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H age A2
O ctober 18, 1995 • T he P ortland O bserver
r
“I 4 l ± erend J esse L, J ackson
? onday, October 16, Afri­
c a n A m e ric a n m en
gathered in large num­
bers in Washington, DC for the
Million Man March.
They came from Baptist and
Catholic churches, from AML con­
gregations, from the Church o f God
in Christ, the Nation o f Islam, the
Southern Christian Leadership Con­
ference (SCLC) and the Congres­
sional Black Caucus (CBC).
Elected officials, ministers, busi­
ness and union leaders, workers and
the unemployed, they marched with
the support o f African American
women, and with the hopes o f Afri­
can American children.
The march gained new momen­
tum when a consensus was forged
among Rev. Joseph Lowery o f SCLC,
Rep. Donald Payne (D-NJ), Chairman
of the Congressional Black Caucus,
the Rev. Clay Evans from Chicago,
the Rev. Al Sharpton ofNew York and
other community leaders with Minis­
ter Louis Farrakhan, who launched
the initiative. All agreed that the march
be ecumenical and broadly based, that
it carry a moral tone o f healing, and
that it put forth a call for political, as
well as, personal reform.
Why march? thirty-two years
ago. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called
us to march because o f the “Shame­
ful condition o f the N egro.” Thirty-
two years later, the names have
changed but the shame remains. The
civil rights movement opened doors
for a new African American middle
class, but those who were left behind
are more isolated and more destitute
than before.
In many cities, our babies die in
infancy at Third World rates. Too
many African Americans are bom
Editorial Articles Do Not Necessarily
Reflect Or Represent The Views O f
The ^lo rtlan h ffibseruer
I NATIONAL'
C O A L IT IO N
One In A Million
into poverty and suffer malnutrition
and en vironmental poison ing that can
blunt their promise. Our chi Idren risk
mean streets to attend schools in mean
straits, often so rundown as to threat­
en their health rather than lift their
m inds. Those who do graduate face a
world o f unemployment and insecu­
rity, o f low-wage jobs and low-gauge
hopes.
There are more African Ameri­
cans in prison than in college. Young
African American men suffer unem­
ployment rates o f up to 50 percent
and higher in our inner cities. Those
who succeed discover that discrimi­
nation still impedes their access to
mortgages for homes, capital for
small businesses, and insurance for
safety and security.
Against these odds, many sur­
render. Young men sire babies that
they do not raise. Families crack un­
der the pressure o f poverty and de­
spair. Drugs and guns provide out­
lets for the pain. Black-on-black
crime plagues our neighborhoods.
This surrender makes it easier
for the larger society to justify its
callous neglect. Racial scapegoating
has fueled vicious attacks on work­
ing and poor people. Welfare moth­
ers are termed lazy, so the national
commitment to protect mothers and
children from destitution is ended.
Unemployed young African Ameri­
can men are termed genetically lim­
ited, and a prison industrial complex
grows to profit from their punish­
ment. Cities are deemed hopeless
and so abandoned.
Affirmative actions programs to
open locked doors are termed dis­
criminatory against those who al­
ready had a key, and so bridges to
opportunity begin to fall. Budget
deficits are addressed by cutting back
programs for the poor, rather than
poor programs.
And so we march. We march in
a solemn commitment to one another
ofatonem ent and reconciliation. Af­
rican American men must not surren­
der to despair. We may be bom in the
ghetto, but we cannot let the ghetto
be bom in us. We must rise above it.
We must turn to each other, not on
each other. As we atone for our way­
ward ways, we recommit ourselves
to our families, our children and to
one another.
We march in a purposeful de­
mand for justice. The call for self-
reliance and the demand for justice
are not contradictor)'. They are com­
plementary. As we rise above our
circumstance, we lay claim to the
moral authority that makes the de­
mand for equal justice compelling.
Thirty-two years ago, we came to
redeem a check that had been returned,
marked “insufficient funds.” Today,
we once again are told that justice
must be deferred for lack o f funds, but
we know better. This Congress voted
a billion dollars for a boat the Navy did
not ask for, even as it cut a similar
amount from the nation’s poorest
schools. This Administration found
billions to bailout wealthy speculators
in Mexican pesos, but can find no
money to rebuild our cities.
Billions go to build prisons, and
nothing for schools. Taxes are to be
cut on the unearned income o f the
idle rich and raised on the hard wages
o f the working poor In this rich
nation, we suffer from a deficit not o f
dollars but o f decency — and so we
much march.
