AFRICAN  MEDIA

                                                                                     REPARATIONS

                                           

                                "The events which transpired five thousand years ago;                                             Five years ago or five minutes ago, Have determined what will happen five minutes from now;
Five years from now or five thousand years from now. All history is a current  event."

                  
                                                                  Dr. John Henrik Clarke

 

                                             NĘCOBRA fighting for reparations on all fronts


Report from 14th annual convention
by J. Damu

Dr. Imari Obadele

Dallas  A five-year plan has been adopted by the nation's principle
reparations organization to bring the issue of black reparations before
the
people and Congress of the United States.

In addition to the legal work already being implemented by the National
Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (NĘCOBRA), new
initiatives to build increased support for Congressman John Conyers' s African-American
Reparations Study Bill (H.R. 40), the launching of Black Fridays to
support black businesses and a strengthened media approach to reparations will
take the reparations movement to a new level, said Ajamu Sankofa, the newly
elected national secretary of NĘCOBRA.

"Now, NĘCOBRA members, let us seize this time and roll up our sleeves and
get busy implementing this plan. Our plan will not work if we do not work
the plan. We are moving to the next higher level of Reparations activism!
The ancestors are pushing us. Can you feel it?" he said.

Dorothy Benton Lewis, NCOBRA's  national co-chair, said, "Now we must go
forth and multiply."

Discussion and reports within the well attended convention seemed to
indicate the two most significant accomplishments of NĘCOBRA during the
past year were the filing of the Tulsa, Okla., lawsuit for damages from the
1921 white terrorism against blacks and the highly visible and successful A
Year of Black Presence support campaign for H.R. 40 on Capital Hill.

Adjoa Aiyetoro, co-chair of the national Reparations Coordinating
Committee and NĘCOBRA's leading attorney, reported the Tulsa lawsuit was filed in
February.

"The media tries to marginalize us," Aiyetoro said, "and  we need to be
more aggressive in uplifting our role so that others know we are active."
Aiyetoro said the media likes to focus on established personalities like
Johnny Cochran and Charles Ogletree because they have had extensive
media exposure in the past. By trying to marginalize NĘCOBRA, she said, the
media tries to isolate the reparations lawsuits from grassroots movements.

The other new development in the reparations movement was the support
campaign, A Year of Black Presence. This campaign, hugely successful by
all accounts, was designed to put NĘCOBRA members in the face of Congress
members all year long - arguing, cajoling and pressuring them to sign on
to H.R. 40.

The Reparations Study Bill, first introduced into Congress in 1989, has
never even been voted out of sub-committee. Some within the reparations
movement have written the bill off as too mild. NĘCOBRA and some others
take a different tack.

"Because H.R. 40 is so weak," said Milton McGriff, national coordinator
for the AYBP Coalition, "it is at the bottom of the reparations food chain,
so to speak. It is the point where we can engage the most number of people."

McGriff went on to say the reparations movement is dealing with a
Congress that cares little or nothing about black people. He said NĘCOBRA needs
to educate people that reparations are not only long overdue but necessary
in order for the black community to grow and prosper.

"We intend to get 100 percent of the Congressional Black Caucus to sign
onto this bill before the end of the year," McGriff said. "It's sad that
those CBC members who have not signed on come from Southern states where our
ancestors suffered much of the horror of life in America," he said.

The other new initiative that generated excitement and enthusiasm among
the audience was the proposal to promote a campaign to support black
businesses that support reparations.

Black Fridays would educate the black-owned and operated business
community to understand the fundamental necessity of winning reparations if black
people are ever to gain control of the economy of the Black community.
Sankofa said that Black business would be encouraged to display the
Black Friday poster, hand out cards promoting reparations and to work together
to promote the benefit of the black community.

Beyond the issues of current litigation sits and building political
support for H.R. 40,and Black Fridays other questions attracted intensive
discussion at the convention.

The issue of land was an issue of intense interest and importance. Dr.
Imari Obadele and Baba Hannibal Afrik, the newly elected national co-chair of
NĘCOBRA, both venerable leaders and founders of the Republic of New
Afrika, spoke of their more than 30-year quest to promote a black state within
the U.S.

