To our brothers and sisters in Puerto Rico — Rest in Peace/Descanse en Paz
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
There are really no words to say to the living that can heal the pain of losing loved ones. There is even more pain when one knows that certain deaths were preventable.
There is no way to apologize adequately for the failures of the U.S. government, its elected officials, the news media, and a mainland populace that has failed you and allowed so many to die.
When the news broke today in The Washington Post with a new count of the numbers who died, 4,465 so far, I failed to speak to the families when I wrote about it.
I want to do that now.
I know you are living with pain. That pain increases each day that we here on the mainland who are not Puerto Rican don’t seem to give a damn.
You deal with the pain of the loss of loved ones, and the pain of being abandoned by your government.
Somehow, so many of you go on each day, fighting to live and love.
Sadly, we know the deaths continue.
I sit here weeping — wondering how many people here even care.
Some of us knew from the beginning that the numbers we were being given were lies.
Now that the lies are unmasked — will we see people who are not Boricua bestir themselves to protest here on the mainland?
I won’t lie — I don’t think it will happen.
The dead now rest in peace.
The living will have to live on, in despair, and in hope, with no justice and no peace.
Wondering...where are the allies?
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Richard “Tre” Jenkins, 18, from Philadelphia went from homeless to Harvard-accepted with a full scholarship last week, reports ABC News
Jenkins lived in a homeless shelter, suffered migraines and his father had a heart attack in the time between fourth to sixth grade. The young scholar was bullied for participating in class and received the nickname “Harvard” by those who harassed him. After lying to a friend about where he lived, Jenkins said he realized he wanted to seek a better path in life for himself and his future children.
“I was walking home with friends, and he [Jenkins’ friend] knows where his house is and pointed to his house, and he’s like ‘Hey, where you live?’, and I lived in a shelter at that time, but my shelter looked like it could’ve been a huge house. I said ‘That’s my place over there,’” said Jenkins.
“But that’s when I realized I’ve got to buckle in because I can’t have my potential kids going through what I’m going through now,” he told WHYY.
Despite being bullied, he says credits participating in at Mighty Writers, an education nonprofit that provides free writing classes to inner-city Philly youth, with helping his essay writing and making it to the Ivy League. Jenkins applied to Harvard in his junior year after being attracted to a university program that pays tuition for students from households earning less than $65,000 a year.
He plans to major in computer science and wants to create the first sentient artificial intelligence program.
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There is a comforting mainstream narrative which tells us that African nations, like the rest of the developing world, are doing just fine. Look past the terrorist incidents, the latest Ebola outbreak and areas of drought, and you will find that poverty is being alleviated and diseases confined to isolated pockets. A combination of western aid, Chinese investment and the rejuvenating application of neoliberal economic medicine in the guise of free trade has come to the rescue, this narrative runs, improving matters by measurable degrees.
This draws on figures from the World Bank showing that in 1981 around 42% of the world’s population was extremely poor, using $1.90 a day in 2011 prices as a yardstick. By 2013, that figure had fallen to 10.7%. An estimate by the bank suggests it fell further, to 9.1%, in 2016. Likewise, polio and other major diseases are in full retreat.
But most of these gains have benefited the poor in Asia and Latin and South America, where governments of varying levels of stability have sought to raise living standards. In sub-Saharan Africa, the story is one of terrible and debilitating decline, such that in 2013 there were 389 million people living on less than $1.90 a day, which the World Bank says amounts to “more than all the other regions combined”.
Fast-rising populations across the region are one reason governments struggle to combat poverty. The other reason can be found in the pernicious activities of western companies, western governments and the Chinese state, which want to maintain access to important minerals and to make sure they stay as cheap as possible.
The devious nature of the conspiracy to keep Africa poor has most recently been exposed by the work of journalists who have banded together as the Norbert Zongo Cell for Investigative Reporting in West Africa (Cenozo), named after the Burkinabé newspaper editor murdered in 1998.
