A ugust 17, 1994 • T he P ortland O bserver
P age A?
V q 1A c i £? P O i R t :
frica is often in the news
these days but except
for the e x h ila ra tin g
"***
v ic to ry of the lib e ra tio n
movement in South Africa the
n e w s co m in g from our
homeland is often tragic and
negative.
Overthe last few years the world
has witnessed horrendous famines
in Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan and
destructive and debilitating conflicts
in Angola and Mozambique. Now
there are the horrible images of hu­
man catastrophe in Rwanda where
upwards of two million people may
eventually die from the ravishes o f
war, fratricide and disease. Africa is
a continent racked by hunger, pov­
erty, disease and war. But we should
never forget that Africa is our home.
Much of the crisis in Africa is
directly attributable to the legacy o f
the holocaust of enslavement, colo­
nialism and neo-colonialism at the
hands o f Europe. As Dubois re­
minded us. Africa is the richest con­
tinent in the world. Unfortunately,
for centuries that wealth has gone to
nourish, enrich and develop Europe
and Europeans instead of Africa and
Africans. Indeed, as Walter Rodney
points out in his classic work, How
Europe Underdeveloped Africa, the
continent’s current condition o f un­
derdevelopment is a clear conse­
quence o f the rape and pillage of
Africa by Europe and Europeans.
?
e
r
Responding To The Crises In Africa
The European slavem asters and
colonialist used their superior weap­
ons and divide and conquer tactics to
pit nation against nation and neigh­
bor against neighbor in their quest to
exploit the human and material re­
sources o f Africa. In 1884 at the
Congress o f Berlin the European
powers sat down and actually carved
up Africa like a piece o f cake or pie
with each nation taking its slice. The
ruin o f Africa is the legacy of white
suprem acy and trag e d ies like
Rwanda are the b itter fruit o f
Europe’s domination of Africa.
It is important to know this his­
tory to avoid shame, self-hatred and
blaming the victims. It is also impor­
tant because we as Africans in
America and the world must under­
stand that it is our duty to do w hat­
ever is necessary to rescue and re­
store Africa. We must develop a
Pan-African consciousnessthat com­
pels us to promote and defend the
interests of Africans throughout the
Pan-African World. We are not re­
sponsible for the underdevelopment
of Africa, but it is our responsibility,
our duty and destiny to reclaim that
which belongs to African people -
Africa. Hence we cannot be silent,
invisible or inactive when catastro­
phes like Rwanda occur. We must
respond because it’s our blood, our
extended family and our future.
Africans in America provided
invaluable political support for the
struggle against apartheid in South
s
p
e
Africa and we have provided a strong
base o f support for the struggle in
Haiti for democracy and human
rights. But we have been far too
silent on the human tragedies in So­
malia, Sudan and now Rw anda. Our
lack of response may be related to
the fact that we have massive prob­
lems right here in the U.S. And, we
claim not to have a lot o f money and
therefore cannot provide a great deal
of monetary and material support.
From my vantage point, however, it
is a matter o f principle. If we can
spend money as much as we do on
alcohol, cigarettes, sports apparel,
and other superfluous items, we can
spend more money on our self-de­
velopment in this country and in
Africa.
It is that principle which has
guided the work of the Black United
Fund movement in this country form
its inception and thank God, that
same principle has inspired Kermit
Eady, President of the New York
Black United Fund to fashion a re­
sponse to the crises plaguing Africa.
Brother Eady is moving to create a
Pan-African Relief Fund which will
begin by raising funds for assistance
to the refugees in Rwanda. With the
help ofboxing promoter Butch Lewis
and Congressmen Floyd Flake and
Charles Rangel, Eady aims to secure
large contributions from artists, ath­
letes and entertainers and thousands
o f contributions from ordinary Black
people all across the country. His
c
t
i
goal is to raise $200,000 immedi­
ately and $5 million over the next
five years.
To be sure this is a modest
amount. Obviously, through the
Congressional Black Caucus and
agencies like Trans-Africa, we need
to pressure the U.S. government to
allocate more relief and develop­
mental assistance to Rw anda and the
entire African continent. However,
projects like Eady’s Pan-African
Relief Fund symbolize our collec­
tive com m itm ent to do som ething
for ourselves no m atter how large
or sm all. O ur children here in the
U.S. and our sisters and brothers
in A frica do not need to see only
E uropeans providing aid and as­
sistance to relieve the problem s
o f A frica. They m ust see our love
for our hom eland m anifest in
concrete deeds and acts. And, if
ta rg e te d e f f e c tiv e ly , m o d e st
p ro jec ts like the P an -A frican
R elief Fund can have a m ean in g ­
ful impact.
