All Are Welcome!
At the 11AM Service we will be at Pleasant Hope Baptist Church (430 E. Belvedere Avenue, Baltimore 21212) with special guest preacher, Pastor Michael Bell from Peace Baptist Church (Washington, DC).
The official Installation Service will begin at 3:30PM at Shiloh Baptist Church (2499 Sycamore Avenue, Edgemere, MD 21219).
I appreciate your prayers and support.
Rev. Heber Brown, III
U.S. acknowledges Baghdad victims were law-abiding, not insurgents
By Leila Fadel, McClatchy Newspapers
Sun Jul 27, 7:40 PM ET
BAGHDAD — The U.S. military said Sunday that the three people killed last month after U.S. soldiers shot at their car in one of the most secured areas of Iraq were civilians, not criminals as the military initially reported.
The correction came more than a month after a bank manager at a branch inside the airport, Hafeth Aboud Mahdi , and two female bank employees were shot at by U.S. soldiers as they sped to work on a road within the secured airport compound. The road is used only by people with high-level security clearance badges. The car veered off the road, hit a concrete blast wall and burst into flames.
The original statement said that Mahdi and the two women were “criminals” and that an American convoy on the side of the secured road came under small-arms fire from the vehicle. Soldiers said they shot back. A weapon was found in the debris and two U.S. military vehicles were struck by bullets from the attack, the statement on June 25 said.
“When we are attacked, we will defend ourselves and will use deadly force if necessary,” said Maj. Joey Sullinger , a spokesman for 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, said at the time. “Such attacks endanger not only U.S. soldiers but also innocent civilians, including women and children, traveling the roadways of Baghdad .”
On Sunday the story changed and the tone was apologetic. A military statement said that neither the civilians who were killed nor the soldiers were at fault for the deaths. An investigation found that “the driver and passengers were law-abiding citizens of Iraq .”
PHOTO COURTESY: James Klekowski
A few days ago, a brother of an organization I belong to called Brothers United for Change (BUC), sent me and the other brothers of BUC an e-mail. In the e-mail he posed the question: “What do young male youth need the most right now?” Subsequent to his question, he posited the following as his choices: Do male youth need someone to fight for their community, fight for their injustice, or fight for their education?
My response to the brother’s e-mail question was education, and I buttressed my response by citing a quote from Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s perennial book The Mis-Education of the Negro:
[t]he same educational process which inspires and stimulates the oppressor with the thought that he is everything worth while, depresses and [CRUSHES] at the same time the spark of genius in the [Black] by making him feel that his race does not amount to much and never will measure up to the standards of other peoples.
It’s my position that the nihilistic behavior exhibited by some Black male youth, particularly, Black male youth in my city of Baltimore is a direct consequence of an “educational” system that devalues, marginalizes and underestimates Black youth in general, but Black male youth in particular.
Why is it that if you ask most Black youth who discovered America, they will emphatically answer Christopher Columbus? That’s right! In the year 2008, Black youth are still being inculcated with this untruth. The late Dr. John Henrik Clarke, in his book Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust states:
[t]oday former Columbus cheerleaders have discarded the word “discovery” and are now using the word “encounter.” They too are aware of the fact that Christopher Columbus discovered absolutely nothing.
EXTRAVAGANZA! YOUTH FIGHTING FOR JOBS!
The young people in our city have set up an exciting day for Wednesday, April 30 from 9 am to 3 pm at City Hall Plaza. Each of the organizations in the Peer 2 Peer Network will be presenting a workshop showing what peer to peer teaching could look like. (more information about Peer 2 Peer can be found in this Baltimore Sun article
The students are encouraging young people to join them to learn from their peers and older folks to come support them as they urge Mayor Sheila Dixon to fund Peer to Peer Enterprises.
EXTRAVAGANZA! YOUTH FIGHTING FOR JOBS!
Here is a tentative schedule of the day:
Ok - first let me encourage you to sign up and become a subscriber to this blog if you have not done so already. Becoming a subscriber gives you the convenience of receiving automatic updates delivered to your inbox whenever I update the site with a new post. For those concerned about receiving too much email in your inbox already, I assure you that I do not abuse this feature and you can discontinue using this service whenever you wish. Visit the SUBSCRIBER PAGE (or the email subscriber box at the top left of the homepage) and enter your email. You will receive a verification email in your inbox and there will be a link there that you have to click in order to start receiving the automatic updates.
