News, analysis, resources and documents that help us advance "Education for Liberation." In addition, we provide critical analysis of racism and capitalism in all their ugly forms.
Wonder Focus: Illinois Prodigy Lives 'Life of Purpose'
By Charlene Israel CBN News Reporter Thursday, August 29, 2013
GREAT LAKES, Ill. -- This fall kids across the
country are heading back to school. But 14-year-old Thessalonika
Arzu-Embry is the exception. She's preparing to graduate -- from
college.
Like most 14-year-old girls, Thessalonika likes to
have fun. She enjoys skating in her Great Lakes neighborhood as well as
playing tennis.
Yet, while most girls her age are entering their
freshman year of high school, complete with discussions about boys and
all the latest fashions, Thessalonika has been focused on more important
matters.
She has been attending college since she was 11.
"It's similar to any environment but this
environment was full of learning, a learning experience for me," she
told CBN News. "I looked forward to it."
An Early Passion for Learning
Thessalonika's mother, Wonder Embry, said she
noticed her daughter's exceptional gift and passion for learning while
home schooling her.
"I started reading to her my college books and she understood college material at 6 years old, 8 years old," she said.
"The first topic that I read about was consciousness
in sleeping dreams and about the neurons in the brain and I thought
that was very interesting to study," Thessalonika recalled.
Her mom said her daughter's quickness for learning
encouraged her to enroll the then 11-year-old in classes at Lake County
College.
"Academically and mentally she was prepared for it,"
her mom said. "And I didn't want to put a cap on it and hinder her and
limit her if she was able to accomplish it. And I just went on and
encouraged her to go ahead and make the most of it."
Many see Thessalonika's academic aptitude as extraordinary, but the girl genius sees her college experience as just the norm.
"I was treated normal in class and a lot of classes
didn't bring attention to my age at all," she said. "I just completed
the work like the rest of the students."
Thessalonika has a 199 I.Q. and she said she never once felt overwhelmed by college-level work.
"Some of the assignments had, like, two pages of
work and stuff and that was very easy to complete," she said. "There
were some assignments that required only five pages of work and I went
like way over the amount."
The impressive teen has received numerous awards and
certificates, is a member of her school's honor college, and served as a
student senator.
Starting the Day with God
As devout Christians, Thessalonika and her family
begin each day with prayer and Bible study. She said her faith and
family support are the keys to her academic success.
Her family attends Bill Winston Ministries in Forest
Park, Ill., where she and her older brother, Jeremy, are part of the
youth group.
"I thank God for that because he has given me the
ability to learn like in Proverbs 28:5. It says 'They that seek the Lord
understand all things.' And I'm very thankful for that," she said.
"We didn't plan on it but it's God's glory to give us the wisdom to even go through this," her mom said.
After completing classes at College of Lake County,
Thessalonika went on to attend Chicago State University where she is set
to receive a bachelor's degree in psychology with a 3.9 GPA. Once she
receives her degree, she said she plans to continue her education.
"I also plan to go to graduate school to get a Psy.D in clinical psychology," she told CBN News.
But before grad school, she plans to get her learner's permit.
A Life of Purpose
Thessalonika hopes to one day open a clinic with her
mother, who is currently pursuing a graduate degree in clinical
psychology along with her 23-year-old brother Jeremy.
Jeremy is also a psychology major graduating this year.
Wonder Embry said both of her children are motivated about learning and hearing from God about their future.
"He put that in their heart to pursue clinical
psychology to help people that are going through mental challenges, help
the youth with esteem and all those issues that tend to come in on
them. I feel very thankful to God," Wonder said.
Meanwhile, some might think this 14-year-old college
graduate has missed out on just being a kid, but Thessalonika says she
is living a very purposeful life.
--------------------------------------
PHOTO CREDIT: The Daily Herald
While other girls her age are navigating their freshman year of high school, Thessalonika Arzu-Embry is only one month away from receiving her bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Chicago State University, reports the Daily Herald.
The teen scholar was home-schooled from 8-11 years-old by her mother, Wonder Embry, a veteran of the United States Navy, and credits her with her academic achievement.
“My mother is a strong inspiration to my success,” said Thessalonika.
The dynamic duo are schoolmates, with the elder Embry working on her
graduate degree in Clinical Psychology, and spend their days working
out, studying and praying together.
“My college experience is a traditional college
experience for me — it is just that I have completed it faster,”
Thessalonika said. “I am very excited about joining others in having the
opportunity to contribute to society in a significant way.”
As if graduating at such a young age isn’t achievement enough,
Thessalonika has maintained a 3.9 GPA and serves as student senator.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
From The Ramparts Junious Ricardo Stanton
Say No To More US Wars!! "The
Creator has a working plan, peace and happiness for every man. The
Creator has a master plan, peace and happiness for every man. The
Creator makes but one demand peace and happiness throughout all the
land." - Leon Thomas
The United States, its
NATO and Israeli thug allies are ginning up yet another war based on
lies and deceptions. This time these lying psychopaths are demonizing
Syria's President Bashar al-Assad to trick us into acquiescing to
another war on behalf of the usual warmongers: the international banking
cartel, the military industrial complex, big oil, the corporate media
and of course Israel. In recent months the US has been deploying naval
vessels, covert operation forces and military assets into the
Mediterranean Sea, Jordan, Turkey and embedding them in Syria itself.
This is in addition to two years of funding arming and supporting
mercenaries and "al-Qaeda" fanatics in a vein attempt to depose Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad.
But the Western Neo-colonial proxy war
is not succeeding because Syrian forces loyal to al-Assad with Russian
logistical support and Iran and Hezbollah fighters have stymied and
beaten back the US/Western dupes and killers. In the US, brain dead
yahoos are too distracted and prozaced out to ask this fundamental
question: if al-Qaeda is supposed to be the mortal enemy of peace,
freedom and sanity, and the West are the good guys why did the West pay
al-Qaeda to attack Libya and help them murder Muammar Gaddafi and why
are they using this same al-Qaeda to destabilize Syria? Because al-Qaeda
is merely a boggey man front group made up of CIA, MI6, Saudi Arabian
stooges and dupes used by the West to further the West's nefarious
agenda.
