Some of everything
Commentary by Chitown Kev
1) Here is the reason that I am excited to join so many of my fellow Kossacks in New Orleans for Netroots Nation in two weeks.
Waaaaaaaay back in 1989, I had more than an inkling that I had a serious problem with mood and mind-altering substances. As a result, I returned home to Detroit because, at that time, if I knew nothing else, I knew that my immediate family wasn’t a family of drug and alcohol abusers.
But...at that time, they drove me crazy. (That remains true, for the most part, but I also realize that they have to put up with my crazy ass, as well...I love ‘em very much!)
So after a couple of months, I wanted to leave and go somewhere else.
I decided that the ‘’someplace else’’ that I would go would be New Orleans, Louisiana,
Only I didn’t have the money cobbled together to get to New Orleans...and I felt I had to get out.
So the plan was that I would go to Chicago, find a job, get my money together and go on to New Orleans from there.
And so...here it is, 28 years later that I get to finally complete the second leg of my trip away from home, lol.
2) Speaking of home...
3) The other day, I was reading Patrick Blanchfield’s review of Katherine Belew’s Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America
Meticulously researched and powerfully argued, Belew’s book isn’t only a definitive history of white-racist violence in late-20th-century America, but also a rigorous meditation on the relationship between American militarism abroad and extremism at home, with distressing implications for the United States in 2018 and beyond. Two fundamental insights underpin the book: first, that there exists a profound relationship between America’s military violence and domestic right-wing paramilitary organizations, and, second, that the character of that relationship underwent a decisive change in the late 1970s and early ’80s.
I haven’t read Ms. Belew’s book but given the evidence of Mr. Blanchfield’s review, there is a missing correlation.
Wartimes and the immediate post-wartime periods also happen to be times when black folks have traditionally had a greater focus on civil rights...for the perfectly obvious reason that it’s outright immoral to ask a group of people to serve the country in a war, on one hand and, on the other hand, not treat them as full citizens after the war. For example, W.E.B. DuBois urged black participation in the First World War in the hope that blacks would benefit at home, socially, from participation in the war through the expansion of civil rights. In the July 1918 issue of The Crisis (page 111), Dr. Dubois asked of black people to ‘’forget our special grievances and close our ranks shoulder to shoulder with our white fellow citizens and the allied nations that are fighting for democracy.’’ Or, there was the threat of black non-participation in World War ii and the threat of a March on Washington in 1941.
So...sure, I can believe that there is a ‘’profound relationship’’’ btween American militarism and domestic right-wing paramilitary organizations. But, as a rule, American militarism is also, historically, closely correlated with increased African American demands for civil rights, I think that those increased demands for civil rights are subject to white backlash...for all I know, Ms. Belew included those in her analysis.
A final and fleeting thought: The election of an African American as presdent of the United States can be made to fit into this pattern, especially since Presidet Obama, unlike Hillary Clinton, John Edwards or Joe Biden, was actively against the Iraq War...The Backlash, in the form of a racist traitor, might also fit into this pattern, a little...speaking of which…
4) I was working a double shift yesterday, so I barely noticed the treasonous performance of The Occupant yesterday and...I mean, was his election some people holding onto their racism, sexism, homophobia, and other -isms?...too depressing to think about but I did wake up with the following song on my mind this morning and I’ll leave you in a good mood.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The company behind Essence magazine just partnered with musician, actress and entrepreneur Queen Latifah for a multimillion-dollar initiative to give more creators of color the financial support and ownership they need.
Essence Ventures LLC announced the Essence Creators and Makers Fund in an emailed statement yesterday (July 11). The new $20 million initiative aims to build a stronger economic and production infrastructure for artists of color—especially those making content about and for women of color, like the Black women in Essence’s target audience.
“The fund will create and finance film, television, digital and documentary-style content that reflect the lives and experiences of women of color,” the statement adds. “It will also seek to collaborate with content creators globally focused on Essence’s diverse and dynamic core audience of Black women, with the content produced encompassing themes that relate and connect across audiences.”
In addition to investment and connections, the fund will support artists by promoting projects via Essence’s various platforms. It will also share ownership rights with creators, which Essence Ventures founder Richelieu Dennis says helps to correct a frequent power imbalance in the entertainment world.
