BlackPerspective.net

Dr. Watkin is an eloquent Black professor at Syracuse University, and sometimes television commentator. He’s also an Aphrosphere Blogger and even does videos; I remember he had a good Jena 6 video when that story was starting to break last August.

You can visit Dr. Watkins and see his response to O’Reilly at blog.boycewatkins.com/

So anyway, O’Racistly is going after Dr. Watkins because he called Jaun Williams, whom I’ve laid off of all these years, an “eternally happy Negro” for giving people like O’Racistly racial cover. And then right after O’Rasictly’s hit job segment tonight there was Jaun Williams by O’Rielly giving cover to his race suppression efforts, and proving Dr. Boyce right - only tonight he was an indignant eternally angry Negro; but only angry at the Black man. Only if he ever got so angry at O’Reilly and Sean Hannity’s racist antics.

O’Reilly did one of his ambush jobs, this time on Syracuse Chancellor Nancy Cantor. She would not engage except to repeat that Dr. Boyce’s words were his private words and that he was not speaking for the University; as the “reporter” and camera man stalked her all the way to her building.

You can disagree with Boyce Watkins opinion about Williams, but he doesn’t deserve to be labeled a racist for them as he said nothing racist; and he doesn’t deserve to have his boss stalked (and of course she doesn’t deserve to be ambushed and stalked), nor to have his job put in jeopardy.

This reverse claim of racism anytime a person of color speaks up strongly against racism, or about our own racially pandering to the majority for self advancement; is a full bore intentional tactic by the defenders of the status quo, of white privelege, and of racial discrimination to try to suppress strong voices against racism; and to cut down and try to discredit those standing up for the victims of racism so that the status quo might be maintained.

Support Dr. Watkins

1. I’d say for one, go to his site and leave words of encouragement as I did.

2. Call Syracuse and leave messages for Dr. Cantor in support of Dr. Watkins, and to congratulate her on how she handle O’Reilly’s thugs, and didn’t unfairly throw Boyce under the bus: 315-443-1870

Check out this video response by Boyce

J.K. Rowling joins children’s writers calling for end to Darfur conflict
CBC News



Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is among a group of 14 children’s writers who have published a letter calling for an end to the conflict in Darfur.

The open letter, signed by the writers, appeared in newspapers in Britain on Saturday — the day before the fifth anniversary of the conflict in the Sudanese region. More than 200,000 people have died while two million have fled to refugee camps.

Author of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling, seen here last July, has signed a letter with 13 other authors calling for intervention to the conflict in Darfur.
(Ian West/Associated Press) “It is time to change the narrative,” says the letter.

“The world needs to wake up. For too long it has let these children suffer. Our politicians need to act on Darfur.”

The other authors include American teen novel writer Judy Blume, Germany’s Cornelia Funke, R.L. Stine, the American author of the Goosebumps series, as well as Michael Morpugo, a former U.K. Children’s Laureate — a bi-annual honour handed out by British booksellers to honour achievement in the area of children’s literature.

More than 1 million children affected

Their plea calls for an immediate ceasefire and the full deployment of a UN peacekeeping force.

read the rest of the story here…

18 students arrested in Darfur protest at White House
From Megan Zingarelli - CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A group of student protesters were arrested Sunday after they called on President Bush to end the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, Sudan, and refused to leave the front gates of the White House.

The protesters shouted, “Hey Bush, you can’t hide! Help us end this genocide!” and “President Bush! No more excuses!” Federal police arrested 18 of them after they marched to the White House.

Sunday’s protest was one of many scheduled around the world for “Global Day for Darfur” to mark five years of ethnic cleansing in Sudan. The conflict has killed more than 200,000 people, and it has made refugees of more than 2 million others.

In London 3,000 protesters gathered at the Sudanese Embassy. Also, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for Darfur peace talks. Watch a report from the protest in London »

In the U.S., Scott Warren, national student director of the Student Anti-Genocide Coalition, said the students were bringing specific demands to the president, including bolstering the United Nations peacekeeping force in Sudan and stepping up pressure on China, Sudan’s trading partner.

“In your last seven months, you can make peace in Sudan, and this is how you can do it,” he said.