Over and over we've experienced how the government lies
to get what they want whether its fascistic policies or wars. Remember
how they said NAFTA and GATT were going to be good for American workers?
Remember how they said bombing Yugoslavia was a humanitarian mission?
Remember how Colin Powell the most credible member of the Bu$h den of
vipers and thieves lied to the whole world about Saddam Hussein's
non-existent weapons of mass destruction? Powell never batted an eye nor
said he was sorry.
Think about this, no ruling elites or their
minions ever go to jail. No matter how egregious their crimes against
humanity no Western leaders ever get tried by the World Court. They are
allowed to ride off in the sunset with their millions, their stock
options and possessions no matter how much pain, suffering, devastation
and death they have caused. Yet someone like Bradley Manning gets dogged
out by the system and sentenced to thirty-five years in jail? Is this
justice? Don't
fall for the mind control apparatus' okey-doke and flim-flam. Don't
allow the talking heads and their corporate owners to turn you into a
sucka or a chump! There are no such things as humanitarian interventions
and wars. Smart bombs, surgical strikes and holy wars are cruel
non-realities. These terms are an oxymoron, contradictions in essence
designed to blur the lines between reality, truth and illusions and
lies. All wars cause carnage, death and agony. There is nothing noble
about senseless killing based on lies. It's one thing to mobilize to
fight to defend your hearth and home; but illegal wars based upon lies
have no redeeming virtues and bring bad KARMA! You reap what you sow.
War,
what is it good for absolutely nothing sang Edwin Starr and we know he
was correct. Roberta Flack sang a song entitled Business Goes on As
Usual. In it she sang, "Business goes on as usual the corn and the
profits are high and TVs boom in every living room, they tell us what
deodorants to buy. Business goes on as usual except that my brother is
dead. He was twenty-five and very much alive but the dreams have all
been blasted from his head. In a far off land with a gun in his hand he
died in a war he did not understand. While business goes on as usual,
there is plenty to choose from on the rack. But the rumor goes that the
latest thing in cloths will be black. Business goes on as usual, as
usual." Asd but true business is going on as usual. Listen to Marvin
Gaye's classic album What's Going On really listen to the lyrics and
meditate on the profundity of what he is singing. "War is not the answer
only love can conquer hate."
As this very moment, the US and its
Western allies are cranking out more lies and propaganda about
al-Assad's chemical weapons. Think people, this is nothing but a redo of
the WMD lies that justified the invasion of Iraq. You remember how that
turned out, right? We'll remain there for the foreseeable future,
sucking trillions from much needed programs here at home and the elites
didn't even get dibbs on the Iraqi oil!!
Don't fall for the same
line again. At least make them come up with something new and different!
Say no to the global gangsters' New World Order and their newest push
for war. The drones, cruise missiles and bombs are being assembled,
prepped and are on standby as we speak. Obama is under immense pressure
from the Neo-Cons, the international banking oligarchs, the military
industrial complex and the Zionists to launch the attack against Syria;
then it's on to Iran. The
rumor mill has it Obama is going to do like Bill Clinton did in Kosovo
and order massive airstrikes rather than infantry and ground attacks.
This way the US won't suffer as many casualties. But that's war room
drawing board talk who knows what might happen and how many US lives
will be lost? Remember they told us the Iraq invasion would be a cake
walk? That's what they said about Vietnam too.
The shot callers
and their puppets like Obama, Bu$h Jr and Clinton like killing people
from afar, using remote controlled drones, missiles and bombs; it gets
them closer to their science fiction ideal of soulless robot and zombie
armies employing fully mechanized weaponry. Don't allow them to
perpetuate another war in our name. Open your eyes and your mind, point
out the obvious lies, contradictions and immorality of what they are
doing.
As they commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the March
on Washington for Jobs and Civil Rights, I fear the US leadership is
about to repeat the very same errors they did in 1963, by escalating the
war in Southeast Asia. And that imperialist blunder turned out to be a
disaster. The US will be on the wrong side of history again if it
attacks yet another country that has done us no harm nor posed a
significant threat to us.
Leon Thomas wrote a song called The
Creator has A Master Plan. We listened to it in the 70's. We need to go
back and listen to it again and again so the message sinks in.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Fired Walmart Workers Arrested at Rally Announcing Labor Day Deadline
Workers hold a sit-in in front of a Walmart office in Washington, DC, on August 22, 2013. (Credit: Making Change at Walmart)
Nine fired workers and a current employee were arrested around 2:30 pm
Thursday after locking arms and sitting in front of the entrance to a
Washington, DC, Walmart office. The planned act of civil disobedience
concluded a noon rally at which workers announced a Labor Day deadline
for Walmart to raise wages and reinstate workers they allege were fired
for their activism.
Twenty workers who joined a June strike by the labor
group OUR Walmart have since been terminated; another fifty-some have
been otherwise disciplined by Walmart.
“Hopefully it opens Walmart’s eyes and lets them know that this is
just the beginning,” OUR Walmart activist Barbara Collins told The Nation prior
to her arrest. If Walmart doesn’t meet the Labor Day deadline, she said
yesterday, “then we’re going to give them a lot more actions, a lot
stronger actions, a lot bolder ones. And it’ll be across the country.”
Collins was fired by Walmart in June, after protesting fellow strikers’ firings by participating in civil disobedience at the headquarters of Yahoo! CEO and Walmart Board Member Marissa Mayer. As The Nation first reported,
this wave of alleged retaliation—the most serious to face OUR Walmart
since its founding two years ago—began two weeks after workers concluded
a weeklong work stoppage and caravan to the company’s Arkansas shareholder meeting. OUR Walmart is closely tied to the United Food and Commercial Workers union.
Organizers say hundreds of supporters joined this afternoon’s rally
to demand Walmart cease retaliation and offer full-time jobs that pay a
minimum of $25,000 a year. Chants included “Whose Walmart? OUR Walmart!”
and “If we don’t get it, shut it down!” In live video posted online by
the campaign, people in suits could be seen stepping over the human
chain of seated ex-workers to enter the Walmart office. According to the
campaign, arrests took place following three warnings issued over a
bullhorn by police; participants in the civil disobedience were
individually escorted to a nearby area where they were issued citations
for a misdemeanor of blocking a passage, and then released.
