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January
19. 2002
Jordan
Green
Enron
Stole Our Future
January
18, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
The
Enron Model
Walt Brasch
Enron
at the White House
CounterPunch
Wire
Human
Rights Groups Says Guantanamo Prisoners Must
Be Treated as POWs
January
17, 2002
Gideon
Levy
Bulldozing
Rafah
Uri Avnery
That
Weapons Shipment
January
16, 2002
John Chuckman
The
Angel and the Pretzel
Lawrence
McGuire
Subverting
the
Geneva Convention
Kathy
Kelly
An
Open Letter to
Richard Perle on Iraq
January
15, 2002
George
Monbiot
Greenpeace,
Lord Melchett
and the Business of Betrayal
Jack McCarthy
Follow
the Pretzel
William
Blum
Atta
and the Times:
Follow the Changing Story
Edward
Said
Emerging
Alternatives
in Palestine
January
14, 2002
David
Vest
Open
Bag. Eat Pretzels.
Patrick
Cockburn
Collapse
of Georgia
Ignored by the World
Mokhiber/Weissman
Enron's
Accountants:
When In Doubt, Shred It
January
13, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
Why
We Kill People
January
12, 2002
Cockburn/St.
Clair
Forbidden
Truths
January
11, 2002
Lee Balllinger/Dave
Marsh
Neil
Young's Duet with Ashcroft
January
10, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Bush,
Enron, UNOCAL
and the Taliban
St. Clair/Cockburn
Greenpeace
to Greenwash?
Hans von
Sponek
Iraq:
Is There an Alternative
to Military Action?
Jim Lobe
Israeli
Human Rights Group Assails Army
Marina Mayakova
Russia's
Top Military Astrologer Predicts More Attacks from OBL
January
9, 2002
David
Vest
The
Super-Burqa
and the Big Tent
ND Jayaprakash
Winnable
Nuclear War?
Rafiq
Kathwari
Kashmir
Will Make Ground Zero Look Like a Bonfire
January
8, 2002
Prudence
Crowther
Sting
Like a B-52
Nelson
Valdés
Al-Qaeda
at Guantanamo Bay
John Chuckman
Dark
Tales from the
Ministry of Truth
Richard
Corn-Revere
Do
We Fear Freedom?
Joan Hoff
The
Nixon You Haven't Heard
January
7, 2002
Lawrence
McGuire
Confusing
Economic Tales About Argentina
Wael Masri
They
Are Taking
Our Rights Away
Philip
Farruggio
Better
Medicine
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
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Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
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by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
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January
21, 2002
The Crisis in Black
Leadership
Black Out
By Kevin Alexander Gray
A black out is in effect. Discussion and action
on issues of race, class, human and civil rights, poverty and
disparate wealth that were moving to the top of the world political
agenda prior to 9/11 are off the table. And many of the people
trying to resurrect those issues will probably end up (if they
aren't already) on someone's terrorist list.
As American life goes, blacks get it
worse and different. The current black out is no exception.
Blacks, as Alexis de Tocqueville described, are the "enemy
within". If war casualties are high, they may do most of
the protesting, thus, they must be controlled more vigorously
and specifically than others.
Blacks also buy big gas guzzling SUV's thus they share an interest
in cheap gas. But beyond material interest, there are clearly
negative consequences for those who do not go along with the
government's plan. They can end up dead or in jail. Martin
Luther King and Muhammad Ali are examples of what can happen
when you diss the plan.
Barbara Lee the sole rebel, barely
got her voice and photo op of official dissent during the vote
giving George Bush II his blank check to wage war. The mainstream
media presentation of Lee's image offers three predictable views
radical traitor, out of touch yet well meaning liberal
and official dissenter. As of yet, those who cast her in one
of those three roles have not widely or thoroughly presented
the reasoning behind her vote. Lee stood alone while the generally
outspoken Maxine Waters, presidential candidate in training Jesse
Jackson Jr. and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus
were mute. Even John Lewis, one of King's apostles of non-violence,
voted for revenge and violence. And Cynthia McKinney, who while
at the UN Conference on Racism in Durban, SA railed against US
government domestic spying, voted for the war and against the
anti-terrorism bill. Evidently, McKinney's activism is tempered
by the militarism of her district.
Then there was John Conyers' puzzling
co-sponsorship (with Jim Sensenbrenner) of the Uniting and Strengthening
America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept
and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001 which makes
legal many of the police state tactics used on a host of radical,
left and progressive organizations and people in the US. After
passage of the bill, Congressman and former Black Panther Bobby
Rush said, "I knew I was casting my vote against J. Edgar
Hoover, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan Once this crisis is over,
they're not going to be looking for Osama bin Laden or people
who look like Arabs. As usual, they're going to be looking for
you and me".
But Rush's initial yea vote for war supports
pretty much the same thing. Conyers, as did most black caucus
members, eventually voted against the final version of the anti-terrorism
bill. Only Corrine Brown, Harold Ford and Chaka Fattah voted
with the majority. Apparently, Conyers rationalized that co-sponsorship
gave him the input to keep a bad situation from being worse.
