Marian's Blog

"... Mugabe still wins"?

"Even if we vote for the opposition, Mugabe still wins." - Woman refugee from Zim (Zimbabwe)

Hard on the heels of January's tragedy passing as Kenya's 'presidential elections', it is equally as nauseating to observe the speed and trajectory of Zimbabwe's own descent into something quite like hell. Four or five years ago we were watching Harare from Nairobi. Back then we heard as people in Zim sold their prized horses to good homes far away in Kenya and beyond.

PlanetGreen needs clues on race & gender

I applauded when Discovery Channel's "Discovery Home" recently evolved into Planet Green TV - planetgreen.com - specialising in sustainable, ecological living. But the line's been crossed with Planet Green repeatedly airing promos that insidiously stereotype Black people and disappear and objectify Black and other women. Who else has seen these two ads?

Alpha Dogs: marketing candidates like snacks?

I do believe we just saw James Harding on The Daily Show. Meanwhile, Newsweek's Tony Dokoupil interviewed the (British) author of Alpha Dogs of London in the 26 May '08 issue: "In "Alpha Dogs," London Times editor James Harding investigates the Americanization of global politics and points to a culprit: the Sawyer Miller Group. Throughout the 1970s and '80s, the U.S. firm packaged and sold foreign politicians like consumer goods." Well, folks, who'da thunk it??

New Orleans, DC, New York on Juneteenth 2008

From the U.S. Gulf Coast post-Katrina to Somalia, Iraq, Darfur, Zimbabwe, and South Sudan, today is Juneteenth, folks. Black Americans still have our eyes on freedom, and nowadays, all over the world, many more people do, too. Today, 19 June, the New Orleans, Louisiana City Council has the chance to vote to approve an independent police monitoring board. We hope they do. Today in Washington, the U.S. House of Representatives has yet another chance to just say No to rolling over and rubber-stamp approving another $165-billion for the devastation and white-collar corruption in Iraq. To do so would send a much-deserved message to a lame-duck White House about something called 'checks-and-balances' which allegedly exist in the U.S. system of government. And, finally, at the U.N. in New York, U.S. Secretary of State Condolezza Rice herself has chosen to preside over the Security Council's historic debate on sexual violence in conflict. There's plenty more happening (and already occurred) all over the world, but these are just three events we wanted to share with you on this historic day we call Juneteenth. A luta continua. The struggle continues.

Juneteenth, and Eunice K. Waymon (Nina Simone)

Time for our annual Black American commemoration of Juneteenth. June 19, 1865 is celebrated by Black Americans as the date when our ancestors in the deep South and West (Texas) finally got word of the Emancipation Proclamation. On paper it had recognised their right to freedom from enslavement effective Jan. 1st of the same year, but, of course, no official source had notified them. In 2008, when she would have turned 75, Juneteenth makes me want to sing some Eunice Kathleen Waymon (aka the late, great Nina Simone); particularly the way she interpreted Dr. Billy Taylor's "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free." Ms. Simone (1933-2003) hailed from Tryon, Polk County, North Carolina (close to Georgia and S. Carolina borders). Reflecting her versatility she made her musical debut, in North Carolina, playing European classical music. "Her concert debut, a classical piano recital, was made at the age of ten. During her performance, her parents, who had taken seats in the front row, were forced to move to the back of the hall to make way for white people. Simone refused to play until her parents were moved back." (Wikipedia.org.) A belated happy birthday, Miss Eunice, and happy Juneteenth!

$200/barrel Oil? Choosing sustainability

My cab driver, transplanted from Ethiopia, told me first. That was weeks ago. But I couldn't believe it till I read the headline of today's Independent (London): "Price of oil will double." Folks, we have now reached 'put up or shut up' time. Time to re-tool our out-of-whack, hyper-industrialised U.S./western lifestyle - much of which is so wastefully over-indulgent. Let's take the news as a wake up call, not doom-and-gloom. I prefer something akin to Lucile Alder's poetic view (Dancing toward the future, published in the same journal with Meadows, Meadows and Randers' 1992 follow-up to their 1972 The Limits of Growth). Make good use of age and even perhaps of wisdom. In short, finally learning, as human society, to wise-up while we have time.

"-- To become a dancer so late
To be determined so late to become
A dancer is to become part
Of the dream of the humble heart
Determined to dance to the beat
Of this one dawn becoming day
Caught by a great blush and throb
Of laughter at such a becoming
Such a desire to become a dancer
In the sense of one moving, clumsy
With effort, yet effortlessly becoming..."

Lucile Alder, Dancing toward the Future

1808 to 2008: From Slavery to Oblivion??

We're now halfway through the year marking the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the United States' direct slave trade from the African continent and still no official statement about that history, no national reflection, no nothing. Interestingly enough and refreshingly, on one of CNN's panel discussions, the Black American former head of Planned Parenthood, Faye Wattleton, actually put clothes on this matter regarding Barack Obama: "He is not from a slavery-descendant background." Wattleton wasn't being critical (as if anyone had the right to be so). She merely articulated the fact that almost everyone else is scrambling to avoid: even as they effuse over the plan to elect "the first black president."

Family enslaved in:
Kentucky - Frankfort
Missouri
North Carolina
South Carolina
Tennessee
(Virginia?)

U.N. examines racism in Washington, DC and USA

This week high-level UN staffer Doudou Diene completes his whirlwind three-week visit to the United States. Apparently he's been here following up on pesky reports of racism, racial discrimination and the like. One only hopes white supremacy and its activities were specifically included. After stops in seven other cities, Mr. Diene's farewell has brought him to the Nation's Capital, the District of Columbia, where this week he's the guest at public meetings June 5-6. For once something directed toward us locals. I hope someone's slipped Mr. Diene a copy of Ellie Walton's doc, CHOCOLATE CITY, on the whitening and gentrification of this city. Washington has a majority population of Black women as well as probably the highest concentration of Black Americans - women and men- with advanced degrees, and yet also certain demographic statistics worse than some developing countries. On Thursday, 5:30 to 8pm, there's a town hall meeting at Anacostia's Thurgood Marshall Academy public charter high school. Friday is the also-public but RSVP-only farewell luncheon hosted by Global Rights.org, where the Special Rapporteur (Diene's title) will present his "Preliminary Observations after a Three Week Tour of the United States." Global Rights (formerly International Human Rights Law Group) is between Farragut North and Dupont Circle (south exit) on the Metro. The website, obviously, is globalrights.org.

Election 2008: the meanings of "history"

Over the past several months I've talked with about sixty journalists about the issues of ethnicity (which is neither colour or "race"), representation and the lack of it, and history - particularly the history of the USA and every other society in the Americas, Europe - including Britain - and Africa, which is a continent, not a country. In talking with journalists, historians and others there are fundamental and serious concerns about this election cycle which, despite the hype and in very basic and uncomfortable ways, is like every previous U.S. presidential election. What I find most astounding is that with so much "free" press running around - domestic and international - almost no one is willing to go on-record to ask, acknowledge or discuss, in clear language whether English, Kreyol, Spanish, Arabic or Choctaw, what it means that in 2008 the U.S. continued its erstwhile tradition of never nominating or electing an American Indian or a Black American - a descendant of those enslaved in the USA. Posed against election hoopla versus an almost overwhelming need for decency and accountability right around the world, what does, or what should, this fact mean?