The DC protest comes as the city’s mayor mulls
a veto of a retail living wage bill fiercely opposed by the retail
giant. Some marched to the rally from the offices of the federal
National Labor Relations Board, the agency charged with investigating
the workers’ claims of widespread illegal discipline against activists.
OUR Walmart has urged the NLRB to seek a federal injunction to more
quickly address the alleged retaliation; the NLRB did not respond to a
Wednesday request for comment on the case.
In a Wednesday e-mail, Walmart spokesperson Kory Lundberg said, “No
associates were disciplined for participating in any specific protests.”
Rather, he said, “we applied the time and attendance policy to the
individual absences in the same way we do for other associates.” He
noted that some protesting workers “did not receive any discipline
because their absences in their individual circumstances did not trigger
the no-fault attendance rules.” Lundberg previously told The Nation that
“as a general rule, the law does not protect hit-and-run intermittent
work stoppages that are part of a coordinated union plan.”
Asked in June about Walmart claims that workers were fired for
threatening customer service by violating attendance rules, former
Obama-appointed NLRB Chair Wilma Liebman said that “the case law doesn’t
sustain that as a valid defense” against the charge of illegally
punishing strikers. As for the lack of legal protection for
“intermittent strikes,” Liebman told The Nation, “I think it would be hard on the facts so far to say that the conduct constitutes intermittent striking.”
The fired workers were on Capitol Hill yesterday to meet with congressional staffers and seek sponsors for a bill introduced
by Congressman Alan Grayson that would dramatically strengthen the
legal remedies available to workers fired for workplace activism. In an
August 5 letter, sixteen congressional Democrats criticized the Walmart
discipline, urging CEO Mike Duke “to stop all retaliatory actions
against employees engaged in protests regarding Walmart’s labor
policies.” Walmart’s “tense labour relations” were also cited by the
major Dutch pension administrator PGGM in its July 1 announcement that, like some peers, it would cease investing in the company.
While fired Walmart workers were rallying against the company in DC,
US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker was delivering remarks and
participating in a panel at an afternoon US Manufacturing Summit in
Orlando hosted by Walmart. The White House did not immediately respond
to a request for comment this morning on the alleged retaliation or the
administration’s participation in the summit, and has not responded to
inquiries from The Nation over the past nine months regarding labor strife at the retail giant.
Asked this month whether the Obama administration should stop praising and appearing with Walmart,
Service Employees International Union President Mary Kay Henry, whose
union has backed organizing efforts against the company, told The Nation
she “would rather, instead of dealing with the specific tactics of the
president’s behavior with individual companies, keep calling on the
president to say we have to have both a tax policy and an ability for
workers to bargain again as a way to get off this low-wage road that the
economy’s on. And I’d like to keep pressing on him to lead on the sort
of bigger concern [rather] than grievance publicly about what he’s doing
on individual things.”
Another of the fired workers arrested today, Brandon Garrett, yesterday told The Nation that
his termination had taken a toll in his Baker, Louisiana, store: “When
we came back from striking and we wasn’t fired right away, even more
associates wanted to join the organization. But I guess Walmart got a
sense of that, and when they terminated me, they kind of scared a lot of
them off.” Now, said Garrett, “they’re still behind us,” but “a lot of
them are scared to be retaliated against. So that’s another reason I’m
standing up like I am.”
OUR Walmart Field Director Andrea Dehlendorf said that in some stores
where activists were fired, “there’s really been a chill that’s
created, which is clearly why Walmart does this.”
However, she said, “We
have some stores where people have gotten so angry and so frustrated
about it that they’re really stepping up and getting more involved…. And
not one person who’ve been fired or disciplined has backed off.”
Barbara Collins said that since being fired, she hasn’t had as much
contact with workers at her Placerville, California, store because
managers “are putting that fear back into the workers.”
“But some of
them,” she added, “they really do know that it’s all a bunch of lies.”
Collins said OUR Walmart members in her store are “definitely standing
stronger, even though management’s intimidating them. They still know
that if we stand together and strong, hopefully it will stop.”
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Baltimore College-Bound, Elijah Miles, Passionately Speaks of Education for Liberation Beyond Self
A summer intern at Teach For America Baltimore, Elijah Miles delivered
this inspiring speech to a group of incoming teachers at institute. Wise
well beyond his years, we think Elijah's words are a great reminder
about why we do the work that we do.
Elijah will begin college at Morgan State in the fall.
Teach For America- not by design, but by mere statistical odds only -has a few politically and racially conscious teachers sprinkled thruout their programs. Obviously Elijah Miles came across one or two during his sojourn thru Baltimore's high school system. Clearly, if TfA replicated these teachers' pedagogical skills, they would lose a ton of their corporate money and would be distanced from the Obama Education-Industrial Cabal.
Public education in today's US is not supposed to produce Elijah Miles-type young Black males who are unwilling to just think selfishly and ignore poverty and racism.
Our struggle is to help all the Elijah Mileses get thru college still believing in the need to uplift Community as one uplift's self and family.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Rachel Maddow Exposes North Carolina's In-Your-Face Massive Voter Suppression
The Spy Photo That Fooled NPR, the U.S. Army Intelligence Center, and Me
A story of a mistaken identity reveals a lot about the history
of Black women in America, the challenges of understanding the past, and
who we are today.
It's a blurry image. But in some ways that makes it the perfect
portrait of Mary Bowser, an African American woman who became a Union
spy during the Civil War by posing as a slave in the Confederate White
House. What better representation of a spy who hid in plain sight than a
photograph whose subject stares straight at the viewer yet whose
features remain largely indecipherable? Small wonder the photograph has
been circulated by NPR, Wikipedia, libraries, history projects, and in
my book, The Secrets of Mary Bowser. There's only one problem: The woman in the photograph was no Union spy. How did we get it so wrong?