We can make a difference. In
1994, the Gingrich forces won by a
cumulative total ofabout 19,000 votes
in 39 critical races. In the negative
campaign o f 1994, six million fewer
people voted than in the previous
midterm election. Eight million Af­
rican American are sti 11 unregistered.
We will register African Americans
to vote and vote in large numbers --
and so we march
We came together on Oct. 16 at
a critical and historic moment. New
trails test us. Many fear that 1996
will be a repeat o f 1896, with the
advances o f the last decades erased,
as Congress buildsjai Is for our hopes.
So African American men from
all walks o f life came together and
stood up. When boats rise from the
bottom, a powerful armada can be
assembled. It is time to heal It is time
to challenge. It is time to march.
V a n ta g e V oi nt
MaV °rO f H a itis Capital City Appeals To Africans Americans For Support
n. June 25, Joseph Em-
ftanurXfliirtim agne,
' popularly known to the
Haitian masse* as Manno, was
elected Mayor of Port Au Prince,
the Capital of Haiti.
A long time friend and ally o f
President Jean Bertrand Aristide,
Manno confounded Haiti watchers
by scoring a stunning upset over the
candidate many believe to have been
the choice o f the U.S. By some ac­
counts the U.S. funneled more than
$6 million into the campaign o f the
Evans Paul, the previous Mayor o f
the city, in an effort to influence the
outcome o f the election. It is widely
believed that the U.S. was grooming
Mr. Paul to be their hand picked
successor to President Aristide.
But this effort to select the next
President o f Haiti failed when the
Haitian masses rejected this scheme
and elected Manno Charlemagne by
a landslide margin o f nearly 4 - 1.
Manno achieved this remarkable vic­
tory on a budget o f less than $7,000.
The election o f Manno Charlemagne
to the office o f Mayor o f Port Au
Prince is a clear expression o f the
determination o f the Haitian masses
to control their own destiny and build
authentic democracy in the first Black
Republic in this hemisphere. Often
called the Bob Marley o f Haiti,
Manno Charlemagne is a folk singer
who gained enormous popularity
amnno
__ .....
a,*pong th»
the Haitian masses, particu­
larly the youth, for his songs o f pro­
test arid opposition to the dread
Duvalier dictatorship and the illicit
regime o f the coup leaders who over­
threw the government o f President
Aristade in 19 9 1. Time and time
again he faced death in daring to
speak truth to power as a part o f the
popular movement for democracy in
Haiti. It was this fearless and un­
flinching advocacy for democracy
which led the Haitian masses to draft
a reluctant Manno Charlemagne to
run for Mayor o f Port Au Prince to
defeat the machinations o f the U.S.
Needless to say, neither his op­
ponent nor the U.S. was pleased with
the outcome o f the June election.
When Manno entered city hall to
assume his duties as Mayor he found
a building stripped o f everything in­
cluding the light fixtures. All o f the
typewriters, fax machine.s, desks,
chairs, supplies and files were gone.
And, while the U.S. was apparently
willing to provide substantial aid to
his predecessor, there has been no
offer o f assistance to the man who
has emerged from the grassroots to
become M ayorofH aiti’scapital city.
It is against that backdrop that
Mayor Charlemagne recently under-
took a goodwill mission to the U.S.
under the auspices o f the Haiti Sup-
port Project o f Campaign for a New
Tomorrow (CNT). In a whirlwind
............................
tour timed to coincide with the An-
nual Congressional Black Caucus
Weekend, Mayor Charlemagne out-
lined an ambitious Four Year Plan,
“dedicated to ensuring the rights o f
the impoverished masses o f Port Au
Prince." Appearing at events in New
York, Washington D.C., Baltimore
and Boston, the Mayor declared his
intent to: Clean up the garbage, de­
bris, and raw sewage that poses a
serious health threat to the city; raise
the level o f education by creating
county schools that will be available
to the poor; create public shelters for
the elderly, sick and homeless; cre­
ate public clinics to provide health
care for the poor, and food banks and
soup kitchens to feed the homeless;
and, implement a public works pro­
gram that will provide jobs to the
unemployed. Mayor Charlemagne
plans to finance this community based
programs by levying taxes on alco­
hol, tobacco and luxury goods and
compelling Haiti’s wealthy property
owners, who have customarily re­
fused to pay taxes, to comply with the
law.
M ayor Charlemagne thanked
African Americans for their solidar­
ity with the drive to restore President
Artistide to power and made a pas­
sionate appeal for ongoing support
o f the struggle for democracy and
development in Haiti; “...We need
you to serve as a voice for us in Haiti.
