Marian's Blog

Washington's Slavery Emancipation, April 1862

Spring in Washington means more than cherry blossoms. Throughout April, Washington, DC -- or at least some of us -- will recognise the 146th anniversary of the abolition of Black enslavement in the District of Columbia which took place Wednesday, 16 April 1862. Here's the rub: annual ceremonies marking DC emancipation were held from 1866 till 1901, but then nothing all the way up to 2002. What happened after 1901? This date of the end of enslavement, though incredibly significant, wasn't even an official local holiday until 2005. So much for marking major passages in U.S. history. So to honour the beginning of real freedom for so many people right there in the U.S. capital, Marian's Blog has a new spin-off featuring the District of Columbia Emancipation Act of 1862. The office of the mayor of Washington has an online calendar listing most of this year's events remembering the mid-19th century emancipation of a people who lived then, and still do, in the shadow of the Capitol, the Congress, the White House and Supreme Court of the United States, in Washington, DC.

Chocolate City, a film on Washington, DC and gentrification

In recognition of our colonised status, people around the world can help by taking a symbolic break from even uttering the words "Washington" and "Washington, DC." Leave our name out of conversation and put a blank space in print. Besides the general public, those encouraged to promote, observe and abide by the boycott should include bloggers, teachers and professors, clergymembers, tourists and tour guides, travel agents, economists, journalists, scientists, activists and politicians. To do so will send a powerful message in contrast to the real lack of power of our city's mostly Black and mostly Black women residents. Washington, the city, always has been about far more than national and international politics and tourism.

(In Washington, an image of DC native son the late Marvin Gaye shows up only in a vodka advert. U.S. Capitol with "don't walk" sign. Photos property Marian's Blog)

In fact, DC's reality remains hidden: a majority-Black American city with a buried yet deeply rooted history (and identity) as the former capital of the U.S. interstate slave trade. People live here, and for many years the majority of Washington's citizens have been Black Americans; or at least we have been the vast majority until the very recent past. Washington as a majority Black city has always been subjugated and segregated. We have been and are under attack. In spite of the presence of international organizations and the embassies of nations around the world, little news of the real DC and our status seems to get out, even and especially among journalists. Along comes a film to break the silence: CHOCOLATE CITY, a documentary by filmmakers Ellie Walton and Sam Wild. Just as they would have bought Black Americans' ancestors as slaves, property developers have bought my town and the local population is being forced out using means that are mostly foul. CC focuses on the displacement and dispersal of the community of 400 families who lived in public housing called Arthur Capper Homes. The film has two de facto "stars", Arthur Capper resident Debra Frazier and Anu Yadav, a performance artist of South Asian origin. The two form unlikely yet complementary poles in the moving narrative. A quickly built official website for Chocolate City is down now seems to be back up after having received so many hits it temporarily exceeded its bandwidth. I'm also pointing readers to Jennifer Tchinnosian's 6 Feb 2008 review in George Washington University's student paper, the Daily Colonial, a name which is wholly a propos.

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

Black History Month on the Eve of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election

It's Black History Month, folks. Today, renegade though it may be to some, my focus is on the peculiarities I'm observing in this 2008 U.S. presidential election season. I'll begin with a fact that may not be obvious to some observers, and the farther one is from the U.S. and our history the less obvious this fact will be. Let's call it Fact 1:

Come November, U.S. voters, after well over two centuries, still will not elect to the presidency a Black person who is the descendant of "we the people" who were enslaved not long ago in the U.S.A. These descendants are the Black American people, the group of Blacks whom Kenyan historian Ali Mazrui somehow has come to deem "undefinable" or "unmentionable", or who somehow should not be singled out n view of our long historical existence, lest in some way we might be seen as an "elite." That is his term, not mine. The other side of this issue is the current possibilitiy of electing someone to become the first Black president of a country - in this case the United States - but a person who in fact does not come from the indigenous Black population of said country. We'll call this Fact 2. Or as Mr. Mazrui informed all of us during the January symposium which was supposed to be about Blacks and abolition of the U.S. slave trade, the United States may beat Kenya by electing the first "Luo" president. Apparently Luo is the name of the Kenyan ethnic group Barack Obama's late father belonged to. Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga is a Luo also, hence the inside joke, though not to Americans in general or to Black Americans in particular. ...