Mary Bowser left behind a sparse historical trail. One early clue
comes from a 1900, Richmond, Virginia, newspaper story about a white
Union spy named Elizabeth Van Lew. In the story, the reporter included
the tantalizing detail that before the war, Van Lew freed one of her
family's slaves and sent her North to be educated. The young woman later
returned to Richmond and was placed in the Confederate White House as
part of Van Lew's spy ring. Van Lew's own Civil War-era diary describes
her reliance on an African American referred to only as Mary, who was a
key source for Van Lew's intelligence network. Nearly half a century
after the war, Van Lew's niece identified the black woman as Mary
Bowser, a revelation included in a June 1911 article in Harper's Monthly.
Numerous books and articles repeated the tale of Bowser's espionage,
often embellished and without any verifiable sources. The advent of the
Internet made it especially easy for the story to circulate, and a
growing interest in black history and women's history provided a steady
audience for pieces about Bowser. Online pieces about Bowser could
easily include an illustration -- if one could be found.
As far as I can determine, the photograph began circulating in 2002, when Morning Edition ran a story about Bowser,
and NPR included the photograph on their website, with a caption
crediting it to "James A. Chambers, U.S. Army Deputy, Office of the
Chief, Military Intelligence." A radio network might seem an unlikely
venue for circulating a photograph, but NPR webpages are rife with
images supporting each radio story, a fact that exemplifies the extent
to which the Internet has made accessing and distributing visual content
not only easy but seemingly necessary. (Try to find a popular,
public-facing web page without any visuals.)
When my publisher, HarperCollins, asked for images to include in my novel,
I dutifully sent the picture purportedly of Bowser. With photographs of
Van Lew, Jefferson Davis, and other Civil War figures easy to find, it
seemed only fair to feature a picture of Bowser herself. Cautiously, I
captioned the image as "rumored to be of Mary Bowser." Ultimately, I
couldn't resist the urge to show what Bowser looked like, even though
elements of the photograph had always troubled me.
As historian and expert on internet hoaxes T. Mills Kelly warns,
we should be skeptical about any Internet source that fills a gap in
the historical record too neatly. What was the likelihood that a woman
for whom we have no birth or death dates, who used several aliases
throughout her life, and who lived during the earliest decades of
photography, happened to leave a clearly documented studio portrait?
My doubts about the image grew when I unearthed several post-war sources corroborating Bowser's participation in the Richmond espionage ring.
One of these documents indicates that in June of 1867, the
slave-turned-spy, then using the surname Garvin, left the U.S. for the
West Indies; after that date, she disappears from the historical record.
But both the dress the figure in the photograph wears and the chair
next to which she stands appear to be from a much later period. Could
the only surviving portrait of Bowser really have been taken years,
perhaps decades, after the woman herself otherwise seems to have
vanished?
Diligence, doubt, and dumb luck -- the great triumvirate of
historical research -- finally led me to an answer. In 2011, I'd
contacted both NPR librarian Kee Malesky and the military office listed
in NPR's original caption for the photograph, but neither could provide
any information about the image. Despite this seeming dead end, I kept
seeking the original, and in January of 2013, I mentioned the mysterious
provenance of the photograph to Paul Grasmehr, reference coordinator at
the Pritzker Military Library. He put me in touch with Lori S. Tagg,
command historian for the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame, which
inducted Bowser in 1995. Tagg searched their records and determined that
"the Bowser photo most likely came from ... the Virginia State Library
Pictures Collection."
This lead didn't initially seem promising. Now known as the Library
of Virginia, this institution contains no reference in its catalog to an
image of Bowser. But when I contacted Dana Puga in their Prints and
Photographs Collection, she confirmed that the famed photograph was
indeed on file in the library, "in the form of a cabinet card from the
Petersburg Studio [of] C. R. Rees."
Quick research (on the Internet, I confess!) revealed that C. R. Rees
took his first picture -- a daguerreotype -- around 1850. Cabinet cards
began to be produced in the 1860s, suggesting a slim possibility that
Mary Bowser might have posed for one. But C.R. Rees didn't open a studio
in Petersburg, Virginia, until around 1880, making it unlikely any
image captured there was of my spy. Luckily, a few months later a
speaking engagement at the Museum of the Confederacy brought me to Richmond, Virginia, where I could at last view the elusive original.
This is the moment a historian lives for -- cradling a rare primary
source in hand. And it was just as informative as I'd hoped. On the back
of the cabinet card was written the name Mary Bowser, and the name was
repeated on the attached mailing envelope, along with a street address
in Petersburg.
Image courtesy of the Library of Virginia
So could this be my spy after all? The answer became clear when I turned the cabinet card over:
Image courtesy of the Library of Virginia
There, staring straight at the camera, was Mary Bowser, her features
easily recognizable -- unlike the blurry version found online. Just as
clear was the date the image was created: 1900. A better match for the
clothing and furniture, but not for the spy, who by the turn into the
twentieth century would have been about sixty years old. The image is of Mary Bowser ... just not the Mary Bowser we've been claiming her to be.
Having my suspicions about the photograph's authenticity confirmed
left me more frustrated than vindicated. It doesn't take any advanced
training to look at a clearly dated artifact and ascertain whether it
could reasonably relate to a figure whose active moment in history
occurred decades earlier. Whoever cropped the image to the form in which
it recurs online removed a critical piece of historical evidence. But
the ease with which NPR, US Army Intelligence, and I have all
participated in the mistaken circulation of this image also reveals how
much our expectations of history are products of the way we live in the
21st century.
As a current exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art reminds us,
the Civil War was more or less contemporaneous with the advent of
photography, resulting in an unprecedentedly visual experience of the
conflict, even for Americans who never ventured anywhere near a
battlefield. The subsequent century and a half of technological advances
in capturing and reproducing images have so substantially increased our
expectation -- our demand -- for reliable, historic visual sources that
it can be difficult for us to understand how ahistoric this desire is.
But in Mary Bowser's own era, individuals didn't have our expectations
of visual certainty. They were far less likely to know what someone,
even a public figure, looked like, as contemporary descriptions of
Bowser reveal.
A reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle who attended a lecture the former spy gave in September of 1865 described her as so "strongly resembling" the prominent abolitionist speaker Anna Dickinson
that "they might, indeed, easily be mistaken for twin sisters." Given
that Anna Dickinson was white, this description suggests that the
speaker was light enough to pass. Yet when Mary first returned to
Richmond in 1860, she was arrested for going out without a pass,
indicating that she was visually recognizable as "colored" and therefore
assumed on sight either to be a slave in need of a pass or a free black
in need of proof of her legal status. And when she happened to meet
Charles Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1867, Beecher described her
as "a Juno, done in somber marble ... Her complexion was a deep
brunette, her features regular, and expressive, her eyes exceedingly
bright and sharp."