Afrik spoke at length on how he thought such a state could be
effectively administered. Obadele continued by giving background information on
legal tactics he had devised over the years to challenge the U.S. on the
issue.

Obadele also outlined his vision of how land owned, controlled and
administered by blacks could be used to rehabilitate blacks who are
currently incarcerated and victims of alcohol and drug abuse. Echoing
the Cuban revolutionary hero Che Guevarra, Obadele said, "A new Afrikan
personality can be created within our own land."

If a place of peace and security can be fixed, he said, people coming
out of prison can be transformed into people of consciousness who desire to
lead progressive lives and make contributions for the general good. People
would be able to transform themselves into positive people, proud of their
ancestors and themselves, he told the audience.

Other participants at the convention, held at Dallas's black Paul Quinn
College, included Deadria Farmer-Paellman of the Reparations Study
Group, former Massachusetts state Sen. Bill Owens, Dr. Maulana Karenga of US,
Esther Stanford and Cikiah Thomas, respectively of England and Canada of
the Global Afrikan Congress, and Conrad Worrill of the National Black United
Front, who said the key to building the reparations movement was to
"Grassroots organize! Grassroots organize! Grassroots organize!"

For more information, call Gigi Gregory at (415) 922-3954 or Damu at
(415) 931-3530.

 

 

 

Subject: What Can Slave Descendants Make of Bush"s Speech at Goree
Island




What Can Slave Descendants Make of Bush"s Speech at Goree Island

a commentary by Omowale Za
African Reparations Activist

Now Bush has done what Clinton did, hung out of a door at Goree Island
condemning slavery. But what does it all mean? Clinton did the same yet
stating his opposition to Reparations. Bush stopped short of an apology,
though admitting to more than did Clinton. Was this just politics to
control the Black vote back home? Or is it something that we can utilize
towards African Reparations, or both?

One of the fatal flaws of Black People highlighted by two of our
greatest minds, Chancellor Williams, an African in America, and Cheihk Anta Diop
of Senegal, is the fact of our gullibility as a People. This is a basic
trait of tropical Peoples according to Diop"s famous Two Cradle Thesis
in which he outlines fundamental opposing cultural/environmentally based
traits between People of the Southern Cradle versus People of the
Northern Cradle. Ice Man Inheritance is another reference to read on
this topic, by Michael Bradley.

What this basic gullibility means in political terms is that we
automatically think that other people's actions are for our benefit,
that people are doing things for us; whereas, the basic tendency is for
people to do things based upon the benefit they can derive from it for
themselves. These two opposing worldviews had devastating consequences
for African People ,in Francis Welsing's "state of nature" when White
People emerged from the caves and we, with our grand civilizations and a
plenty of food wanted to help them since they had nothing. They were
nomads, we were farmers. So John Henrik Clarke, another of our greatest
historian gurus, said that we invited them in for dinner and they ate
us.We were assuming that they had the same values as us, that if someone
was in need, the thing was to help them and they would appreciate it and
return the favor, just like we would do if somebody helped us. So the
first thing that comes to mind based upon the wisdom of our greatest
minds is, why is Bush doing this thing at Goree Island, and why did
Clinton do it? What are they getting out of it? It is clear that both
Clinton and Bush are students of Adam Smith' s TheWealth of Nations, one
of the very foundations of the American "democracy" that preaches self
over others as the highest value. A Black attorney once told me that
U.S. Slavery was O.K. because the Whites won. "Just because they won?" I
retorted. This is the might makes right thesis.

 I was impressed with the release of Nelson Mandela by F.W. deKlerk in
1990 at how most people seemed impressed by deKlerk's action, i.e. like
he was doing something for us. The first question I asked was, what is
de Klerk getting out of it? The answer was that the world
divestment/disinvestment movement against South Africa (in which the
U.S. did not participate) had finally taken its economic toll on the economy
of South Africa and the price of gold had become intolerably unstable to
the point that Apartheid South Africa had no choice but to release
Mandela to restore business confidence in the South Africa economy which
was 60% dependent upon its gold exports. South Africa has produced 45%
of the gold that has ever been produced in World History. So rather than
Mandela's release being an act of White liberalism, it was an act of
White self-preservation where South African Whites had to finally choose
between continuing with apartheid at its most overt level, or going
underground with it in order to bail out their economy.

