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Here's my pop culture pick of the week...an interview by Amy Goodman (Democracy NOW) of Ryan Coogler about his film "Fruitvale"...I think I want to see this. Grant was murdered early New Year's Day in 2009...4 years ago this month.
Transcript was not up when I visited the interview page at Democracy NOW, but you can check back for it here.
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Seems like the hidden history of slavery and white privilege in the United States is gradually coming into the light. Here's the latest flash of it from Douglas Blackmon at the Washington Monthly (via Alternet):
As dumbfounding as the story told by the Carrie Kinsey letter is, far more remarkable is what surrounds that letter at the National Archives. In the same box that holds her grief-stricken missive are at least half a dozen other pieces of correspondence recounting other stories of kidnapping, perversion of the courts, or human trafficking—as horrifying as, or worse than, Carrie Kinsey’s tale. It is the same in the next box on the shelf. And the one before. And the ones on either side of those. And the next and the next. And on and on. Thousands and thousands of plaintive letters and grimly bureaucratic responses—altogether at least 30,000 pages of original material—chronicle cases of forced labor and involuntary servitude in the South decades after the end of the Civil War.
via www.alternet.org
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Excellent article (IMO) by Thom Hartman today
The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says "State" instead of "Country" (the Framers knew the difference - see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states, which was necessary to get Virginia's vote. Founders Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Madison were totally clear on that . . . and we all should be too.
via truth-out.org
Also check out this commentary on what we need to do today on Martin Luther King's birthday by Russell Simmons at Huffington Post. I found it touching and inspiring:
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Great article from Imara Jones at Colorlines today for those of us trying to raise up impacts of our colonial ancestry:
Much hullabaloo has been made recently about slavery as entertainment in movies like “Django Unchained.” But lost in the discussion is slavery as history, and the simple fact that it was an economic system which seized the economic know-how of Africans in order to construct unimaginable wealth in North America, Europe and throughout the Western Hemisphere. Wealth from the slave trade took Western Europe from being one of the world’s poorest regions to its wealthiest and most powerful in under a century.
Though sadistic and macabre, the plain truth is that slavery was an unprecedented economic juggernaut whose impact is still lived by each of us daily. Consequently, here’s my top-10 list of things everyone should know about the economic roots of slavery.
Read more at colorlines.com
I might also point out that the Idle No More movement is helping descendants of European colonials in Canada to discover untold, untaught history about oppression of First Nations citizens. I could really identify with some of the comments in this excellent OpEd by Heather Mallick yesterday in the Toronto Star, in particular her discovery of how oppressed peoples become invisible in the eyes of the privileged groups:
Most of Canada’s native people live in a misery we don’t even see because we’d rather not know. It’s one of the many drawbacks of living on the reserve, far away from the southern cities that Canadians cling to. There’s no one to hear you scream, as the Irish writer Edna O’Brien once said about rural child abuse in her own country.
If you don’t like Indians getting uppity, try this. Look at the gorgeous, hopeful faces of their children, who don’t yet know they’re headed for a life of blank despair thanks to our idleness.
But we don’t look because we don’t have to. They don’t live where we do. We don’t consider them until they block our passage on road and rail and then we just spray them with the same idle anger we show to other drivers, cyclists and people not inside our own little vehicle.
The rest of Mallick's OpEd is worth reading.
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Interesting article from Rev. Yearwood...music and justice, music and healing...
As we celebrate the changing of years this is a good time to look back on the momentous year we endured. And to rejoice in the hip-hop music of 2012 that provided the soundtrack on our journey to hard-fought victories, and helped us cope with tragedy.
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And speaking of court cases (see previous post), two awesome decisions were handed down today, one in the United States, and one in Canada.
In the state of New York, a key part of the NYPD’s controversial “stop and frisk” tactic has been ruled unconstitutional. Manhattan Federal Court Judge Shira Scheindlin's ruling focused on the NYPD's "Clean Halls" program and ordered police to cease making trespass stops outside of private residential buildings:
"While it may be difficult to say when precisely to draw the line between constitutional and unconstitutional police encounters such a line exists, and the NYPD has systematically crossed it when making trespass stops outside buildings," Scheindlin wrote in a 157-page ruling.
In Ottawa, Canada, the Federal Court ruled that Metis and non-status Indians are "Indians" under a section of the Constitution Act, and thus come under federal jurisdiction.The ruling affects more than 600,000 aboriginal people who are not affiliated with specific First Nations reserves:
"The recognition of Metis and non-status Indian as Indians under section 91(24) should accord a further level of respect and reconciliation by removing the constitutional uncertainty surrounding these groups," writes Federal Court Judge Michael Phelan.
While the decision does not go so far as to declare that the federal government has a fiduciary responsibility to the group, it says such duties would flow automatically now that their standing has been clarified.
"There is no dispute that the Crown has a fiduciary relationship with aboriginal people both historically and pursuant to section 35 (of the Constitution)," Phelan writes.
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I found this great article from Steven Newcomb the other day. I think it's an important one because he talks about how "patterns of racist and dehumanizing reasoning from the distant past continue to colonize and dominate the present". Anyone who cares about racial justice eventually has to locate and study patterns of oppression in their own being, ancestry and their own nation. The case that Newcomb refers to is interesting reading as well because it links early history of the United States and Canada to Indigenous rights issues in both nations today.
Obviously, there are many issues that the Original Nations and Peoples of Turtle Island in that region of the continent are attempting to address with the Canadian government. These range from the hundreds of murdered and missing Aboriginal women in British Columbia, and the Keystone XL Pipeline, as well as the exploitation of Indigenous peoples and territories, not to mention the extinguishment process that is being wrongly called a “treaty process” in British Columbia, the thousands of Indian children who continue to be put into the culturally assimilating milieu of non-Indian foster care.
In my view, however, all these pressing issues are the direct result of the history of dehumanization that the Original Nations and Peoples of Turtle Island have been subjected to for many centuries. I am fascinated with the conceptual roots of the existing idea-system that has been and continues to be used against the Original Nations and Peoples of the vast geographical region now called Canada.
That a leader of one of the Original Peoples of Turtle Island feels it necessary to go on a hunger strike for twenty days in an effort to win a meeting with Canada’s Prime Minister is, in my view, evidence of the phenomenon of dehumanization and disrespect.
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An interesting view on Idle No More from Winona LaDuke:
“Idle No More” is Canadian for: “That’s Enough BS. We’re Coming Out to Stop You.”
Canada often touts a sort of “ better than thou” human rights position in the international arena. And it has, for instance, a rather small military, so it’s not likely to launch any pre-emptive strikes against known or unknown adversaries. And it has often sought to appear as a good guy, more so than it’s southern neighbor. More than a few American ex patriots moved to Canada during the Vietnam war, and stayed there, thinking it was a pretty good deal.
That attitude is sort of passe, particularly if you are a Native person. And, particularly if you are Chief Theresa Spence.
Read the whole article at www.commondreams.org
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