No matter how difficult our cir­
cumstance here in the U.S., we have
a stake in being our sisters and broth­
ers keeper. In the final analysis we
must fulfill Marcus Garvey’s dic­
tum: “Africa forthe African at home
and abroad."
Persons interested in support­
ing the Pan-African Relief Fund con­
cept should write to Kermit Eady:
2271 Adam Clayton Powell Blvd.,
NYC 10030 or call 212-234-1695.
v
e
s
Minority Business: Where The Action Is/Was
ast week I described the
s o -c a lle d
P ortlan d
“Asian Approach” to
¿cnaTI business; particularly I
mentioned “Keh,” the Korean
form of cooperation and mutual
support - based on trust and
friendship.
I If
I anticipated some cries of dis­
may: “You know us ain’t got the
money," so I headed that off pretty
neatly, I thought But, still, I had
several African Americans call and
wail that “those were the good old
days’ I was describing in terms of
black cooperation and support.” I
was quick to point out that those
Williams Avenue entrepreneurs of
the 1930s and 1940s faced the same
kind o f detractors; people who talked
about "the good old days’ of the
1920s - Madam Walker, the beauty
products magnate, Marcus Garvey,
and the Southern insurance com­
pany giants.”
A black woman (I love 'em )
called to suggest that any group o f
twenty out of the blacks she knows
could raise the capital to set up and
operate a number of fair size enter­
prises by scaling down their invest­
ment in automobiles, by 50 percent.
“They could drive some old 15 or
20-thousand dollar clunker, but then
they would lose cultural face.”
Shortly after that call, I looked
out by back win­
dow and saw that
the former crack
house on Northeast
17th was sw arming
with three genera­
tions of an Asian
family. Those too
young for heavy cleaning and land­
scaping carried away debris. Those
too old, for it, washed windows and
gave directions to a black laborer
who was emptying a pickup load of
lumber. None of the three units of
family rolling stock could have cost
over 12 grand.
Across the street, the dozen chil­
dren of six black welfare families
played in front of their apartments,
recently bought and renovated by
three young Hispanic men. Just in
the past year there has been the most
dramatic change imaginable in the
ethnic makeup of this eastside neigh­
borhood. A neighbor tells me that
from the vantage point o f his porch,
he has determined that whereas sev­
eral years ago 90 percent of the traf­
fic on A lberta
Street was black,
now only every
Sy
third car is driven
Professor
by an A frican
Mckinley
American.
Burt
Now, since
those supposedly
knowledgeable in business must
know what this all means in terms of
opportunities in retail and service
enterprises, where do we go to ob­
tain their assessments and evalua­
tions? This “Alberta Street Plan” we
hear about - is there funding? Is it a
“turn-key” operation? Is this what a
“Minority Business Organization”
does? Furnish traffic counts, evalu­
ate location, hook you up with
franchisors, bring in the bankers,
arrange credit, what?
Calling cold at first, and later,
profiting by word-of-mouth, I picked
up one used car dealer accounting
client after another.
Soon, two of the dealers, Sidney
Ambrose and Sam Masters asked me
would I set up a finance company for
them, which I did; the “Union Av-
enueFinanceCompany” at5911N.E.
Union. At the time, the stretch o f the
street I described was know as “car
dealers row” with perhaps 50 dealers
in the area (like 82nd Avenue today).
The idea was for them to be able to
finance the smaller dealer’s stock of
cars, instead of having that interest
go to the big finance compan ies (This
is called flooring.) As far as I know
this operation created the first cleri­
cal job ever for a black woman on
Union Avenue. (How many are there
now?) I remember one other black
entrepreneur on Union in those days,
“Chester’s Auto Paint and Detail
Shop,” which serviced the same deal­
ers. Continued next week.
Civil Rights Journal: Save Our Children!
by
B f . rm ce P owell J ackson
T h e h e alth of tw o m illio n
American children is at risk.
Two million American children
are at risk of having lower IQ’s,
shortened attention spans,
h y p e ra c tiv ity , a g g re s s iv e
behavior, reading disabilities
and b e h a v io ra l p ro b le m s .
Some of them even face the
possibility of mental retard­
ation, coma, convulsions and
death.
All o f these health problems are
related to the fact that two million
American children still have danger­
ous levels o f lead poisoning. And
African American and Latino/Latina
children face lead poisoning levels
which are much higher than those of
whites. Indeed, African American
children are more than tw ice as likely
to suffer from lead poisoning as white
children.
