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gduncan969 · 4 years ago

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Critical Race Theory, Apocalyptic Science and the Church

Matthew 5:14 “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.”

Ephesians 5:8 “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light”

1 Thessalonians 5:5 “You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness.”

1 Peter 2:9 “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;”

Last June, my daily newspaper carried an article by Bruce Pardy, a law professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario with the interesting title of “Apocalyptic Science”. As a retired scientist myself and a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, the title intrigued me because it placed together two concepts that in the minds of many, are opposites—science and the bible. What Professor Pardy meant by “apocalyptic science” is something we are hearing much about these days called “Critical Race Theory” now being widely adopted by governments, institutions, large corporations and media in traditional western societies. It is an attempt to redress what the theory’s adherents describe as the systemic racism that is inherent in all white people who were raised in traditional western societies. The theory is now being taught in universities, law-schools and even high schools as true and so our inherently racist thinking and behaviour must be eradicated through an admission of guilt and a willingness to redress both past and present wrongs! Critical Theory seeks to destroy much of what Judeo-Christian societies are based on and replace it with what is best described as a new form of communism. While you may simply want to dismiss all this as an ill-informed and in itself, a blatantly racist theory, we need to examine where it is taking our society and how far it has penetrated into the everyday thinking of those in control of our governments and institutions. It is in that sense the term “apocalyptic science” makes sense because Critical Theory destroys how we have understood “truth” over the last two millenia and it will ultimately end our freedom to worship and serve the Lord because the bible opposes its teachings and so will be judged as hate literature to be eliminated from public discourse. In the middle of this COVID pandemic, we are constantly being urged to “follow the science” but as we examine the tenets of Critical Theory, we need to ask ourselves whose “science” are we following?” What is this theory, what does it mean and how should we as a believers in Jesus Christ guard ourselves against its impact on our rights and freedoms? Let’s deal with these in turn.

Critical Race Theory

Firstly, Critical Race Theory has its roots in the economic theories of Karl Marx whose theories gave rise to the communist revolutions of the twentieth century and caused the deaths of millions of people. From these Marxist roots it expanded in the 1930's as the broader “Critical Theory” to include the areas of science and sociology under the writings of the German philosopher, Max Horheimer. From there, it continued to spread its cancerous influence into much broader areas of society and has now infiltrated our institutions, governments, universities and large corporations. It has changed laws, educational curricula and ultimately has called into question our understanding of what is “truth”. These changes have received broad acceptance and have led to the new fad of “woke” ideology, a term applied to those who are “alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice” but also a term used to denigrate all others who aren’t! Woke-ism is spreading throughout western society, especially among the young and those who view western culture as corrupt and in need of radical change. These have also adopted Critical Race Theory to explain society’s perceived ills as seen only through the lens of racial discrimination so that whatever tragedies unfold, whatever actions are taken by the authorities to mitigate these, these are explained in terms of our inherent racial bias. As a result, it becomes socially acceptable for groups like Black Lives Matter to riot and burn down buildings and to call for the de-funding of the police under the guise of seeking justice. Any opposition to this viewpoint is dismissed simply as evidence of the opponent’s racism. Today’s tragedy of the Colorado mass murder was first described in most of the US media as having been committed by a man “who is white” followed by the grossly erroneous assertion that most mass murders are committed by men who are white. Unfortunately for the media, the culprit is now known to be a Syrian moslem. Critical Theory allows its adherents to believe that “truth” is a purely subjective concept open to interpretation according to one’s own subjective experience—if you believe it is true, then it’s true for you. Because of this, the adoption of Critical Theory by those in control presents a much greater danger to the Church than any new wave of COVID-19 or the impending collapse of the world economy because it’s ultimate aim—of which the Church appears to be largely unaware—is to radically change how communal “Truth” is perceived and defined, both in the scientific and biblical understanding of what is true. In that regard, it strikes at the very heart of the Gospel which defines “Truth” in the Person of Jesus Christ who said (John 14:6) “I am the way, the truth and the life”. Critical theory is radical in the extreme and would be widely laughed off by any normal thinking person but we no longer live in a society governed by normal thinking people and the centres of power in most of the above-mentioned institutions are already infected with its poison. We can no longer laugh it off! Even the 150-year-old Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK, of which I am a lifetime member, now carries comments admitting the racism inherent in white chemists and today, the Church of England announced it may institute a quota for black and minority clergy within its ranks and give anti-racism training to its white clergy following the Archbishop of Canterbury’s apology for the denomination’s “racist past”. Last year, in response to the Black Lives Matter protests, the archbishop ordered the removal of all statues and memorials in churches and cathedrals linked to the slave trade. Last year saw the destruction of multiple statues and name changes of multiple institutions, all as a mea culpa act of contrition for being white! If you are bewildered by this and the insanity of things like the “De-fund the Police” movement or the Woke movement, you are merely seeing the unfolding impact of Critical Theory, especially in its sub-discipline of Critical Race Theory.

We all grew up understanding that to be accepted as “true”, any theory must be provable by experiment; that is, whatever any theory says is true must be provable by performing experiments that produce the results predicted by the theory (“Theory Guides—Experiment Decides”). Until that happens, the theory is merely a hypothesis. Under Critical Theory, this is no longer the case. Critical Theory holds that truth is a subjective concept that is always tainted by the prejudices and biases of the person holding that truth so as a result, the theory cannot be “proven” in the scientific sense. This reasoning is applied in Critical Mathematical Theory where 2 + 2 does not necessarily equal 4 because someone else’s “truth” may see that it equals 5 and the difference between the two is merely the difference in each person’s inherent biases. If your reaction to this reasoning is, “What utter nonsense!” then, according to the theory, you are merely exhibiting your own inherent biases and you need to repent. Such is the case with Critical Race Theory which holds that racism is systemic among white people whose inherent colour prejudice is so entrenched within them it prevents them from recognizing it and so groups like Black Lives Matter, socialist politicians and much of present day media insist you correct your bad attitude. Denying that you are a racist is simply taken as proof of your blindness to it and therefore proof of your guilt. Also, under this theory, justice demands retribution for past wrongs, no matter how long ago these wrongs were committed. Past sins cannot be forgiven. Thus, Critical Race Theory has led to the “cancel culture movement” we are witnessing daily on our TV screens where past actions or comments, even in our teenage years, can result in loss of job, status and reputation, with no opportunity to defend yourself.

How Should the Christian Respond?

Having to answer to the absurdity of Critical Race Theory is like having to argue the sky is blue but answer it we must if we are to reach the multitudes who believe it. Answering it is best done not by attacking it but to some degree agreeing with it! Yes, agreeing with it—in one respect: “truth” is indeed in many cases, subjective. Scientific truth interprets the physical world around us and gives us the natural laws we were born into—fire burns and water quenches but for the believer in Jesus Christ scientific truth comes crashing down when it meets the spiritual truth of the Kingdom of God. In Daniel 3:24 - 25 fire didn’t burn: “Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished; and he rose in haste and spoke, saying to his counselors, “Did we not cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?” They answered and said to the king, “True, O king.” “Look!” he answered, “I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire; and they are not hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.” and in 1 Kings 18: 33 - 34, 38 water didn’t quench because when Elijah tested the prophets of Baal he said, “Fill four jars with water and pour it on the burnt offering and on the wood.” And he said, “Do it a second time.” And they did it a second time. And he said, “Do it a third time.” And they did it a third time. And the water ran around the altar and filled the trench also with water...Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.” We can avoid Critical Theory’s accusations of our blindness to our racism by stating that our “truth” is not based on our own subjective prejudices but on the One who is the ultimate TRUTH, the sum of all truth who has received us, changed us into his image and enlightened us to all that is right and wrong in this world. Jesus declared in Matthew 5:14 “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.” Paul declares in Ephesians 5:8 “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light” and in 1 Thessalonians 5:5 “You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness.” and lastly, Peter declares in 1 Peter 2:9 “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” Whilst others may be blinded to their prejudices we are not because there is One whose Spirit lives within us and reveals all things to us (1 Corinthians 2:10). As believers in Jesus, we bring light into other people’s darkness and relief to the confused minds of those ensnared in the pseudo-truth of Critical Race Theory. Our response to all of this craziness in a world going mad is the same as it always has been: the Gospel the Lord Jesus Christ but for it to be effective it must be spoken boldly, lovingly and unapologetically in answer to our accusers.

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khalilhumam · 4 years ago

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How Black Americans saved Biden and American democracy

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/how-black-americans-saved-biden-and-american-democracy/

How Black Americans saved Biden and American democracy

By Rashawn Ray President-elect Joe Biden should hold a special virtual inauguration for the cities of Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Detroit. These metro areas including their sprawling suburbs helped to mount political theater equivalent to the New England Patriots comeback win over the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI. This time, however, Atlanta’s mail-in ballots came back to win Georgia’s electoral votes for Biden similar to how Philadelphia did for Pennsylvania and Detroit did for Michigan. Exit poll data from the 2020 election show the power of the Black vote. Black Americans represented over 50% of all Democratic voters in Georgia (33% of state population is Black), 20% of all Democratic voters in Michigan (14% of state population is Black), and 21% of all Democratic voters in Pennsylvania (12% of state population). These percentages are considering the critique of exit polls for failure to properly account for the various ways that diverse groups from Blacks to rural whites engage in the political process and respond to surveys. And, 2020 is not an anomaly. Black voters have long pulled their weight relative to other racial groups. In most battleground states, a majority of Black Americans live in metro areas. In Pennsylvania, 65% of Black people live in Philadelphia and nearly 15% in Pittsburgh. Over 70% of Black people live in the Detroit area as well as the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, area. In Arizona, nearly 85% live in Phoenix. In Georgia, 60% live in Atlanta and 35% in Augusta. But, the sprawling suburbs in these areas also show the power of the Black vote. Considering Georgia went blue for the first time in 28 years, it is an ideal example. Using American Community Survey estimates, roughly the same percentage of Blacks and whites (44%) live in Fulton County, which is the county where Atlanta is located. However, the past decade has witnessed a decrease in the white population and an increase in the Black population in most counties that border Fulton. In neighboring Cobb County, the Black population increased from 25% to 28% from 2010-2019, while the white population decreased from 62% to 56% (and only 51% if considering non-Hispanic whites). In Gwinnett County, the Black population increased from 24% to 28% from 2010-2019, while the white population decreased from 54% to 46%. Clayton County’s Black population increased from 66% to 70%, while the white population decreased from 20% to 17%. Even counties with smaller Black populations and larger white populations like Cherokee and Forsyth counties show a similar pattern. The small exception is DeKalb County (where I lived during elementary school). The county had stability in the Black population over the past decade (roughly 54%), while the white population slightly increased from 33% to 34% (29% for non-Hispanic whites). Exit poll data further suggests that college-educated whites did not overwhelmingly vote for Biden in Georgia. In fact, less than 40% voted for Biden compared to 60% voting for Trump. Besides Alabama and South Carolina, this was the lowest percentage of college-educated whites voting for Biden in battleground states. Comparatively, over 50% of college-educated whites voted for Biden in Michigan and Pennsylvania. While some political pundits and journalists attributed Georgia going Democrat to white suburbs, Black voters were the real key. Accordingly, it is important to compare the political context of the 2020 presidential election with that of 1992. Biden reported decided to run for president upon hearing Donald Trump’s failure to admonish white nationalists and white supremacists who held a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 where they enacted violence and murdered Heather Heyer, a counter-protester and Black Lives Matter supporter. We must juxtapose Biden’s electoral decision with former President Bill Clinton who launched his “tough on crime” campaign at Stone Mountain Correctional Facility with mostly incarcerated Black men standing behind him in single-file lines. Interestingly, Clinton’s speech helped galvanize Georgia voters to support him and helped the Arkansas-native to flip the state blue. His speech also helped galvanize the 1994 crime bill, which ironically was shepherded by Biden and blamed for contributing to mass incarceration. Though Biden is forming the most racially diverse cabinet in American history and has made clear through his actions and words that addressing systemic racism will be a focal point of his administration, it is clear that he and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have considerable work to do on criminal justice reform. But the role of Black Americans goes way beyond helping candidate Biden secure a presidential victory. With Trump’s divisive rhetoric, overt appeals to systemic racism, use of outright falsehoods and distortions, and attempt to overturn the 2020 election through extra-legal maneuvers, Blacks helped to save American democracy. They enabled Democrats to overcome the appeals of a GOP leader intent on subverting long-held democratic institutions and ushering in an era of authoritarian rule. A second Trump term likely would have featured more catastrophic attacks on the opposition, including delegitimizing civil society organizations and packing the judiciary with loyalists. Eight years of Trump rule would have destroyed American democracy and altered the future of the country and the world. Growing up in the Atlanta-metro area, I know the legacy and current realities of voter suppression, police brutality, racial segregation, and white supremacy. I share a collective memory with other Blacks of electoral tactics that kept the Black vote down and prevented Stacey Abrams from becoming governor just two years ago. As a kid, I remember visiting Stone Mountain for Fourth of July and witnessing the most amazing laser light display that I have ever seen. As I got older, I realized that the light show was celebrating Confederate generals who aimed to keep my ancestors on plantations and in convict leasing shackles. This is why the political mobilization of Stacey Abrams, civic organizations, and Black Lives Matter activists is so remarkable, both for the 2020 election and American democracy. It is clear rallying cries about systemic racism and a potentially better and more equitable America were heard loud and clear by many voters. According to a CNN exit poll, 36% of Democratic voters ranked racial inequality as their number one issue followed by coronavirus at 27%, two issues that deeply affect Black Americans. Conversely, only 3% of Republican voters ranked racial inequality as their top choice and only 5% ranked coronavirus. Georgia Democratic Senate Candidate Reverend Raphael Warnock, pastor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, received the most votes in a crowded Senate race and will face Republican Kelly Loeffler on Jan. 5, 2021 in a runoff. The other Senate runoff will put Democrat Jon Ossoff against Republican David Perdue. Similar to the estimated 9 million people who watched the Verzuz battle between rappers Jeezy and Gucci Mane, all eyes will once again be on Georgia as the fate of the Senate likely will come down to the power of Black voters.

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michiganprelawland · 4 years ago

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Cornelius Fredericks Could Not Breathe

By Heather Muir, Kalamazoo College Class of 2021

July 29, 2020

Cornelius Fredericks was a sixteen-year-old boy who at a young age, had already overcome many obstacles. At the age of twelve, his mother passed away in her sleep. His father was unable to care for him and his siblings at the time, so all four children were separated from one another and sent to different youth facilities. Before arriving at Lakeside Academy, Cornelius had been placed in two other facilities since his mother died. The first one was Wolverine Human Services in Detroit. According to a former peer support specialist, he loved making new friends, teaching others how to play chess, and showing off card tricks. He had hopes of one day becoming a counselor and helping others. “He was a tough kid with a really soft heart”, says Will White, a former peer support specialist at Wolverine who had gotten to know Cornelius[1].

On April 29th 2020, Sixteen-year-old Cornelius Fredericks was eating his lunch at Lakeside Academy in Kalamazoo, Michigan when he threw a piece of bread in the lunchroom. Minutes later, he was being physically restrained by the youth home’s employees. Seven staff members sat on his chest and weighed him down as he called for help yelling, “I can’t breathe”. Ten minutes later, he was released from the physical restraint, and his body went limp. It wasn’t until another twelve minutes after,when staff members decided to call 911. Cornelius was put on life support at Bronson Methodist Hospital and died on May 1st 2020[2]. After medical experts performed a biopsy and examined the recording of the incident from video surveillance cameras, it was confirmed that Cornelius’ death was a result of homicide.

In June, Cornelius’ extended family filed a civil lawsuit against Lakeside Academy and Sequel Youth and Family Services for $100 million. The lawsuit claims negligence/gross negligence and direct negligence pursuant to Michigan’s wrongful death act.

Pictured Above: Excerpt of Michigan’s Wrongful Death Act [3].

Unfortunately, the excessive force used on Cornelius and the abuse from Lakeside Academy was nothing new… Lakeside staff members had put Cornelius in physical restraints at least ten times in the six months he has been there. In one incident in January, police records show that staff reported to have restrained Cornelius for ten minutes. However, surveillance showed that he was in a physical restraint, unable to move for 36 minutes. Once he was released, the video showed him crying and unable to walk properly. Inconsistency in their reports and disregard for the wellbeing of children at the youth facility is not an uncommon behavior by some members of the staff there [1].Staff at these facilities are supposed to use trauma-informed techniques to help calm children down [5]. These places are meant to be safe spaces for children can receive the care and support that they need. Excessive use of force is an unacceptable form of discipline, especially for such minor incidents.