We need you to lobby on-’our be-
half... We need your financial sup-
port, your technical assistance your
manpower. But most o f ail, we need
your steadfast promise that we will
not be forgotten.”
It is to ensure that the struggle
for democracy and development in
Haiti is not forgotten that CNT has
created the Haiti Support Project
(HSP). Our goal is to assist the pop­
ular movement for democracy to suc­
ceed inspite o f the effort o f the U.S.
government to impose its will on the
Haitian people. Accordingly, in the
coming weeks the HSP will be col­
lecting school supplies, food and
clothing and raising funds to support
the community schools in Port Au
Prince. In addition the HSP would
like to collect medical supplies to
support the public clinics which are
being set up to service the poor. We
would also like to identify fax ma­
chines, computers and other office
equipment and furnishings to assist
the Mayor to restore the physical
infra-structure o f city hall. Finally,
an effort is underway to establish
Sister City relations between Wash­
ington D.C., Boston and Port Au
Prince with the goal o f increasing the
flow o f technical assistance, socially
responsible business investment and
tourism to Haiti.
To contact the Haiti Support
Project call: 4 10-5 2 1-9265
Civil Rights Journal: O J. And Me
BY
B er n ic e P owf . i . i . J ackson
or sixteen month not a
public word from me
about O.J. Not in w rit­
ing, not in speaking.
I was determined that I would not
be caught up in this country's obses­
sion with fame, money, race and sex
all rolled up in one case. I never
watched the case on CNN. I was dis­
gusted by the non-news reports every
single day, even on Mondays when
there had been no trial for two days.
And then there was that Tues­
day. That Tuesday o f the verdict.
Then there was the pain. And a sense
ofbittertsweetness. A sense o f irony.
A sense o f sadness. A sense o f joy.
It's been hard -- very hard -- to
talk about the O.J. trial with white
friends and colleagues. How do you
explain to them the cries o f elation
from my brothers and sisters? If they
have been blind to the history o f the
relationship between African Amer­
icans and the U.S. legal system, the
response o f my people makes little
sense.
If they have not thought about
the legal system and slaves and the
passes our ancestors were required
to carry and how, even if they es­
caped slavery and made it to free­
dom, they could be taken back again
by the law or by bounty hunters, then
it makes little sense. If they have not
thought about the legal system and
blacks during Jim Crow, when thou­
sands o f black men hung on branches
o f trees for not stepping off a side­
walk when passing a White person or
just looking at a white woman, then it
makes little sense. If they have no t
thought about the legal system and
black men like Johnson Whitakers,
the West Point cadet who a century
ago was attacked by his white class­
mates, who nearly slashed offhis ear
and left him tied to his bed and then
was accused o f doing this to himself,
who was court-martialed and dis­
graced for a hundred years, then it
makes little sense. 400 years o f the
legal system not being on our side.
If they have not thought about
the fact that today all African Amer-
ican mothers -- no matter how much
money or education their family has
or how good their child is -- must
teach their male children what to do
when they are stopped by a police
officer because almost all o f our male
children will be at some time, then it
makes little sense. If they have not
thought about the thousands o f cases
o f police brutality against people of
color all across this nation, then it
makes little sense. If they have not
thought about the fact that there are
few - very few -- black families
which haven’t been touched by the
criminal justice system, then it makes
little sense. Ifthey haven't been in an
urban or suburban court room lately
and seen almost all black and His­
panic people as defendants and al­
most all the whites as judges or court
officers or recorders or guards, then
it makes little sense. If whites are not
aware o f the historical and present-
day context, then the response o f my
brother and sisters makes little sense
But the pain for me comes from
my being black and a woman It’s
hard to be black and a woman in
America every day. Last Tuesday it
was nearly unbearable.
The only other time in my life
when I felt these two very essences of
my identity were in dissonance was
during the Clarence Thomas and An ita
Hill hearings. The pain comes when I
realize that half of the women mur­
dered in the U.S. are murdered by their
husbands or boyfriends. The pain
comes when I think about the many
African American women I have
worked with, incarcerated for 15 years
to life, mostly because they killed thcii
husbands after years of being victims
o f domestic violence, often when they
found their husbands abusing their
children. Many of these women had
never even had a speeding or a jay­
walking ticket before. But the vio­
lence and the abuse became too great
to bear. My pain is their pain.
