Marian's Blog

Join us! Friday, 16 Jan, 9PM U.S. East, "LEGACY OF 1804" (BlogTalkRadio)

Hi, everyone! Join host Alice Backer and me, Friday, January 16, 2015, as we discuss the International Decade for People of African Descent, 9PM U.S. Eastern, on the weekly "LEGACY OF 1804" radio show on BlogTalkRadio! The UN has declared the International Decade for People of African Descent, from 2015 to the end of 2024! The Decade's three themes: Recognition, Justice, and Development. Check Alice's website for live interview link and call-in info. KISKEACITY ~ Come back to this link after the live interview for replay and to share the show!

We're back (smile)

We're back after a healthy hiatus. And wishing everyone a beautiful and pleasant holiday season, and a happy New Year. Have you heard? 2015 to 2024 is the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent. FINALLY! Finally, Mom and Dad, grandparents, great grandparents; 2nd, 3rd and 4th greatgrandparents. We Afrodescendants - meaning we people, families, and communities of African ancestry, yet who are not from Continental Africa - finally the world begins - begins - to formally, and, hopefully, even legally, acknowledge our existence on the map of the world (and of our respective regions and countries). Please bear with me while I catch up on my blog skills. And thank you for seeking out Marian's Blog, and for reading! #excited #gladtobeback 

Summer reading? Britain, the Slaves & U.S. Revolution - "Rough Crossings"

We'd like to recommend a book for those interested: Simon Schama's Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution. Here's a video - Schama discussing this huge, terribly obscured chapter of Black American & U.S. history, with staff of Google. This history is growing serious legs. 

Greens' McKinney and Clemente: Helping us learn to overcome

This will be one of my last blog posts before Tuesday's U.S. presidential election. Borrowing from our sisters over at Document the Silence blog (on violence against women of colour), I feel the need to quote my Caribbean-American lesbian sister, Audre Lorde: “When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.” You said a mouthful, Audre.

Like myself, writer/activist Barbara Smith and many, many others who (through our people's spiritual, physical and political evolution rather than random, superficial "change") over and over again, daily - cumulatively - over three long centuries in & of what is now the U.S.A., the veteran and former Democratic congresswoman from Georgia, CYNTHIA MCKINNEY, is yet another Black American woman who not only has understood, intuitively & explicitly, but repeatedly - so often virtually fearlessly - has ACTED UPON this deep mantra on (social) environmental- and self-knowledge. This evolution and regular willingness to take action in spite of fear are just part of the experiences and ethnic/cultural characteristics of Black Americans, and of Black American women in particular, that have been ridiculed, censored and 'disappeared' in the course of this 2006-2008 U.S. presidential election cycle. Martin Luther King affirmed, "We shall overcome." And yet, noting the endemic sexism toward Black women over three centuries (not one election cycle) of the Black Liberation Movement that is native to what is now the USA (as well as in the current presidential selection process), it is entirely possible that Dr. King may have got this phrase from someone else, much like "I HAVE A DREAM" actually came from the lips & mind of Mississippi native daughter FANNIE LOU HAMER. In addition to being a member of the Black ethnic population of the USA, Mrs. Hamer was not MALE, and like most Black Americans, nor did she have a PhD or any kind of college/university degree. And yet she was an eloquent, timeless, courageous and effective leader. Unlike almost all of his Movement Sisters whom I will call the "Movement Women Elders" and the "Movement Young Sistas," Dr. King is consciously and constantly remembered, enshrined, re-enshrined and re-interpreted, even as hundreds and thousands of incredible Black American women remain obscured and unknown, and too often even ridiculed, derided, discounted, and finally left behind; most often quite deliberately. In this context it's worth noting that this contempt and disrespect which Black American women encounter comes from all around us: from White women & men alike (regardless of nationality), from people coming from other countries & societies, from more than a few Black men, again of varying ethnic & national backgrounds, and, most sadly and most intimately, often from some of our own sister Black women whether of U.S. or other backgrounds. Some of us know exactly whom I'm talking about. And yet, in spite of the course of Election 2008, following this most historic 2008 U.S. Green Party presidential ticket of CYNTHIA MCKINNEY AND ROSA CLEMENTE, the obscurity, derision and media whiteout will NOT be the enduring characteristics of this campaign nor of these two sistas and all the People who are choosing to support them at the polls on Tuesday, 4 November. (Power to the People 2008 - www.runcynthiarun.org) This dual candidacy not just of two women (which is significant), not only of two women who both are women of colour, but more precisely and most historically both are Afrodescendant Women of the Americas, is at least three (3) centuries overdue for the Black people of what today is the United States of the Americas (i.e., Black Americans) and for all the Afrodescendants of the Americas. It is also high time that on Tuesday, November 4 (as opposed to an essentially empty promise to "some day" vote for someone like ourselves (another Black woman, another Black American woman) in a non-specific, non-existent future) seemingly discounted but significant numbers of Black women voters will actively choose to put ourselves first, go to the polls and vote for ourselves. The 2008 U.S. presidential election is time for everyone to vote in favour of our own most deeply held values (as opposed to a common "logic" of voting the lesser of various "evils"). For more and more of us, our values - no matter how much money a candidate raises or how he smiles and speaks in chosen tones - do NOT include either so-called "Clean Coal" (i.e., Mountaintop Decapitation/Removal) or "nuclear power" (i.e., Uranium Mining, Uranium tailings, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, massive amounts of lethal, radioactive nuclear waste, groundwater contamination, radiation - including contamination of the Navajo Nation (and other Indigenous communities) and uranium miners suffering from uranium-induced cancer). The original quote about needing to exploit coal & nuclear power was made by the 2008 Democratic candidate.

