John Mellencamp released this statement in response to his latest song, Jena:
“I am not a journalist, I am a songwriter and in the spirit and tradition of the minstrel, I am telling a story in this song. The story is not, strictly speaking, about the town of Jena or this specific incident but of racism in America.
The song was not written as an indictment of the people of Jena but, rather, as a condemnation of racism, a problem which I’ve reflected in many songs, a problem that still plagues our country today. The current trial in Jena is just another reflection of prejudice in our nation. If the song strikes an emotional chord with people and if they examine it and interpret as they will, something will have been accomplished. The aim here is not to antagonize but, rather, to catalyze thought.”
"They made me take a bath in a trash can outside. They poured scalding hot water all over me and they poured candle wax on me and they told me if I screamed, they would kill me." More HERE
"They didn't feed me, didn't give me no water, they said when they came back they were going to finish me off." MW: I just wanted to get away. I asked one of them if they could let me go, they said no because ain't no n----rs allowed up here, and they were going to kill me. One day, I was asleep in the room, one of them came in and was kicking me and said hey n----r, we got a noose out there for you, want to come look at it? We're going to hang you, come on. I got really scared. I just wanted to get out of there. I was fighting for my life. Megan Williams
Source Final Call Newspaper all rights reserved. Copyright 2007 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com
If Megan was your daughter what would you do. What would you say, what would you want the criminal justice system to do to the six animals that raped and tortured your daughter?
It's Time for Action: I plan to be in West Virgina to march with others to express my outrage at the national demonstration. This is a moment not to be scared but to stand against those who we rape our children our defenseless women. I should not only take a stand in West Virgina, we as a people need to take a stand in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and other states harboring bigots that would rape, murder, kill, while placing black men and women in the criminal justice system at astounding rates.
It's time for black folks to start a true economic boycott of those states and stop holding meetings, conferences, conventions, entertainment and other events in these states until there are significant changes in both laws and and actions towards black folks living in these states. We boycotted Sun City South Africa in the 1970's and 80's is it not time for black and white artist to boycott strategic states that practice 21st century American Apartheid. We fought the Confederate battle flag which was placed on top of the South Carolina statehouse in 1962 by vote of the all-white legislature. You remember how other Southern states removed the flag from their statehouses, and South Carolina refused to follow suit. You remember how the NAACP organized a national economic boycott against South Carolina's $14 billion-a-year tourism industry, and in 1999, more than 100 conventions and business organizations participated in the boycott. The boycott was considered one of the largest since the 1970s. It time for another strategic economic boycott.
Are we waiting for blacks to be lynched 2007 style?
You remember how black folk were treated, and continue to be treated in New Orleans by the Federal government. It's all connected.
Those nooses around the country are aimed at black folks. To strike fear in our hearts and in our minds. Are you willing to allow this to occur? We know the Federal Government could care less. Don't expect Bush to protect black folks, he has proven himself over and over again.
What do you think black folks should do?
Friday, October 12, 2007
Good bye and good luck.
Say Good buy to lucrative book contracts, good bye high income, good bye ...
Ann (bigot) Coulter.
OK, this is my first time talking about right wing political whore Ann Coulter but this women get's on my last nerve. I guess she got on the last nerve of the Jewish community too.
While appearing on "The Big Idea," Ann Coulter said Judaism should be discarded, that Jews required Christianity to be "perfected," and that Christianity had a "fast track" to God. (AP Photo/Dr. Scott M. Lieberman)
As reported by (CBS) Jewish groups are firing back at Ann Coulter after the blond-tressed pundit said during an interview yesterday that Jews need to be "perfected" into Christians.
The American Jewish Committee issued a statement declaring that it is "outraged" by Coulter's assertion on Donny Deutsch's CNBC show "The Big Idea" that Jews require "perfecting" by becoming Christians.
"Ms. Coulter's assertion that Jews are somehow religiously imperfect smacks of the most odious anti-Jewish sentiment," said AJC President Richard Sideman.
While appearing on "The Big Idea," Coulter said Judaism should be discarded, that Jews required Christianity to be "perfected," and that Christianity had a "fast track" to God.
"One would think she would know better than to utter such intolerant words," Sideman said. More HERE
A judge decided the fight that thrust a teenager into the center of a civil rights controversy violated his probation for a previous conviction and ordered the boy back to jail, the teen's attorney said.