Pictured Above: Police report of prolonged physical restraint used on Cornelius in January [4].

The State of Michigan failed to recognize major warning signs about Sequel facilities. Sequel’s attorneys instructed staff members to not release any security footage, but officers had already obtained it. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services investigated Lakeside in 2018 after a resident had been subject to four unwarranted restraints, and staff members failed to report that the child had been injured in one of them. Another investigation in 2019 found that a staff member had punched a boy in the face and choked him, although the employee denied the incident ever happened. The department claimed that the State did not need to revoke Lakeside’s license, since the facility was submitting an “acceptable corrective action plan”. The facility was ill-equipped to continue caring for the children in their facilities, but Kalamazoo police had no authority to shut them down. It was up to Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, who according to records, were well aware of Lakeside’s shortcomings.Counties from all over Michigan sent children to Lakeside, and at least 30 of Cornelius’ peers came from out of state. In fact, Lakeside collected $427 per day per child from the state of Oregon. There are records that confirm officials from at least three states were concerned about the types of restraints used by Lakeside employees [1].

After Cornelius’ death, the agency discovered that 76 of 151 residential youth facilities in Michigan had either one incident in the past two years or repeat incidents that concerned children’s safety. The state has since made several changes to the way in which facilities like Lakeside will be overseen. There will now be at least four on-site reviews and restraints that restrict breathing will be banned. In addition, if a resident is restrained staff members must notify the child’s family within 12 hours and the department within 24 hours. Governor Gretchen Whitmer has ordered that the State’s Department of Health and Human Services cut ties with Sequel Youth and Family Services. Three Lakeside staff members, Michael Mosley, Zachary Solis, and Heather McLogan have been charged with involuntary manslaughter and child abuse charges.

These changes are a step, but they are certainly not enough. Black children like Cornelius are 35 percent more likely than white youths to be places in residential treatment facilities nationwide. 33 percent of children in foster care are Black, but Black children make up just 15 percent of U.S. children [6]. Residential programs like Lakeside should be an option of last resort. Chang, of Michigan’s Children’s Services Agency says, “Until we address how we use these facilities and stop warehousing in an environment where order and control is the most important factor and not meeting their therapeutic needs, there will always be this risk factor” [1].

The child welfare system in the U.S. has been broken for a long time, and it is tragic that Cornelius had to die because of it. His death exposes the deep change that needs to occur within the system and how dangerous it is to allow for the privatization of youth facilities. It also highlights how far too often;excessive use of force and punishment isused against Black and Brown bodies in this country by people in positions of power. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Atatiana Jefferson, Aura Rosser, Stephon Clark, Bothan Jean, Philando Castille, Alton Sterling, Michelle Cusseaux, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Gabriella Nevarez, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Tanisha Anderson, Elijah McClain, Cornelius Fredericks, and too manyothers can no longer breathe because of the systemic racism that continually poisons this nation.

It is time for change, time to demand justice, time to take action, time to educate each other, and time fight for each other so that another preventable situation like this does not have to happen. This is not a bi-partisan issue.BLACK LIVES ALWAYS MATTER.

________________________________________________________________

Heather Muir is a senior at Kalamazoo College studying Economics with a concentration in Public Policy and a minor in Japanese. She is interested in the legal profession, as well as international business and non-profit work.

________________________________________________________________

[1]https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/brief-life-cornelius-frederick-warning-signs-missed-teen-s-fatal-n1234660

[2]https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/07/08/cornelius-fredericks-death-michigan-kalamazoo-lakeside-academy/5396416002/

[3]http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(kg3teqknu1kdj1dldueosfab))/mileg.aspx?page=GetObject&objectname=mcl-600-2922

[4]https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20381708-excerpt-regarding-january-restraint

[5]https://www.childtrends.org/publications/5-ways-trauma-informed-care-supports-childrens-development#:~:text=Trauma%2Dinformed%20care%20(TIC),behavior%20problems%20and%20posttraumatic%20stress

[6]https://appam.confex.com/appam/2019/webprogram/Paper32800.html

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litpoliticsinterview · 5 years ago

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Interviews with Farrukh Dhondy

The following transcriptions are of two conversations I had with Farrukh Dhondy, writer, left wing activist and former commissioning editor of Channel 4.

We spoke about the origins of the poetry of Linton Kwesi Johnson, the fraught nature of the British Black Power movement in the late 1970′s and early 80′s.

These interviews were held on the 12th and 18th of November 2019.

- Emily Blundell Owers

Tuesday 12th November 2019

Farrukh Dhondy [FD]: (looking at printout of Voices of the Living and the Dead / VOTL&TD) I knew him in this phase, when he was formulating this. Well, you ask me the questions, I’ll tell you.

Emily [EB]: they’re not questions like ‘when did this happen’…I though that the first thing would be to tell you what the assignment is. ‘Take your text, and explain the relationship between what we have seen Raymond Williams call its social location and its aesthetic ideology. Each of these works is coming out of and speaking to a radical social movement at some moment in the twentieth century. I am asking you to research and reconstruct this context and to critically evaluate which elements of your work’s production and/or performance and/or publication/circulation history cast the best light on its actual or desired intervention in the world. Find out what you can about the decisions – personal, political – that inform the writing of your chosen work: its acts of aesthetic refusal and allegiance, its ways of thinking/doing community, uplift, justice, change. If appropriate, attend to any unintended effects or unconscious logics at play. Aim to address, in more or less equal measure, questions of literary form and of social world and to analyse both in relation to each other.’ Yes, it’s quite a long question.

FD: Good. Well it’s reassuring that you’re quoting Raymond Williams, who has gone out of fashion. But was very much in fashion when I was a student…before the postmodernists replaced him, who talk nonsense.

EB: So the first kind of questions that I was thinking were about the climate at the time…the 60s through to the 80s- this being first performed in 73 and published in 74. But my question is kind of…I get the impression that this was a time of social upheaval and what was it like in terms of one’s everyday experience?

FD: Let’s start there. I joined the Black Panther Movement (BPM/BP) in 1969. The reason was that I was a student from India and the entire movement consisted of immigrant workers, some immigrant students- Asians as well as West Indians- the movement was made of West Indian workers. And some people turned up in the youth branch of the BPM and they of course worked selling the newspaper, coming to meetings, coming to demonstrations that we organised, doing such things. Amongst them were the 6th formers of Tulse Hill school, one of which was Linton Kwesi Johnson. At the time he was not Kwesi, just LJ. But the BPM took its name through inspiration from the BPP of the United States. The BPP of the US departed from the civil rights movement of MLK, saying non-violence will NOT redeem the black population, or its social and political rights. We’ve got to take up arms, just as the American constitution guarantees that any citizen can carry arms and so on. And they were doing it as a piece of bravado- they weren’t actually going to shoot anybody- but they said we’ll carry guns and wear uniforms and this that and the other. But that was the inspiration, and the people who started the BPM here thought they’d take the name but it wasn’t the same struggle. We were immigrants from the ex-colonies, not descendants of slaves. Well yes, the West-Indians would come here, to work, who were- Indians weren’t. I was not- I came from a middle class family, on a scholarship to study at Cambridge, but I felt the same kind of tensions that Indian workers or west-Indian workers felt. Because there was a kind of race divide in Britain. So I joined that movement and the name of the movement was there to inspire black youngsters to join a movement which was dedicated to social and political rights in Britain. Get rid of racism. Get rid of police attacks on people. Get rid of pay differentials. Get rid of educational discrimination. Get rid of the fact that you couldn’t go into some places- a pub wouldn’t serve you, you couldn’t get housing- they’d say no blacks here. That had to be dealt with, it had to be dispensed with. One didn’t have to sit in different compartments, or at the back of the bus or some such, but there was a lot of discrimination going on in the 50s and 60s with the first wave of immigration, that’s the political background through which the BPM started, and which made people like Linton Johnson and others join up.

Now, there were radical teachers in Tulse Hill school. They were all white, but they were dedicated unionists, Trotskyists of sorts…they were the English department of THS. They were very active in the NUT, the national union of teachers, and of course they wanted an association with any other radical group. One got to know them. I was a teacher at the time.

EB: I heard that the Panthers spoke at the school, and that’s why Linton went along to the first meeting that he did…that it was through the school.

FD: Yes- they invited us to speak. I don’t know who spoke.

EB: I think it was Althea…

FD: Althea Jones. Yes. She was a postgraduate student in chemistry and biology, in London University. And she was very inspirational in as far as she was a good speaker. And these people invited her to speak there, and that’s how he got to know it and joined the BPM youth group, where we used to give history lessons in the Oval house, and we’d talk about ‘The Making of the English Working Classes’, Thompson, and other historical developments in America, in the West Indies, we wanted to know British history also. How it wasn’t exclusive- how the labour movement came about…it was all A.P Thompson’s book- it was very instrumental in those lessons. I had to give lectures on it, and young people were there. That was the political atmosphere in which that group began. And of course, in membership, you kind of devoted your life to it. Every day at some meeting, every weekend selling newspapers, during the week you were writing or having to publish it- Freedom News. And they’d call a movement (meeting?) on a Tuesday afternoon, and say ‘You’ve got to go somebody’s been arrested we are fighting for their release, outside the court or Brixton Police Station’. Constantly. So, we were doing all that. Agitational pamphleteering-

EB: Yes! Agit-prop.

FD: Exactly. And the group told itself that it aught to have its own educational internal systems. So, there were history groups, and some people wanted to start a literary movement. At that time, we had about 6 or 7 people who wanted to meet in a literature collective of the BPM, inside south London. And I was an aspirant writer myself- not aspirant, I was a published writer; I hadn’t written any books, but I’d written a lot of articles, lots of journalism and short stories- so they looked upon me as a kind of writer. And Linton wanted to be a kind of writer. And Linton turned up, we used to read things- if you sit in a collective of 8 or 10 people, in 33 Shakespeare road, in Brixton- you find out what other people are thinking, what they’re writing about. They’d bring their work and we’d criticise it, like a book club- a readers and writers association. At the time Linton was writing verse in imitation of what he had heard in 6th form English classes. He was writing not what he wrote later, but stuff that sounded to me like imitation T.S Eliot. Which he carried on into VOTL&TD. This book is not Jamaican patois.

EB: Yes. That’s a big thing, and its maybe more helpful to this question-

FD: Yes, this is (reads from text) ‘they came with fire blazing, death deep within our midst, desiring our destruction, we were water extinguishing their fire…’. Now this has a political bias. At the time, he was writing much more in the imitation of Eliot. Stuff he’d read and been inspired by his teachers to read. There was no notion in that literature group…that reggae was literature. There wasn’t. I think it was I who claimed that people are writing in the language that they grew up with- the language that they spoke at home, in the streets. And why…of course that was not something I invented. It was something I observed. There were poets in Jamaica and the West Indies who were trying to break out into dialect. There were other poets who wrote very purely in the English tradition. They were carrying on from Auden, Wordsworth, Keats, Eliot, Hughes. They were carrying on in that tradition even though they were black. But in the West Indies there was a movement to move towards the way that West Indians used English. Patois. Some call think that’s an insulting term.

EB: Yes, I’ve thought about this too- whether it’s creole or patois.

FD: Creole means ‘home language’.

EB: And then, coming off of that idea of the literary group, I’ve read Linton talking about reading in the Panthers, Fanon and Du Bois.

FD: Yes, in the history lessons…and CLR James of course. Whose biography I wrote. And he lived in our house, CLR James, when the kids were young. Yes, because his wife kicked him out. He stayed for a few months- he was supposed to stay 3 days! Anyway, so Johnson then went on with the inspiration of reggae and that debate which had been raging from the 30s in the west indies, over whether one should write in the British tradition, or apply bits of language and how people speak. And of course, he was influenced by that, and massively influenced by the reggae movement. And he began then- later on- VOTL&TD is kind of a construction in the British tradition, using the consciousness of hindsight. So, he has then put in the political content about tyranny, slavery…but the first branch out was when we told him, people told him, he became aware; ‘write in the language that your parents speak, how you speak on the streets, how Jamaicans speak’. And we got ‘Sonny’s Lettah’- I think that was probably the first branch out for him.

EB: I do find interesting, that 5NOB in this volume is also in DB&B. I was reading earlier, Brathwaite’s ‘History of the Voice’. And he analyses it, and writes it out in creole- in dialect. Because he’s analysing it from the EP, not how it was written down. And I thought that was interesting, because part of the question I’m asking myself is, because this is the reprint- rather than the original- why if this is in 83 that it was reprinted, so after DB&B has come out, after he started he publishing stuff in creole- I wonder why nothing was added to the volume that was this new type of poetry that he was writing.

FD: Braithwaite was at Pembroke college, Cambridge. Not at the same time as me, before. But I used to edit at Cambridge a magazine called Garconette (sp?), and I sought him out in London- said Mr Brathwaite, you were at my college. He probably thought ‘who’s this punk’- but I asked him to contribute a poem and he did. But it was not- he didn’t write- at the time in patois, he wrote in pure English.

EB: So, at the time he (Linton) was writing this (VOTL&TD), you don’t think he was experimenting with creole writing? Yet. Or maybe he was?

FD: Linton? I don’t know, but, as soon as Sonny’s Letter hit the decks, people though this was it, this is fantastic. And he never looked back. Except that when this was republished in 83- he went back to-he wasn’t ashamed of what he had written before. Did he revise it? Have you compared it?

EB: I can’t find 74 anywhere, but I’ve inferred from the introduction- which says ‘this volume’ was published in 74, and yes, I think it’s the same thing.

FD: You see, what would happen is that his teachers would have told him, and through Althea, write about the historical difficulties of what you think; Sonny’s Lettah is personal, he creates a character who is there. VOTL&TD is abstraction. He’s imagining that he’s the soul of black history, and that’s an abstraction. Putting himself in the place of the redemption of black history – ‘the tyrants came for us, they did this to us…’- they didn’t enslave him. He was walking around Brixton, having a drink. Smoking ganja. But he’s taking on the voice of the race.

EB: And calling for an uprising.

FD: Yes.

EB: I was going to ask about what Brixton was like in particular, and the relationships between minority youth, police-

FD: Brixton was very black- 100% black. There were no fashionable pubs, the Atlantic was a run down place, on the border of Coldharbour lane and Railton road- I lived at 74 Railton road. It was known as ‘the front line’.

EB: Yes, I’ve heard that Railton Road was a hotbed of different groups.

FD: What happened was, the BPM had a base in Shakespeare road- 38 SP road. That was given to us by somebody. Its first base was in Barnsbury, Islington. Very fashionable Islington. Because a rich white lady knew Althea and people, and said you can use my house to live in. You wouldn’t have known that it was the beginning of the BPM- it was in a very gentrified, even at that time- ‘Islingtonia’. And she handed over the house, so people would live in different rooms of the house. And the hall would be the meeting place for the Mangrove trials and so on. I would be up there every evening to write up what had gone on with the trial.

EB: I was reading about the Mangrove 9. And it was Franco Rosso, who did the film about the Mangrove 9…was it right that Race Today was based on Railton Road as well?

FD: What happened was, the Black Panthers then acquired property in Tollington Park. We had 3 branches in London. Shakespeare road, we used to call it the South London collective, then there was the West London collective, along the Mangrove- that gang, then there was the North London collective because they needed spaces across London, because there were members who used to come all the way South, as Althea said why don’t we base ourselves there. And as luck would have it, this writer, John Berger, gave us £2500, because he won the Booker Prize. And we, Darcus and I, with the BP, turned up- I was the only one with a fucking bank account. So we turned up to collect the money, with all these reporters trailing us and so on, and we took the money and put it into 37 Tollington Park, up near Finsbury park. And Althea and Eddie and everyone else moved in there. the entire story is told in a book I’ve written called ‘London Company’. Darcus was not a member of the central corps, because Althea didn’t like him.

EB: Of the Panthers? Why didn’t she like him?