Warren said the students knew the president wasn’t home, but still hoped their message was heard. Bush was on his way back to Washington from his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

“It’s not something we take lightly, and we do understand the implications of it. But we also understand that genocide is not just a casual issue,” said student activist Ashley Kroetsch, who was among the 18 arrested. “It is one of the worst crimes against humanity, and it requires a very severe response to end it.”

www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/13/darfur.protest/index.html?section=cnn_latest

Today is “In Solidarity: Global Day for Darfur”. I hope you’ll take a little time to educate yourself on the five year genocide transpiring in Darfur, and think about how such atrocities effect humanity. Think about the ramification of having a world where people are willing to do this to one another; and think about what it means to our humanity when we sit back and do nothing as it goes on.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” - Edmund Burke

Before I get off into this post I want to let you know that today we need you to do more than just read; but we need you to take action. You can see what those proposed actions are and links to them towards the bottom of this post, under the Please Act Now section.

The Crisis in Darfur:

The Sudanese Government in Khartoum started a campiagn in the Western Provence of Darfur in 2003, arming a militia known as the janjaweed (the devil on horce back) to raid villages of other ethnic groups, slaughtering them, displacing millions, and burning their villages so that they do not return. The government has used gunships and airplanes to bomb communities as well.

200,000 to 400,000 dead
2.5 million displaced
Thousands of rapes in a policy rape agenda
Ethno-centrically driven attacks; though underlined by other factors
Civilians systematically targeted

On top of the wholesale slaughter, there has been a brutal campaign of “policy rape” ; that is where rape is used as a weapon of war and is conducted as a matter of policy as opposed to a consequence of rouge soldiers individual behavior.

Further, the Sudanese government’s interest in Darfur are not simply a counter-insurgency against outlaw rebels, as it is framed by some; but that the rebels have just been used as an excuse to displace the Darfurian people for economic and ethnocentric reasons. The Sudanese government did the same thing in the Nuba Mountains in the 90s.

This “Genocide: Darfur” video may help you to grasp the crisis more

During this time of the Olympics we want to use attention on the Olympics games to bring the Olympic Dream To Darfur. The Olympics are a particularly potent weapon this year because the host, China, is Sudan’s major military supplier, and major buyer of Sudanese oil; giving China unrivaled influence over the government in Khartoum.

Reading China’s Genocide Games may help you learn more on this point

Please Act Now: Three simple ways

1. Email or call the Olympic Corporate Sponsors.
Send a letter to companies sponsoring the 2008 Olympics, hosted by China. (Dream for Darfur’s email system will let you do this with the touch of a button.)
2. Pledge to turn off the commercials of Olympic Sponsors during the Games.
Olympic corporate sponsors have been silent about China’s financing of the Darfur genocide, even as the sponsors are spending billions to enhance China’s image as Olympic host. If sponsors continue to ignore China’s complicity in the Darfur genocide, we will ignore their million-dollar ad campaigns.
3. Petition the International Olympic Committee.
Urge the IOC to work with the international community to ensure that China uses its leverage with the government of Sudan to help stop the genocide in Darfur, and avoids tarnishing the 2008 Games in Beijing.

The Currrent Situation

Deployment of a peacekeeping force was agreed upon and passed in the U.N. back in July; yet the countries that voted for it have simply failed to follow through. The joint UN/AU force has only seen about a third of the peacekeepers deployed, and hence are thus far quite ineffectual. Sudan keeps stonewalling on “allowing” the force to be deployed, and the governments of the world simply keep capitulating. SaveDarfur has more on this, along with a petition to sign asking them to stand up to Khartoum www.savedarfur.org/blog/entries/the_deception_continues/.

The European Union recently took a strong step to impose pressure towards ending the Darfur crisis: “EU turns up heat on China over Darfur crisis and divest from PetroChina”:

“March 17, 2008 (BRUSSELS) — The European parliament took an unprecedented step to sanction China over its unwillingness to pressure Sudan to halt violence in Darfur.
The Independent newspaper reported that the EU divested the shares it owned in Chinese oil giant PetroChina.

The latest move by the EU will likely worry policymakers in Beijing who are desperately trying to contain growing criticism for shielding Khartoum from sanctions in the UN Security Council.”