How are we to understand these contradictory sources? In an era in
which photography was still in its infancy, it was rare to have a
detailed sense of what someone beyond your immediate acquaintance looked
like. The allusion to Anna Dickinson likely made sense to readers of
the Eagle not as a specific physical description of the former
intelligence agent but simply as a marker for the still unusual
spectacle of a female speaker addressing an audience on political issues
of the day. Although by our standards it might be regarded as an
inaccurate comparison, the Eagle's description filled an
expectation specific to its era, just as the photo purportedly of Bowser
filled an expectation specific to our own era.
Bowser's story evidences the wonderful truth that Americans of all
backgrounds contributed to our history. But the enormous holes in what
we have of her biography remind us that gender, race, and class also
shaped how millions of Americans went unrecorded in what we rely on as
the historical record, because they were restricted from holding
property, voting, leaving wills, or being accurately recorded in
censuses. Wanting to commemorate an African American woman who played
such a dramatic part in the Civil War is laudable. Expecting to have a
photograph of her was borderline ludicrous. (Consider that even what
seems to most Americans today like basic information about the Civil
War, the number of military deaths during the conflict, remains a matter of estimation and conjecture.)
The story of the mistaken Mary Bowser reveals how an interest in
history, especially women's history and black history, can blind us to
how much about the past remains unknowable. The paradox of the
information age is that our unprecedented access to information feeds an
expectation that every search will yield plentiful -- and accurate --
results. But the type of evidence that our 21st-century sensibilities
most desire may be the least likely to exist.
Uncovering the past is arduous work: Compare the ease with which an
Internet search turns up the falsely labeled, cropped image of Mary
Bowser with the number of sources I persistently contacted over a period
of several years before locating the original cabinet card. Alas, in
the age of the Internet, it may prove nearly impossible to curtail the
use of that image as an avatar for the elusive slave-turned-spy, despite
the definitive proof that it isn't her.
Probing how our own desires shape our understanding of history can be
revelatory. If a genie granted me the ability to learn any three things
about Bowser, I wouldn't choose what she looked like -- it's not nearly
as important as understanding the choices she made that led to her
extraordinary espionage, the dangers she faced in that position, or how
she understood her own role in the struggle to end chattel slavery. But
in telling her story, I admit I still find it hard not to want to offer a
visual image, to present her in the way that is so quick, and so
ubiquitous, today.
Saturday, August 10, 2013
POLITICAL SATIRE:
Interviewing Around Race In Black & White
Jessica Williams and Samantha Bee convene two panels to discuss the state of race relations in America.
Saturday, August 03, 2013
The Common Core State Standards
and Its Negative Impact Upon Black Education
by Drs Donald H Smith & Sam Anderson
(for the National Black Education Agenda)
As we start a new school year in the Age of Privatization and Massive Testing, let us be armed with information and analysis that will help us beat back this racist and classist miseducation onslaught by the white megarich minority currently ruling the world.
Our Struggle for Black Educational and Cultural Excellence is a Struggle for POWER!
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Thursday, August 01, 2013
July 31, 2013- chronicle.com
U.S. Higher Education System Perpetuates White Privilege, Report Says
By Casey McDermott
Colleges and universities have succeeded in attracting more underrepresented-minority students, but that increased access for black and Hispanic students has been accompanied by increasing campus polarization on the basis of race and ethnicity, says a report released on Wednesday by Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce.
The result, it says, is a system in which elite selective colleges enroll predominantly white students while black and Hispanic students, even high-achieving ones, largely attend open-access institutions. Because the latter group of colleges spends less on instruction and sees lower shares of students through to graduation, higher education has thus become a "passive agent" in perpetuating white privilege, says the report, "Separate and Unequal: How Higher Education Reinforces the Intergenerational Reproduction of White Racial Privilege."
"The postsecondary system mimics and magnifies the racial and ethnic inequality in educational preparation it inherits from the K-12 system and then projects this inequality into the labor market," the report says.
From 1995 to 2009, freshman enrollments increased for African-American students by 73 percent, for Hispanic students by 107 percent, and for white students by 15 percent, according to the report.
But among white freshmen during that time, 82 percent of new enrollments were at the most selective four-year institutions, whereas most of the new freshman enrollments for Hispanic and African-American students—72 percent and 68 percent, respectively—were at open-access two- and four-year institutions.
The implications of those enrollment patterns are profound, the report argues. Students who attend open-access institutions are less likely to complete their degrees on time and less likely to go on to earn graduate degrees, it says. Meanwhile, when African-American and Hispanic students do attend more-selective institutions, the results are dramatic, the report says: The students' earnings advantage, for instance, increases by 21 percent. Beyond Preparedness
Disparities in college attendance and outcomes by race are not explained away by differences in college preparation, the report argues. Each year, it notes, 111,000 African-American and Hispanic students graduate in the upper half of their high-school classes but don't finish college in the next eight years.
"Many African-Americans and Hispanics are unprepared for college," the report says, "but whites who are equally unprepared still get more postsecondary opportunities."
When high-achieving minority students go to open-access colleges, they are about half as likely to graduate as those who attend more-selective institutions, according to the report.
Students' college outcomes are often linked to socioeconomic factors, but those are not the whole picture, Anthony P. Carnevale, the Georgetown center's director and a co-author of the report, said in an interview. "Race is an added vulnerability that makes low income and low parental education and other variables more powerful," he said.
The report brings more attention to the "widening chasm" between elite colleges and underrepresented-minority students who are qualified but ultimately do not apply to or enroll in such institutions, said Brian K. Bridges, executive director of the Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute at UNCF, formerly the United Negro College Fund. He cited the Gates Millennium Scholars program, which awards grants to high-achieving minority students with significant financial need, as one model for opening up access to elite institutions. 'Cool Off the Arms Race' for Prestige
Researchers in economics and other fields have recently experimented with more outreach to low-income students, many of whom are members of minority groups. Interventions such as sending students text messages about tasks necessary to prepare for college or providing them with customized college information have been found to affect their choice of whether and where to enroll.