FD: She said was a demagogue, a rabble rouser. And he was very attractive to the general membership. And he was a rival, so she kept him out of the central corps- saying he was a loose cannon, and he knew that. But one day they held a kangaroo trial…a chap called Brian, brought some white girl and the girls who lived there said we don’t want any white girls having sex in here. A household squabble. And they turned it into a kangaroo trial and called the central corps for an emergency meeting, saying ‘this man has disgraced the community’, and I said ‘What the fuck are you talking about? He’s a citizen he can fuck who he likes. It’s none of our business, we’re a political movement. He hasn’t broken any laws.’ And I said I’m not staying here for a kangaroo trial; I’m not doing this. And out of the 8 members of the central corps I walked out. And the first thing I did was phone Darcus, and said this is what’s happened. And he said ‘fuck, the whole place has deteriorated.’ So, we got a gang together, including Linton, and broke up the BPM, said fuck it. We want to do something else. So, we drifted for a while, didn’t go to the meetings, I signed over the house to Anthea and Eddie, her husband…but Linton came with us, he didn’t stay with the BPM, came with Darcus and me, and about 20 of us who quit the BPM started Race Today.

EB: That’s a really good story.

FD: So that’s how Race Today started and Linton joined it. And he continued his career as a poet, by this time of course he’d established himself by reading here and there. And the mood in Britain was towards celebrating Bob Marley, celebrating reggae, realising its rebellious- I wouldn’t say revolutionary- potential. And Linton tuned into that. It was very much attractive, to the establishment even. BBC 2 would do documentaries on him. That’s when Franco Rosso, everyone who thought they were on the radical left of the media, would join in to promote, celebrate, accentuate and bring to the public the ideas and voices they thought they were contributing to that rebellion or act of justice or revolution. All sorts of grades of ambition.

EB: So, at Race Today, were there specific roles?

FD: There weren’t specific roles. Darcus was certainly editor, he’d say what went into the magazine. The rest of us were writers, one of the first things I did for them was on the black explosion in British schools- a big article in the second edition.

EB: So, was Darcus Howe the editor from the start of the magazine?

FD: No, Darcus took over from a priest. Who used to run Race Today, when it was a magazine that belonged to the Institute of Race Relations in Kings Cross. And so, what happened was, Leila, who later on married Darcus, she and 2 or 3 others in the Race Today IRR said Alec was fine as editor, but we need a black editor. They were quite academic in their approach, the previous Race Today, just reporting this and that. They invited Darcus, who had just left the BPM, when we were floating about not belonging to anything, saying we’d make another movement and we’d have a black workers movement…they called him to be editor of Race Today, the collective of young black people who were working for IRR. And Darcus’ whole aim was, we’re not just going to be a magazine, we’re going to turn into an active collective.

EB: So the magazine was the start, and then it came out of that?

FD: Yes, and then he called me to write Black Explosion in British Schools, in February 73. The article is all about how the West Indian children of that generation that I was teaching are completely restless- by your generation they’d settled into the meritocracy, but in that generation they hadn’t.

EB: Are these second-generation kids, born here?

FD: Yes. Linton’s generation.

EB: This is something that I think is going to be the basis of my argument- the shift, the lack of complacency. So, I’m kind of wondering, for my own interest, your personal relationship with Linton. Because from what you’ve said it seems to be a kind of mentor relationship in the BPM.

FD: Hardly. He would never acknowledge anyone as his mentor. Of course, when he went his way and became a reggae poet, with groups giving him background to recordings and so on, there was no connection between me and him at all. We used to meet because we were part of the same collective, but otherwise there was no relationship with me whatsoever. I’ve never known whether he’s read my books- though I’ve followed his career.

EB: This was something I found interesting that I read today- in an interview he did with John La Rose, in I think around 97- he says, and I don’t think this will be a touchy subject from the conversation we’ve just had, but he said after he started touring the world with the successful albums, ‘I think there was a view within RT that I was too much of a high flier and my wings needed to be clipped’, in about 85. He said because of that he retired from music for 3 years, because he was needed for the Brixton organizational stuff.

FD: By 85 I had left Race Today, in the end of 83 I was appointed commissioning editor of channel 4, and I pulled in Darcus to do stuff. So, Linton was left with the collective and became one of its editors.

EB: I thought it was interesting.

FD: Yes, and maybe true. Its not that peoples wings…they probably said ‘what the hell are you doing? Do some political activity instead of cruising around!’

EB: I got the impression that it was more out of guilt than conscience, and I thought that was really interesting.

FD: You’re right I think, you’re right about that. And race today continued, Darcus left it because I gave him the money to fund Bandung files on Channel 4, where he started working full time. And Linton then began to run Race Today, and he must have felt responsible to do that. And if it was out of guilt rather than political conscience- well yeah, maybe. What he did do though, was bring in a lot of Jamaican poets- went to Jamaica, picked up Mikey Smith and others. And they all came and did a circuit of universities, and BBC2 came to the Race Today office and said they wanted to interview the poets.

[recording cuts out here]

Monday 18th November

EB: So, I went through the things we’d spoken about before, to see what hadn’t been lost in the recording. I think the first question that cut off was regarding what it was like to be creative at a time when what was at stake was something more material…if the battles that you’re waging are more to do with police brutality and discrimination- threats which meant government at local and national level needed to be targeted, how can poetry get to that, or try to meet the requirements of an aim like that. I think we spoke about political consciousness raising?

FD: One can look at in several ways. A Caribbean population established itself here. It has its culture, its culture is religion, food- they may not be aware that all these things are known by the name of culture- what you wear, what you believe in, how you conduct the traditions within your life- all that becomes your culture. Now, art is a branch of culture. What you produce to be beautiful or instructive- not useful- a frying pan could be useful but that’s not art- but if you make a sculpture, a painting, if you write poetry or sing a song- those are creative things that come within culture, but they come within the subcategory of art. The workers who came here from the Caribbean had a culture for the Caribbean- the Trinidadians would sing calypso- there were black singers who had made it from the Caribbean- Harry Bellefonte. The people who came here didn’t quite discover what they were going to be writing about. They could do imitation calypso, they could imitate reggae and so forth, and some of them did try. But a particular culture began to evolve within British blacks, and Linton was certainly part of that. He knew that art went with particular forms, particular forms, particular moods and emotions. He had read English poetry, and American poetry, and knew that these were the things that poetry did. But, he had not discovered his subject, until he began to thing 2 things- 1) let me write in the language of the people that I live with, and am part of- actually youths. And the second thing was what should I write about. And it was always said, because we were in political turmoil, political action and struggle, combat and activation- it became clear to him that we always said write about what you are and what you do. It needn’t always be combative. It could be descriptive. When the philosopher C.L.R James said to us in a big meeting of the BPM ‘write about what you’re doing, and that will inspire other people rather than theories’. I was a schoolteacher at the time- I used to write 500 word articles for the paper about accusations of a black child stealing, or the 5th form disco, where fights went on, love rivalries- I wrote about that. James was telling us, write about what you know, about where you are. It will move other people to think in a similar way. Bus drivers wrote about how their union treated them, what happened at the garage, conductors about their interactions with the public- someone was racist to them, stuff like that. Linton would turn the experience that he saw around him into poetry, and that’s how he began writing Dread Beat & Blood, and then he took to writing actual propagandist poems- ‘Darcus Howe to Jail, Race Today cannot fail’, ‘free George Lindo’, stuff like that. So those were activist poems in support of a particular movement rather than descriptions of something that he had observed as an artist and poet. Those distinctions exist even within his work.

EB: Yeah, I think there’s even a further distinction in that this [VOTL&TD] comes before the absolute personal, there’s hints of it. He seems to be writing in the western tradition, of Eliot as you said. I found bits of ‘Voices’ very similar to ‘The Hollow Men’-

FD: Yes, that’s what he was doing.

EB: But he’s imparting upon that style-

FD: Yes- he discovered these two things. The language as his people speaks and the subject matter which he should now begin to represent. So, he did. And he was one of the first. Other people have followed, other writers. Now a whole spate of rap artists of your generation. Like Stormzy, someone who is a household name, who I know.

EB: Yes, my parents would know Stormzy, I doubt they’d know anyone else of that ilk. I suppose it’s similar to Linton, when we think about the documentaries- these people that want to be involved and push this figure.

FD: Sure, and of course what happens in our time is that art, even if it has propagandist and activist motive, becomes something to frame and look at. So even if you sing a song of love to woo a girl, it gets recorded and then its value doesn’t become the relationship, but how much the record will sell for. The function of art in our times has become that. Picasso paints ‘Guernica’, because he hates the Spanish civil war. What happens to the piece? Sells for millions. That’s the destiny of art in our times.

[break]

EB: Thinking about the performance of VOTL&TD at the Keskidee- I wish it were recorded somewhere but it’s not from what I can see. In some interviews he says there were dancers, in others dancers aren’t mentioned. And because obviously there’s different speaking voices- parts- I would really like to know if the audience were told before who each of them were, or if they were meant to infer it. Because if one voice is ‘the dead’ and one voice ‘the living’, I wonder how easy that is to recognise.

FD: Ask the George Padmore institute.

EB: Yes, I’ve looked at their archive website. But I’ll email. And I’ve got your book- I’m going to read the article on the black explosion in British schools, which from what I’ve glanced at is about the way black children were treated as inferior. Which I think is relevant, because I’ve read interviews with Linton that say in Jamaica he was top of the class, and when he came here they tried to put him in basically remedial lessons.

FD: That’s what happened in the first school I taught at. It’s not like that anymore- that’s gone. There’s still a lot of desperation amongst black boys though, gang crime.

EB: This question I think we spoke on, about the musicality of Linton’s work. About him being inspired by reggae artists- and I’ve also read him speaking about how he doesn’t consider himself to be a dub lyricist, because for him the words and the music were together as he wrote, rather than him needing a backing track for the poem to exist. Like reggae artists riffing on the track as it plays. I thought that was interesting because obviously 5NOB is the last in this collection, and I’ve seen it performed with music, but I thought it was interesting that it exists sans music, and I wonder if he wrote it for music, or if the music came after.

FD: What it is, when you look at his work- it’s extremely rhythmic. And it’s rhythmic in a drumbeat way. It has no complex rhythms which then come out, which some melodic songs do have- if you listen to Andrew Lloyd Webber, there’s different beats that progress within the songs. Linton’s poems don’t, they have the same – bum, pa dum, pa dum bu bu dum- and that actually accords well with the sort of instrumental music he did later. Because he recites, he doesn’t sing. Its not melodic, but it’s very rhythmic, and the rhythm is particular. And that’s just his style, the peculiarity of it. Lots of reggae songs, they use melodies found in popular music too- but his compositions as well are purely rhythmic too, the reggae beats.

EB: We spoke about Race Today, how the magazine was owned by IRR, and then when Darcus was appointed editor, he said he wanted it to be about activation, not just recording things. And I’d love for you to retell me that story about the post van-

FD: Yes. Darcus did a couple of months editing the magazine in the IRR at Kings Cross, and we determined in private talks that the magazine should not be – and so had they, those who worked there- had determined what they wanted to do. Because some of them were activists you see, in other groups like the Black Unity and Freedom party- who were doing things. They said to themselves, we don’t want the magazine to reflect the society, it’s not an academic magazine; we want to report the actions which we undertake, and we want it to stimulate the actions of people. If we wanted it to be like Lenin’s magazine in Russia, we needed to move it out of the academic atmosphere of the IRR. So one night a few of us, of course Darcus and I- with me driving my little old green post office van went to the IRR in Kings Cross, loaded up all the machines, the electric typewriters, pens, this that and the other – I don’t know if we took any desks, we may have done. The whole lot, we cleaned up the place. When they came in the next day they found everything gone.

EB: Was there bad blood?

FD: Yes. I think Darcus must’ve told Siavanandan, who thought he was the great leader of immigrants in Britain, who was a purely academic idiot. And not too academic- he didn’t know much. But he got himself into this position. He was a race peddler, not very bright- he’s dead now though, so its not libel. So we ran away, we established ourselves at 132 Railton Road, my second squat. 74 was my first squat, out of which I got burnt.

EB: How do you mean?

FD: I got burnt out. I was living on the second floor, 74 Railton Road, and at 4 o’clock in the morning someone through a bomb into the house. The house was ablaze, I woke up to the smoke. I thought someone was choking me, a pillow or something. I struggled, there was no pillow just burning smoke. I thought shit I’ve left the fire on, it’s caught fire. It wasn’t on.

EB: Was it people trying to get rid of the squatters or?

FD: No. It was the National Front. Because they hit 6 houses that night, all Asian and west-indian houses and shops. They fire-bombed. The fire engine police told me I was fire bombed. The police never caught them. It was on the 15th of march.

EB: Beware the ides of march.

FD: Exactly. That’s when it happened. The 15th of March 1973. Burnt out of our house.

EB: It’s crazy to me that whenever I read about the New Cross house fire that it was never confirmed that it was the National Front. Who else would’ve done it?

FD: Electrical fault, somebody else, someone set fire to the basement because of a love rivalry. There’s all sorts of stories floating. Nobody knows I suppose.

EB: I can’t remember if I asked this last time- I wondered, not necessarily with this text as I don’t know how involved you were, but about the process of getting a text printed, getting somebody like Errol Lloyd to illustrate it. Do you think something like that would spring out of then already knowing each other, or-

FD: Well, the artistic world of blacks at that time was quite small, so they would have got to know each other, and they would have met at cultural occasions, where they were both speaking. And certainly the connection with Race Today could’ve helped- someone calling up and saying ‘I’m with Race Today, a poet, do you want to do my book?’

EB: I see, so it being a known thing people wanted to get involved. Also, not necessarily to do with Voices, but what do you think about capturing something in print which was made to be performed? Because on the first page of the poem, before it even starts, it says ‘with drums, bass guitar and flute’- and I suppose I’m asking for your opinion. Do you think illustrations in print are there in place of performance?

FD: No, they’re an additional form of art, apart from the performance. The performance is one thing, the illustrations their own form of art.

EB: Yes, this is why I’d love to see it. To see if there were costumes or-

FD: There wont have been costumes. I can tell you that. Youths of hope, for Darcus Howe…-

EB: Yes, that’s actually something I want to talk about, Darcus Howe. The fact it’s called ‘youths of hope’. I remember you saying to me before that Darcus was the driving force, was straight to the point.

FD: Yes, of Race Today. Yes.

EB: Everything I read about him, the mangrove 9, the black people’s day of action- every significant incident that is in the books I’ve read about any of this, Darcus is mentioned. So I guess the ‘youth of hope’ moniker is for him. It’s where I got a lot of my idea, my argument, about it being the younger generation who will be able to make a difference- rather than the complacency of the Windrush generation, it will be the younger people. I think 5NOB is my favourite one.

FD: It makes sense you see. Some of the others don’t- ‘terror tearing us up into pieces of smoke’- smoke doesn’t go have pieces!

EB: Well, I think YOH is helpful, when looking at VOTL&TD, to work out some things. Pinning down the tyrants, things like that. We spoke a little before on this- on whether at the time of writing this- because obviously all of this- even 5NOB which obviously made its way onto DB&B, is not written in the creole, the patois, any of the language that made him famous. Do you know if he was experimenting with it at that time- or do you think it was after? I remember you saying ‘sonny’s letter’ was the beginning, and after that he didn’t look back.

FD: I think so, I can’t be certain. 5NOB was refashioned- before he wasn’t doing anything in patois-

EB: Yes, it was actually really interesting to me that 5NOB, in his ‘History of the Voice’, Brathwaite analyses it, written out in patois- I think he did it from listening to the EP and writing it phonetically, because I’ve got DB&B, and it’s printed exactly the same as here. And that speaks to the fact that even though at this time Linton’s writing in standard English, if you were to hear him saying it, it becomes a completely different thing: his accent changes the whole thing. And it makes me think, how can a text that so needs to be heard in the voice of the person who made it- not what’s the point of printing it, because it’s obviously so more people can read it, but I find the tensions of that interesting.

FD: Yes. We all read Eliot for instance- and I’ve heard recordings of him reading Four Quartets, and it doesn’t give you a sense of a new dimension to the poem.

EB: So we don’t know for sure about the experimentations with creole, but I think I mentioned that this text we’ve been set is the republished, 2nd edition- so 9 years after the first in 1983. I wonder if you think there’s a particular reason for not expanding the volume, to include some of the work he was writing then. Because by then he’s published Sonny’s letter, and DB&B, released the albums which made him famous. He obviously wasn’t embarrassed of this stuff he’s done before.

FD: Well, even the publishers say ‘we don’t want collected works yet’, we’ll do them when you’re near to death.

EB: I’ve had to read a collected works of Linton!

