Faith in Action

Graphic Courtesy: Baltimore Afro
Article Courtesy: CNN

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) — Sen. Barack Obama has selected Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate, according to his official Web site and a text message the campaign sent to supporters on Saturday.

“Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee,” the text message, sent at around 3 a.m. ET, said.

“Joe and I will appear for the first time as running mates this afternoon in Springfield, Illinois — the same place this campaign began more than 19 months ago,” Obama said in an e-mail sent to supporters Saturday morning.

“I’m excited about hitting the campaign trail with Joe, but the two of us can’t do this alone,” he wrote. ” We need your help to keep building this movement for change.”

Before the text messages were distributed, multiple Democratic sources confirmed to CNN early Saturday that Obama wanted the Delaware senator as his vice president.

On Friday, CNN learned three Democrats who had been considered contenders for the No. 2 spot, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh and Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, had been ruled out.

Biden was long considered a possible choice for vice president, but the buzz surrounding him intensified after he returned earlier this week from a two-day trip to the Republic of Georgia after Russian troops invaded.

Read More

I don’t know, man. I’m just very leery of a cozy relationship between the church and corporations. Not to say that it shouldn’t happen in all cases, but once corporate dollars enter the church’s purse at a significant level, the door is open for them to wield their influence.

For example, here in Maryland near the historic African American community of Turners Station, I know that Honeywell International, Inc., a diversified technology and manufacturing company, is responsible for cleaning up 3 million tons of toxic waste.

Its successor company, Allied Chemical dumped 3 million tons of Chromium near neighborhoods. Certain types of chromium is known to cause respiratory problems, kidney and liver damage, lung cancer, and a host of other physical diseases. This type of environmental racism is nothing new for Honeywell. Consider this excerpt about their environmental practices:

Honeywell ranks 44th in a list of U.S. corporations most responsible for air pollution, releasing more than 4.25 million kg (9.4 million pounds) of toxins per year into the air. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, no corporation has been linked to a greater number of Superfund toxic waste sites than has Honeywell. In 2001, Honeywell agreed to pay $150,000 in civil penalties and to perform $772,000 worth of reparations for environmental violations involving:

failure to prevent or repair leaks of hazardous organic pollutants into the air

failure to repair or report refrigeration equipment containing chlorofluorocarbons

inadequate reporting of benzene, ammonia, nitrogen oxide, dichlorodifluoromethane, sulfuric acid, sulfur dioxide, and caprolactam emissions

(Daaang! Anybody got the number for Captain Planet?)

Poor folks and People of Color don’t have to go to Beijing to experience crippling pollution. We can find it right in our backyards!

Back in 2006, the State Department of the Environment agreed to give Honeywell 17 years or more to clean up the toxic waste. Since then, Honeywell has been cozying up to the locals down in Turners Station and the surrounding community sponsoring home renovations for residents, school renovation/construction projects, etc. through their Hometown Solutions program. I even hear that one church down in Turners Station allowed Honeywell to hang their corporate banner over their front door!

This type of “positive PR behavior” is not new for corporations. They will often throw out a few trinkets to the community in an effort to silence dissident voices and shade gross illegal or unethical practices. They figure if they throw you a bone, you’ll shut up. Not everyone will shut up, but enough will to essentially isolate the “troublemakers.”

How can the church utilize its prophetic voice on social issues if that voice is underwritten by corporate funding or sustained by government contracts? Is there a way to balance the church’s fiscal relationships with outside entities in a way that won’t compromise our divine mandate?

July 28, 2008

Laura Washington
Chicago Sun-Times
350 N Orleans St
Chicago, IL 60654

Dear Mrs. Washington:

I am writing you this letter in response to your July 28, 2008 column. In it you describe our mother, the honorable Dorothy Wright Tillman, as having a “dismal” record as Alderman of the 3rd ward.

Webster defines dismal as: 1. obsolete , disastrous, dreadful 2: showing or causing gloom or depression3: lacking merit : particularly bad, devoid of cheer or comfort. indicates extreme and utterly depressing gloominess

I stand to disagree wholeheartedly with your imaginative interpretation of her hard work and her history of accomplishment in our beloved community.

Read More

Last week, it was Maryland’s Speaker of the House, Mike Busch’s wife that was offered a courtesy by mainstream media. They intentionally held the news of her drunk driving arrest until Friday when they had the news Wednesday. This week it’s former Democratic Presidential Candidate, John Edwards’ extramarital affair.

Edwards admits to affair, denies fathering child
By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer

Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Friday admitted to an extramarital affair while his wife was battling cancer. He denied fathering the woman’s daughter.