In terms of institutional strategies, elite colleges could take a cue from their open-access peers, said Deborah A. Santiago, co-founder and vice president for policy and research at Excelencia in Education, an advocacy group for Latino students. Instead of just relying on admissions events at local high schools and other venues, Ms. Santiago said, selective colleges could establish partnerships with "promotoras" in predominantly Hispanic communities or work more with churches and other organizations.
The report does not make policy recommendations, and Mr. Carnevale said he is not optimistic about a realistic short-term solution to stratification. Still, he offered a few suggestions, including greater rewards to "striving institutions and individuals."
Colleges need financial incentives to attract and graduate low-income minority students, and those students need more financial support, he said. Institutions, he said, should recognize those priorities and "cool off the arms race" for prestige.
Stratification has been apparent for decades and has only gotten worse, said Michael A. Olivas, director of the Institute of Higher Education Law and Governance at the University of Houston. He called for more examination of legislative and legal solutions, and greater attention to the plight of immigrant students.
At this point, Mr. Olivas said, "I don't think simply describing the problem is going to help."
------------------ Read full report here:
Oscar Grant’s daughter Tatiana and Jack Bryson, the father of Grant’s
friends who were with him when he was shot, rally at Fruitvale Station
on the eve of Johannes Mehserle’s release from prison in 2011.
Julianne Hing Monday, July 8, 2013 ColorLines.com
When audiences see actor Michael B. Jordan get pulled off the BART train in "Fruitvale Station [1]," they'll see the dramatized last moments of Oscar Grant's life, filmed at the actual station where BART police officer Johannes Mehserle killed him on New Year's Eve 2009. The feature film premieres nationally on July 12 to plenty of early buzz and rave reviews for director Ryan Coogler's debut effort, and for performances from actors like Jordan and Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer, who plays Grant's mother. But for many in the Bay Area who lived through Grant's death and the national outrage that followed, the real-life sets will be just as arresting.
Fruitvale Station became a landmark in the community almost immediately after Mehserle gunned Grant down there. Situated in the middle of a bustling Latino immigrant neighborhood, Fruitvale is a popular starting point for protests and marches for a range of issues. But it will forever be tied to Grant's death. "Anyone in our community can point to other locations where somebody was killed or brutalized by the police," says Dereca Blackmon, an organizer and co-founder of the Coalition Against Police Executions, which was formed after Grant's death. "What Fruitvale actually memorializes is, 'Here is where a cop was actually caught and held accountable.' "
The film opens with the cell phone footage that lit up the Internet in the days after Grant was killed. Fruitvale's cement walls and faded beams are there in the grainy cell phone vidoes. So are the glass windows looking out onto the street below, turned into mirrors in the night; the staggered brown tile floors; the fluorescent lighting and cream interior walls of the BART train. Today many people wait for their trains exactly in the spot where Grant was killed. And that same cement wall and those same dark windows are there in the movie, when Grant and his friends and Mehserle are replaced by actors.
It was New Year's Eve 2009 and Grant and his friends were on their way back to the East Bay from San Francisco. They'd taken public transit on his mom's suggestion, for safety. Along the ride a fight broke out on the train. At Fruitvale BART, transit police officers pulled Grant and his friends off the car while the train, packed with New Year's Eve revelers, idled with its doors open. Mehserle and other transit police officers were responsible for calming down the situation, but did exactly the opposite. After an officer named Tony Pirone kneed Grant and called him "a bitch ass n——-," Pirone and Mehserle moved to handcuff him—Pirone by pushing his knee down on top of Grant's neck. Mehserle stood, pulled his Sig Sauer P226 from its holster, and shot Grant in the back. Grant was lying face down on the platform. He was just 22 years old.
All of this was caught on video and uploaded to YouTube. It shook up the country. Police violence is nothing new for black and brown communities, but something was different this time. Mehserle shot an unarmed Grant at point blank range, while he was laying on his stomach. The cell phone videos provided unequivocal proof of the kind of police brutality that is an all too regular part of life for many young men of color.
In the days following Grant's death Davey D, host of Hard Knock Radio on KPFA in the Bay Area says he remembered seeing people in Oakland crying openly. "People were so angry and so frustrated and so in disbelief that this was happening," says Davey D. "You could see the look of pain in people's faces." Grant was killed three weeks before President Obama was first inaugurated, and the nation's glee over electing its first black president was still palpable. There was a sense that justice would be swift, the radio journalist recalls. So after the shooting happened and Obama never addressed it, and the Department of Justice's inquiry ultimately went nowhere, the letdown was especially bitter.
"Fruitvale represented a couple things. It symbolized the continuation of police brutality, and it was a stark reminder that even with a black president and a black attorney general, shit ain't changed and folks were gonna have to do it for themselves," Davey D says.
The very first community protest happened at Fruitvale Station, just over a week after Grant's death. At that first protest the energy of the crowd, so swollen with anger and pain, compelled BART officials to shut the gates to the station. (Watch YouTube footage of the protest [2].) Silence from the city's leaders compounded the community outrage, says Blackmon.
Organizers moved subsequent protests to the Alameda County courthouse to demand that the district attorney file criminal charges against Mehserle. But while the largest protests took place downtown at Frank Ogawa Plaza and in the streets of Oakland, Fruitvale remained a place to gather and protest and remember, and became a landmark.
The day before Mehserle was released from prison in 2011, hundreds gathered [3] once again to demand structural accountability and an end to police violence. There was also a community push to rename the station Oscar Grant Station. "Some people wanted to remember that," says Davey D. "And some people didn't want to go back on BART for a long time. [Police violence] happens so much that there's a certain, I wouldn't say normalization, but you just learn to cope with it."