FD: Well he’s getting old…

EB: My last question was- do you think Linton’s shift in writing style after this marked a shift in his intentions as poet. Maybe from politicisation to new means of expression for black creativity. VOTL&TD is riling up revolution of some kind and-

FD: Yeah, I think that the animus, the particularity of the activation has gone. There’s no Darcus in Jail or George Lindo- those were for particular publications of a monthly magazine- written for that. You couldn’t sell a poem in America or Jamaica, because nobody knows who that is, it’s a petty affair. Those poems were written for a particular audience, of a particular magazine, in a particular month. And they were just protest into rhyme. Of course he discovered that protest into rhyme works as journalism, but not as art. So I’m sure he’s shifted his focus to the attempt at permanence. The other thing, post-this, was that Linton befriended other poets from the Caribbean such as John La Rose. I don’t think La Rose is a good poet- or made an impact- but Linton befriended them, because Race Today deteriorated, got slower and went its way. Because frankly both Darcus and I left it.

EB: Do you think it was also kind of, not that the struggles had been won, but there was less-

FD: Times were changing certainly. And Linton then drifted off to the North to meet people like La Rose regularly, who of course he’d met in the Creation for Liberation times, World Book Fair and so forth.

EB: The way I’ve been thinking about it is like ’74, when this was written- there’s calls for uprising, calls for dying for what we believe in, even if that’s a lot of posturing. But I think even by the time this has been republished, there’s been the Brixton Riots, there’s been the battle of Lewisham. This stuff has happened.

FD: Yes.

EB: I think that you can attribute the change, that VOTL&TD is an attempt at politicisation, of whoever’s reading it, whoever’s watching; aimed at youth, the ‘youth’s of hope’, to stop ‘in-fighting’, start the righteous war- violence is justified if against police.

FD: Yes, he is saying that.

EB: And after this, it’s more like, ‘I’m speaking in my language…I’ve found my voice now’, like from the teaching in the BPM literary classes.

FD: Yes, adding the creole language to the literary tradition, maybe that’s what Linton will achieve.

EB: I think he knows that young people, 2nd generation children of immigrants, have got their own voice and that’s the protest and the riots and all this, is coming out of a lack of complacency. And the change, saying ‘I’m going to speak with this voice instead’, is a reflection of that.

FD: Yes.

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16thstreet · 7 years ago

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American Jewish Voices on Civil Rights and Discriminatory Legislation: Shad Polier

By Poorvi Bellur

Part 1: Shad Polier

Read Introduction

“The AJC began developing its program of using legislation and litigation to protect human rights in 1944 and 1945. At that time many respectable “liberal” organizations told us not to get involved in these projects. We ignored them and went ahead. We did so not because we’re a “liberal” organization but because we’re a Jewish one.” - Shad Polier

Joachim Prinz, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Shad Polier (American Jewish Historical Society, American Jewish Congress records, undated, 1916-2006, Call #I-77, Box 740, Folder 33)

Born in Aiken, South Carolina, Shad Polier was deeply aware of the systemic racism and resulting violence surrounding him in his hometown, leading him to nurture his desire to someday facilitate reform of " not only that, but other unfair things"[1]. Mr. Polier took this drive to become one of the most well-known Jewish social justice lawyers of the 20th century. He was in conversation with some of the most influential thinkers and politicians of his day, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Roy Wilkins, Thurgood Marshall, Hubert Humphrey, John Haynes Holmes, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and Adlai E. Stevenson. A student at the University of South Caroline, Shad Polier was horrified by the brutal racism he witnessed around him as he later recalled “Yet by the time I'd finished at the University of South: Carolina, there had been three separate lynchings in Aiken”[2]. After graduating from college, Polier received admission into Harvard Law School in 1929 and received a Masters degree by 1931.

Except for a brief stint in the private sector in New York, Polier’s career for the most part revolved around social justice law and civil rights reform. Just two years after his matriculation that country was consumed by the famous Scottsboro trial and the debates raging around it. Soon after this Polier became an active member of the NAACP, serving on its legal and education defense fund. By 1945, he became keenly involved in the work of the American Jewish Congress under the leadership of his father in law, Stephen Wise. As a part of the AJC, Polier went on to found and chair of the commission on Law and Social Action of the AJC, which launched legal battles against anti-Semitism, segregation and racism. A contributor to the AJC’s weekly on civil liberties, Polier helped pass the first statewide Fair Education Practices Law in 1947 prohibiting discrimination in college admissions based on race or religion.

Roy Wilkins receiving Convention Award from Shad Polier at National Convention (American Jewish Historical Society, American Jewish Congress records, undated, 1916-2006, Call #I-77, Box 745, Folder 21)

The American Jewish Historical Society’s archives containing Mr. Polier ‘s papers offer a wealth of resources on the fight for civil liberties as well as a window into the tumultuous relationship between the Black American and Jewish American communities in the early 20th century. In a comprehensive essay for an undated issue of the Office of Jewish Information (AJC) News Release entitled ‘The Jew and the racial crisis’[1], Polier explored the need for Jewish involvement in the Civil Rights movement, as “not a negro struggle, but an American struggle--the struggle for human equality and human dignity”. He expounds on the issue of school desegregation and states “We Jews believe that there is room in America to provide a full economic life for everyone” and criticizes the standpoint that de-segregation will lead to the influx of slum communities into urban areas. He argues that Jews as a part of the white community have fallen trap to this perception, despite being separate from the white community in that they value and remember the history of their oppression.

Polier’s papers contain evidence of not only the AJC’s commitment to the cause of Civil Rights, they also reveal the opposition to the AJC’s focus on Civil Rights from within the Jewish community itself. In a newspaper article from May 14th 1960, reporter George S Schuyler reported on this alleged internal conflict, headlined “Jews Deny ‘Heated’ Feud over Negro Rights Issue”[2]. The article cites alleged internal opposition to the organization’s emphasis on the Civil Rights movement, with other Jewish American organizations threatening to withdraw support if the Civil Rights movement remained a priority. An article by Gershom Jacobson from the National Jewish Post on April 20th of the same year asks “Should the congress give priority to a full Jewish program or should priority be given to civil liberties and Negro rights?”[3].

Polier and his colleagues at the AJC responded to these challenges by asserting that the best way to ensure equal rights, safety and opportunity for Jews in America is to correct the undemocratic nature of racist discriminatory legislation, a goal that therefore aligned the AJC’s mission with that of the NAACP and the leaders of the Civil Rights movement. In 1966, Polier joined Cleveland Robinson (Secretary treasurer of District 65 of the Retail, Wholesale and Department store union) and Samuel Hendel (Prof. of Political Science at City College) at a Symposium on Negro-Jewish Tensions[4]. The transcript of Polier’s speech at the event preserved in his papers is most revealing of the crisis in Jewish support for Civil Rights at the time.

[1] “The Jew and the racial crisis”, Office of Jewish Information News Release, American Jewish Congress, Shad Polier Papers Box 7, Folder 4

[2] “Jews Deny ‘Heated’ Feud over Negro Rights Issue”, May 14th 1960, George S Schuyler, Shad Polier Papers Box 7 Folder 4

[3] National Jewish Post and Opinion article by Gershom Jacobson, Shad Polier Papers, Box 7 Folder 4

[4] Transcript of Symposium on Negro-Jewish Tensions, April 7th 1966 in the Stephen Wise Congress House (Shad Polier, Cleveland Robinson, Samuel Hendel), Shad Polier Papers Box 7 Folder 4

[1] "Shad Polier, Lawyer, Dead; Active in Civil Rights Cases." The New York Times. The New York Times, 01 July 1976. Web. 14 Apr. 2017.

[2] "Shad Polier, Lawyer, Dead; Active in Civil Rights Cases." The New York Times. The New York Times, 01 July 1976. Web. 14 Apr. 2017.

#Civil Rights #American Jewish History #Jewish History #Poorvi Bellur

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ultraversecomics2019-blog · 6 years ago

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LEGACY OF THE HEBREW ISRAELITES

Captain Azariyah Ben Yosef

When Israel was a nation, they agreed to a set of covenant laws on Mount Sinai as a special contract with the living GOD (also known as AHAYAH in Hebrew which means “I AM”). It meant that they would be His people and He would be their God or “YAH”. Now with all contracts, which involves two parties, in this case YAH and Israel which had agreements that were spelled out in the contract or covenant. The ancient people of Israel were told that, if they obeyed the laws of the covenant, they would have YAH’s protection and be showered with many blessings, and if they disobeyed they would receive many punishments and curses.

Sadly, our ancestors chose to disobey, and following that fateful decision would thrust the Israelites into a series of calamities and troubles (“known as “Jacob’s trouble”), that would carry on throughout history and continue to plague the Black race unto this day! Before long, ancient Israel experienced a Civil War, which eventually split into two Kingdoms with the tribe of Judah leading the other tribes from the south and the rest of the tribes residing in the north. After a period of self-rule, the Assyrians threatened the independence of the Northern Kingdoms. We get that account in the Bible (2 Kings 18:11-12): “And the king of Assyria did carry away Israel into Assyria and put them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes: because they obeyed not the voice of the LORD their God, but transgressed His covenant, and all that Moses the servant of the LORD commanded and would not hear them, nor do them.” This explains why the Northern Kingdoms were first led away into captivity (or slavery), while the Kingdom of Judah, remained alone and vulnerable also did what was evil in the sight of the Most High (The Living GOD).

2 Kings Chapter 24:3 explains “Surely at the commandment of the LORD came upon Judah, to remove them out of His sight, for the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he did;” Because of disobedience, God allowed the Kingdom of Judah and its rich capital, Jerusalem to be conquered by the Babylonians. Seventy long years of captivity was experienced by the ancient Israelites which failed to make them permanently change their wicked ways. Time after time, God would save His people, and they would betray Him, and their own people, causing their captivity to be prolonged until the Persian Empire conquered them. Ezra 1:1: “Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, the LORD God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; He hath charged me to build Him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.” That temple was rebuilt and the Hebrews continued to do wickedness in the sight of Yah, our Heavenly Father, the Kingdom of Judah failed to understand the prophecies of His Son Yahushua, like described in: Exodus 12:5, Zechariah 13:6, Genesis 49:10, Isaiah 7:14, Micah 5:2, and many other verses in Bible Scripture. Yahushua highlighted many parables prophesying Israel’s betrayal of their Messiah and foretold the many curses that would consume them in the latter days (Matthew 21:33-43). When the Children of Israel were under Roman captivity, and they conspired with the Roman Empire to murder our own Savior. The fate of the Israelites was sealed! Yahushua’s prophecies all came to pass, and because of the rejection of the Prophets of God, the Son of God, and His disciples, the Israelites were forever doomed to inherit the curses outlined in the Book of Deuteronomy and they would continue to be cursed until they sincerely repent and endure until the second coming of our Messiah (Deuteronomy 28:15-68)!!! These prophecies continued throughout history, beginning with the conquest of the Romans, which lasted for hundreds of years, until they eventually lost control to the Arabs (who were Moors), which controlled Jerusalem until the time of the Crusades, in which; White Europeans robbed from all of the Black Civilizations, rewrote mankind’s history to hide the vast accomplishments of Black Empires, and eventually gained ultimate control over the world by reshaping history and reinstituting slavery (which was originally conceived by ancient African Civilizations like Egypt) with the sole purpose of developing racism and targeting the black Hebrews, who escaped Roman persecution in 70 A.D., and fled back into Africa.

White Europeans carried on the evil and satanic legacy of the White Greeks and the Roman Empire using Imperialism and brutal conquest to make sure Black people would never rule the world again, and their greatest fears were the mighty heritage of the Israelites! They sought help from Africans (as they did many times before) to assist them in enslaving the Hebrews, particularly from the tribe of Judah. But it didn’t stop there, White Europeans eventually enslaved all the children of the 12 tribes of Israel and scattered them throughout the world. With the ultimate downfall of the Hebrews through slavery, paved the way for White Europeans to steal their identities, their records, their heritage, and their Bible Scriptures and tamper with them. Eventually White Europeans named Khazars (of the seed of Amalek son of Esau), assumed the identities of the Israelites, and after World War II, with the help from America and its European allies, they formed their own Israeli nation, which was described in the prophecies of the Bible in the Book of Revelation Chapter 2:9 “I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.” Yahushua prophesied that the Gentiles (White people) would trample down Jerusalem, and remain in control of that land until He returns to save His people (us -the true Israelites). The people in the nation of Israel today are not Jews, they are Gentiles! A fact documented by numerous sources, including credible authors like Arthur Koestler in his book “The Thirteenth Tribe”, and Shlomo Sand and his book “The Invention of the Jewish People”. Many so-called Jews themselves admit to stealing the identities of Israelites (especially through online resources like YouTube.com), and admit that the real descendants of the ancient Israelites are the so-called Negros, and according to genetic sciences like DNA research, it has been revealed that Negroes are not African at all, they are biologically Semitic Hebrews! Plus, these facts are substantiated in ancient maps, documenting places in Africa, where Europeans could kidnap Africans that belonged to the 12 tribes of Israel and ship them to the Americas and Europe! On the maps downloaded on Google.com, simply type in the words “Negroland Map”, and you can clearly see the name of “Juda” (meaning JUDAH) inscribed in the western part of Africa! Backing up what was documented in the Holy Bible; White people are not from the lineage of Japheth, they are in fact from the lineage of Esau, and “Negros” or “African Americans” are from the lineages of Shem and Jacob (Genesis 25:19-34)! Genesis 25:23-26 states: “The LORD said to her ‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples (Black & White) from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other (Blacks), and the other will serve the younger’ (meaning prophecy of what will happen to Whites when Christ returns). When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. The first to come out was red (Caucasian), and his whole body was like a hairy garment; so they named him Esau (later he was given the name “Edom”). After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob (Father of the Israelites). Isaac was sixty years old when Rebekah gave birth to them.” So, what happened to the real people of Judah? Scholars, Historians, Archeologists, Anthropologists, and many credible book authors like Rudolph R. Windsor, Ivan Van Sertima, and Rev. Franklyn V. Beckles, Sr., and many groundbreaking books like “From Babylon to Timbuktu”, substantiate the historical facts which are documented in the Holy Bible, identifying who the true Israelites were and who their descendants are today; as well as, revealing through Bible Scripture that the Israelites are clearly identified by their long history of disobedience to God and His laws and must fit the curses outlined in the Book of Deuteronomy. The only race of people who completely match the curses in Deuteronomy Chapter 28 are the Negros! Many credible and historically documented books back up this important fact, including the legendary book “The Hebrewisms of West Africa”. White Europeans utilized the African Slave Trade initially started by the Arabs, and eventually it became big business and was financed by the Roman Catholic Church. The Transatlantic Slave Trade evolved into a political, religious, and economic campaign to kidnap the true Israelites, and force them into slavery for the purposes of: robbing the homeland, stealing their identities, rewriting history, altering their Hebrew Scriptures (which was preserved in the “Dead Sea” by the Essenes), and using the intelligence of the Hebrew slaves and their strength to build America into the superpower nation that it is today! The Western World – (offspring of the Roman Empire) invented perpetual slavery to demoralize the true nation of Israel and brainwash them by using the sadistic and false teachings of racist bastards like Willie Lynch to alter the destiny of the children of Israel, and create a political system of racism, feminism, corruption, terrorism, genocide, eugenics, and Black on Black prejudice to further humiliate and destroy God’s Chosen people. Today the Elite (also known as the Illuminati) and their paid: college professors, church pastors, entertainers, news media, public school officials, politicians, and community leaders will have you believe that none of these facts are true, or that it doesn’t matter, and continue to promote lies that White “Jews” are the real Israelites, and Negros are Africans or Hamites. In truth, we are Shemites, Israelites, and the Lost Tribes of Israel! The Zondervan Bible Dictionary also backs up this conclusion; stating that the so-called Negros are not Africans, but are the descendants of Shem (one of the three sons of Noah), and Shem is the Patriarch of the Hebrews! We are in fact Hebrews! In Joel 3:6 “The children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians (White people), that ye might remove them far from their border.” Sadly Psalm 83 is still in effect, our enemies continue to rule over us, women are appointed over the men, Blacks continue to (and will always) stab each other in the back, and they continue to hide our identities from us, they always seek to destroy us, and we destroy our own people through self-hatred and helping our enemies (the Gentiles) remain in power and to systematically murder us through Genocide, Imprisonment (Slavery), and Eugenics. We who know the truth are on our own, in constant danger, risk consistent slander, and must survive this time of Great Tribulation until Christ returns! For now, it’s every man for himself, you cannot trust anyone, especially those of our own people! Unfortunately, we are a race of backstabbers and idolaters (White people always exploit this fact), which is the main reason we fell as a people, succumb to a “slave mentality”, and most will never regain their former glory with God! You must stay encouraged, read your 1611 King James version Holy Bible, teach your children the truth about their true heritage as Hebrews, teach yourself and your family on how to obey the Commandments of God based on Bible Scripture, and never give up seeking God. Let go of the past, repent and sincerely change from all of your wicked ways, receive Christ as our Lord and Savior (John 3:16), be baptized in the Holy Ghost, and continue to persevere, obey all of God’s Commandments, read your Bible and pray to God every day, and be ready to await Yahshua's return from the heavens to rescue and deliver us, the true people of God, His Chosen seed, and His Remnant from Satan and his unholy kingdoms!

