tough on human smugglers, but the law they intend to pass mainly punishes refugees. Even women and children will be imprisoned for a minimum of one year under this law.
-The Conservative Party claims to be sympathetic to refugees who do not flee their countries illegally, but just announced plans to cancel the only program allowing Canada to protect refugees applying from within their country.
-The Conservative Party plans to make marriage sponsorships conditional on a two-year waiting period. Canadians and their spouses will be subjected to more uncertainty and delay. Spouses in abusive relationships will be trapped in them.
-The Conservative Party has continually stirred up anti-immigrant sentiment to justify its policies, even without a majority.
Evolving means choosing virtue over vice
A review of their record shows the contrary, according to the immigration practitioners.
For example:
-Since the Conservative Party took power, the total time for processing sponsorship applications and visa applications for parents and grandparents has increased dramatically. Meanwhile, the number granted visas annually has dropped by 44 per cent since 2006. This year only 11,500 visas will be issued in this category. New Canadians who hope to be reunited in Canada with their parents or grandparents, or who have any empathy for families that want to be reunited, should vote for another party.
-The backlog of skilled worker applicants waiting for a decision has gone up from 487,000 in 2005 to 508,000.
-What is actually being done to process any type of application remains a guessing game for many applicants.
-The Conservative Party has cut settlement funding for immigrants and refused to fund many well-established groups, often because of political considerations.
-The Conservatives claim they will get tough on human smugglers, but the law they intend to pass mainly punishes refugees. Even women and children will be imprisoned for a minimum of one year under this law.
-The Conservative Party claims to be sympathetic to refugees who do not flee their countries illegally, but just announced plans to cancel the only program allowing Canada to protect refugees applying from within their country.
-The Conservative Party plans to make marriage sponsorships conditional on a two-year waiting period. Canadians and their spouses will be subjected to more uncertainty and delay. Spouses in abusive relationships will be trapped in them.
-The Conservative Party has continually stirred up anti-immigrant sentiment to justify its policies, even without a majority.
Evolving means choosing virtue over vice
By PAT WATSON
On a Spadina streetcar one recent rainy afternoon the cover of a book in the hands of a young man who had that college student look raises the interest of fellow passengers. The title - The Lucifer Principle - was intriguing and raised in the minds of a few what a book with such a title could be about.
As if to be the voice of all the curious, a passenger bursting with inquisitiveness, one of those characters usually seen on Toronto street corners holding out a Timmie's coffee cup with a few coins in the bottom, asked the man holding the book what it was about.
He replied that it was a discourse on human behavior and human nature.
"I'll tell you what human nature is," the questioner shot back. "Human beings are lazy and greedy, and the only thing we've got going for us is a strong survival instinct."
As a human being, should one feel insulted by his characterization, or at least satisfied that someone had enough curiosity to ask?
The questioner had reduced the human race to two unkind adjectives. And why had he left off the other five Deadly Sins of envy, pride, lust, anger and gluttony?
In any case, the man with the book concurred that the book did have as its underlying theme the 'evil' nature of man. Who wouldn't want to know more?
Because answers to any question on Earth can now be found just by turning to the Internet (remember when a primary source used to be the Encyclopedia Britannia?) it was just a matter of going online to get more information on the book with the attention-grabbing title. By the way, kudos to the editor or author for the provocative title.
As it turns out, the book, The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History written by Howard Bloom, came out in 1995, but Toronto Public Library only has one reference copy. So it will be a challenge to get a hold of it to find out what Bloom has to say about culture, evolution, modern civilization and the nature of good and evil.
In any case, it is easy to understand why the questioning passenger would quickly make such a damning summary of human beings. We do have a way of making trouble for ourselves to a much greater extent than even the awesome forces of nature with its earthquakes, hurricanes and floods.
The old comic strip, Pogo, states succinctly: "We have met the enemy and he is us."
But it is understandable that a person who appears down and out could see his fellow humans in a negative light. Negative thinking has a decided way of dragging a human into the abyss. It is also a disservice to all that humans are. For along with the deadly sins there are also seven virtues of prudence, self-control, fairness, faith, hope, love and charity. And there are many more positive human qualities that manifest in our world. There is patience and creativity in the best sense of the word, for instance.
There is no shortage of information, especially through the news media about the countless bad thing people do, so it does not take much searching for evidence of the negative. But if we are to consciously evolve as a species we are challenged to nurture and give our energies to the virtues.