With regard to Goree Island, certainly there is the political aspect of
what is occurring, be it party politics or, if you are interested in
further exploiting African resources, you had better go in giving lip
service to the evils of slavery. It makes sense, especially if you think
that the gullible Africans are going to be impressed by such
romanticized epithets and you still don't take responsibility via an official U.S.
Government apology, an admission of guilt, and you also feel fairly safe
that the Africans are not yet sufficiently mobilized to force an apology
from you. So you can get a lot of mileage out of talking about slavery.

There is also a kind of reverse psychology manipulation in these Goree
Island U.S. Presidential scenes that deals with the success of White
Propaganda. You go onto Gore Island expressing your regrets about
slavery, knowing that your own White Propaganda has succeeded in
convincing the world and especially the Africans that slavery was a
joint European/African ruling class venture based upon human mutuality. 

So, as you are expressing your condemnations without an apology,you are really
speaking as a co-defendant in the mind of others based upon your
successful propaganda on the issue of slavery and its origins. I have
spoken on numerous occasions in these Black listservs about the legal
origins of the so-called "trade" as an Unilateral White Act (s). It will
continue to be meaningless to the brainwashed and eye-opening to the
open-minded yearning for the facts. But, we can hold Bush to his words,
for he admits a lot more than did Clinton in his attempt to do a better
Goree Island than Bro Clinton the Tenor Saxophone player (emphasis on
player). Bush states from World ūAP Africa 7-8-03, that slavery is "one
of the greatest crimes of history." Well that is a pretty strong
statement, though short of an apology. The World Conference Against
Racism that the U.S. shunned like the plague in Durban, South Africa put
that statement on the world map, establishing the TransAtlantic "Trade"
as a Crime Against Humanity. It is good to hear Bush at least state the
fact of International Law about this issue. We have it on record slave
descendants. 

On the other hand, you are well aware that U.S.Congresswoman Maxine Waters pinned the U.S. State Department to the wall proving their involvement as accomplices in getting cocaine into thecountry during Iran/Contra. When they could no longer deny their
involvement, they more or less said, O.K., you're right, so what? They
were flexing their power. We have power too, through organization and
enough unified action. It doesn't take all of us, just enough of us.

Bush also stated, according to World-AP Africa, "One of the largest
migrations in history was also one of the greatest crimes of history."
Isn't that a powerful statement? We have it for record slave descendants.

The word migration doesn't quite report it accurately, however. I think
you know what I mean. He did follow-up by calling us the stolen sons and
daughters of Africa. That is pretty clear, don't you think? But I don't
think he is including the U.S. in the theft, not yet. He said that
others  throughout history said it is sin. 

Well, what does Bush say it is, is it sin? 

You can probably guess,  i.e. if he is not going to apologize. He
will apologize when we put this issue firmly in the World News. From
that standpoint, Goree the second time around can really help us if we
utilize it with action. He feels emboldened to say the things he is saying
because he doesn't believe that we are ready to react to it. Clinton may
have been right in that summation, but I thinking Bush is wrong on that
point at this juncture in the Movement. I took rather with my tongue in
my cheek Bush's statement that "The spirit of Africans in America did
not break,yet the spirit of their captors was corrupted." This is like
saying a murderer wasn't corrupt when he committed the act,                                                                           but became corrupt as the result of committing it. 

And history may move in the direction of justice,                                                                         but how long is he talking about taking, another 400 years?                                                      The time frames are clearly up to us, not the defendants. Why should the
defendant set a time frame? This gets back into that old dependency
thing. It is too late to wait on them. It is in our control now. I hope
you can see this point clearly. It is not up to their actions. The
outcome is up to our actions. And that romanticism about we made the
Whites more aware of themselves. Well, just straight up just don't
believe that. Please spare me that. You mean they don't realize what
they have been doing? Or what they are doing now? 