Mychal Bell, who along with five other black teenagers is accused of beating a white classmate, had gone to juvenile court in Jena on Thursday expecting another routine hearing, said Carol Powell Lexing, one of his attorneys.
Instead, state District Judge J.P. Mauffrey Jr. sentenced Bell to 18 months in jail on two counts of simple battery and two counts of criminal destruction of property, Lexing said.
This is ludicrously arbitrary. The timing of this decision, weeks after Bell's release, suggest that Reed Walters and Judge Mauffrey spent a great deal of time figuring out how they could get Bell back in jail. Mauffrey is the judge who originally refused to allow a bail hearing for Bell after his conviction in adult court was overturned on appeal. Bell's attorneys had previously and unsuccessfully tried to have him removed from the case. More HERE
Share your thoughts at Too Sense Blog or in our comments section below.
Politico.com reports: Jefferson wants bribery charges thrown out, claiming violation by Justice Dept.
Attorneys for Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) are seeking dismissal of most of the charges against the veteran lawmaker, arguing that the Justice Department violated his constitutional privilege under the Speech or Debate Clause when seeking an indictment of him.
In a motion filed Tuesday with a federal court in Alexandria, where Jefferson is scheduled to go on trial in January, Jefferson's lawyers argue that Justice Department prosecutors improperly asked several Jefferson aides about protected legislative matters when seeking an indictment of the Louisiana Democrat. More HERE
Thursday, October 11, 2007
As reported in Media Matters, It appears that John Gibson has racism coming out of his stupid little brain. Check out what this moron had to say:
Gibson knew school shooter was white because "[b]lack shooters don't" shoot themselves; "they shoot and move on"
Summary: On his radio show, while discussing an incident in which a student shot four people at his Cleveland high school before killing himself, John Gibson asserted that "I know the shooter was white. I knew it as soon as he shot himself. Hip-hoppers don't do that. They shoot and move on to shoot again."
I grew up in the deep North, as a youngster my mother and step dad, urged me to read. Reading was always fundamental in our house. Yet reading during my early years was a challenge for me because I have Dyslexia (OK I said it now you know). I adapted, although, I was put down just a bit by other students due to my learning difference. My mom, always supportive said if you don't read the books that you get in school, you won’t get a good job or start your own (business), she always read with us, and encouraged us to at least read books that interest you. She would take us to the library, and we would get the opportunity to get books that we liked. Me and my brothers and one sister would also regularly go to the Egelston Library to pick up books to read. My brother Wayne, was the smart one in the family, went to Boston Latin, (at the time not many blacks were admitted) and is now a Lawyer, Teacher, Criminal Justice expert, and one of, if not the first Black male Homicide Detectives in Boston. Damn! Yes, it was our mom who urged us all to read, Just start reading books that's interest you. One place I would go to buy books was Nubian Notion in the Roxbury Section of Boston. I read books like Think and Grow Rich, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Pimp the Story of My Life by Iceberg Slim, (What)! The Philadelphia Negro, Before the Mayflower, Black Rage, and so many more. But one of the most important books I've ever read was 100 years of lynching. It was a book that made me want to get involved in social justice, community action, political education and community organizing. OK enough of the talk about myself and my family. My point is ... Now in 2007 it appears that things are coming full circle. The Lynching Noose is back.
There is a reason Why the Black Matrix is real and not just another conspiracy theory. Check out what just happened at Columbia University as reported by halfricanrevolution. The reports should make us ask the question: does "institutional racism or Color Arousal disorder start on American College and University Campus and spread across America? And if so, what strategies are collges, universities and communities using to address these issues?
Is this a teachable moment? Or is this America as usual? - AAPP
America's urban centers, especially in the Northeast, have a tendency to deal with the shame of America's racist past by pretending that it is an entirely regional issue. It isn't.
White and black people both face this temptation. White people because they want to believe that they themselves, their friends and family, and even the local society they live in has transcended what they see as the racial time warp of The South. Black people want to believe it because we want to believe that we can escape race, that we can outrun it here in the City; but for the most part we know we can't.
A hangman's noose was left dangling on the door of a black professor's office at Columbia University Teachers College on Tuesday, triggering a hate-crime investigation and drawing parallels to the "Jena Six" controversy.
The ugly symbol of bigotry targeted Dr. Madonna Constantine, a respected psychology and education expert whose books include "Addressing Racism," sources said.
The role of The Afrospear regarding the Jena 6 case is on the minds of many movers and shakers including The New Republic and its readers.
