Marian's Blog

The international conversations Black America's not having: Reading Yvonne Bynoe

Came across an interesting article from nearly a year ago: author Yvonne Bynoe's Black America After Jim Crow: Still Feels Like Segregation, published on AlterNet. (They have good stuff and deserve your consideration of $upport.)

For decades I've been having "frank and candid" conversations, personal and public, with Black folks from around the world outside the USA, as well as with my folks here at home. I agree with much but not all of what Bynoe writes. I remember a surreal moment in the Kenyan government representative's speech at the U.S. 4th of July diplomatic event in Nairobi a few years ago. Johnnie Carson, a Black American, was ambassador. But I'll save this for another time.

"What has not occurred are frank and candid conversations between native Black Americans and immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean that aim to update the public face of "Black America." These dialogues would first need to acknowledge the unique cultures and histories of the various groups, while forging relationships based on our shared interests and challenges in this country as people of African descent." - writer Yvonne Bynoe

Thank you to John and Elizabeth Edwards, 2008 Campaign

My thank-you to John Edwards and family, and everyone who worked so long and hard on this campaign. It will have been one for the history books.

As the Edwards campaign notified the press today, one news commentator noted that the U.S. "has never elected a populist."

As Americans that's nothing to brag about; in fact, it is our collective loss. How many Americans still would prefer that people tell us what some of us would like to hear? Things like we - the 'collective we' - can go right on self-centered and selfish, while simultaneously claiming to be king of the global hill. But our more and more frankenstein-like creation has little if any remaining sense of being one society. And that's just here in the US, let alone how we relate to the "outside world" which many of us can't find on a map let alone know.

It was late last year when a Southern scholar-friend of mine tried to school me about the USA. He said our country would not have any truck with a populist. I really didn't want to believe it.

Someone famous once said something like: There is no hell like the one we create for ourselves.

John Edwards knows it's the economy, not just Iraq

As the candidate said last night in New Hampshire, I too am on the John Edwards grassroots campaign bandwagon right through my ancestral South Carolina, called "the Black Primary", and the other 47, right up to the Democratic Party convention next August in Denver. John Edwards all along has been addressing what's touching, and crushing, the majority of Americans, middle- and working-class/working-poor and poor. I scoffed when I read a Washington Post headline quoting George Bush saying how 'good' the economy looked. I was wondering what planet he was visiting or what he'd been ingesting. That was only about ten days ago. Now Bush has backtracked, acknowledging there are issues with the economy, and today CNN (MSM - mainstream media) reports we're in a recession since the final quarter of 2007. I hear all the candidates. I'm supporting John Edwards.

Michael Moore leaning toward John Edwards?

I got an email today with a very interesting "letter" (article) from Michael Moore in which he's definitely leaning toward John Edwards. Moore's article is entitled, "Who Do We Vote For This Time Around? A Letter from Michael Moore." He writes:

"...  And then there's John Edwards. It's hard to get past the hair, isn't it? But once you do -- and recently I have chosen to try -- you find a man who is out to take on the wealthy and powerful who have made life so miserable for so many.

A candidate who says things like this: "I absolutely believe to my soul that this corporate greed and corporate power has an ironclad hold on our democracy." Whoa. We haven't heard anyone talk like that in a while, at least not anyone who is near the top of the polls. I suspect this is why Edwards is doing so well in Iowa, even though he has nowhere near the stash of cash the other two have. ...

Then he writes:

"... For months I've been wanting to ask the question, "Where are you, Al Gore?"

And then Moore refers to the earlier Edwards quote.

"... On second thought, would you [Gore] even be willing to utter the words,
"I absolutely believe to my soul that this corporate greed and corporate power has an ironclad hold on our democracy"?" 'Cause the candidate who understands that, and who sees it as the root of all evil -- including the root of global warming -- is the President who may lead us to a place of sanity, justice and peace. ..."

Well, shut my mouth. We'll have to wait and see which way Michael goes next.

Katrina: Public housing residents also deserve to reach home

This action alert comes from the Advancement Project - advancementproject.org. See their documentary on their site, and sign the online petition for Senate bill 1668 - the Gulf Coast Recovery Bill of 2007 - expected to come to a vote as soon as next week. Sign here: http://whenthesaints.org

"Two years ago, Hurricane Katrina made its devastating landfall on the Gulf Coast.