Come on slave descendants, this thing has been too well organized,                           premeditated and is working too well for us to even entertain these kinds of thoughts.          It's like the Black guy with a Ph.D. who asked me if I thought it was accidental that
the South Africans worked to death 20 million Africans in diamond and
gold exploits between 1885 and 1990. Some damn accident!

Omowale Za
African Reparations Activist
http://ReadingDoctor.com/atrocity/

 

Subject: BUSH SPEECH AT GOREE ISLAND - REPARATIONS NOW!





 DEMAND REPARATIONS NOW!
National Reparations Rally
Saturday, September 13, 2003
United Nations * New York City
________________________________

Bush: Voice of hope and conscience will not be silenced

GOREE ISLAND, Senegal (CNN) --President Bush visited an infamous former
slave-trading outpost Tuesday on an island off the West African nation
of Senegal, the first stop on his five-nation tour of Africa.

The following is a transcript of Bush's remarks during a ceremony on Goree Island:

BUSH: Mr. President and Madam first lady, distinguished guests, and
residents of Goree Island, citizens of Senegal, I'm honored to begin my
visit to Africa in your beautiful country.

For hundreds of years on this island, peoples of different continents
met in fear and cruelty. Today, we gather in respect and friendship, mindful of
past wrongs and dedicated to the advance of human liberty.

At this place, liberty and life were stolen and sold. Human beings were
delivered and sorted and weighed and branded with the marks of
commercial enterprises and loaded as cargo on a voyage without return.

One of the largest migrations of history was also one of the greatest
crimes of history. Below the decks, the middle passage was a hot, narrow,
sunless nightmare; weeks and months of confinement and abuse and confusion on a
strange and lonely sea.

Some refused to eat, preferring death to any future their captors might
prefer for them. Some who were sick were thrown over the side. Some rose
up in violent rebellion, delivering the closest thing to justice on a slave
ship. Many acts of defiance and bravery are recorded. Countless others
we will never know.

Those who lived to see land again were displayed, examined and sold at
auctions across nations in the Western Hemisphere. They entered society
indifferent to their anguish and made prosperous by their unpaid labor.
There was a time in my country's history where one in every seven human
beings was the property of another. In law, they were regarded only as
articles of commerce, having no right to travel or to marry or to own
possessions.

Because families were often separated, many were denied even the comfort
of suffering together.For 250 years the captives endured an assault on their                    culture and their dignity. The spirit of Africans in America did not break.

Yet the spirit of their captors was corrupted. Small men took on the
powers and airs of tyrants and masters. Years of unpunished brutality and
bullying and rape produced a dullness and hardness of conscience. Christian men
and women became blind to the clearest commands of their faith and added
hypocrisy to injustice. A republic founded on equality for all became a
prison for millions.

And yet in the words of the African proverb, no fist is big enough to
hide the sky. All of the generations oppressed under the laws of man could
not crush the hope of freedom and defeat the purposes of God.
In America, enslaved Africans learned the story of the exodus from Egypt
and set their own hearts on a promised land of freedom. Enslaved Africans
discovered a suffering savior and found he was more like themselves than
their masters.

Enslaved Africans heard the ringing promises of the Declaration of
Independence and asked the self-evident question, " Then why not me?"
In the era of America's founding, a man named Olaudah Equiano was taken
in bondage to the New World. He witnessed all of slavery's cruelties, the
ruthless and the petty. He also saw beyond the slave-holding piety of a
time to a higher standard of humanity.

"God tells us," wrote Equiano, "that the oppressor and the oppressed are
both in his hands. And if these are not the poor, the broken-hearted,
the blind, the captive, the bruised which our Savior speaks of, who are they?"
Down through the years, African-Americans have upheld the ideals of
America by exposing laws and habits contradicting those ideals. The rights of
African-Americans were not the gift of those in authority. Those rights
were granted by the author of life and regained by the persistence and
courage of African-Americans themselves.
Among those Americans was Phillis Wheatley, who was dragged from her
home here in West Africa in 1761 at the age of 7. In my country she became a
poetand the first noted black author in our nation's history. Phillis
Wheatley said, "In every human breast God has implanted a principle which we call
love of freedom. It is impatient of oppression and pants for deliverance."