The following email sent yesterday by MoveOn.org came right on time. After watching some of General Petraeus’ testimony to congress I was think (as I’ve noticed before) these folks keep saying year after year “victory’s just around the corner”, “the insurgency is in it’s last throws”, after we hand over power to the Iraqis everything will be alright, “the insurgents are just a few dead enders”, after the Iraqi’s vote national pride will cause democracy and order to take hold. Things get a little better on the surface for a short while and we have “progress”, then things fall to shit, then they say the exact same stuff again; and repeat cycle.

MoveOn’s Message:

No matter what happens in Iraq, the Bush administration and John McCain always have an answer: 6 more months.

When the “surge” began a year ago, they told America things would get better by September. In September, they said we’d know more by spring. And this week, General Petraeus is on Capitol Hill asking for—you guessed it—6 more months. Senator McCain and President Bush couldn’t agree more.

They don’t have a plan for getting us out of Iraq. So they’re trying to sell endless war on an installment plan.

Six more months won’t change anything—except the body count and the price tag. It’s critical that the news media and voters know that the Bush-McCain strategy in Iraq is to keep us there indefinitely—6 months at a time. So we’ve put together a video exposing their “6 month” gambit. Please check it out and pass it on:

MoveOn continues…

What exactly are they saying?

Yesterday John McCain said the same thing he’s been saying for the last 5 years: We have to stay in Iraq, but “success is in reach.”

And General Petraeus told the Senate that it would be fall before he could say whether, or when, to draw down troops below the “pre-surge” levels. (Specifically, he recommended a 45-day period for “evaluation” starting in the summer, followed by an open-ended “assessment” process to decide what to do next).1

It all boils down to this: Demand more time and promise that victory is just over the horizon. Unfortunately, according to experts from the Iraq Study Group, the “surge” has gotten us “no closer to being able to leave Iraq than [we were] a year ago.”2

More than 4,000 Americans are dead. We’ve spent almost $500 billion on this war. A year after the “surge” began, Americans are no safer, and there is no end in sight.

With the Bush-McCain wait-and-see strategy, we can expect to hear “6 more months” for years and years to come.

We can’t just sit by. We’ve got to speak out now—please help spread the word.

I’ve compiled a couple other news clips along the same lines:

They Keep Saying The Same Things Every Year About The War

McCain Doesn’t Know What’s Going On In Iraq

I reported to you previously about TASO and how “Uganda Still An Example To The World” in the AIDS fight; as it was one of the first countries to show that prevention could work by taking a proactive stance.

I signed this letter to go to my senator in the link at the bottom of the post, urging that we continuing funding to help fight disease. Why not let us help those who help the selves especially.

Please take a few moments to urge your senator to take this stand.

——————————————————————————————
Frome the One Campaign:

My name is Agnes Nyamayarwo. I’m a nurse, a mother and an activist living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda.

It has been more than a decade since I lost my husband, Augustine, and youngest child, Christopher, to AIDS; another son, Charles, ran away from home to escape the stigma of this disease.

Now I honor their memory through my work with an organization called TASO (The AIDS Support Organization) here in Kampala, Uganda. At TASO, I work with HIV/AIDS patients, orphans and mothers to try and save others from experiencing the pain I have.

I am also a member of the TASO Board of Trustees, representing the views of people living with HIV/AIDS in all the 11 centers of TASO across the country. You can learn more about TASO here.

Your work at ONE to make global AIDS an American priority has touched my heart. Last week, you asked your members of Congress to support the reauthorization of PEPFAR and fund the fight against AIDS, TB, and malaria and you won.

Now PEPFAR goes to the U.S. Senate and I’m asking you to please sign ONE’s petition and urge your senators to co-sponsor this lifesaving bill.

www.one.org/pepfarsenate?id=286-271166-LTLm1u&t=3

In my last post on this subject Thursday, regarding the NAACP, I asked “Seriously, are these Mofo’s crazy? Have they lost their cotton-pickin minds?”.

After listening to the Black Women’s Roundtable podcast later that night; I’m convinced that the answer is yes.

Host Gina McCauley had on at the top of the hour Florida State President Adora Nweze and National Communication’s Director Robert McIntyre, for 30 minutes.