In a report last week, it revealed how western banks and governments turn a blind eye to billions of pounds’ worth of wealth, generated across west Africa, that is squirrelled away offshore, often out of sight of the tax authorities. Working with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which was behind the Panama Papers leaks, it details how Nigerian billionaire Sayyu Dantata bought six subsidiaries across the region from US oil firm Chevron. The $1bn deal would have been subject to multiple tax regimes depending on the laws of the countries involved. Tax experts working with the ICIJ say the transaction, at the very least, “skilfully avoided the withholding tax regime”. There is no suggestion Chevron or Dantata engaged in tax evasion or corrupt practices in relation to the transaction.
But tax evasion on the continent is a colossal problem. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has said, the extent of tax evasion in the region is dramatic, with more than $50bn per year funnelled out through illicit flows – a sum more than all the aid the continent receives from individual countries and agencies.
The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, recently said that, after several years in the job, she had concluded that interventions by her agency should come with more strings attached, and one of the strings should be a demand for anti-corruption drives.
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Yahya Jammeh was 15 years into his tenure as Gambia’s autocratic leader in 2009 when, according to local media reports, he ordered security forces to round up hundreds of “sorcerers” — reportedly in retribution for the death of his aunt, who he said was killed by witchcraft.
Over the next seven years, Jammeh directed sporadic “witch hunts” across the West African country of 2 million, a practice confirmed by Gambia’s government. Armed soldiers targeted poor, elderly farmers, forcing them to drink a hallucinogenic liquid before pressuring them into confessing to murders by sorcery, according to victims.
Interviews with more than 20 victims and dozens of witnesses and local leaders in two rural villages revealed a pattern of kidnappings, beatings and forced confessions that have had lasting health implications on survivors and resulted in several deaths, according to surviving family members and neighbors.
Gambia’s government last year launched a commission to investigate alleged abuses under Jammeh, working with an independent center to provide support for survivors of Jammeh-ordered atrocities. But none of the villagers interviewed by The Washington Post said they had contact with government investigators or the victims center.
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France will give residence papers to an illegal immigrant from Mali who scaled the facade of a Paris apartment block to save a boy who was about to fall from a fourth-floor balcony, President Emmanuel Macron said Monday.
Video shows Mamoudou Gassama, 22, risking his life Sunday as he climbed up the balconies to rescue the 4-year-old who is clinging to a railing and glancing at the ground below, while horrified onlookers watch.
The video went viral and Gassama, who has been nicknamed “Spider-Man” for making the rescue in less than a minute, was swiftly granted a meeting at the Elysee Palace.
“This is an exceptional act,” Macron told Gassama. “We’ll obviously be setting all your papers straight and if you wish it, we will start the process naturalization so that you can become French.”
Gassama told Macron he tried to cross the Mediterranean in March 2014 to reach Italy, but was caught by police.
Europe has faced a migrant crisis since 2015 following wars in Libya and Syria and more than 1 million people from Africa and the Middle East have tried to reach the continent via Turkey or by sea.
Macron’s government has said it wants to be both firm and fair on immigration, but it took a tougher stance lately, with parliament approving a bill that tightens asylum rules.
The meeting with Macron was closely followed by French news channel BFM and was the number one headline on Monday morning.
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Everything happened so quickly. I was laughing, talking trash and schooling kids on the basketball court in the gymnasium of my after-school program one evening when I was suddenly asked to leave the court and follow an administrator to a conference room. I was 12 years old.
As we walked down the hallway, I couldn’t help wondering if I was in trouble, since that was the norm. Instead, I found myself walking into a situation that forever changed my life. I was met by my social worker, who was standing in the room along with my two of my siblings. She shared with us that we were not going to be returning home to our mother, with whom we had been living for the past two years.
No explanations or goodbyes; instead, we gathered our book bags and were driven to the Department of Social Services, where our belongings, packed in duffle bags, were sitting in the middle of the floor, ready for us to leave a situation that was all too familiar. This wasn’t my first time being abruptly yanked out of my living situation, and it wouldn’t be the last.