That deliverance was demanded by escaped slaves named Frederick Douglass
and Sojourner Truth, educators named Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DeBois
and ministers of the Gospel named Leon Sullivan and Martin Luther King Jr.

At every turn, the struggle for equality was resisted by many of the
powerful. And some have said we should not judge their failures by the
standards of a later time, yet in every time there were men and women
who clearly saw this sin and called it by name.

We can fairly judge the past by the standards of President John Adams,
who called slavery "an evil of colossal magnitude." We can discern eternal
standards in the deeds of William Wilberforce and John Quincy Adams and
Harriet Beecher Stowe and Abraham Lincoln.

These men and women, black and white, burned with a zeal for freedom and
they left behind a different and better nation. Their moral vision
caused Americans to examine our hearts, to correct our Constitution and to
teach our children the dignity and equality of every person of every race.

By a plan known over to Providence, the stolen sons and daughters of Africa
helped to awaken the conscience of America. The very people traded into
slavery helped to set America free.
My nation's journey toward justice has not been easy and it is not over.
The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with
segregation,and many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the
bitter experience of other times.

But however long the journey, our destination is set: liberty and justice for all.
In the struggle of the centuries, America learned that freedom is not the
possession of one race. We know with equal certainty that freedom is not the
possession of one nation. This belief in the natural rights of man, this
conviction that justice should reach wherever the sun passes,                                                  leads America into the world.

With the power and resources given to us, the United States seeks to bring
peace where there is conflict, hope where there's suffering, and liberty
where there's tyranny. And these commitments bring me and other
distinguished leaders of my government across the Atlantic to Africa.

African peoples are now writing your own story of liberty. Africans have
overcome the arrogance of colonial powers, overcome the cruelty of
apartheid, and made it clear that dictatorship is not the future of any
nation on this continent.

In the process, Africa has produced heroes of liberation, leaders like
Mandela, Senghor, Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Selassie and Sadat. And many visionary
African leaders, such asmy friend, have grasped the power of economic and
political freedom to lift whole nations and put forth bold plans for Africa's development.

Because Africans and Americans share a belief in the values of liberty and
dignity, we must share in the labor of advancing those values. In a time of
growing commerce across the globe, we will ensure that the nations of Africa
are full partners in the trade and prosperity of the world.

Against the waste and violence of civil war, we will stand together for
peace. Against the merciless terrorists who threaten every nation, we will
wage an unrelenting campaign of justice. Confronted with desperate hunger,
we will answer with human compassion and the tools of human technology.In
the face of spreading disease, we will join with you in turning the tides
against AIDS in Africa.

We know that these challenges can be overcome because history moves in
the direction of justice.The evils of slavery were accepted and unchanged                               for centuries, yet eventually the human heart would not abide them.

There is a voice of conscience and hope in every man and woman that will not
be silenced, what Martin Luther King called a certain kind of fire that no
water could put out. That flame could not be extinguished at the Birmingham
(Alabama) jail. It could not be stamped out at Robben Island (South Africa)
prison. It was seen in the darkness here at Goree Island, where no chain
could bind the soul.

This untamed fire of justice continues to burn in the affairs of man,
and it lights the way before us.

May God bless you all.


New York City Pan African Forum
ON REPARATIONS
Friday, July 18, 2003 at 6:3pm
York College - Theater,
94-20 Guy R. Brewer Blvd
Jamaica, Queens NY

The international criminal enterprise, the trans Atlantic slave trade and
colonialism, is finally being examined in the sphere of reparations for
Africans peoples and nations. An international reparations movement is
rapidly gaining momentum in the United States around the world. The
reparations issue may prove to be the catalyst of change in the African
struggle for human rights, in the 21st century.