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.

Martin L. King III's sober, inspiring "Poverty in America", from 14-15 Nov on American Life TV

Whatever else Martin King III may need for his new venture, you have to give him credit him for excellent timing. King has announced he is ready to take up his father's fight against poverty. No one else with a stature that approaches his and that of his family is doing anything as ambitious or potentially far-reaching. The elder son of Martin and Coretta Scott King has produced a powerful documentary, in which he travels the USA to carry on his parents' legacy. On Wednesday, 24 October, King's foundation, Realizing the Dream, and Baby Boomer-oriented American Life TV put on an impeccable premiere for King's new documentary, Poverty in America. Also taking part in the film's Wednesday evening premiere was American Life TV journalist (and Kentucky native), Nick Clooney. Clooney is better known to some as the brother of the inimitable vocalist Rosemary, and father to actor George. King reminded premiere guests that 2008 marks the 40th anniversary of the historic yet nearly still-born Poor People's Campaign. Martin L. King, Jr. begun that Campaign, giving his life virtually on its maiden voyage. In the first week of April 1968 King, Jr. and scores of others committed to the Civil Rights Movement went to Memphis, in west Tennessee, to support that city's striking sanitation (aka "garbage") workers. With Dr. King's world-changing assassination the Poor People's Campaign not only began in Memphis, it was pretty much cut down there. Poverty in America is narrated by longtime King family friend and Movement veteran Andrew Young. Almost a third of Americans are poor or barely surviving on low-incomes and pretty minimal government benefits.

In person, and in the documentary Wednesday night, King III sounded almost eerily like his dad. His final assertion in the documentary: "We can build a society where everyone gets a fair chance to succeed, despite the circumstances of thir birth. That's what my father fought for, and that's what I'll fight for." Well, God bless him. Seeing the (opposite) direction the U.S. has steadfastly travelled the past four decades, MLK III has the anti-poverty territory pretty well to himself. I've posted my photos of the premiere to my Flickr website.

Black Women meet, and annual Congressional Black Caucus

It feels like everyone meets in September. The annual CBC - Congressional Black Caucus - Legislative Conference is underway through Saturday. Looking at the conference dates apparently the traditional Sunday morning prayer breakfast may no longer be fully included, though it's popular and is taking place. Black women's groups are hosting international meetings on two continents, opening the same day, with one in Europe, Vienna, Austria, and the other in America, in Washington, DC. In Washington, along with the Constituency for Africa, the National Council of Negro Women hosted a half-day panel of women from several regions of the African world. "Empowering Women of Political Power in the African Diaspora" took place Thursday at NCNW's historic brownstone building in downtown DC. Strangely, and hardly by accident, although Washington still remains a majority-Black American city, the National Council of Negro Women is the only Black American organisation which owns a building in downtown DC (a not-so-tiny fact in itself worthy of enquiry). Moderator was Cynthia Colas, director of NCNW's International Development Center while Dorothy Height, NCNW's venerable Chair, President Emerita and resident doyenne, presided. Among presenters were African Union ambassador to the USA, Her Excellency Amina Salum Ali, U.S. Congresswoman Diane Watson of California, Zakiya Wadada, exec. dir. of the Emancipation Support Committee of Trinidad and Tobago (Caribbean), and the Hon. Halima Mohamed Mamuya, Member of Parliament, Tanzania, East Africa. So many talented women and too many to list, but more are named here. In Austria (Arnold Schwarzenegger's home country) the Black women's group AFRA and its director, Beatrice Achaleke, host the three-day Congress of Black European Women, the first congress of its type. Co-sponsored by Austria's parliamentary president Barbara Prammer, the meeting was planned as part of the EU's 2007 European Year of Equal Opportunities for All. (Possibly for all save Europe's colonial populace in the Americas???) Anyway. Here's a news story on Thursday's Congress opening. Last week I e-interviewed Yvette Jarvis in Athens. In 2000 Jarvis became Greece's first Black elected official as a member of Athens City Council. Currently she is special advisor on immigration to the city's mayor. 

