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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (March 30, 2011)
opinion wilmington Ten: Time to Pardon “Challenging People to Shape a better Future now” b ernie F oSter Founder/Publisher b obbie d ore F oSter executive editor t ed b anKS advertising Manager J erry F oSter account executive l iSa l oving news editor b rian S timSon reporter d avid K idd graphic Designer m oniCa J. F oSter Seattle office Coordinator J ulie K eeFe S uSan F ried Photographers The Skanner Newspaper, estab shed n October 975, s a week y pub ca- t on, pub shed each Wednesday by IMM Pub cat ons Inc , 4 5 N K ngsworth St , P O Box 5455, Port and, OR 97228 Te ephone (503) 285-5555 E-ma : info@theskanner.com Wor d W de Web s te: http://www.theskanner.com Fax: (503) 285-2900 the Skanner s a member of the Nat ona Newspaper Pub shers Assoc at on and West Coast B ack Pub - shers Assoc at on A photos subm tted become the prope ty of the Skanner We are not re - spon s b e for ost or damaged photos e ther so c ted or unso c ted © 2011 the Skanner A R GH S R S RV D R PRODUC ON N WHO OR N PAR W HOU P RM SS ON PROH B D Knowing What’s important Can Change your life! Subscribe to The Skanner – don’t miss an issue! Please sign me up for: q 1 year $74 q 2 year $140 q New Subscription q Renewal name _________________ address _________________ City _________________ State ______ ZiP ________ Phone Mail with check or money order to: The Skanner P.O. Box 5455 Portland, OR 97228 F orty years ago in Wilmington, N.C., there was a serious struggle of Black Americans to end racial discrimi- nation and violence over the man- ner in which public schools were desegregated. The NAACP, national and local, had won a series of important court battles in Wilmington and across America to desegregate public school sys- tems. But, during the Nixon Administration in the early 1970’s, African Americans in the south, as well as in other regions of the nation, were being challenged with the systematic racial dispari- ties involved in the details of how federal court-ordered school desegregation was being enforced. We are grateful that at the recent 2011 Black Press Week in Washington, D.C., the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) committed to lead a national initiative to get a “Pardon of Innocence” for the Wilmington, N.C. Ten. The NNPA is a vital association of our nation’s leading newspapers that for 184 years have served the news and journal- istic interests of the Black American community in the United States and throughout the Pan African world. While the specifics of case of the Wilmington Ten are unique, this case of political prisoners raised the broad issues and plight of the struggle for African American lib- eration and empowerment to a nnPa C olumniSt Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. global level during the 1970’s. Black students, parents, and com- munity leaders made a decision in Wilmington in February 1971 that they would stand up and fight to protect and secure the “quality” education of African American students by attempting to preserve the high academic integrity and institutional legacy of African history of racial violence and injustice in that port city, the African American community became the targets of a violent, paramilitary, anti-Black terror campaign led by the Ku Klux Klan and the Rights of White People (ROWP) organization. Our move- ment’s headquarters in Wilmington - Gregory Congregational United Church of Christ - and the surrounding African American community was placed in a state of siege by armed White vigilantes, who opposed ... the African American community became the targets of a violent, paramilitary, anti-Black terror campaign led by the Ku Klux Klan American public schools such as Williston Senior High School. The United Church of Christ, and its Commission for Racial Justice led by The Reverend Dr. Charles E. Cobb, decided to stand with the student-led coalition in Wilmington to demand fairness and equal justice. As a young civil rights activist, I was dispatched by the Commission for Racial Justice to give organizational assistance to our brothers and sisters in Wilmington. Because we dared to speak out and to engage in non-violent street protests to the long, unprecedented racial justice and equality. The Civil Rights Movement evolving from the 1950’s and 1960’s into the 1970’s had to grap- ple with the fact that the Nixon Administration took steps to counter and suppress the momen- tum and progress of the movement in the wake of the assassination of The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Thus, what we faced in Wilmington, N.C. in 1971 was not only the vile of local racial hatred and violence, but also we later found out that right-wing law enforcement officials in the Nixon Administration aided and abetted the concerted frame-up, unjust conviction, and imprisonment of the Wilmington Ten. We are the Wilmington Ten: Wayne Moore, William Joe Wright, Connie Tindall, Marvin Patrick, James McKoy, Ann Shepard, Willie Earl Vereen, Jerry Jacobs, Reginald Epps, and Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. Because of our involvement in the struggle in Wilmington in 1971, we were unjustly charged, arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to a combined maximum total of 282 years in prison in North Carolina in 1972. We all were completely innocent of the alleged charges of arson and conspiracy to assault. In 1978, Amnesty International declared that we were “Political Prisoners.” We stayed in prison during most of the 1970’s while our case was on appeal. On Dec. 4, 1980, the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the unjust convictions because of “prosecutorial misconduct” in the unconstitutional and unfair frame- up. Yet, to date there has not been an official “pardon of innocence” issued by the state of or by the fed- eral government. NNPA Chair, Danny J. Blakewell, Sr. affirmed, “We are going to tell the story of the Wilmington 10.” Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. is Senior advisor to the Black alliance for educational options and President of education online Services Corporation. Gadhafi: America’s Love, Hate Relationship T he United States’ relation- ship with Moammar Gaddafi has vacillated over the years, at one time viewing him as a mad dog leader, then accept- ing him into the international com- munity as a member in good standing and more recently, depicting him as an outcast while participating in coordinated multi- national air strikes on Libya. In a recent speech to the nation on Monday night, President Obama defended his decision to join France, the United Nations and now NATO in launching air strikes on the African country to protect civilians. The mass protests that led to the downfall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after 35 years in power and the 23-year tenure of Tunisia President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali have inspired protests throughout Northern Africa and the Middle East – including in Libya, Bahrain, and Yemen – and have underscored the United States’ inconsistent foreign policy. While professing support for democracy around the world, the U.S. has openly supported dicta- tors who routinely exploited and killed their own people, as was the case in Egypt under Mubarak and is the case in Bahrain under King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa. In those and other instances, the U.S. turned a deft ear to human rights violations because the leaders of those countries were allied with America in the fight against inter- national terrorism. In the case of Gaddafi, he has been considered both friend and foe. Page 4 The Portland Skanner march 30, 2011 t he C urry r ePort George E. Curry Libya, a mostly desert country about four times the size of California, was divided into three different provinces, each with deep tribal tension, until a Gaddafi-led revolution ousted its former king in 1969. Even Gaddafi’s severest critics concede killed. Reagan retaliated by bombing Libya. In the process, dozens of innocent civilians were killed, including Gaddafi’s adopt- ed infant daughter. Two years later, Libya experi- enced the wrath of the internation- al community after it was suspect- ed of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland that resulted in the deaths of 270 peo- ple. In 1992, the United Nations applied sanctions against Libya for failing to turn over two sus- pects in the bombing. Beginning in 1998, when it became the first nation to issue an international arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden, Libya took a The major fear among some African leaders is that having joined in the air strikes against Libya, the Obama administration may now use that as an excuse to support military intervention in other African countries that he has used Libya’s newly- discovered oil wealth to uplift the poor, improving hospitals, and schools. Detractors say he runs an oppressive regime where political opponents are victims of public hangings. Gaddafi became an international pariah 25 years ago. In 1986, the Reagan administration accused Libyan agents of bombing a disco in Berlin, Germany in which two American soldiers were series of high-profile actions to repair its tarnished international reputation. In 1999, Gaddafi turned over two suspects in the Pan Am bomb- ing, prompting the U.N. to lift eco- nomic sanctions against Libya. Two years later, when the two suspects were found guilty of murder, Gaddafi condemned the Sept. 11 attacks and urged his fel- low citizens to donate blood to the victims. The U.N. made additional con- cessions in 2003 by lifting travel and weapons bans against Libya after it formally accepted respon- sibility for the Pan Am bomb- ing. Libya paid more than $2 bil- lion to settle claims by the victims’ families. In another step toward regaining international respectability, Libya disbanded its nuclear program and provided the CIA with information that helped uncover a nuclear underground market in Europe. President George W. Bush, eye- ing Libya as a potential partner in the war against terrorism, lifted most U.S. trade sanctions in 2004. Describing the newly-thawed relationship, the Los Angeles Times, which spells the Libyan leader’s last name differently from most news outlets, observed: “As it struggles to combat Islamic ter- rorist networks, the Bush adminis- tration has quietly built an intelli- gence alliance with Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, a onetime bitter enemy the U.S. had tried for years to isolate, topple or kill. “Kadafi has helped the U.S. pur- sue Al Qaeda’s network in North Africa by turning radicals over to neighboring pro-Western govern- ments. He has also provided information to the CIA on Libyan nationals with alleged ties to inter- national terrorists.” The newspaper continued, “In turn, the U.S. has handed over to Tripoli some anti-Kadafi Libyans captured in its campaign against terrorism. And Kadafi’s agents have been allowed into the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba to interrogate Libyans being held there.”