The greatest secret that is being kept in the world today is who the real children of God are. An important fact is that there is a real agenda aimed at Black Americans who are the only ones that are being targeted through the Western World’s Eugenics program. An agenda set forth by what the world calls the Illuminati. According to the Bible they are identified as the Synagogue of satan (Revelation 2:9 and 3:9).They have been the enemies to the Children of God since the Grecian Empire under Alexander the Greek. Unwittingly, they have been fulfilling Bible scriptures foretold by The Most High God of Israel (Genesis 3) to attack and destroy God’s Chosen Seed who remains in the earth today. This warfare has been spiritual, mental, and physical on all levels (Ephesians 6). They have used various tactics such as religion, that traces back to Ancient Babylon. This Elite has been behind the political, religious and educational system set to destroy the Children of Israel. The whole world has been behind this conspiracy against God’s children (Psalm 83). They in fact have always known who the true children of God are. The Children of God are in fact Negroes (Deuteronomy 28:68). This fact goes against all religious teachings, because we have been brainwashed into a satanic governmental system that is based on lies and is in fact committed to keeping the true identity of the Children of Israel a secret. This governmental system was identified publicly by U.S. President George Bush in the 1980’s -as the New World Order. A political masterplan that was originally set in place by the Egyptians. Which is why America models everything after Ancient Egypt (Exodus Chapter 1). These Illuminist powers used the blueprint of Ancient Egypt to systematically destroy the Children of God since their downfall after King Solomon’s reign. When they fell as a people they were enslaved by their enemies who are what the world calls Europeans today, but they are in fact what the Bible calls Edomites. These Edomites are in fact Caucasians according to the Bible, White people are the main enemies to the children of God. These enemies of God whitewashed mankind’s true history and the historical records of the Israelites. All in a coordinated effort to hide the real identity of God’s chosen people. They have used World Wars as a pretext to steal their homeland in 1948. The Jewish-Israeli people are in fact Romans and Jewish converts -not the true Jews according to the Bible and not of the bloodline of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. How could this happen? You may ask. Well the Bible answers that question. The Nation of Israel fell as a people due to disobedience to God’s laws, statutes, and commandments (Deuteronomy 28:15). This disobedience to their God (whose name is AHAYAH “I Am”), caused them to suffer curses that will plagued them forever and is a sign of who the real Jews are and how they will be scattered throughout the earth. During the 1600’s White Europeans saw an opportunity to take advantage of their downfall by conspiring with other Gentiles, such as the Africans to kidnap Negroes who are Hebrews and sell them into slavery. It is a common misconception that all Black people are the same. In fact they are not all the same, in truth the Black race is the most diverse race on the planet. Only the White race is all the same, this information has been proven by Anthropologists and History scholars around the world (Zondervan Bible dictionary). One may ask how did this race war between the Children of God and the Caucasoid hybrid race began. It was prophesied by the Most High in the Book of Genesis Chapter 3. When Eve betrayed her husband and made a covenant with satan. Satan promised her knowledge and power which is the reason why the world exalts women today (“Feminism” and Goddess worship), which is an abomination to God! A spiritual and racial battle was set in place when God told satan that there will be enmity (strife) between satan’s seed and God’s seed. Which means satan has a seed in the earth that is committed to destroying the seed of God (Genesis Chapters 25-27). This ancient battle was set in motion before the Great Flood during the days of Noah and resurfaced again with the birth of Jacob and Esau -two distinct nationalities (which means two different races of people). The descendants of Jacob became the children of God. The descendants of Esau evolved to become the Greco-Roman Empire. Esau’s lineage which is the seed of satan, officially put their plan in action to exterminate the Children of God in 70 A.D. When they laid siege against Jerusalem and forced most of the Hebrews to flee into Africa. This record is recorded in the books by the historian Josephus and the book “From Babylon to Timbuktu”, as well as many other historical records. The Hebrews a magnificent race of people that ruled all of Africa and before and after the downfall of the Roman Empire they ruled over Asia and Europe! According to historical records and in and outside of the Bible the Israelites continued to sin against their God. Which forced The Most High, AHAYAH to allow His children to be enslaved by their enemies time and time again and scattered them throughout the four corners of the earth. Which led to their final downfall during the Arab and Transatlantic slave trades. This takedown would begin a Gentile Coalition to set in place a plan of Eugenics and a system of perpetual slavery to keep the Children of Israel from ever becoming a nation again. Which is the real reason why America was established as a nation. The Romans became Jewish converts and financed the slave trades and created a western world society that became an extension of the Roman Empire (a “Rebirth”). Through this political and religious system they would keep the Children of God in constant physical and mental darkness. This system is called Zionism and Freemasonry. As identified by masons like Albert Pike in his book ”Morals & Dogma”. This elaborate plan would involve America's most celebrated icons. Who in fact are not heroes but satanists. People like George Washington, Willie Lynch, Margaret Sanger, and Uncle Tom Negroes like Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks and Jesse Jackson. The children of satan also set up a partnership with Negro religious and political leaders who were famous sellouts for bringing forth their New World Order agenda, to keep the Children of God in bondage in the New World which is called America! During the course of 400 years, this country has successfully carried on its racist and genicital conspiracy against Negroes to victimize them with poor housing, putting drugs in Black neighborhoods, promoting abortions, demonizing Black men, and forcing integration with White people and their institutions, and flooding the prison system with Black men due to false arrests and corrupt police departments. Which is why the American political and legal system has been encouraging the unlawful shootings and public executions of Black men all across America. Which is fueled by the Donald Trump Administration, which is the reason why the President and United States Congress is in agreement with building a border wall. They are fulfilling Bible prophecy listed in 2nd Esdras chapters 13-16. Their ancestors, the Romans did the same thing in 70 A.D when they set up a wall to starve out the Hebrews in Masada. The exciting and troubling times that are happening in America today, is in fact Bible prophecy being fulfilled before our eyes! Donald Trump’s true mission is to carry out the agenda carried on by Roman the Catholic Church. Which is why America is ramping up social immorality throughout the earth such as homosexuality and other sexual perversions like sodomy and sex trafficking. These are the vices that the Roman Catholic Church supports, which is why the news media is always revealing sexual perversions that Catholic priests are routinely involved in and being accused of. The enemies of God know who the real Jews are and are committed to enforcing a perpetual cycle of sin in America so that the Negroes who are Hebrews could never rise and come together or be a nation ever again. In conclusion, the solution to this growing problem is for Hebrews to return to their God AHAYAH, obey His commandments, repent of their sins and be baptized in the name of the Father, and the Son, and The Holy Spirit (Matthew Chapter 28 and the Book of Acts Chapter 2), and separate from Gentiles. The greatest mistake of Hebrews in America ever committed was to listen to evil women who were sellouts like Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks, and Cynthia Mckinney who pushed for integration and for Negro women to be leaders when the Black men were supposed to be the leaders of the Black race. Integration, mixing with Gentiles, and Feminism are an abomination according to the Bible. I highly recommend watching the historic documentary films: “Hebrew or the so called Negro” and “Hebrews to Negroes”. The truth that Negroes are the real Jews, and the Awakening of God's Chosen people is spreading all over the world! If you are a Hebrew, I sincerely hope that you take part in this glorious Hebrew Israelite movement. Repent from your sins and return to The Most High -God of the Israelites, so that The Lord our Messiah (whose name in the Hebrew language is “YASHAYAH”) can return and put these evil Gentiles who are our enemies into subjection and return AHAYAH’s Chosen Remnant to their former glory as the true NATION OF ISRAEL (Book of Revelation Chapter 7)!

THE END

About The Author: Author DR. FRANKLYN VICTOR BECKLES, JR.

Book Author Dr. Franklyn Victor Beckles, Jr., is the first

African American to organize and lead a civil rights march to protest against

bullying, and racial profiling and discrimination in Public Schools in Augusta

Georgia! Read about his inspiring works as a Community Leader by Author Nathan

Van Sertima: “Dr. Beckles vs. the Richmond County Board of Education”

(Amazon.com). www.aikenstandard.com/article/20160110/AIK0101/160119950/

Community Leader Dr. Franklyn V. Beckles, Jr., organized the first historic

Civil Rights Crusade against Racial Injustice and Bullying in Richmond County

Schools in the history of the state of Georgia! eBook Writer Dr. Beckles (a.k.a. "Azariyah Ben Yosef") is a unsung hero and pioneer in the Hebrew Israelite Movement in America and a true Witness of God, who is happily married and the father of eight children!

Famous Book Author and unsung Civil Rights Pioneer - HIS INSPIRING TRUE STORY: "THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CIVIL RIGHTS PIONEER DR. FRANKLYN VICTOR BECKLES, JR." I was born in 1972. My father and mother are Rev. Franklyn Victor Beckles, Sr., and Mrs. Samella Beckles. I was raised by good parents who were intelligent and educated, middle-class African Americans. My family’s biological roots stem from the African immigrants of the Caribbean and the Americas, whose ancestry can be traced back to the original Israelites, the Islamic Moors, and African Kings that ruled the first civilizations that once conquered the world! My life has always been a long struggle of setbacks, disappointments, and great accomplishments. Fortunately, God loves me and has blessed me with everlasting favor, which allows for my successes in life to our way my failures. I grew up in Southern California, and in 1988 my family relocated to the Central Savannah River Area (Aiken/Augusta), a place in South Carolina and Georgia were racism, government corruption, corporate job discrimination, feminism, homosexuality, political scandals, and social injustice are a unique scourge on society! It was here that I have lived most of my adult life, fighting against the evil vices mentioned of the natives in the C.S.R.A. I persevered with my father to become a positive Christian role model and inspirational leader in the Black Community for 28 years! Through the grace and mercy of God, I was able to withstand the overwhelming trials and tribulations of consistent racism, routine job discrimination, harassment, constant corrupt law enforcement, false arrests, growing social immorality, unjust feminism, government misconduct, habitual corporate injustice, violation of employee and minority civil rights in South Carolina and Georgia. Despite it all, I graduated from high school in 1991, and was the Scholar of the year and weightlifting champion. I served in the U.S. Armed Forces, and in 1999, I graduated with honors from the University of South Carolina State. I developed skill as a talented writer and became the first African American to become Editor-in-Chief of a major online Comic Book Publishing Company in 1999. By 2002, I graduated again at the top of my class from graduate school with a PhD., in Theological Studies and Divinity from the New Life Theological Seminary in Orangeburg, S.C. Officially I became a Church Pastor in 2005, and was ordained in 2008, where I married the love of my life, Mrs. Adrian Felicia Beckles. We quickly started a family of our own, and eventually became blessed to be the proud father of five wonderful children! I’m happily married and plan to stay that way till death do us part! We truly love each other (which you don’t see with most couples nowadays), and we plan to have more kids. The Lord Jesus Christ continues to bless me indeed. My greatest accomplishment is having a beautiful and blessed family. The Lord wants me to document my other achievements to be a testimony of His glory (John 3:16). I was a prominent and successful public school teacher for 8 years, appointed principal of a renowned private school, became a paid firefighter for 4 years, served as the first African American to be Captain of the Clearwater Fire Department, and was a volunteer firefighter for 16 years. I was a Christian Comic Book Writer, Church Pastor, Business Manager, Triathlete, and TV Evangelist for 11 years. In 2016, I broke a Guinness World Record by jogging across two states to raise awareness and money for the Georgia ALS Association, to find a cure to save the lives of victims of Lou Gehrig’s disease and help people like my father! But my happiest accomplishments was officially becoming a legitimate writer, civil rights activist, and published book author for the past 5 years, after struggling to get my work published in books and eBooks for the 17 years! Now I’m a paid Book Author, eBook Publisher, an internationally renowned Christian Comic Book Writer, and an African American Business Entrepreneur. I own and direct a prosperous and prominent Christian Private School, Bible College, and a Medical Transportation Company, and I reside in a wealthy neighborhood in Columbia County, Georgia. Back in 2013, I made the national news becoming a Civil Rights Pioneer! A famed Black Historian brought the attention of the world of my unsung contribution to Black History as a successful Community Leader, Civil Rights Activist, and Political Candidate in Richmond County, Georgia. In fact many books, magazines, and articles were written and published all over the Internet, documenting my achievements as a Black Community Leader by dozens of inspired authors and fans. Profiling me as a crusader against racial injustice and a new leader or spokesperson for the Black Community protesting against all forms of immorality like: racism, police corruption and brutality, feminism and homosexuality, and especially targeting the growing crisis of bullying in the public schools in Augusta Georgia. What started it all, was a growing problem with mistreatment, abuse, neglect, and discrimination against African American boys in the public schools of Aiken County, S.C., and the Richmond County area in Augusta Georgia (see historic book “Conspiracy Against Black Boys”). The original pioneer was my father, Rev. Franklyn Victor Beckles, Sr., a notable and respected College Professor since 1985! He was the first African American to establish a Charter School and Private Christian Academy in the city of Aiken South Carolina in 1988. There Rev. Beckles revolutionized the field of Education with his private school Aiken Academy, by promoting quality education to prevent minority students from all over the C.S.R.A., from dropping out of school or being constantly victimized by the embattled public school systems. In 2009, I followed in my father’s footsteps by establishing my own private school called The Children’s Christian to combat the problem of incompetent public school educators, negligent female and racist teachers, and corrupt Richmond County Board of Education administrators. In 2013, I launched a community campaign with other concerned parents to lead a public and televised march through the streets of downtown Augusta, to protest against the abuse of minority students by faculty members, and advocate against bullying in the public schools! We addressed the issue of dishonest Principals allowing bullying to go unpunished in their schools. As the leader of the team of protesters (which included my wife and kids), we forced the School Superintendent to make positive changes in the public schools, and later forced him to resign due to allegations of corruption and misconduct on the behalf of the Richmond County Board of Education. The civil rights march was a success, only my family stood by me all the way, and the Richmond County School System is much better now because of what we did. The publicity sparked the outrage of the whole Community against the Board of Education for all the criminal activity that they allowed to go on in their public schools! Somethings still haven’t changed. Many Black Students and their Parents were victimized and harassed by the Richmond County Board of Education, including me and my son Christian Alexander Beckles. Which is the main reason, why I started my own private school to properly educate my kids and other children in the community who were unfairly kicked out of the public schools due to discrimination. No one except for me and my family had the guts to stand up to the Richmond County Board of Education, and address the turmoil of bullying, corruption, false arrests, and injustice in the public schools in Augusta Georgia. For decades, nothing had been done to fight against discrimination and injustice of the Richmond County Board of Education since the 1960’s! The only progress was that now the government agencies and the businesses had both black and white people, and especially women harassing, targeting, and discriminating against Black Men (which is crisis all over the world)! The simple fact remains (and to this day) - that no Community Leader had ever stepped forward to fight the dishonest and negligent School System of Augusta Georgia, until I did from 2003 to 2014! My public campaign to address the issue of bullying in public schools was revolutionary and was celebrated by every newspaper and TV News Station across the C.S.R.A., that entire year of 2013! With support from over 800 people in the Black Community, I finally ran for office to be the next Board of Education Member of District 2, and now I’m a candidate for the position of School Superintendent of Richmond County! In 2014, Nathan Van Sertima published a historic book documenting my biography and contribution to African American History as a crusader for the Black Community, and considered me to be a modern version of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., despite being routinely slandered and attacked by disgruntled and bitter racist, feminist, homosexual, and Uncle Tom degenerates! God continues to bless me to survive and withstand the relentless backlash and blackball tactics of the elite cult of corrupt political and religious leaders in the Central Savannah River Area. Currently, I retired from teaching, became a full-time Book Author, and the father of six kids! My family and I continue to manage our businesses, and my son is the Director of my Christian School. I have published over 200 books, and I get paid in royalties for each book every month. I am a success in life, and I have no regrets, God still blesses me and shows me and my family favor every day. I am proud that He has allowed me to make a positive mark on the world, and to be a living testimony of His everlasting GRACE and MERCY!!!!