“The real value in content creation is owners”
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Minority homebuyers are systematically steered to neighborhoods with higher concentrations of toxic contamination and pollution than their white counterparts, according to a new study that looks at potential discrimination faced by people of color when working with real estate agents.
The study’s results confirm observations made by environmental justice experts over the past few decades about the correlations between race and pollution. The literature on environmental justice has demonstrated evidence that minority households are more likely to be exposed to a range of toxics and other pollutants.
In the study, the authors found people of color are often presented with housing options that are disproportionately lower in environmental quality than are those given to similar white buyers.
“These results are the first that we know of to demonstrate housing discrimination by real estate agents to pollution exposures and to a range of other economic disadvantages,” Peter Christensen, a professor of economics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and one of the authors of the study, told ThinkProgress in an email on Monday.
Christensen and Christopher Timmins, a professor of economics at Duke University, prepared the study — “Sorting or Steering: Experimental Evidence on the Economic Effects of Housing Discrimination” — for the National Bureau of Economic Research, an independent economic research group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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A Democratic nominee campaigning for an upstate New York congressional seat had no apologies for the hardcore lyrics he rapped more than a decade ago.
Antonio Delgado, formerly AD The Voice, defended his music on Monday, accusing his incumbent GOP rival for the 19th congressional district of taking his lyrics out of context, according to confirmed reports.
“My decision to pursue a career in hip-hop was consistent with hip-hop’s long and rich history of addressing the social and racial injustices that plague America. If you listen to the content of the lyrics, my mission is clear,” he stated.
Delgado, 41, is a Schenectady, New York native who earned a law degree from Harvard University after attending prestigious Oxford University in England as a Rhodes scholar. He recorded an 18-song CD in 2006 that criticized the two-party political system, described dead presidents as white supremacists and made frequent use of the N-word, according to reports.
“I was shocked and surprised to learn Mr. Delgado authored some very troubling and offensive song lyrics,” said John Faso, Delgado’s Republican opponent.
“The tone and tenor of his lyrics, as reported, are not consistent with the views of most people in our district, nor do they represent a true reflection of our nation. Mr. Delgado’s lyrics paint an ugly and false picture of America,” the GOP incumbent added.
The former rapper accused Faso of mischaracterizing his work and predicted that his ploy will fail because folks in the district know the Democrat’s true character.
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Haiti's Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant resigned Saturday amid violent and deadly protests sparked by a proposed plan to raise fuel prices, according to President Jovenel Moise. CNN: Haiti's Prime Minister resigns amid deadly protests
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Lafontant resigned before parliament, which was due to host a vote of no confidence, Yves German Joseph, the General Secretary of the National Palace, told CNN.
Lafontant, who took office in February 2017, informed Moise of his resignation by letter. Moise accepted the resignation, Joseph said.
Moise said on Twitter he would address the country Saturday night "in a
special edition on the National Television of Haiti."
"I take this opportunity to thank Mr. Lafontant and the members of the cabinet for the services rendered to the nation," Moise said on Twitter. The controversial plan to raise fuel prices would increase the cost of gasoline by 38 percent, diesel by 47 percent and kerosene by 51 percent.
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The U.S. and the Soviet Union weren’t the only ones trying to change regimes during the Cold War, some of it was Africa’s own corrupt leaders. OZY: THE SECRET HAND BEHIND WEST AFRICA’S REGIME CHANGES
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Armed with AK-47s, the rebels sneaked into Liberia on Christmas Eve in 1989 to overthrow the country’s President Samuel Doe. As the ensuing civil war escalated, ultimately killing 400,000 people, the world’s attention turned to rebel leader Charles Taylor, and Libya, which had trained his men. But the man whom diplomats and experts hold responsible for the invasion was watching calmly from Yamoussoukro. At 84, Ivory Coast President Félix Houphouët-Boigny’s appetite for regime change hadn’t waned.
West Africa’s longest-serving leader, Houphouët-Boigny led Ivory Coast from its independence in 1960 till his death in 1993, turning the former French colony into a rare pillar of economic success and stability. An ally of the West during the Cold War, Houphouët-Boigny had a Peace Prize instituted in his name by UNESCO in 1990. But there was a more manipulative side to the man popularly known as Papa Houphouët or Le Vieux (The Old One), say experts and diplomats who worked with him.