AAPP --- Who Keeps Sharpton and Jackson Powerful? The White Media.
Listen Up!
by Dayo Olopade
By now, the Jena story is familiar: according to press accounts, a black student at the local high school sat under the de facto 'white tree.' After three nooses were hung from the tree in response, a spate of racialized taunts and tension soon escalated into full-on violence. The white noose-makers were given a short school suspension, while, even with recently-reduced charges, Bell and the five others face a combined 130 years in jail.
At the September rally in Jena, Sharpton and his counterpart, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, were the marquee speakers, calling for the dismissal of all charges and railing against the prison "industry". "Mychal Bell, we know you hear us. Hang on a little while longer," Jackson thundered. But the real story was the crowd, assembled by a flood of black activism on the Internet and on black talk radio. Black blogs like AfroSpear, Mirror On America and Prometheus 6 have written reliably on the story for months. As a result, black churches, historically black colleges and universities, and student groups of all stripes were protesting the Jena case as early as March. This brand of organizing was faster to focus on Jena, and its effectiveness far outstripped that of established groups like the NAACP, Sharpton's National Action Network, and Jackson's Rainbow/P.U.S.H. Coalition. The Color of Change, an Internet advocacy group sprung from MoveOn in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, generated an online petition to Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco that boasts over 300,000 signatures. In fact, Sharpton admitted to the Chicago Tribune last month that his own knowledge about Jena had come from the black netroots. Read the whole article HERE
I just finished reading a post (below) by the blogger, The Thought Merchant. Wow, did the Thought Merchant make me think differently about the upcoming Presidential Primaries and the Race for the Presidency. I've now decided to take a second look at John Edwards. Maybe a whole lot of black folks should too.
John Edwards has the boldest platform addressing issues that are crucial to African Americans. Yet in the smoke screen of “The Great Black Hype”, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton’s perceived “Black Husband”, Bill Clinton, John Edwards is getting little traction in the polls as well as in fund-raising. Why is this the case? Unfortunately, because African Americans are being pushed in the political direction of two candidates whose main concerns are not primary to the sensibilities of the Black Community.
Hillary Clinton as a candidate must foster the image of strength and security when it comes to foreign policy. Because of her gender, and Bill Clinton’s record of cutting the military budget, Hillary must seem more hawkish than the normal Democratic candidate. Hence, the domestic issues that are of main concern to African Americans cannot afford to be her priority.
The naivete of Blacks in supporting Hillary Clinton due to Bill Clinton’s perceived sympathy to their cause has been shown on this blog to be misplaced. Nonetheless, Hillary will still garner great support among African Americans because of this erroneous perception.
Barack Obama as a candidate lives in constant fear of alienating white supporters by seeming too aggressive on the core “Black” issues. Obama is paying lip service to the normal domestic agenda Democrats eagerly toss about, but his campaign lacks any passion in its attempt to tailor policy that inspires the masses of the Black electorate.
Barack Obama is White America’s feel good candidate. He’s like that one Black friend a White person may have that allows him to feel that he’s not a racist. Obama’s candidacy is a fantasy for Whites in that it deludes them into believing that somehow his popularity proves America is beyond race. Obama’s candidacy is a curse for Blacks because he has to keep a healthy distance from the African American political agenda so as to not offend White liberal sensibilities. Read More HERE
U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson said Thursday he will cooperate with investigators after questions arose about how one of his friends got nearly half a million dollars for work at the Housing Authority of New Orleans, which currently is under the oversight of the federal government.
Jackson, who testified before Congress this year that he doesn't intervene in awarding contracts, acknowledged he may be under investigation in a case that involves just that.
Others connected to the case say HUD's inspector general and the FBI have seized HANO equipment and have asked questions about Jackson's possible role in HANO's hiring of Jackson's friend, South Carolina construction contractor William Hairston. Hairston's construction company was hired by HANO in January 2006 and subsequently won a no-bid "emergency" contract awarded to Hairston's construction company in July 2006. More HERE
It took a lot of courage for Carmen Williams to reveal the identity of her 20-year-old daughter. Williams is the mother of Megan Williams, the black West Virginia woman who was tortured, stabbed, sexually assaulted and treated like an animal by six white offenders during a weeklong captivity. You never get used to the lurid details of a man's inhumanity. Just as it was hard to bear the horrible things that were done to Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, the white Knoxville, Tenn., couple brutally killed in January, I'm sickened by the cruelty Megan Williams suffered. I'm also struck by the similarity between how Carmen Williams chose to handle her daughter's ordeal at the hands of whites and how Mamie Till-Mobley handled the brutal murder of her son, Emmett Till, in 1955. More HERE
Claude Williams, 70, stands outside of the Logan County Courthouse where he works as a security guard Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2007 in Logan, W.Va. Ever since news broke of a black girl's alleged torture, rape and humiliation at the hands of six white captors in Logan County, whites keep approaching Williams, a Logan native, apologizing, and expressing an assumed shame. AP Photo/Jeff Gentner
LOGAN, W.Va. (AP) - Ever since police arrested six whites in the rape and torture of a black woman, Claude Williams has been accepting apologies.