As the questioner pointed out after condemning us all as lazy and greedy, we are as a species driven to survive. The question going forward is how much of our energy we are willing to continue to cede to 'sins' as opposed to 'virtues'.
Perception of today’s youth not reality
On a Spadina streetcar one recent rainy afternoon the cover of a book in the hands of a young man who had that college student look raises the interest of fellow passengers. The title - The Lucifer Principle - was intriguing and raised in the minds of a few what a book with such a title could be about.
As if to be the voice of all the curious, a passenger bursting with inquisitiveness, one of those characters usually seen on Toronto street corners holding out a Timmie's coffee cup with a few coins in the bottom, asked the man holding the book what it was about.
He replied that it was a discourse on human behavior and human nature.
"I'll tell you what human nature is," the questioner shot back. "Human beings are lazy and greedy, and the only thing we've got going for us is a strong survival instinct."
As a human being, should one feel insulted by his characterization, or at least satisfied that someone had enough curiosity to ask?
The questioner had reduced the human race to two unkind adjectives. And why had he left off the other five Deadly Sins of envy, pride, lust, anger and gluttony?
In any case, the man with the book concurred that the book did have as its underlying theme the 'evil' nature of man. Who wouldn't want to know more?
Because answers to any question on Earth can now be found just by turning to the Internet (remember when a primary source used to be the Encyclopedia Britannia?) it was just a matter of going online to get more information on the book with the attention-grabbing title. By the way, kudos to the editor or author for the provocative title.
As it turns out, the book, The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History written by Howard Bloom, came out in 1995, but Toronto Public Library only has one reference copy. So it will be a challenge to get a hold of it to find out what Bloom has to say about culture, evolution, modern civilization and the nature of good and evil.
In any case, it is easy to understand why the questioning passenger would quickly make such a damning summary of human beings. We do have a way of making trouble for ourselves to a much greater extent than even the awesome forces of nature with its earthquakes, hurricanes and floods.
The old comic strip, Pogo, states succinctly: "We have met the enemy and he is us."
But it is understandable that a person who appears down and out could see his fellow humans in a negative light. Negative thinking has a decided way of dragging a human into the abyss. It is also a disservice to all that humans are. For along with the deadly sins there are also seven virtues of prudence, self-control, fairness, faith, hope, love and charity. And there are many more positive human qualities that manifest in our world. There is patience and creativity in the best sense of the word, for instance.
There is no shortage of information, especially through the news media about the countless bad thing people do, so it does not take much searching for evidence of the negative. But if we are to consciously evolve as a species we are challenged to nurture and give our energies to the virtues.
As the questioner pointed out after condemning us all as lazy and greedy, we are as a species driven to survive. The question going forward is how much of our energy we are willing to continue to cede to 'sins' as opposed to 'virtues'.
Perception of today’s youth not reality
I can't help but experience a sense of déjà vu when I listen to descriptions of today's youth. Now in my late thirties, youth are described in the same manner as people my age were 20 years ago.
Usually, I'll hear things like: "Young people today are lazy, have no respect for their elders and think they know everything. Kids do not appreciate how good they have it nowadays. When I was young, I had to walk five miles to go to school".
I like to tell people who criticize today's youth that every generation throughout history has annoyed their elders in one way or another. However, the majority of them turned out fine. We wouldn't be here today if previous generations didn't have their act together.
Today's youth face unique challenges that previous generations did not. Even the Internet - the medium that I am using to state my opinion - presents a challenge.
When I was a kid, I didn't have to worry about people making slanderous statements about me on the Internet, or using Photoshop to create embarrassing pictures for the world to see.
I didn't have to worry about global warming, the world financial crisis, or my parents losing their house after being laid off. Back then, people got a job, worked until they were 65, received a watch or some other gift and enjoyed retirement. We all know that is not the case today.
Despite these issues, there is hope for the future. Although there are problems among today's youth, the majority are no different than previous generations. Some will be followers and others will be a burden on society.
However, many are (and will grow up to be) leaders. They are bright, tech-savvy, inquisitive, and are making a positive impact on their community. Many of them are featured in Share and we should be proud of them.
I encourage people who disparage today's youth to pick up a copy of Share. Take time to talk to youth, not at them. As their elders, do not tolerate disrespect - but don't forget to treat them with respect. You may be surprised by what you'll learn from them.
Small Caribana grants an insult
Usually, I'll hear things like: "Young people today are lazy, have no respect for their elders and think they know everything. Kids do not appreciate how good they have it nowadays. When I was young, I had to walk five miles to go to school".