THE END

About Dr. F. Victor Beckles (a.k.a. “Captain Azariyah Ben Yosef”)

Book Author Dr. Franklyn Victor Beckles, Jr., is the first

African American to organize and lead a civil rights march to protest against

bullying, and racial profiling and discrimination in Public Schools in Augusta

Georgia! Read about his inspiring works as a Community Leader by Author Nathan

Van Sertima: “Dr. Beckles vs. the Richmond County Board of Education”

(Amazon.com). www.aikenstandard.com/article/20160110/AIK0101/160119950/

Famous

Community Leader Dr. Franklyn V. Beckles, Jr., organized the first historic

Civil Rights Crusade against Racial Injustice and Bullying in Richmond County

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/hebrewisraelites2019

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evilelitest2 · 8 years ago

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100 Days of Trump Season 2

Well yesterday I finished season 2 of 100 Days of Trump so it is time to look back and wonder at all we have accomplished...namely that I think i’ve been more productive than the President of the United States and isn’t that a scary thought. 51 of these suckers down, 49 to go. And seriously, watch the Wire People. For new readers, this is a project where I try to recommend a work every day to help explain WTF happened in 2016 and what we can do about it. Season one mostly focused on the psychology of the Trump voter, season 2 focused on the system which made Trump possible...and also the psychology of the Trump voter. Season 3 starts...today actually but you see what I mean.

100 Days of Trump, Understanding what happened in 2016

1) Assassins Understanding Trump populism

2) M by Fritz Lang Understanding fascism

3) It Happened Here Understanding Collaboration

4) City of Life and Death, Understanding military atrocities

5) Taxi Driver, understanding MRAs

6) Pink Floyd’s the Wall, the Psychological Appeal of Fascism

7) Conspiracy, how Fascists force their will o others

8) Maus, about how existing bigotry makes fascism possible.

9) Pan’s Labyrinth about the danger of letting roles subsume you.

10) Breaking Bad, summing up the Obama/Trump voter mindset

11) To Kill a Mockingbird, about the foundations that make bigotry possible.

12) All The President’s Men, about what the 4th estate is suppose to do.

13) 1776, about what America’s founding actually stood for

14) Protagonist, about the pattern of insecurity leading to radicalism

15) The Russians are Coming, about the appeal of an imaginary enemy

16) Stalag 17, how not to respond when there actually is a spy trying to fuck you over.

17) A Series of Unfortunate Events, about the normalization of evil and how to deal with it.

18) The Godfather (Part 1 and Part 2), about the Client Patron relationship, immigration in America, and how the Mob resembles American capitalism

19) The Social Network about the libertarian nerdbro culture which helps Trump even as he destroys them.

20) The Last King Scotland, on the Appeal of Authoritarianism

21) Dr. Strangelove: Why Nuclear War is a very bad thing

22) Bob Roberts: On how the Right Co-opts the Left

23) Rope, Looking at the psychology of Hipster Racism

24) State of the Union, about how our political system make Trump possible

25) The Complete History of the Soviet Union to the Melody of Tetris, about WTF is going on with Putin?

26) Watchmen, on what happens when a society losses sight of its national narrative.

27) The Big Short, explaining the economic crash that made this whole thing possible

28) I Claudius about the mindset/psychology of the political elites

29) Stressed Out, the millennial theme song

30) Angels in America, on the double think of the Political World

31) Yes Prime Minister, on how politics actually work

32) West Wing, on how politics should work.

33) Citizen Kane, on the dangers of mixing egotism and populism

34) Rodger and Me, on how Reaganomics and Neoliberalism ruined the Rust Belt

35) 8-Mile, on how the humiliation of poverty makes poor whites susceptible to authoritarian flattery.

36) Extra History/Extra Credits, on the problems our or democracy actually have a president.

37) CGPGrey: On Voting Systems and how a political system encourages certain brehaviors

38) Why are you so angry, on psychology of Angry Jack, the so-called “moderates” who allow the Alt Right to thrive.

39) The Lion in Winter, on the nature of being human and in power

40) Veronica Mars, on Class conflict and privilege in America

41) Bowling for Columbine, on the culture of Fear in America

42)The Great Gatsby about the vast carelessness that made Trump inevitable

42.5) 3 PS3, a little bonus episode on the attitude of the rich

43) Fargo, on the world that makes such obsession with wealth possible

44) Death of a Salesmen, about America’s addiction to Nostalgia

45)In Cold Blood, about shame and outlast in the Trump Movement

46) Into Pieces on the nihilistic psychology of Trump’s Personality Cult

47) The Jimquisition, about how corporations work and think

48) Paper’s Please, on how evil systems are able to sustain themselves.

49) The Third Man about how people can rationalize Evil

50) The Wire, about the institutions of America and why they fail.

51) Chinatown, about the why evil often wins

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marymosley · 5 years ago

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Ramos v. Louisiana and the Jim Crow Origins of Nonunanimous Juries

Ramos v. Louisiana, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court last Monday and summarized here, holds that the Sixth Amendment impartial jury guarantee gives defendants a right to a unanimous jury verdict in state trials. The case is making waves for reasons tangential to the dispute between the parties: in a dizzyingly split opinion, the justices argue more over the meaning of stare decisis (the court’s obligation to follow its prior holdings) than whether defendants in state courts may be convicted by a less-than-unanimous jury. This aspect of the opinion has been widely discussed (see analysis here, here, here, and here), and foreshadows the justices’ likely battle over an upcoming reproductive rights case. Since the divergent perspectives on stare decisis have been covered elsewhere, I will consider another issue that split the justices: the legal relevance of the nonunanimous jury law’s Jim Crow origins.

First, a pop quiz

Did North Carolina ever allow non unanimous jury verdicts in criminal trials? Read on for the answer.

The facts and procedural history of the case

Evangelisto Ramos was charged with a second-degree murder in New Orleans in 2014. He maintained his innocence and invoked his right to a jury trial. At the conclusion of the trial, ten jurors found Mr. Ramos guilty and two jurors found him not guilty. In the 48 states (including North Carolina) and federal court where all jurors must agree on a guilty verdict to convict a defendant, this would have resulted in a hung jury and a mistrial. Instead, because he was tried in Louisiana (before voters repealed the nonunanimous jury provision in 2019), Mr. Ramos was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Appellate courts in Louisiana affirmed the conviction, relying on Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U.S. 404 (1972), which had declined to extend the Sixth Amendment right to a unanimous jury to the states under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court granted certiorari and reversed Mr. Ramos’s conviction.

Mr. Ramos’s Sixth Amendment challenge

Mr. Ramos asserted that the nonunanimous jury verdict violated his Sixth Amendment right to a unanimous jury. His argument rested on the historical and continued meaning of the Sixth Amendment right to a trial by an impartial jury, which provides that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury[.]” He argued that the impartial jury guarantee, at the time the Sixth Amendment was adopted in 1789, included the right to a unanimous jury verdict. Neither party disputed that the right to a unanimous jury verdict was central to the jury trial right at common law, dating back to 1367. See Douglas G. Smith, The Historical and Constitutional Contexts of Jury Reform, 25 Hofstra L. Rev. 377, 397 (1996). The U.S. Supreme Court has referenced that history on several occasions, at one point describing the common law right to a unanimous jury as so widely known that “[n]o authorities are needed to sustain this proposition.” Am. Publ’g Co. v. Fisher, 166 U.S. 464, 468 (1897). And the Supreme Court had already agreed that the purpose and effect of the impartial jury guarantee of the Sixth Amendment was to codify the common law meaning of the jury right, including the right to a unanimous verdict. See, e.g., Patton v. United States, 281 U. S. 276, 288 (1930). The only question before the Ramos court was the applicability of that aspect of the right to the states—whether the right was incorporated under the Fourteenth Amendment to bind states as well as the federal government. The biggest hurdle for Mr. Ramos to overcome was that the earlier decision, Apodaca, already answered this question in the negative.

Nonunanimous jury verdicts sound race-neutral: what’s race got to do with it?

Justice Gorsuch begins his opinion, in a portion joined by a narrow majority of the justices (Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kavanaugh), with a history lesson not on the Sixth Amendment but on nonunanimous juries in Louisiana. It is an ugly history, revealing a white supremacist backlash to the growing rights and political power of black people at the end of the nineteenth century. The move away from unanimous juries in Louisiana emerged in response to constitutional, statutory, and judicial efforts to secure the rights of black people to serve on juries through the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303 (1880) (holding that racial discrimination in jury selection compromises the right of trial by jury and violates the Equal Protection Clause). Justice Gorsuch explains that the nonunanimous jury provision originated in Louisiana’s 1898 constitutional convention, the purpose of which, according to one committee chairman, was to “establish the supremacy of the white race.” Ramos v. Louisiana, Slip. Op. at 2. Alongside other Jim Crow provisions intended to disenfranchise black people, including a poll tax and combined literacy and property ownership test, the nonunanimous jury provision targeted black people without explicitly naming this intent in its text. “With a careful eye on racial demographics, the convention delegates sculpted a facially race-neutral rule permitting 10-to-2 verdicts in order to ensure that African-American juror service would be meaningless.” Slip Op. at 2 (internal quotations omitted).

Justice Kavanaugh explains why nonunanimous jury provisions limit the influence of black jurors on the outcome of criminal trials:

Then and now, non-unanimous juries can silence the voices and negate the votes of black jurors, especially in cases with black defendants or black victims, and only one or two black jurors. The 10 jurors “can simply ignore the views of their fellow panel members of a different race or class.” Johnson v. Louisiana, 406 U. S. 356, 397 (1972) (Stewart, J., dissenting). That reality—and the resulting perception of unfairness and racial bias—can undermine confidence in and respect for the criminal justice system. The non-unanimous jury operates much the same as the unfettered peremptory challenge, a practice that for many decades likewise functioned as an engine of discrimination against black defendants, victims, and jurors. In effect, the non-unanimous jury allows backdoor and unreviewable peremptory strikes against up to 2 of the 12 jurors.

Slip Op. at 35 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring in part).

In 1974, Louisiana readopted its nonunanimous jury provision. Why? The justices don’t seem sure. Justice Gorsuch briefly concludes that “it’s hard to say why these laws persist”; Justice Kavanaugh speculates that the continued reliance on nonunanimous juries “may have been motivated by neutral principles (or just by inertia)”; and Justice Alito notes that the stated purpose of the nonunanimous jury provision in 1974 was judicial efficiency and, in the debate, “no mention was made of race.” Slip Op. at 3 (Alito, J., dissenting). But Justice Sotomayor observes that when it comes to old laws originally motivated by racial animus, it is often the case that “States’ legislatures never truly grapple[] with the laws’ sordid history in reenacting them.” Slip Op. at 33 (Sotomayor, J., concurring in part). She finds that Louisiana’s only effort to do so came not in 1974 but just last year, when Louisiana voters approved a 2019 referendum repealing the nonunanimous jury provision. The campaign for a unanimous jury right focused in part on the racist origins and continuing racially disparate outcomes of the nonunanimous jury law.

Raise your hand if you think that the Jim Crow origins of Louisiana’s nonunanimous jury provision is important to consider in this case

Not all nine justices think we should consider this history. Only five do. Four justices share Justice Gorsuch’s perspective that the racist history of Louisiana’s nonunanimous jury verdict law matters here. Concurring in most of Justice Gorsuch’s opinion, Justice Sotomayor writes separately to stress how important the Jim Crow history is to the invalidity of nonunanimous juries. Justice Kavanaugh also spends part of his lengthy concurrence discussing the significance of the racism that gave rise to nonunanimous juries. Justice Thomas ignores the Jim Crow history altogether, and Justice Alito, joined by Justice Kagan and Chief Justice Roberts, seems more offended by the majority’s audacity to observe that racism underpinned the nonunanimous jury provision than by the racism itself. Slip Op. at 62-66 (Alito, J., dissenting).

It may sound unremarkable that five justices in this case examine the racist history underlying Louisiana’s nonunanimous jury provision. In reviewing the constitutionality of a provision arising out of a white supremacist state constitutional convention, wouldn’t the Court have to reckon with that history? Certainly, if Mr. Ramos had raised an equal protection challenge to his nonunanimous jury verdict, the Court would have been squarely presented with the legal question of whether the nonunanimous jury provision was unlawful because it was motivated by a discriminatory purpose and had a discriminatory effect. But outside the equal protection context, the U.S. Supreme Court has marginalized the relevance of racist intent when such a consideration is not an essential element of a defendant’s legal claim, for example, when a traffic stop is challenged as racially motivated in violation of the Fourth Amendment. See, e.g., Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 813 (1996) (“[T]he Constitution prohibits selective enforcement of the law based on considerations such as race. But the constitutional basis for objecting to intentionally discriminatory application of laws is the Equal Protection Clause, not the Fourth Amendment. Subjective intentions play no role in ordinary, probable-cause Fourth Amendment analysis.”).

Why did a majority of the Court look so closely at this history in Ramos, and what exactly did they do with it? It is easy enough to note that five justices think that the racist origins of the law matter here and four justices apparently think they don’t. The more difficult question is how and why that history matters. How, if at all, does Jim Crow history influence the justices’ resolution of the legal questions before them in Ramos?

The answer is elusive. Justice Gorsuch highlights the racist origins of the law and criticizes the Apodaca plurality for ignoring that history, but in a footnote concedes that his discussion of Louisiana’s white supremacist constitutional convention is dicta, as nonunanimous juries would violate the Sixth Amendment impartial jury guarantee whether or not they were designed to diminish the influence of black jurors. Justice Sotomayor emphasizes that “the racially biased origins of the Louisiana and Oregon laws uniquely matter here,” but what does it mean legally to “matter”? Does the history matter because it serves as important context; because the Court has an ethical obligation to acknowledge painful aspects of our history (a “never again” perspective); or does it somehow factor into the resolution of the questions before the Court? She does not detail how the Jim Crow origins of Louisiana’s nonunanimous juries affect the Court’s analysis of the legal issues. She implies that an equal protection claim may have succeeded here, referencing the analogous case of United States v. Fordice, 505 U. S. 717, 729 (1992), which held that policies “‘traceable’ to a State’s de jure racial segregation and that still ‘have discriminatory effects’ offend the Equal Protection Clause.”

Justice Kavanaugh alone specifies how the origins of Louisiana’s nonunanimous juries influence the resolution of this case. He concludes that, once the court has determined that the correct resolution of the issues conflicts with a prior court holding (here, the Apodaca ruling), the court is more justified in departing from precedent when it has caused “significant negative jurisprudential or real-world consequences.” Slip Op. at 42 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring in part). The nonunanimous jury provision “tolerates and reinforces a practice that is thoroughly racist in its origins and has continuing racially discriminatory effects,” a significant negative consequence. This framework brings the Jim Crow history into the stare decisis analysis, not the determination of the scope of the Sixth Amendment right to a unanimous jury, or whether, under the Fourteenth Amendment, this right binds the states.

Why does the Jim Crow discussion feature so prominently? Is it easier for justices to confront vestiges of racism (a la Ramos) than to confront contemporary allegations of more widespread racial bias (a la Whren)? Or perhaps the justices are more likely to consider racism as relevant when ruling on Sixth Amendment challenges involving the right to a jury trial? Recently, in Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, 137 S. Ct. 855, 867 (2017), the U.S. Supreme Court held that in cases involving evidence of racial bias in juror deliberations, the rule preventing the court from hearing juror testimony about statements made during deliberations must yield so that the court may consider whether the alleged racial bias violated the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial. That was not an equal protection case, but a case concerning the right to a fair and impartial jury, and the Court’s decision rested (as Justice Kavanaugh explains in Ramos) on a recognition of “the imperative to purge racial prejudice from the administration of justice generally and from the jury system in particular.” Id. at 13–14 (quoting Pena-Rodriguez and collecting cases). So, a working theory: when a defendant asserts a Fourth Amendment right, racial bias generally doesn’t matter, but when asserting a Sixth Amendment right, it might? Or maybe, as my colleague Shea Denning has considered and Justice Ginsburg has suggested, Whren was wrongly decided?

The bottom line here is that a majority of the court concluded that it is important to consider Jim Crow history when ruling on whether the unanimous verdict aspect of the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial applies to the states. Although the justices in the majority do not agree on how this history factors into the analysis, the decision suggests that Jim Crow origins may support the invalidation of laws even outside of equal protection challenges.