In 2008, simply by choosing to work together, Cynthia McKinney, Rosa Clemente and the U.S. Green Party have modeled for us all that not only is it better, it's now imperative (to quote Rosa), for us to run for office, participate in society, to vote, and also to speak.

Brazil: Afrodescendant Land Claims go to ILO

With assistance from Australia-based COHRE, Afrobrazilians being evicted from their ancestral lands are taking their case to the International Labour Organisation (ILO). More later...

Greens' Rosa Clemente on WAMU.org Radio, 26 Aug

Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney's running mate Rosa Clemente did a very informative interview earlier today with Kojo Nnamdi of WAMU-fm (part of American University). Great interview, Rosa. You can hear it online here. It seemed a bit strange when Clemente referenced history of the Young Lords political party and compared them to the Black Panthers. Nnamdi said most people were more familiar with the Panthers. I'm thinking this would depend on whom you talk with. Was Kojo being disingenuous? Also about the radio call-in from a Black American man who pointed out, accurately, the gulf of historical difference between Barack Obama's identity in and toward the U.S. (and the U.S. toward him) and that of the entire indigenous U.S. Black population, i.e. Black Americans.) Meanwhile, not only is Kojo Nnamdi himself "Black," he's a native of Guyana, and I'm happy for him. Guyana's a fascinating case. It's a South American country yet historically, culturally and demographically, identifies greatly with the societies and countries of the Black, English-speaking Caribbean. As a child of Guyana's Afrodescendant, Caribbean-identified people, is it that Kojo isn't really that familiar with the history of the Young Lords? Maybe or maybe not. In the end of all this, there's as much historical, cultural, geographic and blood heritage difference between Barack Obama and Black Americans as there is between Mr. Obama and the Afro-Guyanese. Ain't nothing really 'easy' or 'user-friendly' about the histories, peoples and realities of the Americas, especially we Black folks. In a more honest, transparent world Kojo could reflect a bit on this, think of his family, country and sub-region of his origin and its peoples, as distinct as the Black Americans, and then go and do a truly informative radio show on all the above.