 Today, much of the region’s infrastructure remains in ruin.

 In New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina caused damage to 300,000 housing units, of which 71% were low-income housing.  Most of the city’s public housing received no or moderate damage, but approximately 1,300 out of 5,146 units have been reopened (the rest remain boarded up awaiting demolition). There is a severe shortage of affordable housing in the post-Katrina New Orleans housing market, which has meant the continued displacement of predominantly low-income African Africans two years after the storm.

 Advancement Project pledges to persist in the fight for people’s right to return home.
 We recently partnered with Brave New Foundation to distribute a short video, When the Saints Go Marching In, to raise awareness of the ongoing housing crisis in New Orleans. During the making of this video, the filmmakers heard the story of the Aguilar family who lost their home to storm and only received $4,000 in payments from their insurance company. They met Mr. Washington, an 87- year-old man and former carpenter, who owned three homes prior to the storm.  He is still living in a FEMA trailer today.  And they met Julie, who could have returned to her job and normal life, if the government had opened up the public housing unit that she had lived in prior to the storm.

 You can watch their stories at:  http://whenthesaints.org

 You can also view Advancement Project’s documentary about the fight for public housing in New Orleans, This Is My Home, at: www.advancementproject.org.

 There is something you can do to help. Please sign the petition urging the Senate to pass the Gulf Coast Recovery Bill of 2007 (S. 1668). The bill is expected to come to a vote after Labor Day. Its passage will be an important step toward rebuilding the infrastructure in the Gulf Coast region. Please sign the petition at: http://whenthesaints.org "

Katrina & Congress: Increase aid, bring Gulf Coast natives home

This week is the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the utter failure of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-constructed levee system. For more on this please visit levees.org.

Can you believe anyone would actually front Michael Chertoff to replace Alberto Gonzales?? When you think things couldn't get much worse they get even weirder.
Meanwhile, I received an urgent letter from the NAACP asking the public to contact Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in the U.S. Congress to request that they increase - and closely monitor - 2008 federal budget assistance to the survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, who are still being victimised.

Quoting the letter from NAACP chair Julian Bond, "Congress will return from recess with 60 days to decide on the 2008 Federal Budget, including continuing funds for Gulf Coast recovery efforts and assistance for Katrina survivors. But, the President's budget proposal does not provide adequate funding for many of the key programs that provide housing, education and health care assistance in the region.

 The President's budget does not renew the $500 million Social Service Block Grant to help hurricane ravaged areas of the Gulf Coast fund child welfare, employment services, and other state and local social programs. And neither the President's budget nor any proposals from Congress include additional funds for THE ROAD HOME, a program designed to help those displaced by Katrina and Rita with housing issues, even though this program was forced to stop accepting applications on July 31st (2007) because of a $5 billion shortfall. ..." "Tell Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi to increase funding for the Gulf Coast." Read the rest below.

Sen. Harry Reid (Nevada), tel: 202-224-3542, 528 Hart Senate Office Bldg, Wash, DC 20510. email form:
http://reid.senate.gov/contact/email_form -dot- cfm

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (California), tel: 202-225-4965;
Fax: 202-225-4188, email: sf.nancy@mail -dot- house -dot- gov

And please support the NAACP - 4805 Mt. Hope Drive, Baltimore, Maryland 21215. Thanks!

Post-Katrina, Cont'd: Let the People Rebuild - 2006 Harvard Jnl of African American Public Policy

For some strange reason we just don't seem to be hearing as much regular, in-depth news and information as we should about post-Katrina issues facing New Orleans, the Gulf Coast and the USA. So, we suggest you check the Summer 2006 online table of contents of, and subscribe to, the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy. From Gulf Coast women's voices and the right of return of New Orleanians internally displaced (these are the two human rights' terms) across the U.S., and restoring regional health care infrastructure. This is all about salvaging and creating grassroots democracy (what other kind is there?) in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. And, really, in the USA. Thank you for showing that you care.