New data from the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention pub­
lished in the Journal of the American
Medical Association show that we
have made much progress in the
fight against lead poisoning o f
American children over the past de­
cade The removal of lead from gaso­
line, food cans and new residential
paint is responsible for the decrease
in blood lead levels of most Ameri­
can children
But there are still nearly 4 mil­
lion homes and apartments occupied
by families with young children in
the U.S. which contain hazardous
lead. Thus, almost one in every ten
preschoolers is affected by lead poi­
soning. In some communities more
than half o f young children are suf­
fering.
For instance, in Chicago 38 per­
cent o f children tested were lead
poisoned. In St. Louis 47 percent of
the children were affected, in Balti­
more 40 percent, and in East St.
Louis 53 percent. Rural children are
not immune either -- a new Univer­
sity o f North Carolina study found
that 22 percent o f rural children tested
in 1993 had elevated levels of lead
The older, more dilapidated the
building, the more likely the child is
to be lead poisoned Poor children of
color are more likely to reside in
such housing and, thus, to eat lead-
based paint chips or inhale dust con­
taminated by lead paint. Old build­
ings also often have high levels of
lead in the drinking water caused by
lead solder and pipes. Buildings built
before 1950 are likely to contain
paint with high concentrations of
lead while those built after 1980
have virtually no lead paint.
Childhood lead poisoning is a
preventable disease. It is also the
number one environmental health
threattochildrenin the United States.
We can eradicate lead poisoning in
children, just as we have ride our
country o f small pox and polio.
But that will only happen ifthere
is the political will and financial abil­
ity to clean up our housing stock.
The cost o f getting ride o f lead-based
paint in old buildings is surely greater
than low-income private home own­
ers, day-care providers and state and
local governments can bear.
A provision in the House Ways
and Means Committee’s health care
reform bill would address this need
by providing a dedicated source of
funds for cleaning up such hazards
in housing and day care centers.
Called the Lead Abatement Trust
Fund, this provision would provide
not only the dollars for such clean
up, but would also provide much-
needed jobs in the nation’s cities
through training workers to do lead
abatement. But with all of the jock­
eying for passage o f health care bill
even as this is being written, there’s
no telling whether the Lead Abate­
ment Trust Fund will still be a part of
the final health care reform bill.
The reality is that there is an
enormous cost in not eradicating this
terrible condition in our children It
is estimated that every dollar invested
in abating lead hazards produces
about $1.80 in benefits realized in
reduced medical and special educa­
tion costs, lower rates o f infant mor­
tality, and increased earnings and
productivity. The fact is that Ameri­
cans - all of us - have a moral
responsibility to do everything pos­
sible to stop the poisoning of our
children.
There’s something we can all do
about lead poisoning o f America's
children. Parents can learn about
potential sources of lead exposure
and steps to take to protect their
children by calling l-800-LEAD-
FYI. Parents should make sure that
their children are screened for lead
poisoning during regular medical
check-ups.
Voters can call their Senators
and Representatives and tell them
they want to make sure that the Lead
Abatement Trust Fund is part of the
health care reform bill. Without a
dedicated source of dollars to do the
clean up, it will take generations to
get rid o f lead-based paint in our
older housing stock.
C h u rch es and co m m u n ity
groups can think about helping day­
care centers and low-income hous­
ing residents pay for lead abatement
in their buildings. Perhaps that can
become a new thrust in the Habitat
for Housing program that so many
local churches and community orga­
nizations are now taking part in.
Our children are our future.
Losing the intellect, the creativity,
the productivity o f even one child is
a loss for us all. Let's do something
about lead poisoning now. Let’s save
our children.
THIS WAY FOR SLACK
EMPOWERMENT
by
D r . L enora Ft
lani
Black Leaders Must Coordi­
nate Our Fight For Democracy In
Africa
The oi I workers ofN igeria have
been on strike for democracy since
July 4, demanding that the military
g o v ern m en t o f G en eral Sani
Abacha free Chief Moshood K.O.
Abiola, who won the country's
presidential election last year. The
military prevented Abiola from tak­
ing office, and then charged him
with treason and arrested him on
the first anniversary o f his election.
In recent weeks, the oil workers (oil
is Nigeria's largest industry) have
been joined by other workers and
students in bringing the West Afri­
can nation to a virtual standstill.