I like to tell people who criticize today's youth that every generation throughout history has annoyed their elders in one way or another. However, the majority of them turned out fine. We wouldn't be here today if previous generations didn't have their act together.
Today's youth face unique challenges that previous generations did not. Even the Internet - the medium that I am using to state my opinion - presents a challenge.
When I was a kid, I didn't have to worry about people making slanderous statements about me on the Internet, or using Photoshop to create embarrassing pictures for the world to see.
I didn't have to worry about global warming, the world financial crisis, or my parents losing their house after being laid off. Back then, people got a job, worked until they were 65, received a watch or some other gift and enjoyed retirement. We all know that is not the case today.
Despite these issues, there is hope for the future. Although there are problems among today's youth, the majority are no different than previous generations. Some will be followers and others will be a burden on society.
However, many are (and will grow up to be) leaders. They are bright, tech-savvy, inquisitive, and are making a positive impact on their community. Many of them are featured in Share and we should be proud of them.
I encourage people who disparage today's youth to pick up a copy of Share. Take time to talk to youth, not at them. As their elders, do not tolerate disrespect - but don't forget to treat them with respect. You may be surprised by what you'll learn from them.
Small Caribana grants an insult
By RAPHAEL FRANCIS
A few weeks ago the headline in a local newspaper heralded the fact that the Festival Management Committee (FMC) received the paltry sum of $400,000 as a government grant to stage the 2011 CARIBANATM. Well "la di da" I thought but after yawning at the idea it occurred to me that the Caribbean community once again had been insulted and we somehow failed to realize the insult.
Regardless of who manages or sponsors it, CARIBANATM, North America's largest annual summer extravaganza, is responsible for the infusion of more than $400,000,000 ($400-million) into the local economy each year. A grant of $400,000 is a mere 1/1000th or 0.1% of what the festival generates. Who but a mental invalid would think this is a good deal for the untold thousands of costume designers, artisans, fabricators, seamstresses, musicians, volunteers and revelers responsible for this event?
On the other hand, by contrast, the Ontario government has made a grant of $12-million (i.e. $12,000,000) to the Indian Film Awards (IFA) for bringing to North America for the first time their award ceremony which will be held in Toronto on June 25, 2011. In case you did not get the full impact, IFA which is coming to Toronto for the very, very, very first time has received 30 times more than CARIBANATM which has been here since 1967 during which time it has brought into the coffers of Toronto and Ontario a sum that exceeds $25,000,000,000 ($25-billion) Canadian dollars. What in hell is wrong with this picture?
It is my profound conviction that this glaring disparity in funding is due solely and entirely to a gross lack of respect and disdain for the Black Community. Why are we as Black people so willing and content to settle for so little? Is this the lingering result of the "legacy of colonialization" or is it mere "habitualization"? Have we not long gone past the stage when it was considered a treat to be given the scraps of food left on the master's plate? I would like to think that we are more intelligent and are sophisticated enough to know when we have been given the shaft.
Granted, the South-East Asian population in the GTA over the last two or three decades has grown by leaps and bounds and therefore constitutes fertile ground for potential votes in the Fall 2011 provincial elections. But must it be made so obvious and at our expense?
We (the Caribbean Community) started CARIBANATM to celebrate and commemorate Canada's 100th anniversary as an independent sovereign nation and some 44 years later we still go "cap in hand", "tail between our legs" begging for money to stage an event that benefits everyone but us. Where is our Caribbean Canadian Cultural Centre (C4) or our Caribbean Exhibition Centre where we can display our incredibly intricate, imaginative, creative, complex and beautiful expressions of art or our music? And how about our Performing Arts Centre where we can showcase the many talented artistes from Africa and the Caribbean as well as our local musicians, dancers, singers and other artisans? How about a place of our own where our young, talented and educated descendants can go to hone their artistic and cultural skills?
We ought to stop being so damn complacent and become more assertive and aggressive. I don't mean aggressive in the sense of shutting down University Ave. or the Gardner Expressway as others have successfully done. What we can shut down however, is CARIBANATM. And we don't need a permit or a government grant to do it. All we need is a little cooperation between the 'Mas Bandleaders, the Steelband players, the Calypsonians and members of the Black and Caribbean community. We can do it. Let us try it for one year and be assured that the first time those whose normal bank deposits after the long weekend in August see a drastic decline from what it used to be, they will certainly realize how much we are needed. That's when they will come with "wheel barrows " filled with cash begging, beseeching, cajoling and imploring us to keep the fête going. And wouldn't it be nice to be in the driver's seat for once? (This will also mean lots more money for the stakeholders such as the Bandleaders, for example.)