3 votes shy: Dems Baucus, Byrd & GOP halt S. 1257, DC Voting Rights

I couldn't believe the news at mid-afternoon today that on a 57 "yes" to 42 "no" voice vote, the U.S. Senate today failed to endorse S. 1257. This bill finally would have given Washington, the District of Columbia its own voting representation in the House of Representatives. Can any Americans truly be proud of, or indifferent to, this outcome?

This probably is particularly sobering for 87 year old, former Massachusetts senator Edward Brooke, a Republican who is Black. Despite his best bi-partisan efforts, today's vote split along party lines. With eight exceptions, other Republicans voted against 1257 despite the fact that its major compromise would have given Utah one more congressional seat.

Call your U.S. senators today in favor of S. 1257 - DC Voting Rights!

According to DC Vote, today is the second annual National Call-In Day for U.S. voters to ask their U.S. Senators to vote YES on S. 1257 - the DC Voting Rights Act. DC Vote says Senate Majority leader Harry Reid has committed to bringing S. 1257 to the Senate floor tomorrow, 18 September. You can call your two U.S. senators on the following 866 number before 5PM U.S. Eastern time today. Ask them to please vote to pass the DC Voting Rights Act - tel: 1.866.346.3008. Or call on 1.202.224.3121 and ask for your senators' offices. Ask friends, family and colleagues to do likewise. If you're not American but know others who are, ask them to do the same. And thanks. What's at stake is (finally) granting equal participation in the House of Representatives to the people of Washington, DC. You'd think we already had this right, huh?

Americans whose home is "the Nation's Capital" - Washington - have waited patiently and protested very peacefully for a very long time. We're again asking our sister and fellow citizens for a modicum of equal status. Even if we win tomorrow, we'll still be unrepresented in the U.S. Senate. 

One battle at a time. The House of Reps already has approved this change. Now the decision is up to the 100 senators who control DC's future yet are only based in Washington to represent all the other Americans out in the lower 48 States plus Alaska and Hawaii.

"Washington City", as we once were called, has been the US capital since the early 1800s. Enslavement of Black Americans in DC only ended in 1862. So why have Washingtonians been so long excluded from equal representation?

Earlier today, a Democratic email colleague shared the fact that Sept. 18 is "Constitution Day" in the U.S. I'd never heard of it but as a proud native of the District of Columbia it's hard to wrap my mind around, and just as difficult to describe, how it feels knowing every moment I've lived in Washington, I've been de facto excluded from, politically voiceless in and invisible to, our national system of "representative democracy."

The American assassinations, part 2 - 1964, 68: Malcolm, Martin and John's brother Bobby

On the Web I found a photo taken in Washington, at Richard Nixon's January 1969 inauguration. A notation says ten thousand people came out in the cold for this event. Two thousand were protesters. In the foreground, above the crowd, a young woman holds her handpainted sign. "PEACE IS NOT SUBVERSIVE". I read those words and forty years later they make me ask myself what exactly is different today? Is America a sleepwalking society? Quite often that's how it feels. I started blogging this thread, "the American assassinations", before reading that this week BBC News has alleged U.S. CIA involvement in the 1968 murder of Robert Kennedy. The report by Shane O'Sullivan appeared November 21, 2006 on BBC Newsnight. It is possible some in the US still really do not want to think of such things. The evening he was murdered Bobby Kennedy had just won California's Democratic Party primary and was on the verge of becoming the party nominee for president of the United States. How many of us ever stop to consider the implication of these multiple assassinations in the US? All the victims were male political figures and not one of them right wing. All this violence and death. The violent reversal of the politically possible. All in less than five years, from 1963 to '68. The Boomer generation. My generation. Multiple political murders shaped my generation of American youth. In the face of serial murders and assassinations, wouldn't coming-of-age somehow change? One devastating death followed by another and another. All in barely half a decade. All with deep social and political effects that remain today. Who talks about how these killings in the U.S. marked the baby boomer generation? Many of us weren't even 18 by the time we'd lived through all this. How many people, Americans and everyone, ever think about that? Had Robert Kennedy not been shot in the recesses of an L.A. hotel it is possible, even likely, he'd have become the 37th U.S. president. Is this the real reason he died? Indeed this 'alternate reality': had Bobby Kennedy been allowed to live, at the very least would have spared us who we got instead: Richard "I am not a crook" Nixon. Some of us remember -only too well- his other "name", "Tricky Dick". Tricky Dick Nixon. Before Robert it was his brother, our president, on a routine political visit to Dallas where he, too, was assassinated in November 1963. Fewer than nineteen months later it was Black American leader Malcolm X (Malcolm Little), shot so many times, by multiple gunmen, in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. It was Sunday, 21 February 1965. In Pennsylvania my family heard the news on our car radio. This moment in my parents' car stays frozen in my mind. A sunny, early Sunday afternoon, right after church. I am in the back seat as we ride. The news comes on the radio as we're stopped at the light at East Market Street, heading north on South Queen. So much violence. And then barely three years later Martin Luther King is shot and killed, Thursday, April 4th, in Memphis, Tennessee. Then Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles on June 8th. Two more American assassinations less than eight weeks apart.

