Black Power

Opal Tometi On Building A Transnational Movement For Black Lives

August 6, 2015 Interview with Opal Tometi Laura Flanders, www.truth-out.org Strategize! #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Black Power, Immigration, Mass Incarceration, Police Brutrality, Racial Justice, Worker Rights and Jobs

Interview with Opal Tometi by Laura Flanders in Truthout - Take us back a couple of years. Were you conscious of the fact, in 2013 when you saw that Black Lives Matter post from Alicia, that here was an opportunity to connect your issue, the issue of immigrants' rights and justice, to the Black justice movement in this country? Was it a conscious thing? It was absolutely conscious. When I reached out to Alicia to say, "I really think we need an online platform to connect our groups and to connect our communities," I had in mind that it was really important that we establish a really broad notion of who is Black America, these days. A really broad notion to ensure that this platform was big enough for the communities like the ones that I represent (my parents are Nigerian immigrants; the communities that I work with are Afro-Latinos and Caribbean and so on) and that they could also have their concerns heard. It was really important to us to ensure that it wasn't just a movement about police killing Black people but it was also about structural racism and justice for all Black people.

W.E.B. DuBois To Malcolm X: The Black Peace Movement

August 5, 2015 Vincent Intondi, www.zinnedproject.org Educate! #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Black Power, History, Malcolm X, Nuclear Weapons, W.E.B. Dubois

By Vincent Intondi in Zinn Ed Project - When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. announced his strong opposition to the war in Vietnam, the media attacked him for straying outside of his civil rights mandate. In so many words, powerful interests told him: “Mind your own business.” In fact, African American leaders have long been concerned with broad issues of peace and justice—and have especially opposed nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, this activism is left out of mainstream corporate-produced history textbooks. On June 6, 1964, three Japanese writers and a group of hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) arrived in Harlem as part of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki World Peace Study Mission. Their mission: to speak out against nuclear proliferation. Yuri Kochiyama, a Japanese American activist, organized a reception for the hibakusha at her home in the Harlem Manhattanville Housing Projects, with her friend Malcolm X. Malcolm said, “You have been scarred by the atom bomb. You just saw that we have also been scarred. The bomb that hit us was racism.”

Cornel West On The State Of Black America

October 24, 2014 WGBH News, www.wgbhnews.org Educate! Black Power, Cornel West

Since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., it is clear that something has died in Black America. The last great efforts for Black collective triumph were inspired by the massive rebellions in response to Dr. King’s murder. Yet these gallant actions were met with increasing repression and clever strategies of co-optation by the powers that be. The fundamental shift from a we-consciousness to an I-consciousness reflected not only a growing sense of Black collective defeat but also a Black embrace of the seductive myth of individualism in American culture.

Black Is Back Coalition Holds National Conference In Philadelphia

July 31, 2014 Glen Ford, www.blackagendareport.com Organize! Barack Obama, Black Power, Conference, White House

In November of 2009, the newly-formed Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations marched from Malcolm X Park through the gentrifying streets of Washington to the White House, loudly denouncing the First Black President of the United States. Barack Obama had been in office only ten months, but the militarist and corporatist trajectory of his regime was already quite clear. Obama had retained George Bush’s Secretary of Defense, escalated the drone wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, placed Bill Clinton’s Wall Street operatives in charge of the economy, announced his intention to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, even as he pushed through Congress a health care bill that was largely written by private drug and insurance companies. Like George Bush before him, Obama sabotaged the Durban II World Conference Against Racism, in order to derail demands for reparations for slavery and colonialism. And, only 100 days into his administration, Obama had served notice to African Americans that he would propose no programs to alleviate the suffering of Black America, which had been hit hardest by the economic meltdown. The Black is Back Coalition was determined that the first politician in history to spend a billion dollars to win the presidency would not get a free pass from all of Black America – even if his father was an African. One of the biggest contingents in that first anti-Obama march and rally was the Newark, New Jersey-based People’s Organization for Progress, “POP” – perhaps Black America’s most dynamic regional grassroots organization. POP’s membership, after much debate, had endorsed Obama in the 2008 election, but that did not stop them from chanting their outrage at his policies at the gates of the White House.