Ruminate on this one. Crazy as the idea might seem, it can work. We must realize that we have been taken for granted much too long and that has been aided and abetted by those amongst us who are suffering from a terminal case of "the delusion of inclusion".
In the past, the masters used "promotion" from "field slave" to "house slave" in order to get us to conspire against each other. Today, however, they employ techniques of "token appointments", limited memberships in exclusive clubs and meaningless job titles. Nuff said.
A few weeks ago the headline in a local newspaper heralded the fact that the Festival Management Committee (FMC) received the paltry sum of $400,000 as a government grant to stage the 2011 CARIBANATM. Well "la di da" I thought but after yawning at the idea it occurred to me that the Caribbean community once again had been insulted and we somehow failed to realize the insult.
Regardless of who manages or sponsors it, CARIBANATM, North America's largest annual summer extravaganza, is responsible for the infusion of more than $400,000,000 ($400-million) into the local economy each year. A grant of $400,000 is a mere 1/1000th or 0.1% of what the festival generates. Who but a mental invalid would think this is a good deal for the untold thousands of costume designers, artisans, fabricators, seamstresses, musicians, volunteers and revelers responsible for this event?
On the other hand, by contrast, the Ontario government has made a grant of $12-million (i.e. $12,000,000) to the Indian Film Awards (IFA) for bringing to North America for the first time their award ceremony which will be held in Toronto on June 25, 2011. In case you did not get the full impact, IFA which is coming to Toronto for the very, very, very first time has received 30 times more than CARIBANATM which has been here since 1967 during which time it has brought into the coffers of Toronto and Ontario a sum that exceeds $25,000,000,000 ($25-billion) Canadian dollars. What in hell is wrong with this picture?
It is my profound conviction that this glaring disparity in funding is due solely and entirely to a gross lack of respect and disdain for the Black Community. Why are we as Black people so willing and content to settle for so little? Is this the lingering result of the "legacy of colonialization" or is it mere "habitualization"? Have we not long gone past the stage when it was considered a treat to be given the scraps of food left on the master's plate? I would like to think that we are more intelligent and are sophisticated enough to know when we have been given the shaft.
Granted, the South-East Asian population in the GTA over the last two or three decades has grown by leaps and bounds and therefore constitutes fertile ground for potential votes in the Fall 2011 provincial elections. But must it be made so obvious and at our expense?
We (the Caribbean Community) started CARIBANATM to celebrate and commemorate Canada's 100th anniversary as an independent sovereign nation and some 44 years later we still go "cap in hand", "tail between our legs" begging for money to stage an event that benefits everyone but us. Where is our Caribbean Canadian Cultural Centre (C4) or our Caribbean Exhibition Centre where we can display our incredibly intricate, imaginative, creative, complex and beautiful expressions of art or our music? And how about our Performing Arts Centre where we can showcase the many talented artistes from Africa and the Caribbean as well as our local musicians, dancers, singers and other artisans? How about a place of our own where our young, talented and educated descendants can go to hone their artistic and cultural skills?
We ought to stop being so damn complacent and become more assertive and aggressive. I don't mean aggressive in the sense of shutting down University Ave. or the Gardner Expressway as others have successfully done. What we can shut down however, is CARIBANATM. And we don't need a permit or a government grant to do it. All we need is a little cooperation between the 'Mas Bandleaders, the Steelband players, the Calypsonians and members of the Black and Caribbean community. We can do it. Let us try it for one year and be assured that the first time those whose normal bank deposits after the long weekend in August see a drastic decline from what it used to be, they will certainly realize how much we are needed. That's when they will come with "wheel barrows " filled with cash begging, beseeching, cajoling and imploring us to keep the fête going. And wouldn't it be nice to be in the driver's seat for once? (This will also mean lots more money for the stakeholders such as the Bandleaders, for example.)
Ruminate on this one. Crazy as the idea might seem, it can work. We must realize that we have been taken for granted much too long and that has been aided and abetted by those amongst us who are suffering from a terminal case of "the delusion of inclusion".
In the past, the masters used "promotion" from "field slave" to "house slave" in order to get us to conspire against each other. Today, however, they employ techniques of "token appointments", limited memberships in exclusive clubs and meaningless job titles. Nuff said.