It’s not the O.J. Simspon case
which has divided the nation. It’s the
criminal justice system and its histo­
ry as oppressor which has caused the
divide.
y p e r s p e c ttv e s
Ode To A W hite Bronco, Or O. J. Rides Again
I®
he in g e n u o u s p re ­
tense of surprise at the
I
! Sim pson verdict on
the part of a m anipulative
establishm ent media comes
as ‘no surprise’ - not to those
of us who early on recognized
the awful truth of Dr. Marshall
M c L u h a n ’s
h is to ric
announcement, “The medium
is the m essage.”
When we re­
view this sordid soap
opera-of-a-trial, we
must keep in mind
several other pene­
trating observations
by Dr. M cLuhan
who was Director o f the Center for
| Culture and Technology at the Uni­
versity o f Toronto. He pointed out,
first, that when Johannes Gutenberg
invented the printing press in the 15 th
century, he created the “Reading
Public” -- a vast news, knowledge
and gossip-hungry group o f human
beings poised to devour this new
I printed word whether it was true,
| false or indifferent. For better or
worse, we had media.
Secondly, he observed, that was
only the beginning; “what we have
called nations’ in recent centuries
did not, and could not precede
Gutenberg’s invention o f the print­
ing press any more than they can
survive the advent o f electronic cir­
cuitry (television) with its power o f
totally involving all people in all
other cultures”. This cogent percep­
tion led to an equally famous con­
cept, “The Global Village” (Books
by Marshall McLuhan are, “The
I Gutenberg Galaxy, Understanding
Media and The Mechanical Bride”).
With this background, we may
better evaluate the corporate media’s
mercenary and merciless year-long
campaign to boost ratings and adver­
tising revenues. In some quarters this
divisive exercise was known as the
“People o f Los Angeles County vs
O.J. Simpson”. To those o f us long-
familiar with a quaint American in­
stitution that not only can be quite
punitive in demeanor at times, but
which can have the temerity to ignore
its own failing while lecturing the rest
o f us, none o f this has been surpris­
ing.
There is a certain reassurance
and renewed faith in an American
people who firmly rejected a ratings-
happy television industry’s predic­
tion o f violence and bloodshed in the
streets, whichever way the verdict
went. Some stations rushed hordes of
reporters to do man-in-the-street in­
terviews clearly designed to raise tem­
pers and provoke outbursts. Others
sent cameramen to cover police re­
serve units and the national Guard;
there was still hope that the ratings
and revenue game would not be com­
pletely lost. But, thankfully, Marshall
McLuhan’s “reading public” didn't
buy.
And we all
saw it, didn’t
w e? W hen a I
By
Professor
Makin ley
Burt
“N ot G u ilty ”
verdict was re­
turned in record I
time, the media]
went to pieces;
that classic American journalistic |
play, a new “Crime o f the Century”
had gone all wrong. Within minutes
the masks had dropped all over the
tube; even on the Business Chan­
nel”. Red-faced, bug-eyed commen­
tators stumbled over news for which
their culture and up bringing had not
prepared them.
The media tribunal had appoint­
ed itself judge, jury and prosecutor
but, now, the script had been altered
and the quarry had escaped. The re­
sentment was palpable; “O.J.” was I
supposed to hang! Was he guilty?
Who knows (beyond a shadow o f a
doubt)?
For a while the media will be
busy exploiting and questioning a
“divisiveness” o f their own making -
-ifit indeed exists as portrayed. What
the media will not be doing is con­
fessing to this past year o f dangerous
neglect o f vital concerns to the Amer-1
ican people in the areas ofhealth care,
job loss and a could-care-less Con­
gress.
N ext w eek, M o unting m e­
dia sins: As if the g ra tu ito u s!
v iolence w ere n o te n o u g h , ajong
w ith th e p ro g ra m m a n a g e r ’s
dem ands that fem ale n e w sc a st­
ers show at least 14 inches o f l
g le a m in g w hite th ig h s, m a n y f
A frican A m ericans are p ro te s t­
ing the “ E vening P ublic H air I
F o llie s” . F o llow ing the ev e n in g !
new s, th e re is an ep id em ic o f ,
lo w - b u d g e t c r im e s p e c i a l s f
film ed by te le v isio n cam eram en
w ho acco m p an y p o lic e on raids
in low -incom e n e ig h b o rh o o d s.
T hey sp e c ia liz e in cra sh in g into I
A fric a n A m e ric a n b e d ro o m s !
along w ith the cops, catc h in g
black w om en in v arious sta te s
o f u ndress. O f co u rse, this isf
never done in w hite n e ig h b o r­
hoods. Law suits!
©Ip' JJJartlattii (©Hseruer
(USPS 959 680)
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