Marian's Blog

"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

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.

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.

Impostor: Richard Nixon, George Bush - What's the difference?

Now for a history moment. What's the difference between George Bush and Richard Nixon? In my book - Nixon was impeached. In November 1973 Nixon spoke to a large group of Associated Press editors in Florida, stating, "People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook...." He added he was "not a crook." The American public disagreed. In 2006 it would seem reasonable that US citizens have a civic responsibility to be interested in knowing not only whether their president is a 'crook' but also whether he is competent. US citizens need to know whether our legislative branch (Congress) and the judicial branch (Supreme Court) of government are even exercising their check and balance functions. We're supposed to know who actually is running the US government, and whether or not those actions truly represent the will of the American people. If the answer to any of those things is no, we're in it deep. In October 1973 the Nixon administration appointed special prosecutor Archibald Cox to investigate the break-in at Democratic Party national headquarters then located in Washington's Watergate complex. (The late Frank Wills was the security guard who discovered the break-in.) Within days Nixon had decided to fire Cox. This led to October 20, 1973's "Saturday Night Massacre." The firing was temporarily halted by US Attorney General Elliot Richardson and deputy AG William Ruckelshaus as both chose to resign rather than obey the order to fire Cox. These days who would have that much integrity? Let's not mention courage. Enter Robert Bork, Nixon's Solicitor General in 1973. Later as Supreme Court candidate he was "borked."  After the demission of Richardson and Ruckelshaus, Bork voluntarily carried out the order to fire Cox. That was then and this is now, as another conservative by the name of Bruce Bartlett has published a rousing book titled Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. I have absolutely no nostalgia for Mr. Reagan or his "legacy", but unfortunately before long more of us probably will agree with the first part of Bartlett's premise. - "Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people." - Archibald Cox

"What About the People Who Can't Eat?"- The Injustice Index, Drum Major Institute for Public Policy

"With all due respect to gay rights or abortion - What about the people who can't eat??!" - Kristina Borjesson, Feb 3rd, 2006, speaking to a small, live audience at New York Open Center, broadcast on CSPAN2 Book TV. Editor of Feet to the Fire - The Media After 9/11: Top Journalists Speak Out.

Injustice Index US domestic stats from Drum Major Institute for Public Policy:

*pounds lost by George W. Bush in first 7 months of 2005: 8

*growth in number of hungry US households since 1999: 43%

*income at which a US family of 3 qualifies for food stamps: $20,376

*average yearly wage of "sales associates" at Wal-Mart: $14,787

*number of Wal-Mart employees in USA: 1.2 million

*net worth of five (5) Walton family heirs to Wal-Mart fortune: $77.9 billion

European Journalism Centre gets new director

The Maastricht, Netherlands-based European Journalism Centre - the EJC - will get a new director from March 1st. Previous director Raymonde Griswold will be succeeded by a chap called Wilfried Rütten. Check other interesting info on their site.

A Black History Month 2006 Plan of Action

"If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development" - Aristotle. I have three priorities for BHM 2006 - BHM being Black (or African American) history month. One is preparing for next year's 2007 quadricentennial (400th) anniversary of the founding of Virginia - or more precisely, founding of the Jamestown colony by subjects of the King of England, and eventual founding of the English Virginia colony, predecessor of what became the US state (including what today is Kentucky). Priority #2 is May 10th - le 10 mai 2006 - France's new national day to publicly, officially remember France's involvement in African slavery. Internationally it's fairly obvious that when it comes to modern world history's long era of slavery many or most of our societies long ago chose amnesia rather than historical accuracy and responsibility. (Read Alan Rice - "British Selective Amnesia and the Political Imperative to Conserve Black Atlantic Memory" in Revisiting slave narratives , ed. Judith Misrahi-Barak.) Yet even as Americans go on dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, 10 May is central to France's other former territory, la Louisiane, and to the history and evolution of its people and descendants. As children in Baton Rouge, Louisiana we studied Longfellow's 1847 epic poem, Evangeline, about the Acadians' migration to Louisiana from what is now Canada. But no one ever mentioned a massive migration to New Orleans around 1803 to about 1812 from the French part of the island Saint Domingue in the Caribbean - the part of the island that now is Haiti. Somewhere someone must have written a story or poem about this. New Orleans' native Anne Rice's book, The Feast of All Saints, for example. Decades after reading Evangeline in Louisiana I want to know how Louisiane and Nouvelle France (New France) relate to each other. This leads me to my third priority, an affirmation of events 2 and 1 which are related to each other in the context of European expansion: the need for other European nations besides France to 'come out of the closet' about their own roles in the interconnected international slave trade. These nations will do well to follow France's example: Britain, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Denmark and Norway - the old amalgamated Denmark-Norway. The annual May 10th commemoration would not be happening were it not for member of French Parliament Christiane Taubira (Guyane francaise), as well as the French parliament which in 2001 passed her Taubira Law, and president Chirac and others who now have formally acknowledged France's slavery and slave trade role. We also thank France for its eventual role in the abolition of same, as well as for its contribution as the first country to declare slavery a crime against humanity. "... On one of these sale days, I saw a mother lead seven children to the auction-block. She knew that some of them would be taken from her; but they took all. The children were sold to a slave-trader, and their mother was bought by a man in her own town..." - continued below, Chapter 3, The Slaves' New Year's Day, Harriet Jacobs' 1860 autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules... - Sands' book on the Bush-Blair Choice for War

Hmm... how will the public and press on the western shores of the Atlantic pond react to news of British human rights attorney Philippe Sands' revised account of the UK-US joint prelude to the war on Iraq? Sands teaches law at University of London. His aptly titled book is Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules--From FDR's Atlantic Charter to George W. Bush's Illegal War. As a matter of fact, recently I asked here: What might a discussion between FD Roosevelt and GW Bush sound like? The publisher's website - Penguin UK - features this short interview with Sands. "In the explosive Lawless World, Philippe Sands argues that recent American actions are undermining the global legal order established after WW2 and promoting its economic interests at the expense of human rights and the environment. Here Sands explains that his book is intended to challenge, inform and even outrage readers. ..." Meanwhile Simon Walters' article about the book appears in The Mail on Sunday (yesterday's newspaper, 29 Jan, from London) with the title, "Blair in Secret Plot with Bush to Dupe U.N." Could all this possibly be 'twew'? Walters says Sands' book claims Tony Blair "offered his total support for the war at a secret White House summit as Mr Bush displayed his contempt for the UN, made a series of wild threats against Saddam Hussein and showed a devastating ignorance about the catastrophic aftermath of the war." And continuing: "The revelations make a nonsense of Mr Blair's claim that the final decision was not made until MPs [Members of British Parliament] voted in the Commons 24 hours before the war - and could revive the risk of him being charged with war crimes or impeached by Parliament itself. ... The book also makes serious allegations concerning the conduct of Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer and Attorney General Lord Goldsmith over Goldsmith's legal advice on the war. ... it alleges the British Government boasted that disgraced newspaper tycoon Conrad Black was being used by Mr Bush's allies in America as a channel for pro-war propaganda in the UK via his Daily Telegraph newspaper."