Hockey Night in Canada gets first black commentator
A hockey player of Barbadian heritage has become the first Black person to join the Hockey Night in Canada team on CBC television.
Kevin Weekes was signed to the show as a “colour commentator” to analyze plays, and he will also be an analyst for NHL on the Fly, reports said.
"Kevin Weekes Makes History as the First Black Hockey Analyst," reads the tag line on an email sent by his publicist.
The move has raised some eyebrows, as Hockey Night in Canada’s audience is largely white Don Cherry fans.
Weekes began his career in hockey with the Owen Sound Platers in the OHL and had a brief stint with the Ottawa 67s. His NHL debut came with the Florida Panthers in 1993 an entry draft, but he began playing for the team in the 1997-98 season. He was then traded to the Vancouver Canucks, the lone surviving Canadian team in this year’s Stanley Cup playoffs, and then moved to the New York Islanders.
A goalie, he was credited with helping lead the Carolina Hurricanes to its 2022 Stanley Cup victory by recording two shut outs in the playoffs.
He retired from the NHL as an active player in 2009.
In 1973, Weekes’ parents moved from Barbados to Toronto, where he was born.
According to reports, he has been scheduled to do mostly the western games with play-by-play man Mark Lee and made his regular season debut Thursday on opening night with the Vancouver-Calgary match.
Scott Moore, president of CBC Sports, said Weekes earned the job based on a knock-it-out-of-the-park audition calling an old Oilers-Canucks game off tape, but the executive did not downplay the ability of Weekes to "reflect a slightly different community."
"My concern with hockey in general," Moore says, "is we tend to skew old and we tend not to speak to diverse communities."
"I was able to embrace my roots as an important part of who I am," Weekes says, "but I was also able to live the Canadian dream, of making it to the (NHL)."Weekes credits Hockey Night in Canada as being one of two factors which got him into the game at a time when there were few black players in the NHL.
The second factor was the fact that his Cooper catching glove was manufactured in Barbados.
"I was shaped my Hockey Night, by the power of the brand," Weekes says. "It won me over, and I know it won my parents over."Weekes signed a one-year contract with the CBC and will also work for the NHL Network.
He has not written off rejoining the NHL as a player, saying: "I'd respect that. You never sneeze at an NHL team." But his plan is to become a broadcasting pro.
If HNiC nurtures an unproven talent into another NHL-goalie-turned-first-rate-analyst -- John Davidson, Glenn Healy, Brian Hayward, Kelly Hrudey, Daryl Reaugh, Darren Eliot are just a partial list -- then it will have added value to an already formidable brand. If Weekes flames out, well, the taxpayers' network deserves credit for some original thinking.
Stepmother, dad charged in Brampton boy's death
Stepmother, dad charged in Brampton boy's death
BY Rob Lamberti ,Toronto Sun
First posted: Tuesday, May 31, 2011 11:48:22 EDT AM
BRAMPTON - BRAMPTON — The father and stepmother of murdered 10-year-old ShakeilBoothe were remanded in custody following their brief but separate court appearances Tuesday.
The lad was found with no vital signs inside his Homeland Ct. home on May 25.
While police said there were no visible signs of trauma, his death has been ruled a murder. The cause of death was not revealed.
Garfield Boothe, 31, charged with second-degree murder, appeared calm as he sat and looked towards the bench of Justice of the Peace Thomas McKeogh.
His lawyer, Luc Leclair, had his case put over for a video remand June 14.
Meanwhile, his common-law wife and Shakeil’s step-mother, Nichelle Boothe-Rowe, 28, charged with manslaughter, was ordered to next appear in court for a day-long bail hearing on June 8.
Publication bans were imposed on evidence presented during both court appearances.
Boothe, a large man who wore a blue training shirt with light grey piping, only looked into the body of the court once, as he was being taken away, and nodded to a woman, who returned the gesture.
Outside court, Leclair said his client is “upset” by the events.
“This case is not what it appears to be,” Leclair said.
He said he’s waiting for disclosure materials from Peel homicide detectives.
Boothe’s common-law wife stood in her prison greens with her hands cuffed in front of her throughout her hearing.
Boothe was originally arrested during the weekend and was charged with failing to provide the necessities of life. On Monday, he was charged with second-degree murder.Boothe-Rowe’charge was announced by Peel police on Tuesday morning. Her lawyer, Brian Ross, refused comment.