The Millions for Reparations NYC Coordinating Committee will host a NYC Pan
African Forum On Reparations on Friday, July 18, 2003 at 6:30pm, at York
College Theater, 94-20 Guy R. Brewer Blvd., Jamaica, Queens NY. The forum
will serve as an opportunity to make an assessment, exchange ideas, and
develop a common vision for the reparations movement.

Invited panelists include:

Dr. Ronald Walters
Political Analyst, Scholar, Columnist, and Director of African American
Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland.

Viola Plummer
Political Scientist, Chair of the December 12th Movement International
Secretariat (United Nations non-governmental organization (NGO), and
National Co-Chair of Millions for Reparations.

John Watusi Branch
Executive Director of the Center for Culture, The Afrikan Poetry Theatre Inc.,                                           a 23 year old cultural and educational center. Founder of Watusi
Enterprise, a cultural consultant, import/export, travel, publishing and
investment company. John Watusi Branch is also a poet and author.

Elombe Brath
Historian, Journalist, and Chairman of the Patrice Lumumba Coalition.

Roger S. Wareham, Esq.
Political Activist and Lead attorney in the Reparations class action lawsuit
against U.S. Corporations.

In addition, brief presentations by
New York City Councilman Leroy Comrie, Donald Whitehead of the United
Black Men of Queens Mentoring Program and a very special cultural performance.

Millions for Reparations
456 Nostrand Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11216
Phone 718-398-1766 * Fax 718-623-1855
info@Millionsforreparations.com <http://www.millionsforreparations.com>
www.millionsforreparations.com

 


NATIONAL REPARATIONS RALLY
UNITED NATIONS, NYC
SATURDAY, SEPT 13, 2003

Subject: Amen/History?word Sounds

Over the last 500 years or so, Africans have lost first and
foremost the center from which energy is recycled.                                                                   The center from which SPirit regenerates. 

The center from which inspiration comes.
Africans have lost their own understanding of how AMEN-RA
functions in their day to day affairs.
Africans have lost true knowledge of who they are.
Africans know very little of who they were, where they came from
what they accomplished and what they possesed.
Africans have lost their history.
Africans have lost their culture and their societal structures.
Africans have lost their understanding of ethics and morality
and the cohesive unity of the good of the group, village, community.
Africans have lost their means of communication and the positive
aspects of their language structures that reinforced their cultural and societal norms.
In effect, Africans have no God, Africans have no history and
Africans have no common language that speaks positively of themselves.
All, have been replaced by an invaders capsized, upside down mis interpretation                           and misunderstanding of the Natural Laws that govern the Universe.
Things that are lost, however, can be found.
Things that have been capsized can be righted.
Things that have been mis interpreted can be corrected.
No matter what living conditions exist, no matter what manner of
humanity sits atop the throne.
According to the cycle of Rhythmic Law, TRUTH is always availabe
to the seeker.
In order to rediscover that which has been lost, in order to
reveal that which has been hidden, in order to restablish that which has
been destroyed, the African Woman and Man must now become SEEKERS.
TRuth revealed, will dispel the darkness and determine the
direction of that PATH that must be travelled.
Breaking the SPELL of the trckster, regaining the vision that
once was common is the task that now lies ahead of us.ALL else is folly.
All else perpetuates the present cycle, and assists the
Trickster in maintaining his position of dominance and control.
Natural Law demands active resistance to those forces that
oppose it in order to balance the equation.
For the African Woman and Man to regain their rightful place in
the human family, the trickster must be exposed in every aspect of his
institutional systemic expression.

On every level organised resistance.
On every level, organised reversal of the Tricksters order.
As the African Woman and Man learns to reverse the Tricksters
structures the Spell unravels and the structures weaken.
The mis education of the African Woman and the Man is the
Tricksters chain that binds us to him.
The reducation of the African Woman and Man is the Key that
unlocks the African mind and break the tricksters Spell.

cbrowne
FMUM Spokesperson
AIM ally

to be continued(5/8/03)

                                                                                             AFRICANMEDIA HOMERAS