Still, the war powers vote was as Dorothy Love Coates once put
it, "the separation line" between the saved and the
unsaved. Attempts to portray opposition to the anti-terrorism
bill, as nuanced defiance to the war does not move those who
abandoned peace to the saved side of the line.
With the possible exception of Lee and
a few others, black leadership inside and outside of government
- if there is such a thing, have surrendered to white, male leadership.
For sure, Cornell West and Al Sharpton got in a one-liner or
two about US policy in the Middle East being bad. But for the
most part, elite black leadership and organizations are in the
pockets of corporate America and know not to bite the hand that
feeds them even when they are not being all that well fed. That
is unless you take a Harvard-led poor peoples' movement or a
possible presidential run as serious models of defiance. And
Bush's warning of "You're either with us or against us"
makes clear the threat against their meal ticket.
Kweisi Mfume of the NAACP wrapped himself
and his organization in the flag repeatedly pledging his organization's
support of the war citing the "traditional patriotism of
black Americans". He quickly rebuked Curtis Gatewood,
president of the organization's Durham, North Carolina branch
for denouncing the US plan for military retaliation. Oddly,
Mfume raised the ghost of Crispus Attucks to explain polling
data that ironically had 71per cent of blacks supporting racial
profiling of Arabs or those of Middle Eastern origin.
Jesse Jackson Sr. checked the limits
of the black out by suggesting he might go to Afghanistan. But
he quickly found out that anything other than support for war
and "God Bless America," was out. He was lampooned
from syndicated morning black talk radio to NBC's Saturday Night
Live to the editorial page cartoons. After the sting of the
whipping over his aborted trip faded, Jackson put out a column
posing the old Nixon/Kissinger line of "peace with honor"
and then shut up. That is unless you consider his day late opposition
to the anti-terrorism bill as saying something.
Predictably, the most notable criticism
of US policy from the black religious community is coming from
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, although he has yet to
offer outright condemnation of the Afghan war. At a New York
event reported in black newspapers across the country, Farrakhan
said that American policymakers were "dripping with the
blood of hundreds of thousands of people around the globe".
He also cautioned the US government to be "careful"
not to start a religious war and asked to see the "overwhelming
evidence" against bin Laden. Still, neither Farrakhan
nor Christian ministers Al Sharpton and Jackson Sr. have much
sway within the organized black religious community. The people
with the power are the ministers in the pulpit and the deacon
boards and ladies' auxiliaries that support them. And down in
the black belt south where WWJD ("What Would Jesus Do?")
bumper stickers are just as common as Confederate and American
flags, black and white Christians have avoided applying the Jesus
question to the current situation. Even after Bush II declared
war in a church the National Cathedral.
Without a doubt, it has always been difficult
for progressive voices to get their message out. But civil rights
leadership has been noticeably gagged since 9/11. As a result,
black Americans, like everyone else, are being propagandized
into support of an Old Testament 'eye for an eye' foreign policy,
a war that punishes and kills poor, starving Afghans and the
expansion of the very police state they have fought for decades.
Blacks are not politically monolithic.
Yet the day before the terrorists' attacks, the illegitimacy
of the Bush presidency was a given in much of the black community.
Bush's most ardent critics were black democratic officials and
activists such as Sharpton, Jackson Sr. and even Mfume and his
organization. They charged that the 2000 election goings on
in Florida and the decision of the Supreme Court in Bush's favor
was nothing less than a coup d'état. Sharpton's possible
run for president is pitched as a protest over black voter disenfranchisement.
Now, in war, all is forgiven if not forgotten.
Consider that for the past 20 years or
so the US has waged a war on drugs/black and brown citizens.
The theme of the war is "stop the violence". Civil
rights groups, schools, public officials and others have bought
into the theme. Americans have waged a war against themselves,
their children, kin and friends. The superficial focus has been
on ending gang violence and thug life. In the eighties, (coincidentally
the generation where the current group of military enlistees
is drawn from) the popular movies were Boyz in the Hood, Menace
to Society and Colors just to name a few. The music of choice
for young ghetto dwellers and wannabes busters - the much-maligned
gangsta rap. The recurring act in thug life is protecting your
turf and fellow G's. If rival gangbangers bum rush your spot
and kills a homey, the dissed gang members pile in their rides
and go off to shoot up the rival's hood.
So, what is the difference between the
"boyz in the hood" and the boyz in the White House
and Congress? Not a whole lot. Americans have been bum rushed
into hysteria and the response is like that of gangbangers.
Perhaps this explains why one can see American flags flying on
the cars of young black men who before 9/11 were the targets
of men wearing the same flag. Some fly it in hopes of keeping
the man off their backs. But others may correctly see it as
America embracing it's true thug self.
There is a general mainstream media censoring
of all voices opposed to thug life. Clear Channel's list of
songs it proposed to ban along with the firing of Davey D at
San Francisco's KMEL- a firing directly resulting from his airing
a serious interview with Barbara Lee, was just the beginning
of the new media repression. If it does not support thug life,
it is not heard. And on those rare occasions when opposition
sneaks through, it is ignored, ridiculed or crushed. That is
what happened to Lee and Davey D. Nobody in mainstream media
wanted her to say why she voted the way she did. Now, the Patriot
Act consummates the marriage between corporate censorship and
government suppression of speech and dissent. Corporate media
will continue to ban from the airwaves anything more complex
than fear, revenge, boosterism, flag waving, amnesic recollections
of history, foreign policy fakery and emoting.