Panthers In The Hole: US Prison Crisis

July 31, 2014 Angola 3 News, www.angola3news.blogspot.mx Educate! Black Panthers, Black Power, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Interview, Prison

Amnesty International France and La Boîte à Bulleshave published a 128-page French language graphic novel entitled Panthers in the Hole. The book's co-authors David Cénou and Bruno Cénou present with visual art what Amnesty France describes as "la tragique histoire des Trois d'Angola" (the tragic story of the Angola 3). Robert H. King, Herman Wallace, and Albert Woodfox are the trio of Black Panther political prisoners known collectively as the Angola 3. On October 1, 2013 Herman Wallace was dramatically released from prison after 41 years in solitary confinement. At the time of his release, he had been fighting terminal liver cancer for several months. Three days later, on Oct. 4, Herman was surrounded by loved ones as he passed on at a friend’s house in New Orleans, Louisiana. Albert Woodfox remains in solitary confinement to this day and with only temporary respite from routine body cavity searches pending an upcoming ruling by the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. On April 17, 2014, marking 42 years since Albert Woodfox was first placed in solitary, Amnesty International renewed its call for his immediate release (view Amnesty’s statement and essay) and today continues their online campaign (sign the petition here).

When The Black Students Of Wesleyan Took Over Fisk Hall

July 16, 2014 Rebel Empire Productions, www.youtube.com Resist! Black Power, Civil Rights, History, Malcolm X, Wesleyan

FISK TAKEOVER Based on the events of February 21st, 1969 at Wesleyan University. Follow us https://twitter.com/RebelXEmpire Check out http://thefisktakeover.tumblr.com/ On Friday, February 21st, 1969, the Black Students of Wesleyan took over Fisk Hall. They brought all academic processes to a halt to protest for a day of Remembrance for Malcolm X and forever changed the history of Wesleyan University.

Armed Resistance In The Civil Rights Movement

June 17, 2014 Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, www.prospect.org Strategize! Black Power, Civil Rights, History, Nonviolence, Racism

On his first visit to Martin Luther King Jr.’s house in Montgomery, Alabama, the journalist William Worthy began to sink into an armchair. He snapped up again when nonviolent activist Bayard Rustin yelled, “Bill, wait, wait! Couple of guns on that chair!” Worthy looked behind him and saw two loaded pistols nestled on the cushion. “Just for self-defense,” King said. In his new book, This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible, Charles E. Cobb, a former field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and a visiting professor of Africana Studies at Brown University, explores what he sees as one of the movement’s forgotten contradictions: Guns made it possible. According to Cobb, civil-rights leaders recognized that armed resistance was sometimes necessary to preserve their peaceful mission. Guns kept people like King alive. Danielle L. McGuire, an assistant professor of history at Wayne State University, argues that armed self-defense was also far more common for black women in the South than has generally been acknowledged.

Black Co-ops Were A Method Of Economic Survival

June 14, 2014 Jessica Gordon Nembhard, www.geo.coop Educate! Black Power, Cooperatives, Racism

Du Bois’ position was that African Americans were discriminated against economically, that we were trying to become capitalists and gain individual wealth just like other Americans, however it wasn’t working because of racism and discrimination. He said that we should voluntarily form a group economy based on a sense of solidarity and use producer and consumer cooperatives to position ourselves to serve our economic needs separately from the white economy. This way we could control our own goods and services and gain income and wealth - stabilize ourselves and our communities. Then if we wanted to join the mainstream economy, we could join from a position of strength. Du Bois said this in various ways from about 1897 until the end of his life. Aside from doing the full study in 1907, he actually held a conference at Atlanta University that same year. He was holding annual conferences about African Americans during that period at Atlanta University, and in 1907 the conference topic was “Negro Businesses and Cooperatives.” Du Bois was among the speakers at that conference and he had other people talk about cooperative activity among Negroes.

Detroit’s Radical: General Gordon Baker

May 30, 2014 David Goldberg, www.jacobinmag.com Educate! Black Power, Detroit

In October 1963, civic leaders in Detroit staged a downtown celebration formally announcing the city’s bid to host the 1968 Olympic games. African American hurdler Hayes Jones, a Pontiac, Michigan native who went on to win a gold metal in the 1964 Olympics, kicked off the event by carrying an Olympic torch to the epicenter of the proposed games. As the national anthem played, Jones approached the podium, but didn’t receive a hero’s welcome. Protestors from an array of local civil rights organizations carrying picket signs surrounded his approach, using the occasion to point out the hypocrisy of Detroit’s bid to host an event symbolizing international brotherhood while housing discrimination remained rampant and legally sanctioned due to the city’s unwillingness to pass an open housing ordinance. One group of protestors — members of UHURU, a proto-Black Power student organization formed at Wayne State University earlier in the year — booed the national anthem. General Gordon Baker, Jr., took his sign, swung it at Jones, and admonished the sprinter, “We’ve been running from the white man too long!” Baker and the other members of UHURU were quickly arrested for “disturbing the peace,” a charge that Baker would transform into his life’s work as an organizer and revolutionary.

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