At birth I was abandoned by my parents, who left me in the hospital as they struggled to escape drug addiction, criminal activity and poverty. I was then placed in permanent guardianship with my great-aunt, who raised me and my two siblings for 10 years. When I was 10, my mother was no longer on drugs and fought to regain custody of us. By the summer of 1998, my older brother, younger sister and I were moving in with her and my 16-year-old sister, of whom my mom had previous custody.
I remember moving in and thinking that things would be better for us; I finally got the mom of my dreams. But those dreams quickly dissolved. My mother, who had suddenly become a single mother of four, was trying to figure it all out with little resources, guidance or support. She typically left us home alone while she spent long hours at work just to make ends meet. She was overwhelmed by the daily routine of being a mom, and she began to lash out with physical and emotional abuse.
After two years, she felt it was better to place us in foster care. What she did not realize is that the system that had the responsibility to protect and “do no harm” became a place where I experienced multiple traumas, including being separated from her and my siblings.
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“The platform is often a safe space for White supremacists to spew anti-Black vitriol and encourage physical violence against Black people without reprimand from Facebook.” ColorLines: Facebook must protect it's black users
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Nearly two years ago, 23-year-old Black mother Korryn Gaines wasexecuted in her own home. Police also shot her five-year-old son. I, like many folks, was horrified to read about yet another Black mother dead at the hands of the police—Korryn was the ninth Black woman killed by law enforcement officers in 2016.
I was also enraged at the role Facebook played in destroying this young family. Facebook’s opaque policies on the use of its platform had spilled offline in a violent and disturbing way—and it wasn’t the first or the last time.
Gaines was live streaming as officers busted into her home to serve a warrant on charges stemming from a traffic stop. In the middle of the standoff, police officials asked Facebook to suspend Gaines’ accounts via what they called a “law enforcement portal,” a part of the site only open to certified law enforcement agencies.
Facebook granted the emergency request and took her account offline. In doing so, Facebook removed one of the most important tools Gaines had to hold the police accountable and gave police the license to kill Gaines with no accountability.
Facebook has long been complicit in violence against Black people, both online and offline. The platform is a safe space for White supremacists to spew anti-Black vitriol, organize Klan rallies, and encourage physical violence against Black people without reprimand from Facebook.
That’s part of the reason why I, and a contingent of other activists with The Movement for Black Lives, visited Facebook’s offices in 2015.
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Nearly two decades ago, Jim Hunn was wandering around a cemetery in Lincoln county, Kentucky, when a small headstone caught his eye. He stared at the name etched on it: Jordan Wallace. Hunn can’t explain exactly why, but he felt an instant attachment.
“I got a feeling when I saw it,” he said.
He later learned that Wallace was his great-great-grandfather: a slave who, with his father and two brothers, escaped his owner’s home in 1864 to travel to Camp Nelson, a nearby Union army supply depot and recruitment camp where more than 10,000 African American soldiers lived during the civil war while serving in the US Colored Troops, who fought for the Union. Wallace and his sons joined the troops when they arrived.
Camp Nelson has existed in relative obscurity since then, despite its pivotal role in the history of US slavery. But now years of hard work by local enthusiasts to protect the site may be paying off. In an unexpected and little-noticed move, the Trump administration, which drastically shrank national monuments in Utah, recently proposed turning Camp Nelson into a monument, along with another site in Mississippi, commemorating African American history.
“Nobody knows it’s here, or the significance of this place for African Americans,” Hunn, a soft-spoken 77-year-old man, said as he rocked in a wooden rocking chair on the porch of Camp Nelson’s interpretive center one windy day in late March. “It makes me proud to know where I came from. My theory is if you are black and born in Kentucky, you had somebody connected to Camp Nelson.”
These proposed designations are striking because Donald Trump has, for instance, partly blamed anti-racism marchersfor violence at a white supremacist rally, and his administration has made moves to roll back civil rights protections. Both sites are important symbols of black history that local communities, lawmakers, and historians say have long deserved national recognition.
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