It was an exercise in hedging and ridiculous pretense about what issues are and are not in their scope; still not explaining why freeing rapists is in their scope. Mrs. Nweze kept talking about no “intent to ignore the victims”; but the problem is where is the active intent to help the victims?

Director McIntyre was as arrogant as he can be. He kept spinning, talking about how the NAACP’s history should let everyone know where they stand; but history has absolutely nothing to do with the position the NAACP is taking in this particular case. When directly asked did he favor the Dunbar suspect getting bail, McIntyre skirted the actual question responding that they “have a right to bail”; which no asked him to give us a lecture on legal rights, but for his and the NAACP’s position on this particular case. He even went as far as to say if they get bail “so be it”.

I guess that’s the NAACP’s position on unleashing brutal rapists on our community, “so be it”!

In response to the performance of his representative on the podcast I called Julian Bond’s office (Chairman of the National NAACP) Friday, and when the operator transferred me I was sent to the voice mail of a Mrs. Brice who said that I’d reached the legal department and office of Julian Bond. So I left my message for him there.

My message went something like this:

“Hi, My name is Yobachi Boswell with the Afrosphere Action Coalition. I’m calling to ask the Chairman and wanted to know why the NAACP is allowing its West Palm Beach branch to coddle rapists; and why it’s not taking an active stance in favor of the Dunbar Village victims?

The communications director, Mr. McIntyre, was on Gina McCauley’s podcast last night, and he refused to take a positive position in favor of the Dunbar Village victims because he says that’s out of the NAACP’s scope.

If taking an affirmative position oh behalf of black Victims is not within the scope of the NAACP, then why is taking up for rapists and doing PR work for multimillionaires who beat up dogs.”

For her part, Mrs Nweze has at least apologized on a number of occasions this past week showing some humility, compasssion and contriteness on behalf of the organization. But every other official in the organization at every level, and the organizations actions (or inactions) belie this one individuals words of apology:

1. Maude Ford Lee is still the President of the West Palm Beach Branch and she hasn’t retracted one word of what she’s said or has done to try and free rapists.
2. Richard McIntyre posture remains one of having been a complete ass and totally unconcerned and incompationate
3. The NAACP has not at any level yet made a positive statement on behalf of the Dunbar Village victims
4. The NAACP hasn’t done one thing to help the victims of this horrendous attack in particular, nor to help the people living in the concentration camp of Dunbar Village in general

All of the above is completely unsatisfactory.

So for my part, I’m calling Maude Ford Lee Monday and asking her why she still supports rapists and wants them free to pillage the community. And I’m also going to send a fax or postal letter to Chairman Bond, Communications Director McIntyre and Florida President Nweze making these points in more detail.

Also, Frank Cerabino of the Palm Beach Post called in to the podcast Thursday. Cerabino was at the press conference last month where the NAACP called for bail for the alleged rapists. I called in and asked him about Mrs. Nweze’s claim that the NAACP didn’t produce the flyer handed out there; but he notes there were only a couple of dozen people there who were not reporters, there’s no way the NAACP could have not known it was being passed out, the NAACP didn’t disavow it, and the positions they took from the podium while standing with the alleged rapist parents were consistent with the flyers.

I’m way too tired to put together this post from scratch like I normally would, so I’m just going to whole sale steal from Danielle. Hell, who needs to re-invent the wheel?

“I have created a slideshow that can be placed in your sidebar if you are planning on participating on April 13th for the In Solidarity: Global Day for Darfur.

The Mission is to build upon Amnesty International’s global efforts within the blogsphere.

The Strategy is to Educate, Motivate and Activate toward ending the genocide in Darfur.

Educate through analysis of reports and news materials, compilations of facts through viral multimedia like podcasts and videos posted on Youtube and linking to articles, blog posts, and viral media to expand public knowledge of the Darfuri genocide. Any and all aspects can be focused on; such as the root causes of the murder, who is behind it, and what the international community has done to promote the murder and to end it.

Motivate through the capacity within humanity for empathy. Motivate through love. Pull at heart strings, communicate the sameness of Darfuri families and your own, and share the simple, common fact that we are all the same and the suffering of the Darfuri people is felt within our hearts. Motivate through the anger for the greed, the murder, and the lack of action.