Re-connecting Africa with herself: 1619 Angola and Congo to Virginia

Re-connecting Africa with her history and her people means re-connecting Europe (and the Middle East) with its own history, too. "About 350 slaves were bound for Veracruz [Mexico], when the ship was robbed of its human cargo off the coast of Mexico in 1619 by two unidentified pirate ships..." Sandra sent me the link to Lisa Rein's Sunday, 3 September Washington Post article, Mystery of Va.'s First Slaves is Unlocked 400 Years Later. This was no "mystery". The countries who held these records for the past four centuries did not care. In fact, they've been evasive, hostile and secretive about this chapter of their own history. The Africa-Europe-Virginia story of 30 Africans cast ashore at Jamestown in 1619 from a Dutch-flagged ship is part of the larger story of 350 Angolans and Congolese among the tens of millions of Africans deported on ship after ship to the Americas over 300 years. Since then we have been kept apart from Africa. Apartheid. Forced to live apart forever. These Africans lived apart in the Americas, separated to the present day from Africa and each other. They were kept apart even inside every society into which they were shipped like goods. "They passed through a slave fortress at the port city of Luanda, still Angola's capital." ... continued

A Coming Autumn of Discontent

The summer's been busy. It's not quite over. I don't really want to let it go. Fall won't arrive officially for a while but, in the U.S. anyway, the signs say we're entering a fall of political discontent. Let's hope so. 

Several tens of thousands of mostly Black New Orleanians fairly and justly need our moral support and practical help as they struggle to rebuild their lives and to get home.

We've just seen Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, on HBO. Nuestro vecino Mexico seems to be playing its own version of the US's Election 2000 debacle. Elected opposition politicians just blocked president Vicente Fox from giving his farewell speech in the national parliament. War in and against Lebanon and Hizbollah rocket attacks on Israel's north. Now gli italiani have stepped up to be first to send major numbers of peacekeeping troops. In a heartbeat the international community has pledged 950 million dollars U.S. to rebuild Lebanon (again). And what of Africa a few short miles away? How much funding's been pledged and how much delivered -- for Darfur? What of southern Sudan? What's going on there with foreign oil extraction and post-war development? In South Sudan we're talking basic development. Not recovery. Many of us are not yet paying attention to Africa, and the U.S. public is not getting this news in 'mainstream' media. What a waste. For in-depth detail go to AllAfrica.com, BBC online, and several other places. Shining a non-federal spotlight on local Washington, DC: the gutting and selling-out of our city and her people continues, wholescale and unabated. DC's traditional low-rise human-scale skyline, dominated up to now by lots of gracious trees and the tops of monuments, is being obliterated by massive condo-concrete construction. None of this "growth" is coordinated. There is no public planning of my city in the public interest. Corporate interests and ownership dominate, led by a "developer" called Douglas Jamal. As you check his site don't be fooled by the "down-homey" country-style guitar music. I wonder why he named his company Douglas Development Corporation rather than Jamal Development Corporation. Who is Douglas Jamal? Is he from some place, and who sold my hometown to him and his Douglas Development Corporation?

Washington - capital of the Upper South - is the new Wild West. Transformed into a frontier for and of outside settlers. Exiling DC's Black American majority as though we were never here. Which of course is a blatant, bald-faced lie that we will never, ever, tolerate. Then, a few days from now the U.S. and the world mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11/2001. I was in Hawaii, barely out of Kosovo/Kosova and Skopje (Makedonija). Then, September 12th will feature primary elections across the U.S. In heavily Democratic cities like the District of Columbia (Washington) and New York, whoever wins the primary in effect wins November's general election. In Washington's mayoral race, two Black city council members face off -- veteran Linda Cropp and relative newcomer Adrian Fenty. More later on that contest. So it's been busy this summer. Swam more, went to two writers' events, celebrated cousin Mary Belle's 90th birthday, joined a 6AM fitness group... and much more.

July 4: America from the inside looking out - DuBois's "Human drama from a veiled corner"

On July 4th, 2006 I remember that in 1920 Dr. William Edward Burghardt DuBois published a book called Darkwater.