August 7, 1998: Julian Bartley and many other lives

I will never forget that August 7, 1998 was a Friday. In Croatia I finished a report for work. My colleague-friend Melinda and I had taken a day of leave and arrived on Croatia's beautiful, rocky, pine-scented Dalmatian coast to spend a weekend away from our human rights work with OSCE. We unlocked the door to our little hotel room. Which of us happened to turn on the TV? We saw the images of devastation and knew something dreadful had occurred. Then the little lightbox told us that what we were observing had taken place in the city centre of Nairobi, Kenya. Something told me I'd soon learn more about this tragedy. So many paths in my life eventually seem to converge. In August 1998 and in spite of my family's distinctive African ancestry, I had never yet had the opportunity to venture anywhere in Africa other than northern Africa. Back in Washington I did have an acquaintance named Julian who, like Melinda and many of my friends, shared my affinity for the world. While on loan from his State Department career, I'd met Julian Bartley when he was doing foreign policy work on the congressional staff of U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson. A few years later, ten days after my trip to the Croatian coast with Melinda, the other piece of news arrived from my friend "A" back in Washington.

$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

Hastings holds State of Black Europe hearing in Congress

In London in September or October 2004 this writer spoke on the panel, "Alliances We Need to Fight Racism" at the European Social Forum (Malmo, Sweden Sept. 2008). I participated as a member of the network Alliance of People of African Descent in Europe. Now, veteran Florida Member of Congress Alcee Hastings, who is Black American (and certainly likely, as most Black Americans are, a Euro descendant himself), has announced a hearing by the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, or CSCE, a commission of the U.S. Congress. Mr. Hastings is CSCE chair. "The State of (In)visible Black Europe: Race, Rights, and Politics" will be held Tuesday, 29 April, at 10AM in Rayburn House Office Building. "The hearing will focus on the challenges and opportunities faced by the more than 5 million members of Europe's Black population amidst reported increases in hate crimes and discrimination, anti-immigration and national identity debates, and growing security concerns. The impact of recently introduced anti-discrimination laws and diversity initiatives aimed at ensuring and protecting equal rights for a population many do not know exists will also be discussed. ..." Invited participants are Dr. Philomena Essed of Antioch University, author of the book, Everyday Racism: Reports from Women of Two Cultures (1990), and member of Netherlands' Equal Treatment Commission; (UK) Guardian newspaper columnist Gary Younge; Joe Frans, vice chair of the UN Working Group on People of African Descent and former member of Swedish Parliament; Dr. Allison Blakely, Afro-European author and historian at Boston University; Dr. Clarence Lusane, international race politics author and faculty member at American University; and Afro-German actor Boris Kodjoe. Logically, Marian's Blog is very interested in this hearing and its outcomes. One hard look at the disenfranchised, excluded political condition of the people of the city of majority-Black Washington, DC, with NO VOTE in the very same U.S. Senate and House of Representatives where this hearing's being held, reveals a painful irony. Europe isn't the only place where Black people are ignored, disempowered, and treated as invisible.

Zimbabwe Independence Day 2008: Where are the election results?

What is there to say about Zimbabwe? 18 April marks the 28th anniversary of Zimbabwe's freedom from colonialism and state-sponsored apartheid. Some of us, like me, marched and protested to help put an end to Rhodesia. Most people acknowledge something's gone very wrong in the last 28 years. The problem is not independence. but Zimbabwe's governance. The most recent affront is the national election of three weeks ago. Zimbabweans peacefully went to the polls and then they and the rest of Africa and the world awaited the count and announcement of the election outcome. Some reports say the opposition actually won yet today we're still waiting. This is almost as bad as the U.S. 2000 Bush v. Gore presidential election. Some hoped ex-freedom fighter Robert Mugabe might use today's Independence Day speech to gracefully and finally announce he's come to terms with the will of Zimbabwe's voters. Instead he and the ruling party have again done the unthinkable. Meanwhile, South Africa, the region, and much of Africa seem to sit on their hands. How long will this go on?