Edwards told ABC News that he lied repeatedly about the affair with a 42-year-old woman but said that he didn’t love her. He said he has not taken a paternity test but knows he isn’t the father because of the timing of the affair and the birth.

Read More

For the record, I think that CNN’s “Black in America” special was abysmal. If you missed it, believe me - you’ve seen it before. If you watched Dateline NBC’s special on Black Women in Nov. ‘07, Tavis Smiley’s State of Black America, Real Talk with Al Sharpton, or Upfront with Jesse Jackson - you’ve seen the CNN Special before. More of the usual suspects (for the most part) sitting around talking about how bad Black folk got it with a sprinkling of how some Black folks pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and made something of themselves in spite of their blackness. Not surprisingly, there was no talk of institutional racism and how that plays a part in the current situation. Of course the acrobat of adjectives, the ringmaster of run-on sentences, the prime minister of pronouns himself - Michael Eric Dyson represented us “Black folk” real good to massa ‘nem. And keeping in line with a growing trend in mainstream media’s depiction of Black Women, the CNN special made sure to talk about how more and more Black Women are choosing White Men as mates - in fact, mainstream media is so obsessed with separating Black Women from Black Men that they covered African American Women and Families on one night and covered Black Men alone on another night! (:sigh: I can’t do it again. I already dropped my thunder on this issue when NBC did it.) Sorry, Mr. Media Men - no matter what you do, there are still many Black Women who deeply love and cherish Black Men. Likewise, there are many many many Black Men like myself who not only see royalty in Black Women, but who see love personified in them. A grade for CNN’s WACK attempt at telling OURSTORY? D-

Here is a link to Dr. Maulana Karenga’s commentary on CNN’s docu-drama entitled “Peddling Pathology in the Media: Selling Dream, Drama, and Dread.” Thanks Bro. Jahi!

Now let me find out that the Sultan of Surveillance himself, Martin O’Malley, is outraged by the recent findings released by the ACLU that peace activists in Baltimore were monitored over the course of 14 months and 288 hours for planning lawful, nonviolent, protests against war and the death penalty. Those in Baltimore know that Overseer O’Malley led the way in hanging Blue Light Cameras like Christmas lights all over the city keeping Big Brother’s Eye on Bmore’s Black and poor citizens. Illegal arrests skyrocketed under O’Malley’s iron grip and in the run up to the gubernatorial election he had sections of the city barricaded to restrict movement seemingly to decrease the likelihood of an embarrassing criminal event that his political opponent Robert Ehrlich could take advantage of during the campaign. O’Malley cares about First Amendment rights?! Oh stop it - I CAN’T BREATHE - BWAH HAHAHAHAHA (BTW - if you are a part of an organization that has planned a march, rally, protest in Maryland, the ACLU is offering to help you find out if you were spied on. Click here for more info.)

In other news, Maryland’s Speaker of the House, Mike Busch, is in a bit of a tizzy right now being that his wife was arrested on DUI charges shortly after midnight for driving through two flashing red lights in Annapolis. Busch brushes it aside as a personal family matter. No worries, Busch - mainstream media has your back. Your wife was arrested on Wednesday, but the Baltimore Sun chose not to shine its light on the issue until Friday at 3:32 PM - you know…a time when most folks aren’t even thinking about politics, world affairs, or drunk drivers who happen to be married to the third most politically powerful man in the state!

Closing on a…good note? The House of Representatives passed a resolution (boy, they love those non-binding resolutions don’t they?) Tuesday apologizing for Slavery. Great. Maryland expressed profound regret (along with many other states) and the U.S. House apologizes - fine. Now make the apology mean something. Bring on REPARATIONS! A nationwide, institutional effort to level the playing field between Africans and all other nation groups represented in these so-called United States of America. For more about reparations check out Dr. Ray Winbush’s blog and book.

Big ups to Nas for his role in helping to challenge Fox News on the racist and wrong-headed propaganda that they continually present to the American public as “fair and balanced news.” Recently, Nas joined Color of Change in delivering more than 600,000 petitions to Fox News decrying the depiction of the Obama’s fist jab as some sort of terrorist symbol and calling Michelle Obama, Barack’s “baby mamma.” (Shout out to Nas as well for his latest album self-entitled, NAS, where he devotes a song to Fox “News” entitled “Sly Fox“.)

In the video above, Nas calls Fox News a propaganda machine - not a news network. A statement that many have believed to be true for a long time, but now we can know for sure that it’s true. Why? Because on Hardball with Chris Matthews last Friday, former Press Secretary of the White House, Scott McCllelan, admitted that the White House sends Fox News talking points for their nightly commentators and political pundits - you know Bill O’Reilly and the crew. I couldn’t believe what I was watching! (So much for the First Amendment’s attempt to create a separate checks and balances organism with a Free Press.) I know that most of you understand the gravity of this collusive alliance between media and government. You do understand that you must question everything that comes through the one eyed devil box don’t you? I believe Fox “News” is only the tip of the iceberg.