As common as police killings of black and Latino men are, accountability rarely follows. Even Mehserle's second-degree murder charges were a victory of sorts; it's extremely rare for on-duty police officers to be charged with murder when they kill people, and even rarer still for a conviction to stick. In 2010, just three days after a judge sentenced Mehserle to two years in prison, which was the lightest possible sentence, Oakland police officers fired nine shots at a black man named Derrick Jones as he fled, hitting him six times. Jones died. In 2011 Oakland school police officers shot and killed 20-year-old Raheim Brown outside of a high school dance. Last year Oakland police officers shot and killed 18-year-old high school senior Alan Blueford after he and his friends were stopped by cops. The DA's office has declined to charge officers of those subsequent shootings with any criminal wrongdoing. This ever elusive justice has activists questioning the utility of turning to the criminal justice system to demand accountability of its own members. "We've started asking the question: Does it make sense to ask the institutions that kill us for justice?" said Cat Brooks, a co-chair of the Onyx Organizing Committee, a group dedicated to ending police violence.
"For me, the most important conversation that is happening now is how do we grow this beyond any individual young man into a larger campaign against police terror? How do we come together to create enough pushback … so they know they can't get away with it anymore?" Brooks said. Almost five years on from Grant's death, Brooks, who lives in West Oakland, still avoids the Fruitvale BART station as much as she can. "It is and forever will be where Johannes Mehserle executed Oscar Grant."
Every year on the anniversary of his death, Grant's family and community gather at Fruitvale for a remembrance of his life. It's a tradition now. "But what ends up happening," Blackmon says, "is there's always five more mothers standing next to [Grant's mother] Wanda, every year."
Obama Supports the Racial Surveillance That Killed Trayvon
— Glen Ford
07/24/2013
http://blackagendareport.com ”Blacks are hyper-surveilled from damn near cradle to the grave, both within and outside their communities.”
President Obama pretended to cross over to the Black side for a few minutes, last week, in response to near-universal Black rage at George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the stalking and murder of Trayvon Martin. According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, 87 percent of African Americans believe the shooting was unjustified, compared to only one out of three whites. Blacks made their outrage visible in hundreds of demonstrations and vigils across the country, prompting even Obama’s most hardcore apologists to beseech their icon to say something to put the angry Black genie back in the bottle.
Beginning his performance with “Once the jury’s spoken, that’s how our system works,” and an endorsement of the propriety of the trial, Obama half-mumbled 2,100 words designed to indicate that he is aware of “a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws, everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws” – and then almost immediately washed his hands of the matter with the caveat: “The criminal code and law enforcement is traditionally done at the state and local levels, not at the federal levels.” Stand Your Ground laws are something that might be reexamined “if they are designed in such a way that they may encourage the kinds of altercations and confrontations and tragedies that we saw in the Florida case, rather than diffuse potential altercations.” Mostly, Obama was concerned with reestablishing “trust” in the system. “I think it would be productive for the Justice Department, governors, mayors to work with law enforcement about training at the state and local levels in order to reduce the kind of mistrust in the system that sometimes currently exists.”
“The groundswell of furious Black protest forced Obama to recall a time when he used to be Black, too.”
Obama insisted, in closing, that “things are getting better” in America, despite the proliferation of Stand Your Ground laws designed to justify precisely the vigilante murder and acquittal that occasioned his “impromptu” press conference. The fact is, Trayvon Martin’s death was quite ordinary, as was the impunity granted to Zimmerman – once by cops, the second time by jury. What was extraordinary, was the groundswell of furious Black protest, a response so fierce it forced Obama to recall a time when he used to be Black, too.
His cop-out – that most laws are made at the state level – belies the fact that Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder are champions of mass incarceration, insulating the federal prison system from austerity, even as he slashes Medicare and Medicaid budgets and the sacred cows of defense and Homeland Security. While state prison populations have declined, overall, mainly due to budget pressures, the federal prison system “continues to grow by about 3 percent a year,” according to Mother Jones. For this administration, mass incarceration is top priority.
Filling up those prison beds with Black and brown bodies requires the maintenance and expansion of a monstrous system of hyper-surveillance – the foundation stone of the Incarceration State. Racial surveillance, transforming whole communities into Constitution-free zones, is the feeder system of the American Gulag. It is the reason that one out of every eight prisoners on planet Earth is an African American, and that one out of three Black American men will wind up with felony records. Study after study has shown that young Blacks use illegal drugs with the same or less frequency than whites, yet Blacks are far more likely to be arrested and incarcerated for drug offenses – due to massive racial surveillance. You find the crime you look for.
“For this administration, mass incarceration is top priority.”
When the president told the nation, last week, that “African-American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system,” he was attempting to frame white fears of Blacks as somehow practical and commonsensical, rather than racist. (Obama denied that racism is “endemic” to the U.S. in his Philadelphia speech on race, in March, 2008.) In the real world of pervasively racist America, Blacks are hyper-surveilled from damn near cradle to the grave, both within and outside their communities. “Involvement” in the criminal justice system is all but inevitable.
Hyper-surveillance places the assumption of guilt on the peoples and communities that are targeted – which, in the U.S., means all Black people (even Barack Obama – “until I was a senator,” he said). Hyper-surveillance – its justification and practice – stripped Trayvon Martin of the presumption of innocence, marking him with a fatal presumption of guilt. Two-thirds of whites still believe his death was justified, despite the clear facts of his innocence. That’s why his death is ordinary – because ordinary white people routinely condone such killings.
“I think Ray Kelly is one of the best there is.”
And so, in practice, does Obama, despite his press conference theatrics. The president has high praise, and possibly a powerful appointment in store, for Ray Kelly, the New York City Police Commissioner who has overseen and defended over five million stop-and-frisks since 2002, overwhelmingly targeting Black and brown men. Obama is looking for a new head of Homeland Security. “I think Ray Kelly is one of the best there is,” Obama said. Kelly proudly justifies his management of the Mother-of-All-Stop-and-Frisk operations, as intended “to instill fear” in young Blacks and Latinos that they may be patted down by a cop whenever they leave their homes. Kelly also created a massive program to spy on Muslims, not only in New York City but in other localities, and arranged for CIA agents to be embedded in the NYPD to conduct domestic surveillance – which is illegal.
Obama is, of course, well aware of Kelly’s huge contributions to the cause of racial and ethnic hyper-surveillance, and has given his wholehearted endorsement. The First Black President encourages the killing of more Trayvons throughout the “Homeland,” just as he orders so-called “signature” mass murder-by-drone of males of a certain age in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia (along with whatever women and children may be within the missile’s kill zone).