WAR as "tax", only worse, & the U.S. 2006 elections

We're into the countdown to the 2006 U.S. mid-term elections. Tuesday, Nov 7, is election day, and if you're registered, I urge you to vote. On t.v. one of the usual political talking heads tries to "remind" us that "if Democrats win, they'll institute taxes."

What the heck?! Is that supposed to be an argument?

Isn't war a huge, bloody, tax???

No amount of taxes or other money that any of us pays will bring back one life lost in this war. Don't forget to add in billions going to some rather shadowy private corporations to "rebuild" the country where the war is. Then we hear not much really is being built. So we don't even know where the money has gone. "Your tax dollars at work." But in the Washington, DC metro area - mainly suburban Maryland and northern Virginia - you hear from reliable sources that so many of the people with money to buy big homes work (or do contracting) for Defense Department and "Homeland Security". So please don't talk to me about Democrats and "taxes". Let's vote.

September 11th

On Friday, Feb. 26, 1993, I was sitting at my desk in the Washington congressional office of my boss, Central Brooklyn, NY representative Major R. Owens. My office partner, Braden, and I noticed we were unable to reach our New York office by phone. Eventually we heard "a fire" (we thought minor) had broken out at the World Trade Center. We then learned smoke from the WTC could be seen from the office in Brooklyn.

Another Friday, this time August 1998. In Croatia, my friend and work colleague Melinda and I arrive for a few well-deserved days on an island in the Jadranska Mora - the Adriatic. We turn on the t.v. as we walk into the hotel room and become witnesses to bombings in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. Somewhere inside I feel that for me there is more to this news, but I don't know what it could be. Ten days later I hear from Andrea in Washington that our friend and mutual colleague Julian Bartley, U.S. consul general at the embassy in Nairobi, has been killed, along with his 20 year old son "Jay" - Julian, Jr. Many, many Kenyans and other innocent people are killed and injured. Julian - a Black American diplomat - and his son are the two Americans who die who are from the same family.

Julian, Sr. and I had met and had a working lunch while he was on loan on the staff of another member of Congress.

Three years on from August 1998 - barely a month after September 11 - our family relocated to Nairobi. There I learn that one of my new friends was Julian's neighbour. Her sons attended school with Jay.

We will continue to do our best to fear no evil; no matter where it comes from, no matter the "logic" claimed by those responsible, regardless of which side.

From the Quran (39:53): "O my servants who exceeded the limits, never despair of God's Mercy. For God forgives all sins. God is the forgiver, most merciful." God forgives. So can we.

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.

"Granulated slavery" - Michael Burke in the Jamaica Observer

It's August. This is a month to remember and commemorate Britain's end of its slave trade, from London to Guyana and the Caribbean and its "basin", and beyond. This also encompasses "local Washington, DC" since a sizeable number of Caribbean folk live and work in the DC-Maryland-Virginia area. More Caribbean and Caribbean Basin folk are scattered across Canada and various parts of Europe. August also marks national independence of Britain's post-slavery Caribbean colonies, more than a hundred years after chattel slavery ended. So we're checking Michael Burke's fascinating column, Granulated slavery, Saturday, 5 August, in the Jamaica Observer. Burke pulls together related issues: economic enslavement, jobs and their absence, 1970s' Roman Catholic liberation theology throughout the Americas (conveniently abandoned by some), the virus of today's artificially induced mass consumption as well as the local and global co-operative movement and its underused ability to put a dent in poverty. Thanks for the overview, Michael.