"I have been in the world, but not of it. I have seen the human drama from a veiled corner, where all the outer tragedy and comedy have reproduced themselves in microcosm within. From this inner torment of souls the human scene without has interpreted itself to me in unusual and even illuminating ways. For this reason, and this alone, I venture to write again on themes on which great souls have already said greater words, in the hope that I may strike here and there a half-tone, newer even if slighter, up from the heart of my problem and the problems of my people."

Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil. University of Virginia Library EText.

Immigration: the "one size fits all" problem

The other day a white American man "confided" to me, unsolicited, how he knows a number of other white Americans who he says "would sooner hire immigrants" than hire Black Americans. He added he didn't think this was happening "by accident"; that many or even most of these people know exactly what they are doing.

This reminds me of a conversation years ago in Minnesota. Another white American described to me how certain white Minneapolis & St. Paul employers were hiring Black Americans, Native Americans (American Indians), and Latinos in order to pay less than the hourly wage they would pay most whites.

These attitudes - de facto policies of not hiring Black Americans, and paying people of colour lower wages than whites for the same work - are not based on any consideration of "individual abilities" but are two related versions of the same old racism. In the national immigration debate who is discussing or even talking about this? The white American I quoted first is now in the U.S. but says he has lived abroad a lot - in Africa, and not as U.S. military. I suggested he find the courage to speak publicly about what he already knows that he knows.

This immigration morass is more complicated and more compelling than many let on, which makes it definitely worth thinking hard about and discussing and acting on with all the affected parties at the table, including Black Americans. So far this does not seem to be what is happening - certainly not enough. And though next to American Indians, Black Americans have been in America longest and have so much at stake, most of us are not being included in the public discussion and most of us are not in the highly charged politicking and lobbying process.

Color of wealth: what's the racial wealth divide?

The Color of Wealth is available June 2006. Subtitled "The Story Behind the US Racial Wealth Divide", authors include my girl Rose Brewer along with Rebecca Adamson, Meizhu Lui, Barbara Robles and Betsy Leondar-Wright.

Woman of colour and M.I.T.-trained economist Julianne Malveaux reviews TCoW: "... shows how contemporary wealth differences evolve from pivotal points in our history, and explains how public policy, even when well meaning, reinforces existing inequality. This book is an important contribution to critical work on race and economics.” Julianne's most recent book is Wall Street, Main Street and the Side Street: A Mad Economist Takes a Stroll.

The Color of Wealth press release explains that for every 100 cents (dollar) owned by an "average" US white family, an "average" US family of color has just 18 cents. "Why do people of color have so little wealth? The Color of Wealth lays bare a dirty secret: for centuries, people of color have been barred by laws and by discrimination from participating in government wealth-building programs that have benefited white Americans." This includes, for example, "post–World War II GI Bill programs [that] helped whites only—The Color of Wealth is the first book to demonstrate the decisive influence of government on Americans’ net worth."

"Great Society" Speech, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, Univ Michigan May 22, 1964

Friday, 22 May 1964 "... the "Great Society" is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor. ..." - Lyndon Johnson, 36th president of the United States of America

New Orleans, race, White voters: Or why ex-mayor Marc Morial is NOT Louisiana Governor