The rage that forced Obama to don his “Black” identity must be channeled into sustained political action – a Movement – that directly confronts the dehumanization and targeting of Black America at its root: the mega-profiling of hyper-surveillance. Otherwise, it's all sound and fury, signifying…not much.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
Downtown Detroit is now a shadow of its former self.
Capitalism as a system ought to be judged by its failures as well as its successes.
The automobile-driven economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s made
Detroit a globally recognized symbol of successful capitalist renewal
after the great depression and the war (1929-1945). High-wage auto
industry jobs with real security and exemplary benefits were said to
prove capitalism's ability to generate and sustain a large "middle
class", one that could include African Americans, too. Auto-industry
jobs became inspirations and models for what workers across America
might seek and acquire - those middle-class components of a modern
"American Dream".
True, quality jobs in Detroit were forced from the automobile
capitalists by long and hard union struggles, especially across the
1930s. Once defeated in those struggles, auto capitalists quickly
arranged to rewrite the history so that good wages and working
conditions became something they "gave" to their workers. In any case,
Detroit became a vibrant, world-class city in the 1950s and 1960s; its
distinctive culture and sound shaped the world's music much as its cars
shaped the world's industries.
Over the past 40 years, capitalism turned that success into the
abject failure culminating now in the largest municipal bankruptcy in US
history.
The key decision-makers - major shareholders in General Motors, Ford,
Chrysler, etc, and the boards of directors they selected - made many
disastrous decisions. They failed in competition with European and
Japanese automobile capitalists and so lost market share to them. They
responded too slowly and inadequately to the need to develop new
fuel-saving technologies.
And, perhaps most tellingly, they responded to
their own failures by deciding to move production out of Detroit so
they could pay other workers lower wages.
The automobile companies' competitive failures, and then their moves,
had two key economic consequences. First, they effectively undermined
the economic foundation of Detroit's economy. Second, they thereby dealt
a major blow to any chances for an enduring US middle class. The past
40 years have displayed those consequences and the capitalist system's
inability or unwillingness to stop, let alone reverse, them.
Real wages in the US stopped growing in the 1970s, and have not grown
since, even as workers' rising productivity generated even more profits
for employers. Rising consumer debt and overwork postponed for a few
years the impacts of stagnant real wages on consumption. But by 2007,
with wages stagnant and further consumer borrowing capacity exhausted, a
long and deep crisis arrived. Employers used the resulting unemployment
to attack job security and benefits and the public sector built up in
the 1950s and 1960s to support the middle class (for example, by
low-cost public higher education).
Auto industry capitalists took the lead and Detroit exemplified the
economic decline that resulted. In the deep crisis since 2007, General
Motors and Chrysler got federal bailouts, but Detroit did not. The auto
companies got wage reductions (via the tiered wage system) that assured
Detroit's wage-based economy could not recover, even as auto company
production and profits did. The failures of private capitalism thus drew
in the complicity of the federal government.
Despite what the heroic sit-down strikes and other actions of the
United Auto Workers had earlier won for their members, the auto
companies' decision-making powers remained in the hands of major
shareholders and their boards of directors. They used that power to
evade, weaken and eventually undo what union struggles had won. The
unions proved incapable of stopping that process. Detroit's capitalists
thus undermined the middle-class conditions workers had extracted from
them - and thus destroyed the "capitalist success" city built on those
conditions.
Detroit's decline, like the parallel decline of the United Auto
Workers, teaches an inescapable lesson. The very contracts that militant
unions win with employers give those employers great incentives to find
ways around those contracts. They usually do.
The top-down structure of capitalist enterprises provides major
shareholders and boards of directors with the resources (corporate
profits) to cut or remove the good conditions unions can sometimes win.
That's how this system works. Detroit has "been there and done that".
The solution is not more contracts.
A Detroit public school in ruins.
If the autoworkers had transformed the auto companies into worker
co-operatives, Detroit would have evolved very differently. Worker
co-operatives would not have moved production, thereby undermining their
jobs, families and communities, including especially Detroit. Workers
would not have destroyed themselves and their communities that way.
Moving production, a distinctly capitalist strategy, was key to
Detroit's population dropping from 1.8m in 1950 to 700,000 today.
Workers co-operatives would also have searched and likely found
alternatives to moving that might have saved Detroit. Workers
co-operatives, for example, would likely have paid less in dividends to
owners and salaries to managers than was typical at Ford, General Motors
and Chrysler. Those savings, if passed on in lower automobile prices,
would have enabled better completion with European and Japanese car
makers than Detroit's Big Three managed.
We cannot know how much more Detroit's auto industry might have
benefited from technical progress had it been organized as a workers'
co-operative. We can guess that workers have greater incentives to
improve technology in co-operatives they own and operate than as
employees in capitalist enterprises. Finally, worker co-operatives would
likely have switched to producing (and helped to promote) mass-transit
vehicles or other alternatives to the automobile to retain jobs and
well-being once they saw that continued automobile production could not
secure those priorities for worker co-operatives.
What kind of a society gives a relatively tiny number of people the
position and power to make corporate decisions impacting millions in and
around Detroit while it excludes those millions from participating in
those decisions?
When those capitalists' decisions condemn Detroit to 40 years of
disastrous decline, what kind of society relieves those capitalists of
any responsibility to help rebuild that city?
The simple answer to these questions: no genuinely democratic economy could or would work that way.
[Richard D Wolff is professor of economics emeritus at the University
of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008.
He is currently a visiting professor in the graduate programme in
international affairs of the New School University, New York City.
Richard also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan.
His most recent book is Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic
Meltdown and What to Do About It (2009). A full archive of Richard's
work, including videos and podcasts, can be found on his site - http://www.rdwolff.com/]
This data from both a recent ABCNews Poll and a Pew Poll. It is obvious that deepseated racial denial is at the heart of white racism. It is also obvious that younger whites are moving towards at least recognizing that they have to deal with issues of race and racism.... But they still have a long long way to go.
One thing is clear, the killing of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of Zimmerman has struck a united chord across class and gender lines within Black America.