Kenya: Lucy Yinda's Wema Centre for street children and community orphans

In 14 Million Dreams, Miles Roston's documentary film about Africa's millions of children orphaned by HIV and AIDS, Ms. Lucy Yinda describes how she started the Wema Centre for the rehabilitation of street children and community orphans. I can never forget the children I've seen, in Africa, in the U.S., the Caribbean, South America, the Balkans: children sniffing glue to numb hunger pain, refugee mothers with babies, smiling or anxious dirty-faced children in rags running through traffic at intersections, sometimes carrying a smaller child, begging passing drivers for change. I will never understand how anyone can take advantage of another person in such conditions. Please give Wema Centre your financial, political and spiritual support!

War and Collateral Civilians: Ethiopian women trafficked and trapped in Lebanon

The Blogher 2006 conference is happening in about a week. Meanwhile over at Blogher.org I posted my concerns about the least visible of the "collateral civilians" caught in the bombing of Lebanon and Hezbollah. Look here under "Race & Ethnicity."

June: Caribbean American Heritage Month 2006

Props to our Caribbean cousins/sisters/brothers for Caribbean American Heritage Month 2006. Jasmyn Cannick has a good link on her site where she writes about Oakland, California Congresswoman Barbara Lee's 2005 proclamation, with a list of a few US folks of (recent) Caribbean descent/origin, like California's Mervyn Dymally, "the first foreign born member of the United States Congress, Marcus Garvey, Sidney Poitier, Colin Powell, Cicely Tyson, Sheryl Lee Ralph, and Shirley Chisolm." The folks are even going to show us how to play cricket on the National Mall in DC. Do they plan to let women join in? More events and details at CaribbeanAmericanMonth.org site.

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.

Why does Bush talk about 'the Americas' but not the OAS?

There's a major disconnect in the Americas. I can't figure when or where or how it began. Bush is in Chicago talking to the National Restaurant Assoc. and answering citizen questions about "the Americas" and relations with "our neighbors" in "the Western Hemisphere". Actually, seems more like throwing tomatoes at Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Chavez 'just happens to be' a pardo - which means he's a racially mixed person of African and Native descent; like a lot of us from the Americas. And Bush never mentions anything about the OAS. (As a matter of fact, neither does the MSM.) Heck. It's almost right out back of the White House.

Speaking of "neighbors" and "neighborhoods", this may ring a bell: "... In present day Venezuelan society, notes respected commentator Gregory Wilpert, "The correspondence between skin color and class membership is quite stunning at times. To confirm this observation, all one has to do is compare middle to upper class neighborhoods, where predominantly lighter colored folks live, with the barrios, which are clearly predominantly inhabited by darker skinned Venezuelans."..." (A Real Racial Democracy? "Hugo Chávez and the Politics of Race" [Venezuela], N. Kozloff, Counterpunch, 14 Oct 2005)

             OAS - Organization of American States
              17th Street & Constitution Ave., NW
                      Washington, DC 20006

National Archives: Congressional records on slavery and the international slave trade

Interesting reading here; a link to the National Archives' holdings of US Congress records on American slavery and the international slave trade. If you want to know what the Continental Congress thought about enslaving Black people, or what congressmen said - on the record - about Haiti's fight for independence (doing just what the US already did), it's here.

Word: Rove's (reportedly) been indicted - hasta la vista, bambino?

Word is (from truthout.org) allegedly Karl Rove has been indicted. If this is accurate... and unless Mr. Bush suddenly decides he can make up some new rule - I think this means that Rove is supposed to resign? Since Mr. Bush came to town so much of the political furniture has been moved till who knows anymore. And if true then truthout has scooped. We'll see one way or the other, should confirmed reports surface. Eventually...