Second, I have just created a new page called TAKE ACTION. This page will be a meeting place for those e-activists out there who wish to make a difference in the world while remaining at their computer. I recognize that everyone doesn’t have the ability to get to every press conference, attend every hearing, or show up for every rally. People care deeply about social justice issues, but they’re busy. I get it. So I created the TAKE ACTION page so that you can easily add your 2 cents to meaningful social justice movements going on around the world while enjoying your surfing experience on my blog. I’ll be updating the TAKE ACTION page frequently so please check it often. The TAKE ACTION issue this week involves a bill currently in the Baltimore City Council that would seek to divest from companies doing business with Sudan. In essence, this bill will put pressure on the Sudanese Government - the type of pressure that will force it to stop sponsoring genocide in Darfur and to protect the 2.5 million people that have already been displaced by the government-sponsored Janjaweed militia. Check out the TAKE ACTION page and follow the easy steps to email members of Baltimore City Council in support of the Sudan Divestment Bill. (I provided the names, emails, and even the message that you can send in support)
As Always - Thank you for taking the time to visit and support my blog.Â
Rev. Heber Brown, III
Every now and then concrete evidence of the presidential abuse of power breaches the surface. America, my friends, ceased long ago from being a democracy. Some would say we never were. America is, in fact, an oligarchy. Definition?
Oligarchy: a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes. (source: Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)
You know it’s bad when congressional Republicans are now openly questioning a Republican President. Read below.
Hoekstra: White House secrets wrong - 07/10/06 - The Detroit News Online
I just finished the first book of Taylor Branch’s trilogy on America during the King years. It was a fascinating read that opened my eyes to many elements of the beginnings of what’s called the Civil Rights Movement of the 50’s and 60’s. Before I start the 2nd book of the trilogy, I think I’ll continue on with a book that I started last weekend entitled The COINTELPRO Papers : Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall.
I’ve been researching the FBI’s Cointelpro program since preparing a sermon for youth day earlier last month. The Counter Intelligence Program (known as Cointelpro) was officially created in 1956 to:
“to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize’ such groups and their ‘leadership, spokesmen, members, and supporters…and to gather information on the ‘unsavory backgrounds’ of group leaders.”
For those interested in non-fiction horror stories this is one frightening read. My research on Cointelpro paints a picture of a federal agency at times more powerful than the president and accountable to no earthly power, but the Director of the FBI. The most infamous Director was J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover and his FBI were known for the abuse of power and political persecution of anyone determined to be a “radical.” The FBI was even involved in the murders of revolutionaries like Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.
In my research, I realized that their targets included many of the persons who I deemed to be freedom fighters. Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Medgar Evers, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Martin King, Jr., Malcolm X and the list goes on and on. Three good books to read to learn more are Malcolm X: The FBI File , Martin Luther King, Jr.: The FBI File, and Black Americans: The FBI Files.
Cointelpro is said to have ended in 1971, but my research and this latest article from USA Today indicates that Cointelpro isn’t dead, but has been marketed under a different name. A name creatively chosen to evoke feelings of safety & pride while hiding a darker nature. What was Cointelpro of the 50’s and 60’s is now known as the Patriot Act to those in the 21st century.
Be careful my people: The government is listening to phone calls, reading your emails, intercepting your mail, reviewing your financial activity, liberally labeling who is and who isn’t a terrorist and watching our every step.
PRIVACY IS DEAD.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE!:
Rate Hikes Make Things Ripe for True Reform
by Min. Heber Brown, III
Baltimore Times
Originally posted 6/30/2006
For the past few months, the general public has been held captive by political pandering over the inevitable BGE rate hikes. We’ve heard countless proposals on what the public will ultimately have to pay for the increased cost of energy.
In what looked like a concluding chapter on this issue, the General Assembly recently convened in Annapolis for a special session to produce a plan that would appease an outraged public. After overriding Governor Ehrlich’s veto, the Democrat-led, General Assembly produced the following result: 15% increase for the next 11 months with an approximate $2.19 monthly fee to be paid to BGE for a decade.
Read this insightful article by Heather Dillon entitled, “Multicultural Churches”. I’d be interested to read what you think. I’ll reserve my comment until others have had a chance to give their 2 cents.
In America, 92 percent of churches are made up almost entirely of a single race. Religious institutions have become places of segregation rather than unity. Is your church part of that 92 percent?
Yet despite widespread segregation, some congregations are trying something different. Multiracial church congregations have begun surfacing across America. Advocates of these diverse religious communities base their ideal on Biblical examples. The first church, described in the book of Acts, was multicultural and multilingual from the very beginning. Other early churches were multicultural as well.