We Shall Overcome was sung at one of the memorial events. I could
not tell whether the song was being sung to evoke the triumph
over tragedy through love, forgiveness and redemption or was
it just being misused as a violent battle cry. Haitian singer
Wycliff Jean, wearing a coat with an embossed American flag singing
Bob Marley's Redemption Song at an earlier celebrity fundraising
telethon could have been subtle insurrection. However, the singing
of the civil rights standard is more significant in the black
out because it is an unambiguous cultural prompt aimed at bringing
blacks in line with the war. White Americans singing a song
that many once scorned or dismissed has a subtle, yet powerful,
impact on the psyche of black people. It exploits black feelings
of hope that America can overcome the race dilemma.
With few exceptions, black celebrity
voices have been limited to singing, boosterism, patriotic posing
and shamming. Since 9/11, Ray Charles' "America the Beautiful"
and Whitney Houston version of the national anthem is everywhere
while Edwin Starr's "War" is off the play list. Thankfully,
Marvin Gaye's Star-Spangled Banner, which is the best soul version
for purists, gets limited to no airplay. Rapper Chuck D formerly
of Public Enemy was able to warn his hip-hop constituents "don't
"believe the hype!" And writer Alice Walker has spoken
out against the war but her voice has not been widely heard,
at least not in the Deep South. Comedian Steve Harvey, who was
scheduled to appear on CBS's Dave Letterman Show, said he would
not "sacrifice his son" to the war effort. After his
anti-war remarks, his appearance on the show was cancelled.
According to published reports, Harvey said he was afraid to
fly to New York while the terrorists' alert was in effect.
But his "Kings of Comedy" bud, D.J. Hugley, while on
NBC's Conan O'Brian night, made a passing remark about a "being
black man and understanding racial profiling," then he nullified
his concern as he joked that while flying east, he asked the
fight attendant "to check out Mohammed in the back of him".
His remark is indicative of the trend in wartime black comedy
to make light of profiling.
A significant percentage of those of
the Islamic faith in America are African American. Hugley's
Mohammed could be Muhammed Ali. Of the 5.7 million Muslims in
America, an estimated 2.3 million or more are black to include
the 100,000 or so members of Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam.
But 75 percent of blacks of Islamic faith are straight up Sunni
Muslims. African Muslims in America can be traced back to 1619
- an estimated 10 per cent of enslaved Africans were Muslim.
So, in comparison to the 36 million African Americans, a little
less than 10 per cent are Muslim.
Intuitively, one might think that African
Americans would be inclined to seek solidarity with Arab Americans
and Middle Eastern immigrants. This is not the case. The simple
explanation for why blacks might be fearful of Arabs is the events
of 9/11. Arab men crashed planes into buildings. Of course,
with that logic, they should want profiling of whites due to
the crime of Oklahoma bomber Tim McVeigh. 9/11 aside, there
is resentment of Arab Americans by many blacks who see them as
being assimilated into whiteness. Some blacks see the relationship
between blacks and Middle-Eastern Americans as one of exploitation.
The perception stems from the fact that Middle-Easterners own
many of the new businesses in the inner city while blacks still
face obstacles to business ownership. And over the years, there
has been very little political or social coalition building between
racial minorities in the US.
A closer look also reveals a poisonous
mix of fear, ignorance, resentment and the illusion of acceptance.
Why else would African Americans paradoxically support racial
profiling, a tool used against them from the enslavement trade
to the present? What other than madness can explain why blacks
would physically attack the "lost boys of the Sudan"
living in Atlanta, thinking they were Muslims when in fact they
were Christians? Just as troubling was the response by the Sudanese
men's American sponsors. The Sudanese were given gold crosses
to wear around their necks reminiscent of the Star of David worn
by Jews in Nazi Germany.
It is counterproductive to the civil
rights agenda and dangerous for black leadership to be silent
or supportive of a war complete with a suspension of Bill of
Rights and international human rights protections, more spies
at home and abroad, a future of more government sponsored assassinations,
reliance on more clandestine military and police operations to
include (per former Secretary of Army Togo West's 1994 report)
all white or predominately white special operations units with
a history of racism and infiltration by white supremacists.
Black political goals are now in a deeper freeze by the requirement
of unity. And under the heavy cloak of unity is a rightward
shift in US economic priorities with policies guaranteeing corporate
bailouts at the expense of workers who themselves are in need
of a bailout in these hard economic times.
A movement based on representing the
poor should insist on US government policies to address those
legitimate claims that exploited people around the world have
against this country. To that end, black leadership must defy
the black out or what good are they? CP
Kevin Gray
is a civil rights organizer in South Carolina and regular CounterPunch
contributor. He can be reached at:
kagamba@bellsouth.net
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