Finally, some proof that mainstream media works as the 4th Branch of the American Government controlling what the masses think…and as Dr. Carter G. Woodson so eloquently put it in his seminal work, The Mis-Education of the Negro - if you can control what a person thinks you don’t have to tell them to go here or there, you don’t have to tell them to go to the backdoor - they will automatically go and if there is no backdoor they will cut one out for their own benefit.

Now I’m just waiting for some disgruntled former employee of Black Entertainment Television to let it be known once and for all that “Black Evil Television” purposely broadcasts movies like “Baby Boy” and “Soul Plane” on a regular basis to instill, protect, and maintain a “ghetto mentality” in the minds of African people. Even the youth are catching on to the madness of that very evil network.

“Power to the People!”

“Power to the People!”

The crowd swayed and chanted in a thunderous roar pumping clinched fists in the air as if they were literally striking out at the oligarchical american government and its fascist functionaries that provide safe haven for racism, economic exploitation, discrimination, and ultimately an oppressive existence.

No, this crowd of dedicated change agents weren’t members of the Black Panthers. They weren’t members of the American Indian Movement. They weren’t Weathermen.

They were members of the Green Party - some would say they are the descendants of all of those forenamed revolutionary groups. The Green Party is founded on 10 key values:

The Green Party Convention was Saturday, July 12, 2008 in Chicago. I just happened to flip it on TV (Thank God for CSPAN) as I was on my way out the door. An hour and a half later, I hadn’t left the house yet, but I had watched the entire convention. It was really inspiring. I got a sense that I was watching the beginning of a movement. It had all the right ingredients: small, dedicated crowd of supporters, little notice from “mainstream”, progressive agenda that most people could identify with in some way.

And at the center of it all were two awe-inspiring women: Cynthia McKinney - the Green Party nominee for President of the United States, and Rosa Clemente, Afro-Buricua, Community Organizer and Hip Hop Activist for Vice President. (You’ve gotta read Clemente’s powerful piece, “Russell Simmons, you are not Hip Hop!“)

Barack Obama may have the momentum that inspires Black people, but Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente have the message that will uplift us. Obama as President will provide an infinite amount of symbolism to the Black community, McKinney as President will render infinite amounts of substantive policy shifts that will create a new type of country which will help usher in a new kind of world.

As I’ve shared many many times before on this blog, mainstream media works in cooperation with the government to control what you think so chances are most of you have never heard of former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) and if you have it’s because of how Big Brother sensationalized an incident at Capital Hill involving her hair. An incident that was blown up about a year after she grilled then Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, over 11 trillion dollars that went missing at the Pentagon, DynCorp’s slave trade, and the 9/11 wargames. (Note: There are always consequences for challenging Empire. She was soon out of office.)

Since “they” are working to keep you blind to it, I urge you to work to open your eyes to this Party and these two fascinating women. Talk to your children about the Green Party. As the two mainstream political parties are now controlled by corporate interest; it is incumbent upon the people to search out alternative political choices - or as Clemente said - the Green Party isn’t the alternative, it’s the imperative.

This does raise an issue though that I’d love your feedback on particularly as it relates to Black voters. What should Black voters do? Vote for symbol and help a Black man become the first African American President of the United States? OR Vote for substance and support a political party whose nominees most likely don’t stand a chance of winning (in the traditional sense) in this presidential election cycle? (Glen Ford, Executive Director of the Black Agenda Report chose the latter of those two options saying that McKinney deserves the Black Vote, Obama does not.)

Whatever happens - don’t sleep on the Green Party. They are not going quietly into the night. I sense that this is only the beginning.

So I’m sitting in a meeting with ministers from across the city discussing social issues when I get a text message from one of my seminary brothers.

“Hey man, is Jesse Jackson still a pastor?” Perplexed, I responded, “I’m not sure why?”

He responds, “Of course the media doesn’t give the full context, but what they do show is him saying he wants to cut Obama’s [genitalia] off.”

Wow. It’s difficult to imagine the context that would justify a statement like that. It’s disappointing to say the least, and perhaps it is a bit symbolic of the generational friction that sometimes occurs when the Elders who have been in the seat of The Celebrated for decades, finally meet a young person who has the wherewithal to take the baton from them and continue running the race. Of course, that means that the Elder must prepare for a different, less acknowledged role - sometimes that is very difficult.