What does this mean in states like North Carolina where jury unanimity was already guaranteed?

The holding in Ramos does not have immediate implications for North Carolina, where people accused of crimes already had a right to a unanimous jury. However, it raises interesting questions about the possibility that Jim Crow laws may have evolved into current law without careful examination or reconsideration. Kavanaugh asserts that the “nonunanimous jury is today the last of Louisiana’s Jim Crow laws.” (Slip. Op. Kavanaugh, J., concurring, at 48.) Assuming that this is true, what about in other states? What about here?

In 1898, the year of Louisiana’s constitutional convention, North Carolina saw similar white supremacist political activity, propaganda, and related violence, including the only successful political coup in United States history, in which white supremacists overthrew the city government of Wilmington, killing numerous black residents, forcing the resignation of the mayor, police chief, and aldermen, and burning down the headquarters of a black newspaper. Caleb Crain, City Limits: What a white-supremacist coup looks like, The New Yorker, April 27, 2020. As in Louisiana, “white supremacists went on to alter state law so as to disenfranchise black people[;]” while there were “more than a hundred and twenty-five thousand registered black voters in North Carolina in 1896 . . . only six thousand or so were still on the books by 1902.” Id. at 67. See also Thomas W. Frampton, The Jim Crow Jury, 71 Vanderbilt Law Review 1593, 1613-14 fns 118, 123, 124 (2019) (quoting articles published in 1898 and 1899 in the Semi-Weekly Messenger, a Wilmington newspaper, making white supremacist appeals for nonunanimous juries, one of which suggests that nonunanimous jury verdicts will reduce the need for lynchings). Are any of the laws passed in this era and motivated by this campaign of white supremacy still on the books?

The answer, almost certainly, is yes. Consider the North Carolina law making it a felony to vote when ineligible, even if the voter is unaware that he or she is ineligible to vote. This law dates back nearly unaltered to this same political effort to disenfranchise black voters around the turn of the twentieth century. Are there others? Some aspects of jury selection, including the use of peremptory strikes, have been historically entangled with discrimination. See April Anderson, Peremptory Challenges at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century: Development of Modern Jury Selection Strategies as Seen in Practitioners’ Trial Manuals 16 Stan. J. C.R. & C.L. 1 (2020). Historians at UNC are working on documenting North Carolina’s Jim Crow Laws, which may help identify others still in operation.

Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence in Ramos cautions that we may be governed by dated laws, in North Carolina and elsewhere, that have been reenacted or maintained without meaningful consideration of their Jim Crow origins and purpose. At least some of our legal architecture is built on the same troubling historical foundations described in Ramos. The splintered Ramos opinion does not provide a roadmap for resolving legal challenges related to Jim Crow laws—outside the usual equal protection approach—but a majority of the justices insist that this history cannot be ignored.

About that pop quiz

Yes, North Carolina briefly allowed non-unanimous jury verdicts in the 17th century. See Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 98 n.45 (1970). I don’t know what motivated the adoption of nonunanimous juries in North Carolina or the return to unanimity. If you know more about this history, please leave a comment, and of course, feel free to comment on any other issues raised by the Ramos decision.

The post Ramos v. Louisiana and the Jim Crow Origins of Nonunanimous Juries appeared first on North Carolina Criminal Law.

Ramos v. Louisiana and the Jim Crow Origins of Nonunanimous Juries published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

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lovetgirlytiffanylove · 5 years ago

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Indigenous Participation in D-Day and the Second World War – Active History

By: Shawkay Ottmann

Indigenous veteran Clarence Silver as soon as stated, “When I served overseas I was a Canadian. When I came home I was an Indian.”[1] These two strains illustrate the Indigenous expertise in the Second World War. Indigenous troopers fought in all major battles Canada participated in, including D-Day, aspect by aspect with non-Indigenous soldiers. The distinction was in the state of affairs Indigenous soldiers came from and returned.

D-Day, 6 June 1944, was a pivotal day in the Second World War. When the Allied forces landed on five seashores in Normandy it signaled the beginning of the finish of Nazi Germany. Likewise, the conflict was pivotal for Indigenous peoples in the battle for Indigenous rights and equality. In each conditions, these experiences turned decisive influences in the course of history.

Reportedly there were three,090 Canadian Indigenous individuals in the Second World War. This quantity solely reflects a portion of those who served. Métis, Inuit, and Non-Status First Nations individuals have been excluded from the rely, along with Indigenous individuals who served in American Forces.[2] Amongst those who served and have been present on D-Day have been Francis William Godon, a Métis man in the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, George Horse from Thunderchild First Nation who joined the Elite Sapper Battalion, and Tom Naphtahli “Little Chief” Settee with The Regina Rifle Regiment.

Francis Godon (on right) with two of his buddies at Shilo, Manitoba, simply earlier than going abroad, 1943. Picture from Francis Godon by way of The Memory Challenge.

The primary barrier Indigenous peoples faced was at enlistment. Indigenous peoples primarily served in the infantry, both on account of the quantity of manpower the infantry required and the entrance restrictions many Indigenous individuals could not cross in other branches of the army. Each the air pressure and the navy initially required enlistees to be white.[3] Additionally, meeting the instructional normal was a challenge for many Indigenous individuals. In Godon’s group, the white faculty wouldn’t admit Indigenous youngsters, and so Godon was rejected from the army 3 times earlier than he discovered a place in the army kitchens and ultimately labored his approach into the infantry.[4] It was only after making it into the infantry that the Indigenous expertise was just like the non-Indigenous expertise. Certainly, becoming a member of the army provided new freedoms to Indigenous peoples, most noticeably from the rampant discrimination confronted in Canadian society.

As such, Godon and Horse have been like many Canadian soldiers who didn’t see action previous to D-Day. Godon educated on the Isle of Wight earlier than boarding the ship taking him to Normandy, and Horse educated off the coast of Scotland. Each men knew that they have been coaching for an invasion, however the particulars beyond that have been minimal. Godon stated, “we knew we were going to the invasion, but we didn’t know where.”[5] The secrecy that surrounded the assault was properly guarded to take care of the factor of surprise. Horse stated, “The Germans thought we were going to cross at Dover to Calais but we landed… where they least expected us.”[6]

On D-Day over 155,000 British, American, and Canadian troops crossed the English Channel. On the ground, the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division and the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade have been tasked with taking Juno Seashore. 14,000 Canadians landed on the seashore that day.[7] When the time got here, the males have been loaded onto ships and taken across the English Channel. Godon recalled a commanding officer saying, “you boys now, I guess you know what you’re getting into. Well, we’ve been waiting for this, we trained for this… I’m going to tell you something that’s not very good… most of you guys won’t be coming home.”[8] The officer’s warning proved truthful. During the Battle of Normandy, Canadians have been to endure the highest casualties in the British Military Group, 359 soldiers dying on D-Day alone, 33 of the 359 Indigenous.[9]

All three soldiers recall men falling on the seashore. Godon described making the seashore after leaping off the touchdown craft, operating for his life, and crawling off the seashore. He said, “So you had to keep going. Which was a hard thing to do because the beach was something like ketchup…That’s how blood red the beach was.”[10] Likewise, Sofa recalled, “I don’t know how I ever made it. Guys were dropping here and there; we kept running.”[11] In what was a very widespread expertise, the seashore was a battlefield that required velocity and resulted in the deaths of many. In this occasion, the sacrifice paid off. D-Day was finally successful. Settee stated, “Finally we got into town [Courseulles-sur-Mer] and started street fighting… We held that town there. We held it.”[12] By opening a further front, D-Day gave the western Allies the foothold they wanted to liberate France and finish the conflict in Europe on 8 Might 1945.

Tommy Prince (left), Canada’s most highly adorned First Nations soldier, and Tom Settee pose collectively during training. Image from Tom Sofa by way of The Memory Undertaking.

Like when enlisting, Indigenous veterans confronted distinctive challenges upon returning to Canada. Indigenous peoples weren’t Canadian citizens however wards of the state till 1960. The Department of Indian Affairs was tasked with caring for Indigenous peoples with the final objective to “do away with the tribal system and assimilate the Indian people in all respects with the inhabitants of the Dominion…”[13] The objective was enfranchisement, which might permit for movement off reserves and the proper to vote, however would also remove an individual’s Indian Standing and access to Treaty Rights. Whereas it was not necessary to enfranchise to hitch the army, some Indian Brokers instructed it was a requirement. Those that did enfranchise have been evicted from their communities after the conflict as they have been not Standing Indians and have been subsequently not allowed to stay on reserves. For many who didn’t enfranchise, Indigenous veterans acquired no or lesser advantages in comparability to non-Indigenous veterans. This was as a result of the undeniable fact that many Indigenous veterans’ solely access to Veteran Affairs was via Indian Affairs, who have been paternalistic and continued to see Indigenous individuals as incapable of operating their very own lives.[14] As such, it took 21 years of preventing for Godon to obtain his pension after the warfare.[15] A further battle based mostly solely on Indigenousness.

On one hand, many Indigenous veterans fell into addictions after returning to Canada. As an example, Godon turned an alcoholic until his son helped him get sober.[16]

On the other, the army additionally taught Euro-Canadian discipline and management expertise that led to the information and political group required to improve communities and stand up to the Canadian authorities. This created a surge of organizations preventing for Indigenous rights and equality, led by Second World War veterans. Indigenous veterans’ leadership additionally grew on a group degree. Settee taught morals and discipline via boxing in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, helping many younger men off the streets by means of the sport. Certainly, the Tom Sofa Boxing Membership still exists in Prince Albert.[17]

Tom Sofa standing next to the portray he ready of Juno Seashore in 2010. Historica Canada.

Moreover, as a consequence of Indigenous involvement in the struggle, non-Indigenous help elevated. After preventing a struggle towards racism, Canadians have been discomforted by the remedy of Indigenous peoples in their own nation. Subsequently, with Indigenous management and non-Indigenous help, the government created the Particular Joint Committee of 1946-48, which would result in modifications in the Indian Act in 1951.[18]

D-Day was a pivotal day in the Second World War and the struggle towards Nazi Germany. Likewise, Indigenous participation in the conflict was pivotal in the battle for equality and rights in Canada for Indigenous peoples. Whereas D-Day was only the begin of the Battle of Normandy, the struggle was solely the start of a battle, persevering with an older warfare with the Canadian government to deal with Indigenous peoples as allies and sovereign nations as an alternative of wards, as that they had been prior to 1830.[19] Storming Juno Seashore required velocity and leaving the fallen behind however the struggle for Indigenous rights is far slower. It’s also a struggle in which stopping for the fallen is a necessity. In the strategy of reconciliation, the sacrifices will pay off, identical to the sacrifices of those that fell on Juno Seashore.

Shawkay Ottmann has a Main in History and a Minor in Style Design from Ryerson College. She is of combined heritage, her ancestors encapsulating the three I’s: Indigenous, Invader and Immigrant. She is Anishinaabe from Fishing Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan, as well as British, German, Polish and Norwegian.

Additional Reading:

Davison, Janet Frances. “We Shall Remember: Canadian Indians and the World War II” Dissertation. Trent University. 1993.

Godon, Francis William. “Veteran Stories: Francis William Godon” The Reminiscence Challenge. Accessed 15 April 2019. http://www.thememoryproject.com/stories/539:francis-william-godon/

Macdonald, John A. to L. Vankoughnet, January three 1887, Sessional Papers of the Dominion of Canada, Vol. 16, First Session of the Sixth Parliament, Session 1887 (No20B), p. 20B-37. Accessed February 2019. http://eco.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.9_08052_20_16/502?r=0&s=1

Miller, J.R., Skyscrapers Cover the Heavens. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.

Prince Albert Day by day Herald. “Thomas Naphthali Settee”, InMemoriam.ca, 2012. Accessed Accessed 20 April 2019. http://www.inmemoriam.ca/view-announcement-292672-thomas-naphthali-settee.html

Settee, Thomas Naphtahli. “Veteran Tales: Tom Naphtahli “Little Chief” Sofa”, The Memory Challenge, Accessed 15 April 2019. http://www.thememoryproject.com/stories/2525:tom-naphtahli-little-chief-settee/

Sexsmith, Pamela. “George Horse – a veteran tells his tale”, AMMSA.com, 2003. Accessed 15 April 2019. https://ammsa.com/publications/saskatchewan-sage/george-horse-veteran-tells-his-tale

Veterans Affairs Canada. “Canada Remembers – D-Day and the Battle of Normandy”, Veterans Affairs Canada, 6 March 2019, Accessed 20 April 2019. https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/history/historical-sheets/d-day

Veterans Affairs Canada. “Outstanding Accomplishments – Branching Out”, Veterans Affairs Canada. Accessed 14 February 2019, Accessed 15 April 2019. https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/those-who-served/indigenous-veterans/native-soldiers/branching

Veterans Affairs Canada. “Two Decades Later”, Veterans Affairs Canada, 14 February 2019. Accessed 15 April 2019. https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/those-who-served/indigenous-veterans/native-soldiers/second_response

Xavier, Jules and Stag, Shilo. “Francis William Godon 1924-2019 Métis D-Day veteran passes 75 years after harrowing experience at Juno Beach”, Government of Canada, 26 February 2019. Accessed 25 April 2019. http://www.army-armee.forces.gc.ca/en/news-publications/national-news-details-no-menu.page?doc=francis-william-godon-1924-2019-metis-d-day-veteran-passes-75-years-after-harrowing-experience-at-juno-beach/jskwaa54

Notes

[1] Janet Frances Davison, “We Shall Remember: Canadian Indians and the World War II” Dissertation. Trent University. 1993: 88. [2] Veterans Affairs Canada, “Two Decades Later”, Veterans Affairs Canada, 14 February 2019, Accessed April 15, 2019. https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/those-who-served/indigenous-veterans/native-soldiers/second_response [3] Veterans Affairs Canada, “Outstanding Accomplishments – Branching Out”, Veterans Affairs Canada, Accessed 14 February 2019, Accessed 15 April 2019. https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/those-who-served/indigenous-veterans/native-soldiers/branching [4] Francis William Godon, “Veteran Stories: Francis William Godon”, The Reminiscence Venture, Accessed 15 April 2019. http://www.thememoryproject.com/stories/539:francis-william-godon/ [5] Godon, “Veteran Stories: Francis William Godon” [6] Pamela Sexsmith, “George Horse – a veteran tells his tale”, AMMSA.com, 2003, Accessed 15 April 2019. https://ammsa.com/publications/saskatchewan-sage/george-horse-veteran-tells-his-tale [7]Veterans Affairs Canada, “Canada Remembers – D-Day and the Battle of Normandy”, Veterans Affairs Canada, 6 March 2019, Accessed 20 April 2019. https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/history/historical-sheets/d-day [8] Godon, “Veteran Stories: Francis William Godon” [9] Veterans Affairs Canada, “Canada Remembers – D-Day and the Battle of Normandy” [10] Godon, “Veteran Stories: Francis William Godon” [11] Thomas Naphtahli Sofa, “Veteran Tales: Tom Naphtahli “Little Chief” Sofa”, The Memory Undertaking, Accessed 15 April 2019. http://www.thememoryproject.com/stories/2525:tom-naphtahli-little-chief-settee/ [12] Ibid. [13] John A. Macdonald to L. Vankoughnet, January three 1887, Sessional Papers of the Dominion of Canada, Vol. 16, First Session of the Sixth Parliament, Session 1887 (No20B), p. 20B-37 http://eco.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.9_08052_20_16/502?r=0&s=1 [14] Davison, “We Shall Remember”, 85-6. [15] Jules Xavier and Shilo Stag, “Francis William Godon 1924-2019 Métis D-Day veteran passes 75 years after harrowing experience at Juno Beach”, Authorities of Canada, 26 February 2019, Accessed 25 April 2019. http://www.army-armee.forces.gc.ca/en/news-publications/national-news-details-no-menu.page?doc=francis-william-godon-1924-2019-metis-d-day-veteran-passes-75-years-after-harrowing-experience-at-juno-beach/jskwaa54 [16] Ibid. [17] Prince Albert Day by day Herald, “Thomas Naphthali Settee”, InMemoriam.ca, 2012, Accessed Accessed 20 April 2019. http://www.inmemoriam.ca/view-announcement-292672-thomas-naphthali-settee.html [18] Davison, “We Shall Remember”, 90-95, 110. [19] J.R. Miller, Skyscrapers Disguise the Heavens, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 118-119.