I should've posted this weeks ago but here goes. If anyone believes there's a "level playing field" in competing for leadership in the US, you need to remove your head from whatever hole in which it's stuck. Just because it's the 21st century and currently 2006 and some of us have high-speed Internet is no reason to deliberately subscribe to delusion. In New Orleans the son of former mayor "Moon" Landrieu (and sister of current Louisiana US senator Mary L.) and member of one of Louisiana's traditional - read 'white' - political family dynasties challenges a Black guy whose father, no disrespect intended, definitely never was elected to any Louisiana statewide office. New Orleans' ex-mayor Marc Morial's late father, Ernest "Dutch" Morial, was the first-ever Black (or Creole) mayor of New Orleans when he succeeded Mitch's dad as New Orleans mayor in April 1978. This was almost yesterday - the late 1970s - not the 1870s. Marc Morial himself, now head of the New York-based National Urban League, was a successful multi-term mayor of his hometown. Yet when it came time for him and his backers to look around for what he could do next they realised he was not going to be elected the next governor of the Bayou State. I guess Marc couldn't even seriously consider lieutenant governor - the post currently held by dynastic N.O. mayoral contender Mitch Landrieu. Landrieu could, and did, get that job. In Louisiana with his name and colour it could be handed to him - and probably was. But not Marc Morial and not Ray Nagin. Before Katrina drove out over half its majority-Black population, New Orleans - and only since the '70s - had become an oasis within a statewide political wilderness, giving at least some (albeit local rather than statewide) chance to a relative handful of Black Louisianians aspiring to exercise political leadership in their own society. Is Black American political leadership in our own country and in our home communities still too ambitious in 21st century USA? This gaping disparity (between defacto exclusion of Blacks from leadership in most of Louisiana versus a chance for Blacks to compete locally and successfully in pre-Katrina New Orleans politics) exists because like all over the USA - including the "non-racist" (?!) American North and West - millions of white Americans still refuse to support and vote for Black candidates. Even if their lives and true democracy depend on it. Another case, another state. Illinois. Barack Obama, with a Kenyan father and white American mother, reportedly depended on Black Americans as the faithful, decisive and visionary voter base that made him Illinois' first Black US senator, though he is not an ethnic Black American. (And ethnic Black Americans aren't Kenyan or White American.) Even being 'half white' did not convince a majority of Illinois' white voters to vote for Obama. That fact is deep but it is not new. If anybody ever asked us we Black Americans always have known about and felt the stab from the "'flakiness' factor" of our white kin/fellow US citizens. (Like white abolitionist John Brown there are exceptions; they deserve the attention they almost never get from the MSM.) In some circles such irrational social-political behaviour would at best be construed as a public mental health problem. Just as importantly, it's blatantly anti-democratic. At the end of the day, whoever is elected in N.O. today, the whole world needs to be aware of Katrina's unintentional yet very real impact in undermining at least four decades of work and achievements and civil and political rights organising and social behaviour change on behalf of everyone eligible to vote - in New Orleans, in Louisiana, in the South and across the USA. When the cards are on the table this playing field remains far from being level and the ceiling is so low Black Americans still can't stand up. You just have to wonder why most US pollsters and public opinion researchers do not ask Americans about this and do not seem to care.

Marian's Blog does Open Source Radio, tonight

If you can, please join us tonight by tuning in to "Hidden Histories of Slavery" on Open Source Radio. Join us via the Internet. TIME: 19:00 to 20:00 (7-8pm) US East Coast time. "Marian's Blog", so to speak, will be one of OSR's guests, with host Christopher Lydon and the incomparable Dr. Simon Schama of the BBC series, A History of Britain and also Columbia Univ., and Dr. Jill LePore from Harvard. We'll be talking slavery in the USA: the history, the research; the social and political cluelessness and amnesia... which has got to be either a massive collective defense mechanism or else some kind of weird secret weapon. Schama and LePore both have recent books on enslavement. I believe I'm the only guest who's actually spent the past 30 years searching for my own enslaved and free ancestors: those who were enslaved and later freed, the free, the enslavers, and my American Indian ancestors. What a mix - 100% American, I might add. What a conversation. What fun! We're sooo looking forward... Join us!

Slavery: The "holes and troubles" of our collective memory, France to Darfur and beyond

Pending adjustments to technical problems with typepad and/or my internet connection I'm going to go ahead and post this in draft.

Today, 10 May 2006, is the world's first-ever national day in which a country officially remembers its role in the international trade in African people. And while France has become the first country to do so, our collective belief in our continuing evolution as humans dictates that France's action cannot also be the last. The official program took place at the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris. From today the whole world must give credit to France and Black French people as the beating heart - le coeur battant - of action among the countries and societies responsible to finally name and claim their roles in the slave trade. I am part of something called 'la francophonie', with my childhood in Louisiana shaped by France and Haiti. Later as an 18 year old working in Le Sauze sur Barcelonnette (Alpes de Haute Provence), people constantly assumed or asked me if I was from Guadeloupe and the Antilles. I told them "no", explaining I was Black American and that both my parents and all their parents, etc., were from the US. Back then I was still super-generously clueless to all the major historical links fueling the confusion of people in France. This confusion remains - and for sure not only in France - because the global public still is not encouraged to discuss our intersecting history and its geographies. Today I understand the logic of why the French and the Antillaise "recognised" me. We - "the descendants of the shipped" - are cousins. Captured Africans put off ships at Point a Pitre, Cartagena (Spain/Colombia) and/or Bahia (Portugal/Brasil) and those delivered as "human cargo" in Providence and Charleston (British North America/USA) - we're all related. Guadeloupean writer Maryse Conde and Reunionnaise political scientist Francoise Verges co-chair France's national committee for the memory of slavery - le Comite pour la Memoire de l'Esclavage. Verges also is author of a book on slavery, La Memoire Enchainee, subtitle translated: "Questions on slavery". The committee link is in French; there doesn't yet seem to be an English translation. More to follow.