Williams, a black security guard at the courthouse where the case is unfolding, said whites continually approach him to express shame for the allegations.
Williams is not related to the victim, Megan Williams, but feels a kinship with her. He descended from coal miners who came to work in West Virginia from Alabama, where "you'd be a 50-year-old black man and a 10-year-old white boy would be called 'sir,' and he'd call you 'boy.'"
Authorities have not filed hate crime charges in the attack, but for many residents, the issue of race is inseparable from the assault on Megan Williams, who said she was doused with hot water, forced to eat animal feces, and taunted with racial slurs.
The graphic allegations have reverberated across West Virginia, where 97 percent of the state's 1.8 million residents are white. But many locals bristle at the shadow the case has cast across their communities.
"It's not a West Virginia problem," said the Rev. Emanuel Heyliger of the Ferguson Memorial Baptist Church in Dunbar, a friend of Megan Williams' family. "This could happen anywhere in the United States where men's minds are blighted by evil."
West Virginia's relationship with race is older than the state. It broke away from Virginia in 1861 rather than join the Confederacy. But that move was not a straightforward renunciation of slavery, which was still legal in West Virginia when the state joined the Union in 1863. Gov. Arthur Boreman abolished it two years later.
West Virginia's legal system enforced racial segregation until the start of the 1960s. Laws were passed to ban interracial marriage and the education of black children together with whites. There was even a law requiring birth, death and marriage records for blacks to be kept in separate registers.
But unlike some states, West Virginia's government took an active role in building an alternate society of black institutions. The first publicly funded black school below the Mason-Dixon line was founded in 1866 in West Virginia, and by the start of World War II, the state also had two public colleges, a hospital for the mentally ill, vocational training schools, an orphanage and a sanitarium for tuberculosis patients.
"To tell you the truth, black people were able to do things here they weren't always able to do in other places, particularly the deep South," said Cicero Fain, an assistant history professor at Marshall University.
"But blacks were always aware they were supposed to be second-class citizens," he said. "The state funded these institutions, assisted in establishing them, but never tried to integrate them into the prevailing white power structure."
Former state NAACP President James Tolbert says the state's blacks have long struggled for adequate attention.
No one with any sense is feelin' George W. Bush anymore. (based on today's Washington Post report). It would be great if he and his Vice President would do the American people a favor and just resign.
The messages crossing those BlackBerries have been relentlessly negative the last few years. And some have grown embittered at what has become of the presidency they helped build. A key Bush reelection strategist has disavowed him, his former U.N. ambassador has become a vocal critic of key policies, his former defense secretary says he does not miss him, his former speechwriter wrote a harsh takedown of another top aide.
One former senior official said nearly everyone who has left the administration is angry in some way or another -- at the president for making bad decisions, at his staff for misguiding him, at events that have spiraled out of control. Others called that an exaggeration. Either way, interviews with a dozen top aides who left in recent months reveal a profound sense of ambivalence about the ultimate outcome of their work beyond toppling Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
The WaPo report goes on to note, All the more so in a White House beset by an intractable war, a hostile Congress, a shipwrecked domestic agenda and near-historic-low approval ratings. The long-term ideals that many of them came to the White House to pursue appear jeopardized, even discredited to many. They tell themselves that they have acted on principle, that the decisions they helped make will be vindicated. But they cannot be sure.
"There's this overriding awareness that we're living and acting for the judgment of history," said William Inboden, who resigned last month as senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council.
African American Pundit (AAP) formerly African American Political Pundit, is a nationally recognized, writer, internet political activist, internet blog talk radio host, black internet pundit and political analyst, who addresses black American politics and social issues. He is works with other afrospear bloggers to shape Black America’s political discourse through punditry, pontification and political action organizing.
He has served as a credentialed blogger at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
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