The African continent and its
people have for centuries been the
victims o f gross economic and po­
litical manipulation and destruc­
tion by Europe and America: from
slavery and colonialism, to CIA-
inspired civil wars, to U.S. and Eu­
ropean government support for dic­
tators, murderers, and thieves. That
kind of treachery continues to this
day, o f course, as the Clinton ad­
ministration maintains its support
for rulers such as General Abacha
and Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire.
The Reverend Jesse Jackson’s
visit to Nigeria has highlighted the
importance o f Black leaders speak-
ng out a g a in st th e C linton
administration’spolicies. Reverend
Jackson, representing the State De­
partment and the Clinton adminis­
tration, has delivered a letter from
P resid en t C lin to n to G eneral
Abacha calling on him to release
Chief Abiola, the democratically-
elected president o f N igeria, and to
turn power over to a civilian gov­
ernment.
Reverend Jackson’s trip has,
however, provoked controversy.
Prom inent N igerian democracy
leaders have identified Reverend
Jackson as a “friend and collabora­
tor o f the military oligarchy in Ni­
geria.” The brilliant, Nobel prize­
w inning N igerian author Wole
Soyinka has objected Reverend
Jackson’s visit on the grounds that
General Abacha will be able to
manipulate it for his own anti-demo­
cratic ends. And, indeed, he has.
The latest word is that General
Abacha has agreed to release Chief
Abiola, but on the condition that he
give up all claims to the presidency.
Reverend Jackson has also
worked closely with Congressman
Ron Dellums o f California, whose
wife is employed by the Washing­
ton, D C. lobbying firm that repre­
sents the Abacha government. Mr
Dellums has introduced a congres­
sional resolution which gives cred­
ibility to the idea o f a constitutional
conference allowing the military
dictatorsh ip to extend its tenure and
play an influential role in any tran­
sition to democracy. While Rever­
(Tbe
end Jackson and Representative
Dellums have tried to mobilize sup­
port among Black leaders for their
sympathies for Abacha, Congress­
man Donald Payne ofNewark, New
jersey, the Congressional Black
Caucus member most influential
on Africa policy, has made sure that
the CBC has held fast in its backing
o f Chief Abiola. So strong is Con­
gressman Payne’s support of the
democratic forces in N igeria that he
was denied a visa by the military
government last week.
Reverend Jackson’s visittoNi-
geria, in my opinion, was mis­
guided. It is extremely dangerous
for a Black leader o f his interna­
tional stature to lend any credibility
whatsoever to the Abacha govern­
ment. In Zaire, the U.S. govern­
ment has continued its backing of
the Mobutu dictatorship, allowing
Mobutu to sabotage the new consti­
tution and depose the democrati­
ca lly -e le c te d p rim e m in ister,
Etienne Tshisekedi. I am among
those in this country who have m ili-
tantly supported Tshisekedi and
worked to expose those-Black or
white-wh.o would allow any com­
promise with the Mobutu govern­
ment. I appeal to Reverend Jackson
to learn from the example o f Zaire.
Any legitimacy afforded to Gen­
eral Abacha undermines the Nige­
rian dem ocracy m ovem ent and
C hief Abiola.
R ev eren d A1 S h a rp to n ’s
planned visit to Rwanda raises some
similar concerns. The Rwandan
tragedy is, o f course, o f a magni­
tude that is hard to describe. But, as
ever, the U .S. government has found
a way to manipulate it for its own
political ends, namely by allowing
President Mobutu to control the
relief and military situation on the
Sairean side o f the border. Mobutu
is being politically rehabilitated, at
just the moment when the anti-
M obutu dem ocracy m ovem ent
needs the greatest support.
While Reverend Sharpton’s
visit to Rwanda is motivated by
humanitarian concerns, the Hutu
hardliners responsible for the geno
cide are massed at the Rwandan
border under the protection o f their
old ally, Mobutu, ready to reinvade
Rwanda. I urge Reverend Sharpton
to use his visit to challenge the
Clinton administration to fully with­
draw its support for Mobutu.
As an A frican A m erican
leader who has done ex tensive
w ork on b e h a lf o f A frican de
m ocracy in Saire, N ig eria and
R w anda on C apitol H ill, with
the C on g ressio n al B lack C au­
cus and with o rd in ary Am eri
cans around the co u n try , I b e­
lieve it is critical th at all Black
leaders work to g eth er at this im ­
p o rtan t ju n ctu re . O ur jo in t e f
forts to dism antle co rru p t A fri­
can regim es w ill do the m ost for
A frican dem ocracy.
(©bseruer
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