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#Blog #Canadian history #D-Day #enfranchisement #Indigenous History #series

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iamthelightofyourlife · 5 years ago

Text

Indigenous Participation in D-Day and the Second World War – Active History

By: Shawkay Ottmann

Francis Godon (on right) with two of his buddies at Shilo, Manitoba, simply earlier than going abroad, 1943. Picture from Francis Godon by way of The Memory Challenge.

Tommy Prince (left), Canada’s most highly adorned First Nations soldier, and Tom Settee pose collectively during training. Image from Tom Sofa by way of The Memory Undertaking.

On one hand, many Indigenous veterans fell into addictions after returning to Canada. As an example, Godon turned an alcoholic until his son helped him get sober.[16]

Tom Sofa standing next to the portray he ready of Juno Seashore in 2010. Historica Canada.

Additional Reading:

Davison, Janet Frances. “We Shall Remember: Canadian Indians and the World War II” Dissertation. Trent University. 1993.

Godon, Francis William. “Veteran Stories: Francis William Godon” The Reminiscence Challenge. Accessed 15 April 2019. http://www.thememoryproject.com/stories/539:francis-william-godon/

Miller, J.R., Skyscrapers Cover the Heavens. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.

Prince Albert Day by day Herald. “Thomas Naphthali Settee”, InMemoriam.ca, 2012. Accessed Accessed 20 April 2019. http://www.inmemoriam.ca/view-announcement-292672-thomas-naphthali-settee.html

Sexsmith, Pamela. “George Horse – a veteran tells his tale”, AMMSA.com, 2003. Accessed 15 April 2019. https://ammsa.com/publications/saskatchewan-sage/george-horse-veteran-tells-his-tale

Notes

The post Indigenous Participation in D-Day and the Second World War – Active History appeared first on DWJ Tech.

#Blog #Canadian history #D-Day #enfranchisement #Indigenous History #series

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mytherapistknowsaboutyouthings · 5 years ago

Text

Indigenous Participation in D-Day and the Second World War – Active History

By: Shawkay Ottmann

Francis Godon (on right) with two of his buddies at Shilo, Manitoba, simply earlier than going abroad, 1943. Picture from Francis Godon by way of The Memory Challenge.

Tommy Prince (left), Canada’s most highly adorned First Nations soldier, and Tom Settee pose collectively during training. Image from Tom Sofa by way of The Memory Undertaking.

On one hand, many Indigenous veterans fell into addictions after returning to Canada. As an example, Godon turned an alcoholic until his son helped him get sober.[16]

Tom Sofa standing next to the portray he ready of Juno Seashore in 2010. Historica Canada.

Additional Reading:

Davison, Janet Frances. “We Shall Remember: Canadian Indians and the World War II” Dissertation. Trent University. 1993.

Godon, Francis William. “Veteran Stories: Francis William Godon” The Reminiscence Challenge. Accessed 15 April 2019. http://www.thememoryproject.com/stories/539:francis-william-godon/

Miller, J.R., Skyscrapers Cover the Heavens. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.

Prince Albert Day by day Herald. “Thomas Naphthali Settee”, InMemoriam.ca, 2012. Accessed Accessed 20 April 2019. http://www.inmemoriam.ca/view-announcement-292672-thomas-naphthali-settee.html

Sexsmith, Pamela. “George Horse – a veteran tells his tale”, AMMSA.com, 2003. Accessed 15 April 2019. https://ammsa.com/publications/saskatchewan-sage/george-horse-veteran-tells-his-tale

Notes

The post Indigenous Participation in D-Day and the Second World War – Active History appeared first on DWJ Tech.

#Blog #Canadian history #D-Day #enfranchisement #Indigenous History #series

0 notes

eyasutesfaye11-blog · 5 years ago

Text

Indigenous Participation in D-Day and the Second World War – Active History

By: Shawkay Ottmann

Francis Godon (on right) with two of his buddies at Shilo, Manitoba, simply earlier than going abroad, 1943. Picture from Francis Godon by way of The Memory Challenge.

Tommy Prince (left), Canada’s most highly adorned First Nations soldier, and Tom Settee pose collectively during training. Image from Tom Sofa by way of The Memory Undertaking.

On one hand, many Indigenous veterans fell into addictions after returning to Canada. As an example, Godon turned an alcoholic until his son helped him get sober.[16]

Tom Sofa standing next to the portray he ready of Juno Seashore in 2010. Historica Canada.

Additional Reading:

Davison, Janet Frances. “We Shall Remember: Canadian Indians and the World War II” Dissertation. Trent University. 1993.

Godon, Francis William. “Veteran Stories: Francis William Godon” The Reminiscence Challenge. Accessed 15 April 2019. http://www.thememoryproject.com/stories/539:francis-william-godon/

Miller, J.R., Skyscrapers Cover the Heavens. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.

Prince Albert Day by day Herald. “Thomas Naphthali Settee”, InMemoriam.ca, 2012. Accessed Accessed 20 April 2019. http://www.inmemoriam.ca/view-announcement-292672-thomas-naphthali-settee.html

Sexsmith, Pamela. “George Horse – a veteran tells his tale”, AMMSA.com, 2003. Accessed 15 April 2019. https://ammsa.com/publications/saskatchewan-sage/george-horse-veteran-tells-his-tale

Notes

The post Indigenous Participation in D-Day and the Second World War – Active History appeared first on DWJ Tech.

#Blog #Canadian history #D-Day #enfranchisement #Indigenous History #series

0 notes

pielson2-blog · 5 years ago

Text

Indigenous Participation in D-Day and the Second World War – Active History

By: Shawkay Ottmann

Francis Godon (on right) with two of his buddies at Shilo, Manitoba, simply earlier than going abroad, 1943. Picture from Francis Godon by way of The Memory Challenge.

Tommy Prince (left), Canada’s most highly adorned First Nations soldier, and Tom Settee pose collectively during training. Image from Tom Sofa by way of The Memory Undertaking.

On one hand, many Indigenous veterans fell into addictions after returning to Canada. As an example, Godon turned an alcoholic until his son helped him get sober.[16]

Tom Sofa standing next to the portray he ready of Juno Seashore in 2010. Historica Canada.

Additional Reading:

Davison, Janet Frances. “We Shall Remember: Canadian Indians and the World War II” Dissertation. Trent University. 1993.

Godon, Francis William. “Veteran Stories: Francis William Godon” The Reminiscence Challenge. Accessed 15 April 2019. http://www.thememoryproject.com/stories/539:francis-william-godon/

Miller, J.R., Skyscrapers Cover the Heavens. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.

Prince Albert Day by day Herald. “Thomas Naphthali Settee”, InMemoriam.ca, 2012. Accessed Accessed 20 April 2019. http://www.inmemoriam.ca/view-announcement-292672-thomas-naphthali-settee.html

Sexsmith, Pamela. “George Horse – a veteran tells his tale”, AMMSA.com, 2003. Accessed 15 April 2019. https://ammsa.com/publications/saskatchewan-sage/george-horse-veteran-tells-his-tale

Notes

The post Indigenous Participation in D-Day and the Second World War – Active History appeared first on DWJ Tech.

#Blog #Canadian history #D-Day #enfranchisement #Indigenous History #series

0 notes

iteddybearboyfme · 5 years ago

Text

Indigenous Participation in D-Day and the Second World War – Active History

By: Shawkay Ottmann

Francis Godon (on right) with two of his buddies at Shilo, Manitoba, simply earlier than going abroad, 1943. Picture from Francis Godon by way of The Memory Challenge.

Tommy Prince (left), Canada’s most highly adorned First Nations soldier, and Tom Settee pose collectively during training. Image from Tom Sofa by way of The Memory Undertaking.

On one hand, many Indigenous veterans fell into addictions after returning to Canada. As an example, Godon turned an alcoholic until his son helped him get sober.[16]

Tom Sofa standing next to the portray he ready of Juno Seashore in 2010. Historica Canada.

Additional Reading:

Davison, Janet Frances. “We Shall Remember: Canadian Indians and the World War II” Dissertation. Trent University. 1993.

Godon, Francis William. “Veteran Stories: Francis William Godon” The Reminiscence Challenge. Accessed 15 April 2019. http://www.thememoryproject.com/stories/539:francis-william-godon/

Miller, J.R., Skyscrapers Cover the Heavens. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.

Prince Albert Day by day Herald. “Thomas Naphthali Settee”, InMemoriam.ca, 2012. Accessed Accessed 20 April 2019. http://www.inmemoriam.ca/view-announcement-292672-thomas-naphthali-settee.html

Sexsmith, Pamela. “George Horse – a veteran tells his tale”, AMMSA.com, 2003. Accessed 15 April 2019. https://ammsa.com/publications/saskatchewan-sage/george-horse-veteran-tells-his-tale

Notes

The post Indigenous Participation in D-Day and the Second World War – Active History appeared first on DWJ Tech.

#Blog #Canadian history #D-Day #enfranchisement #Indigenous History #series

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revpauljbern · 6 years ago

Text

My 7 Reasons Why Capitalism Has Run Its Course (with free book excerpt included)

Seven Reasons Why Capitalism,

As We Know It, Has Run Its Course

Free book excerpt #33 from, “The Middle and Working Class Manifesto 4th Edition” by Rev. Paul J. Bern

For a website view, click here :-)

As world trade continues its anemic 1.2% average annual growth rate, politicians in most industrial countries, and particularly in the US, have an incentive to make exaggerated claims about the alleged ongoing economic recovery. The government wants us to think the Great Recession is over, and that we're on "the road to recovery," while the American people and other nations look on skeptically. The ugly truth is that more and more people have lost confidence in – and consequently no longer trust – the federal government. To make matters worse, 2015 turned out to be the year when the American public lost confidence and trust in law enforcement (think Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Gardner in New York, and that's just for starters). The street protests in Ferguson, New York, Chicago, L.A., Atlanta, Baltimore and elsewhere attest to the authenticity of that mistrust, which continues to get progressively worse. Below are seven important social phenomena that point to a more realistic economic and political outlook for 2019. Let's start where it matters most by beginning with the economy.

My Seven Reasons Why Capitalism Can't Recover

1) The Central Banks are clueless. The usual tricks that U.S. and European central banks use to keep their debt-based economies going are long-exhausted. Interest rates cannot get much lower. And because cheap money wasn't working, the printing press was turned up a notch, into what the U.S. federal reserve calls quantitative easing -- injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into the world economy, escalating an emerging trade war. Most recently, the Fed is raising rates at the insistence of investors and retirees, who have been seeing zero income from their “investments” for many years. This is bound to end disastrously one way or the other.

2) Trump's Trade Wars. For a global economy to grow, global cooperation is needed. But in a major recession all countries engage in a bitter struggle to dominate foreign markets so that their own corporations can export. These markets are won by devaluing currencies (accomplished in the U.S. by quantitative easing), installing protectionist measures (so that a nation's corporations have monopoly dominance over the nation's consumers), or by waging warfare (a risky but highly effective form of market domination).

3) The Pentagon's Military Wars. Foreign war is a good symptom of economic decay. The domination of markets – every inch of them – becomes an issue of life and death importance. Wars have been unleashed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. America is fighting scores of clandestine wars in numerous other countries as well. "Containing" economies like China and "opening" economies like Iran and North Korea become more urgent during a major recession, requiring brute force and creating further global instability in all realms of social life.

4) The U.S. Economy is going nowhere in a hurry. The most important consumer market in the world, the U.S., is a nation of totally bankrupt consumers. Nearly 18 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed, while further job losses are certain due to nearly every state's budget deficit. States are bracing for more painful cuts, more layoffs, more tax increases, more battles with public employee unions, more requests to bail out cities. And in the long term, as cities and states try to keep up on their debts, the very nature of government could change as they have less money left over to pay for the services they have long provided." (date 12-05-10; the problem with state government budget shortfalls has since gotten far, far worse – PB)

5) Bailout Capitalism Emerges. First it was the banks and other corporations that needed bailing out in 2008, and now whole nations want the same. Western nations bailed out their banks by falling into the massive debt that they are now drowning in. Greece and Ireland have been bailed out, with eyes shifting to Portugal, Spain, and Italy. With the emergence of “Brexit”, the entire European Union is being called into question as the Euro takes a beating in the bailout spree. If the EU is dismantled, the shock waves will quickly reach other economies globally.

6) Bailout Repercussions. All western nations -- starting with the U.S., Canada and Great Britain – are grappling with their own national debts. Rich bond investors are demanding that these countries drastically reduce their deficits, while also demanding that the deficits be reduced on the backs of working families instead of rich investors. This is tearing the social fabric apart, as working and poor people see their social programs under attack. In Europe mass movements are erupting in France, Spain, Portugal, England, Greece, Ireland, Italy, etc. Social stability is a prerequisite for a recovered economy, but corporate politicians everywhere are asking much more than working people are willing to give.

7) The Far Right Emerges. To deal with working people more ruthlessly, the radical right is being unleashed. In normal times these bigots yell furiously but no one listens. But in times of economic crisis they're given endless airtime on all major media outlets. The message of the far right promotes all the rottenness not yet eradicated by education: racism, xenophobia, religious intolerance, violence, and a backward nationalism that fears all things "foreign." These core beliefs effectively divide working people so that a concerted campaign against the corporate elite is harder to wage. Meanwhile, labor unions, progressives, and other working class organizations are instead targeted.

America imports twice the dollar amount of manufactured goods than it does oil. Since 2000 the US experienced a rapid increase in the imports of advanced technology products. A country dependent on foreigners for manufactured and advanced technology products is not a superpower. When it comes to Americans ages 18-24, 63% could not locate Iraq, Iran or Israel on a Middle East map. Fifty percent could not locate New York City. Moreover, 30% of respondents thought US population exceeded one billion. Forty-seven percent of all urban school children do not possess basic grade level skills. Is there any doubt as to why the jury system is a sham? Despotism and dictatorship reign when ignorance and nonsense rule societies. Society will divide itself into exploiters and exploited. In the early 1800's, complex literacy in New England exceeded 93%. A small farm nation, without newly built schools, sport stadiums, and "prestigious" universities had a much better track record. They keenly observed the American ideal of independence while never watching TV or indulging in Virtual Reality.

A country that has too many lacking in native knowledge is not a superpower. Countless industrial plants have been closed as 3.5 million jobs in manufacturing have been outsourced in the last ten years. In that time 7 million less jobs have been created than what population growth required. The high tech jobs never appeared as touted. Information Technology, computer system designs, and telecommunications in fact lost 17%, 9%, and 25% of its work force respectively. Even wholesale and retail trade experienced job losses, mainly at the managerial levels. As several hundred thousand engineers languished in unemployment lines for years, salaries for law school graduates continue to skyrocket. Firms in Philadelphia and New York are offering newly trained ruling class members over $125,000.00 in annual salaries. A country that does not fully utilize and reward its productive citizens and instead caters to the parasitic and marginal sectors is not a superpower. A country whose populace has been reduced to chattel by the special interest-driven 'health care for ransom' system is not a superpower.

Unfortunately, lawsuits for unproven and astronomical monetary amounts are pursued as the main recourse. These acts obviously fuel the healthcare crisis. Senator Hillary Clinton, who received $4.6 million from a trial lawyer group, helped to block medical lawsuit reform during her 2016 campaign. This mild bill would have saved her constituents $800.00 a year in premiums. A country that allows legalized bribery to plutocrats to influence law and policy is not a superpower. A country in which 4-7% of its people are illegals who now choose to dictate terms is not a superpower. This is clearly a breakdown of law and order.....”

In closing, the various reasons for capitalism's impending failure I have just elaborated on do not happen in a normal economic cycle of boom and bust. These symptoms point to a larger disease in the capitalist economic system, a disease that cannot be cured by politicians who swear allegiance to this deteriorating system and to the wealthy elite who benefit from it. To ensure that the economic system is changed so that working people benefit, the ones who do the real work every day to keep things moving, large-scale collective action is necessary based on demands that unite the majority of working people. The ongoing fight for a $15.00 per hour minimum wage is one good example of large-scale collective action. What America needs is a massive job-creation program at the expense of Wall Street, an expansion of Social Security and Medicare, and a moratorium on home foreclosures. If the Christian community worked cooperatively with the unions in promoting these demands, working people could put up a real fight. After all, the Bible says, “The workman is worth his/her wages”.

#End of Capitalism #The American Empire #democracy #corporate greed #materialism #money #the US dollar

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