Marian's Blog

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 

Hurricane Gustav: Evacuation Priority

We're tracking Hurricane Gustav which many say could be worse than Hurricane Katrina almost exactly three years ago. New Orleans is now under a mandatory evacuation order, this time around providing bus transport for its residents without cars. Gustav has left Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, etc. into the Gulf of Mexico, headed for the U.S. coast, in particular New Orleans.

Global warming and our collective meat-eating ways

Have you heard about Gidon Eschel and Pamela Martin's report on meat-eating and global warming? It's online here as a PDF file. Happy reading!

Shop Green: Earth Day 365 days/year

If you're in the U.S. or nearby, when you need to shop start using this site - Co-op America's National Green Pages.

Food: from fuel to riots as Reuters covers agflation

The current global food crisis makes me remember being in Jamaica in the last quarter of 1977. Michael Manley was prime minister. For some reason, the U.S. government did not consider Mr. Manley a friend. Somehow I sensed that perhaps it was more than coincidence that the same tense political period between Washington and Kingston witnessed empty shelves in all of Kingston's local food shops. This is no exaggeration. There was no rice and no beans ("peas" in the Caribbean). It's painful to remember, particularly in contrast to my eventual return to the States and walking into a supermarket as though it were the first time. I experienced culture shock. In fact, I wept as I saw aisle after aisle of so many brands of the same products, and much of it junk. Literally nothing to buy on grocery shelves a few short miles away in Jamaica, and row after row of food and junk on U.S. shelves. More often than not the items on the American shelves consisted of something manufactured for human consumption; so much of it in a category we've been conditioned to call "snack" foods. Fast forward to now. I'm not sure if Reuters coined the term "agflation" but they use it in this article on the soaring costs around the globe for people to feed their families and communities. This week in Haiti it was food riots and looting that resulted in several deaths. At the beginning of this year it was tortilla riots in Mexico, and last fall, some of India's poorest protested middlemen's alleged stockpiling for profit of food designated to help feed the most hungry. Amid so many concerns around food and agriculture politics globally and in the U.S., the American public needs to pressure Congress and federal and state governments to re-consider the idea of further converting land and crops used for food to the expansion of biofuel. A related matter is the fact that it's far cheaper and more efficient for people themselves to eat grain rather than raise large animals (beef livestock, for example), feed them enormous quantities of grain, and then slaughter these animals in order for people to eventually eat them. In most U.S. households for 30 years or so, the idea of the practicality of vegetarianism caused little more than a casual or bemused stir (or maybe an argument) over lunch or dinner. Today, however, with heightening contradictions of food, fuel and other costs vs. survival, this discussion hopefully will take on new life and new meaning.

Black History Month even in Paris! Family history and finding our Caribbean enslaved ancestors

I am sooo excited about this! Thanks and appreciation to France-based Comite Marche du 23 Mai 1998 (and S. Flainville) on their workshop on Sunday, 24 February. It's in French, of course: "Comment j’ai retrouve mes parents qui ont vecu au temps de l’esclavage." "How I found my relatives who lived during slavery." The geo-historical focus is on Martinique (and perhaps also Guadeloupe?) I will post more details on Marian's Blog en francais but here are a few: It all takes place 2:30-5:30pm in the Salle Saint-Denys at 8, rue de la Boulangerie, 93200 Saint-Denis, near Paris. Workshop leader is Dr. Emmanuel GORDIEN, director of CM98's own genealogy center. There's a nominal €2 (that's euro) charge, and the closest Metro is Saint-Denis Basilique. Dr. Gordien recommends a couple of French-language resources: Claire Sibille's "Guide des sources de la traite négrière de l’esclavage et de leurs abolitions" and "Les noms de famille d’origine africaine de la population martiniquaise d’ascendance servile," by Guillaume Durand and Kinvi Logossah from Editions Harmattan. I look forward to hearing how it went. Big props to Suzy and CM98!

Britain's high-risk drama of mixed-gender hospital wards, op-ed in the Independent

Perhaps I am a "minority" as an American who believes it important to seek out news from and about the enormous world beyond one's own country. So today, Jan 31st, I stumbled upon an op-ed in The Independent where I learned that about twenty per cent of Britain's hospital patients are compelled to stay in gender-mixed hospital wards. Yes, women and men accomodated in adjoining beds on the same wards. Hmmm... Apparently this brilliant 'gender blind' - or just blind is more like it - policy was birthed back in 1997 by none other than now-ex PM Tony Blair. Reads The Independent: "Eleven years after Mr Blair's burst of incomprehension, one in five patients is still placed in mixed accommodation. The indignity and misery this causes is eloquently chronicled in these pages by Janet Street-Porter, whose sister was treated for terminal cancer on such a ward. Yesterday, a report for the Mental Health Act Commission found that women and young people were accommodated in mixed-sex wards, with the attendant risk of sexual abuse. Many described their stay on such wards as frightening. Whether a patient is physically or mentally ill, such an atmosphere can hardly speed recovery. ... In a rare moment of clarity amid the gobbledegook and spin, Lord Darzi said there could be no single-sex wards [emphasis added] without building "the whole of the NHS into single rooms". Clear this might be, but it is nonsense. Mixed wards will be abolished when the Government gives hospitals no choice but to do so. There can hardly be a prospective patient who does not regard this as an absolute priority. ..." I wonder what Sherry (Blair) thinks about this policy, off the record. Now that Tony's joined her by becoming a Catholic, and were he still prime minister, would he make the same decision today? God save Elizabeth the Queen, who, luckily, need never fret over her own accomodation.

"A noose lesson": the only worthwhile news from Grambling State University??

"Grambling had football. Southern had football and academics." These were my words as I described to a lady my view of the legendary, continuing rivalry between two Louisiana schools, both historically Black: Southern University and Grambling University. Each fall Southern and Grambling teams face-off in the annual Bayou Classic football gameMy siblings and I grew up on Southern's campus, in Scotlandville (Baton Rouge), while Grambling is a few short miles from the now-infamous town of Jena. I've never seen anyone address this issue but it's my educated guess that Southern University and A&M College probably is the largest historically Black university in the United States. We'd drive the 70 miles east to visit Southern's New Orleans campus, back when it was new. Today, Southern has even more statewide campuses. Hurricane Katrina shifted the title "Louisiana's largest city" from New Orleans to the state capital, "Big BR" - Baton Rouge. News is out that a few rookie schoolteachers (Black Americans) called themselves giving a group of small children a rather vivid lesson about what happened over in Jena. One newscaster bothered to add that the woman in one photo, holding up a little girl with a noose around her neck, is the girl's own grandma. The implication is that the grandma and the other adults were awkwardly sharing with the kids what Black Americans have been and are subjected to. Clearly their method was idiotic, not to mention weird, especially for small kids. In some parts of the U.S. we call this 'backasswards'. To me the bigger question is, Why is this the only time mainstream media mention anything about Grambling (or any other U.S. Black college)? A chyron (subtitle) image on MSNBC even mispelled Grambling's name as "Gambling State University". I've never before seen CNN interview - or more like put on the spot - Grambling president Dr. Horace Judson. The only other times these two charismatic schools are publicly acknowledged is via the rare, obscure and marginal media mention of inter-collegiate Black college football.

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."