Activate through petitions, open letters, letters to all our elected officials as well as U.N., Sudanese and Chinese officials, and speaking out to the corporate sponsors of the Beijing Olympics as China plays a key role.

I will be adding some facts, links and viral media in the coming days which anyone can grab and use. I will also have some fact sheets and other materials to spread. Since we are building a movement, I will prominently display all participants’ contributions and continue with the link love.

The code for the slideshow can be found here entitled In Solidarity: Global Day for Darfur.”

If you want to add the code to your sidebar comment to Modern Musings since one measurement needs to be changed in the html code depending upon the size of your sidebar.

Let me know in the comments if you’re a blogger who wants to participate with your username and your url; not the name of your blog but your full url address, and I’ll pass the information on, so that you can be listed.

I told you the other day about how the NAACP More Concerned With Excusing Rapists, Than With Helping Their Victims.

The more I look at this flyer the more disgusted and the more pissed off I get.

If you go here, and click on the flyer you can blow it up to where you can read all of it.

Victims?

Cause that dirty little Hatian whore wanted it, and same for her punk ass son; because what young man doesn’t want head…from his momma?

Howard Witt writes:

Maude Ford Lee, the president of the West Palm Beach NAACP chapter who joined Sharpton at the news conference, said she hoped Sharpton’s presence would help expose the “injustice” of the case.

“Our kids are incarcerated, they can’t even get a bond, and it’s unconscionable what is happening,” Lee told reporters.

Seriously, are these Mofo’s crazy? Have they lost their cotton-pickin minds?

What’s “unconscionable” is these Colored people at the NAACP trying to free rapists just because they’re Black, and being more concerned about making them out to be misunderstood little angels; while ignoring the well being of law abiding moral black folks trapped in the Dubar Villages of this nation…who are victimized by these “precious” and “tender” rapist, and other thugs of their ilk.

Witt goes on to write, “Lee declined further explanation of her comments. But National Association for the Advancement of Colored People officials at both the state and national level said their organizations had taken no position on whether the Dunbar suspects should be released on bond”.

Silence is a betrayal of morality. Silence is a position. It’s a position in favor of the status quo. In this case, the status quo of their WPB Branch trying to spring rapist free, the status quo of lax police protection of poor Black people, the status quo of Black victimization by our own with no response from the Leading Negro apparatus.

Let’s call the NAACP officials to find out why they’re okay with this status quo.

Chairman Julian Bond (877) NAACP-98
Interim President and CEO Dennis Courtland Hayes (877) NAACP-98
&
President of Florida State Conference NAACP Adora Obi Nweze (407) 843-5320

For her part, state president Nweze will be on Gina McCauley’s live podcast at whataboutourdaughters.blogspot.com/ at 8:00 central tonight.

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends” – MLK, Jr

“A time comes when silence is betrayal” – MLK, JR

“All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing” – Edmund Burke

Okay, I’m not going to go through the arduous task of recapping all the happenings point by point; but here’s the situation in a nutshell:

Back in the summer a woman was gang rapped in her apartment while her son was beaten, and then she was forced to perform oral on him; as they screamed for help in a thined wall project apartment, and no one bothered to even call police.

Back in late November, four suspects were charged.

Though there have been persistent calls over the months for Al Shaprton and the NAACP to bring their advocacy powers to bare on behalf of the torcher victims as well as for the safety of Dunbar Village residents in general; these people have been mostly muted, until they decide to take up for the apparent rapists (Though according to West Palm Beach (WPB) chapter president Maude Ford Lee, the chapter helped relocate the families with some churches. Her statement making this claim gives no specifics as to the veracity of this “help”.)

Let me first be abundantly clear: due process must be insisted upon for all defendents, even when we think “we know” who do it; as to protect the freedom of the innocent and to be sure and punish the rightfully guilty, especially when dealing with a racist and classist injustice system.

However, with that principle strigently in hand, there by no means should be calls for likely rapist to roam free based on another set of accused rapist in another case having received bail; as has been called for by Al Sharpton and the NAACP. If anything Sharpton and the NAACP should be calling for the other defendants to be held without bail as well, but not that the Dunbar (self-confessed in some cases) rapist be unleashed back onto the community. If there are no due process issues and sufficent evidence (there is cooberating evidence such as DNA) to support a solid belief that these are the right supspects; there’s no reason why they should receive bail.