Senior American diplomat Herman Cohen recalls meeting at the Ivorian leader’s house with Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the Angolan rebel group UNITA that through the 1980s tried to overthrow the U.N.-recognized government of José Eduardo Dos Santos. Former Liberian warlord Prince Johnson, once Taylor’s ally, has told Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission that Houphouët-Boigny was involved in the 1987 assassination of Burkina Faso’s Marxist leader, Thomas Sankara. And though the Ivorian leader denied a role in these interventions, he was behind Taylor’s Christmas Eve Liberia invasion, according to Cyril Obi, a West Africa researcher at the Social Science Research Council in Brooklyn. Taylor and his fighters entered Liberia through Ivory Coast, says Cohen, who is convinced about Houphouët-Boigny’s role.
“There is no doubt that the planning, financing and logistical assistance was orchestrated by [Ivory Coast] — [Taylor] working with President Houphouët,” says Cohen, who at the time was the U.S. assistant secretary of state for West Africa.
A deeply personal seed for the 1989 Liberian coup had been planted a decade earlier. Doe came to power in a 1980 coup during which then–Liberian President William Tolbert Jr. was killed. The assassinated president’s son, Albert Tolbert, was married to Houphouët-Boigny’s adopted daughter, Daisy Delafosse, and the Ivorian leader asked Doe to spare his son-in-law’s life. Doe’s men ignored the request and killed Albert Tolbert.
But Houphouët-Boigny wasn’t just a man with a vendetta. Small and soft-spoken, he defied the stereotype of a strongman. A legislator in the French Parliament before he took charge of independent Ivory Coast, Houphouët-Boigny continued moderate political positions and alliances with the West. With heavy investments in agriculture, the country emerged as the world’s largest cocoa producer, and till the early 1990s, the region’s biggest postcolonial economic success.
This success, though, also “gave Houphouët extra money to throw his weight around and influence politics,” says Cohen.
The U.S. and South Africa were the public faces of support for Angola’s Savimbi and UNITA, against the Soviet bloc–supported Dos Santos. But Houphouët-Boigny played a critical role in UNITA’s longevity. The Ivorian leader, says Cohen, helped Savimbi sell diamonds that he smuggled out of Angola to finance his insurgency. From August 1989 to an Angolan peace agreement in May 1991, the Angolan rebel leader was a frequent visitor to Houphouët-Boigny’s home. “Savimbi considered Houphouët to be his political or spiritual father,” recalls Cohen.
By 1987, though, another Marxist leader in the region was worrying the West. Sankara in Burkina Faso had declared his country would not repay loans from international agencies. A worried Cohen articulated these concerns to Houphouët-Boigny. “Oh, he is just a young guy,” Cohen recalls Houphouët-Boigny responding dismissively, speaking of Sankara, then 38. “He will mature. Don’t worry.” But the American diplomat still feels queasy about that conversation: Months later, Sankara was assassinated. Burkina Faso’s new leader was Sankara’s military chief, Blaise Compaoré, who remained in power till a peaceful transfer of power in 2014.
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Milwaukee has agreed to shell out a cool $3.4 million in order to settle a lawsuit which accuses its police department of unduly targeting black and Latinx residents for years through its stop-and-frisk policy.
The Milwaukee Common Council approved the settlement last week Tuesday, with Mayor Tom Barrett signing off on the agreement with the ACLU of Wisconsin on Friday.
“Ultimately we hope that these type of situations cease and desist,” Alderman Khalif Rainey said, according to the Associated Press.
The settlement will require more training for cops on stop and searches, as well as a reform of stop-and-frisk practices.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel notes:
The settlement includes a five-year consent decree requiring the department and the city’s Fire and Police Commission, the civilian oversight board, to reform stop-and-search practices, improve data collection and require officers to undergo more training on stops and searches.
“For the last decade, tens of thousands of Black and Latino Milwaukeeans have been interrupted in their daily lives by police stopping them without reasonable suspicion of criminal activity as required by the Constitution,” the ACLU of Wisconsin said in a Friday news release.
The civil rights group sued Milwaukee’s police department last year on behalf of some half a dozen people who said they were stopped at least once since 2010. The ACLU uncovered that officers had stopped more than 350,000 motorists and pedestrians from 2010 to 2017, with no explanation of probable cause for the encounters, the AP notes.
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