Or perhaps something about Sen. Obama’s message at Black Churches has struck a personal chord with Rev. Jackson. “Talking down to Black people,” as Rev. Jackson put it may really be, “Barack is talking down to me.” Rev. Jackson’s challenges in his personal life are no secret and maybe Sen. Obama’s message of personal accountability and responsibility for our families has hit a sore spot.

Some may even say that Jackson’s remarks, as coarse as they are, may in some way reflect the frustrations of some Black people who perceive that Senator Obama strategically and with great effort has worked to assure White & Jewish voters of his allegiance while not doing the same for the African American voting bloc. (Many though chalk this alleged strategy up as a part of “playing the game.”)

Who knows what happened in Jackson’s notorious whisper into a hot mic. What we do know is that Rev. Jackson said it, apologized, and Sen. Obama accepted his apology. What we also know is that this will be fodder for mainstream media and particularly a right-news propaganda network like Fox who will play this over and over again for their own devilish purposes.

Mainstream media will fill the minds of the nation with this in an attempt to distract the American people away from the signing of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) into law - a move that one Maryland lawmaker called “the death of the 4th Amendment” (that sound you hear is ATT and Verizon execs cheering at the top of their lungs - can you hear them now?) and you’ll be distracted away from the sheer disregard that Karl Rove displayed by defying a congressional subpoena and refusing to testify before Congress about allegations of political pressure at the Justice Department.

The real “news” will get a backseat while Jackson’s salacious soundbyte about Barack Obama’s privates will be front center. A most unfortunate reality in this increasingly oligarchic society.

Well, according to the United States he was a terrorist, but now he is a highly respected international diplomat. Mandela was on the United State’s Terror Watch List which made sure he had to jump through extra hoops to gain entry into the U.S. I’m sure his name being on that list also authorized the CIA or FBI to take some “other” actions against him as well. [read: wiretapping and other surveillance activities. I'm sure we'll read about it in a book after Mandela has made his final earthly transition.]

While most world leaders applaud Baba Mandela today (some going so far as to suggest that he is nearly a saint), he wasn’t always so celebrated - of course most of us know about his being an anti-apartheid political prisoner for 27 years in Robben Island Prison, but I wonder if most people know that Mandela came to be a proponent of armed self-defense in South Africa. Consider this quote from his Opening Statement in his defense case before the Pretoria Supreme Court in April 1964 entitled, “I Am Prepared To Die.”

At the beginning of June 1961, after a long and anxious assessment of the South African situation, I, and some colleagues, came to the conclusion that as violence in this country was inevitable, it would be unrealistic and wrong for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the Government met our peaceful demands with force.

This conclusion was not easily arrived at. It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle, and to form Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation). We did so not because we desired such a course, but solely because the Government had left us with no other choice. In the Manifesto of Umkhonto published on 16 December 1961, which is Exhibit AD, we said:

“The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices - submit or fight. That time has now come to South Africa. We shall not submit and we have no choice but to hit back by all means in our power in defence of our people, our future, and our freedom”.

They say that the conservatives of today were the radicals of yesterday. While I wouldn’t say that Mandela is a “conservative” it is interesting studying his development. I have serious doubts about whether or not he would support armed self-defense today. Or maybe he would. Who knows.

What I do know is that the revolutionary spirit is alive and well in the world, especially in Nigeria where members of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), are engaged in guerilla warfare against Western oil companies (Shell, Chevron, and others) who are extracting the “liquid gold” from their land and leaving the indigenous people to live in extreme poverty. Being that the government of Nigeria is not advocating for the masses of poor in the nation and non-violent rallies and protests are not working, groups like MEND have begun a campaign of sabotage, kidnapping, and murder of Western oil workers in order to aggressively reconstitute the redistribution of resources in their nation.

Now who are the terrorists in Nigeria?

How does this apply to other conflicts in the world? (i.e. Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinians, the Israeli Government, FARC, the Columbian Government, etc.)

How does this apply to historical conflict and its traditional re-telling? (i.e. the Black Panthers, American Indian Movement, Pilgrims, Black Muslims, Puerto Rican Independence Movement, the Central Intelligence Agency, Bloods, Crips, Black Guerilla Family, Young Lords, the Weathermen, MOVE, etc.)

I am encouraged to see the revolutionary spirit alive and well in these young people from Cali who are Young Black Panthers dedicated to projecting the true image of The Panthers. They call themselves “The Riders” and they are all former Bloods and Crips who have evolved in their thinking to a higher, revolutionary consciousness. Their spokeswoman is extremely impressive. My favorite soundbyte from her was: “You can’t be a revolutionary if you don’t read!”