Louisiana from France to Katrina: It's not finished - c'est pas fini

France has vowed that each May she will recall her slavery history. May 10th and the Taubira law; abolition on 28 May 1848. Europe. Africa. Americas. Indian Ocean. Will she remember all the people and places she's been? And what will France remember? Slave ships and sharks. The frigid graveyard of the Atlantic middle passage. Martinique, Guadeloupe, Guiana and Saint Domingue. Saint Domingue. Haiti, Ayiti. Stolen labour, stolen people. Their arms, backs, hands and legs sold and re-sold to grow the cane to make the rum. Sodden Europe. Femmes mulatres. New Orleans. "Creole cottages". 'Second families'. Tan, black and brown concubines. Quadroon balls in spring. Then a courageous New Orleanian woman of African descent. Henriette DeLille who one day would say NO, renounce sexual exploitation as "tradition", and found the Sisters of the Holy Family. Louisiane turned Louisiana. Baton Rouge. Lafayette. New Orleans. Native people and Africans. Spanish and French America. A storm called Katrina. Will France remember? Check this video via Rosie's blog. It is not over. Ce n'est pas fini.

New Orleans: "Out of Country voting" for others but no vote for displaced Americans

I'm re-ordering and slightly re-wording my previous post with emphasis here on New Orleans' 2006 mayoral election which has made no provision for the tens of thousands of displaced New Orleans voters who do not physically travel back to New Orleans to vote. It would be an understatement to say that expectation is not realistic. It's also pretty inhumane not to mention anti-democratic. Yet in spite of the human rights implications (international, not Baton Rouge's or Washington's) they've actually gone ahead today with an election for mayor of New Orleans, La. Tens of thousands of New Orleans voters remain displaced, even homeless, yet in the eight months since Katrina first hit neither the US nor Louisiana government saw fit to arrange "out-of-state polling" in the communities across the United States of America where Louisiana's citizens remain scattered. Ironically financial grants from the US made possible by Americans including New Orleans' displaced citizen-exiles have made it possible for displaced persons and communities in other countries - and those receiving refuge in the USA - to be able to vote in their own countries' elections. Some of those people have voted "out of country" inside the US where they've received refuge, living barely a stone's throw from displaced New Orleanians who have been given no place to vote. In international election missions we work hard to provide "out-of-country voting", absentee voting, and so on. So what's going on here? (continued)

Protest marches: No to Katrina evictions; Bush articles of impeachment

So much going on as February winds down. Your help is needed to support and help pass H.R. 4197: the Hurricane Katrina Recovery, Reclamation, Restoration, Reconstruction and Reunion Act of 2005. Email, snail-mail or call your congressional representatives and ask them to pass HR 4197. What about impeaching George Bush? Get your copy of this book available for $9.95 from Center for Constitutional Rights -featuring four Articles of Impeachment against George Bush. I'm sure his parents will be disappointed, though probably in the American people. Articles of impeachment include: warrantless surveillance, lying to Congress about Iraq, torturing prisoners, and subverting the Separation of Powers. By law US federal separation of powers is legislative, executive and judicial, though lately they seem all jumbled with someone in or near the White House pulling rabbits from a hat. KATRINA PROTESTS: Info from democrats.com and afterdowningstreet.org, "... on March 15, FEMA plans to evict thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina. ... Our federal government is engaged in a campaign to exclude poor and black people from the new version of the city it allowed to be destroyed. On March 14, tens of thousands of Americans will skip work and march from the U.S. Capitol to the White House, and we will not leave until Bush announces a plan for housing and orders an end to evictions. Press Conference: 1-2pm, Rayburn Office Building - Room #2237; Mardi Gras Style March for Justice: 2-3pm start from Capitol South Metro at 2pm to White House; Rally & Protest at White House 3pm- 11:59pm, Lafayette Square Park." Check websites of the protest march for those internally displaced by Katrina, and another to send an email to your voting member of Congress - if you have one (Washington, DC itself and Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, US Samoa, Mariana Islands, etc. HAVE NO voting representation in Congress). Ask your rep to cosponsor House Resolution 635 calling for congressional investigation into grounds for impeachment. Register here for local protests in your area.