Sharpton and the NAACP have claimed it a matter of fairness. Somehow to these folks, because Group A rapist were let out on bail; its fair for women and children to be subject to rape, and therefore, Group B rapist should be released.

Since a Blogger campaign started a couple of weeks ago to “Stop NAACP Support of Rapists”, Al Sharpton has retracted his position and admitted he made a mistake. The NAACP however, persist, and claim that you can’t believe your lying eyes and ears. The NAACP continues to take up for criminals just because they’re Black.

We (Black people with any decent level of integrity) don’t defend criminals just because they’re Black. And we don’t let “Leading Blacks” tell us that bruatal rapist are “precious” and “tender” misunderstood youth:

This is the flyer they passed out at the press confrence where they “didn’t” defend rapist.

Even while advocating against the gross overreach of a malicious prosecutor in the Jena 6 case, I never claimed that Mychael Bell, Bryant Purvis and company were sweet and pure; and in their case, even if they are the perpitrators, their alleged crime was nowhere near as horrific as this.

We’re asking people to contact Mrs Lee of the West Palm Beach NAACP (unit5143@naacp.org or 561 655-9798) and encourage her to refrain from advocating that rapist get bail; and for all NAACP members everywhere to withhold funds and participation in this organization until it does the right thing to “Advance” our community. The national and state NAACP are aware of this issue. Their silence is nothing less than a nod of agreement with the position of the WPB branch.

This is a letter from Color of Change about the latest injustice at the Louisiana State Prison at Angola; once a plantation and still is.

Dear Friend,

After a week of intense public pressure, officials at Angola prison moved Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox out of solitary confinement for the first time in 35 years. But they’re still locked up, for a crime everyone knows they didn’t commit.

ColorOfChange.org members have helped turn things around by making it a political liability for the authorities at Angola to keep Wallace and Woodfox in solitary confinement. I’ve joined them to keep the pressure on by forcing federal and state authorities to intervene and release these innocent men who have been punished for challenging the violence and segregation at Angola.

Will you join me?

www.colorofchange.org/angola3/?id=1456-138198

Prisoners picking cotton at Angola in 1999

When ColorOfChange.org spoke up about the Jena 6, it was about more than helping six Black youth in a small town called Jena. It was about standing up against a system of unequal justice that deals an uneven hand based on the color of one’s skin. That broken system is at work again and ColorOfChange.org is joining The Innocence Project and Amnesty International to challenge it in the case of the Angola 3.

“Angola”, sits on 18,000 acres of former plantation land in Louisiana and is estimated to be one of the largest prisons in the United States. Angola’s history is telling: once considered one of the most violent, racially segregated prison in America, almost a prisoner a day was stabbed, shot or raped. Prisoners were often put in inhumane extreme punishment camps for small infractions. The Angola 3 - Herman, Albert and Robert - organized hunger and work strikes within the prison in the 70’s to protest continued segregation, corruption and horrific abuse facing the largely Black prisoner population.

Shortly after they spoke out, the Angola 3 were convicted of murdering a prison guard by an all-white jury. It is now clear that these men were framed to silence their peaceful revolt against inhumane treatment. Since then, they have spent every day for 35 years in 6×9 foot cells for a crime they didn’t commit.

Herman and Albert are not saints. They are the first to admit they’ve committed crimes. But, everyone agrees that their debts to society for various robbery convictions were paid long ago.

NBC News/Dateline just aired a piece this week about the plight of the Angola 3. And it’s time to finally get some justice for Herman and Albert. For far too long, court officials have stalled and refused to review their cases. Evidence of prosecutorial misconduct and constitutional violations have not swayed them.

It’s now time for the Governor of Louisiana and the United States Congress, which provides the funding for federal prisons like Angola, to step in and say enough is enough. Please join us in calling for Governor Bobby Jindal and your Congressperson to initiate an immediate and full investigation into the case of the Angola 3.

www.colorofchange.org/angola3/?id=1456-138198

Thanks.