State of Black Union look at Katrina & Bush- Poppy won't be pleased; 2007 in Old Virginny

Barely a month ago George Bush pere (the daddy) told all of us how badly he felt for his boy George as Rev. Joseph Lowery and former president Jimmy Carter took W to task at Mrs. Coretta Scott King's funeral. Well, Daddy definitely will not be pleased with, and he and Barbara may not want to see, CSPAN's video of the 2006 Sobu conference. Al Sharpton, Harry Belafonte and Louis Farrakhan each takes a turn putting Bush act II's name in his mouth, and repeatedly including his role in the devastating federal response to Hurricane Katrina. All this was in Saturday's SOBU State of the Black Union conference. Um-um-um. I almost felt sorry for Bush. Again. But this time thank heaven he wasn't there applauding and wondering how to act. And all this was on his "home territory." No, not Connecticut. Houston. In Texas. No matter who or where you are, if you consider yourself a thinking human being please read and consider supporting SOBU's Covenant with Black America. In remembrance of the early British North American presence - the root of the UK-US 'special relationship', and of course not excluding Britain's role in the slave trade - SOBU organiser Tavis Smiley announced in Houston that next year's conference will convene in good olde Jamestown, Va. Throughout 2007 Virginia will remember the last four hundred years since American Indians saved the bacon of English settlers at a place that came to be known as Jamestown. So many Black Americans have ancestors and family from Virginia. Incidentally, we wonder how the quadricentennial planners intend to accurately incorporate the fact that until 1792 Kentucky was part of Virginia.

God, Please Send Me Back as a Black American again

This is for my buddy and brother Washingtonian George over at Negrophile ("one who loves and admires Black people"). Thank you for that inspiration, in spite of such things as Harvard University's "implicit association test" - which neither mentions nor measures the existence of those of us (not only among Blacks) who love and admire Black Americans - Black folks any and everywhere. Thank you, George, for Negrophile's truth and inspiration. I also thank the spirit of my cousin, Harry Lee Gudger, God rest his good-natured soul. In his lifetime Harry Gudger was a native of Muncie, Indiana USA who later became an elected officer of the Texas NAACP. From Zvornik to Srebrenica, from Travnik to Somalia, Haiti and beyond I've been asked: "'What' (ethnicity) are you? Where are you from?" As I walked to work one morning in eastern Bosnia an elderly man asked (translating): "Gospodja ("ma'am") - Are you from India?" I looked my elder, that's what he was, in his eyes and let him know, "no, sir", I was not from India but that I was Black American, meaning this particular US North American version of our mestizajes of the Americas - our various, similar yet diverse mixtures of African + Indigenous Native American + European - mixed race ancestry. In other words I am 100% Black American. I realise and cannot accept as some among the 'newly mixed' assert "their" issues and identity right here in the same geopolitical space by apparently ignoring and supplanting - even denigrating - any thoughtful consideration of the processes by which mixed race people in the US and Americas were created centuries ago. In other words, I thank the Creator for making my people - Black Americans - as fully human as most of them truly are; and in the face of and in spite of such indifference, cruelty, craziness, deprivation and depravity, all taking place in the midst of unprecedented wealth and power. Across the world and including some recent immigrants to the USA - so many people have told me they've been inspired by Black Americans... So if there is karma and as Black Americans say, "What goes around comes around," God, send me back another time as a Black American, a Black American woman.