As you have probably heard, Eight former Black Panthers were arrested January 23rd in California, New York and Florida on charges related to the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police officer. Similar charges were thrown out after it was revealed that police used torture to extract confessions when some of these same men were arrested in New Orleans in 1973. Richard Brown, Richard O'Neal, Ray Boudreaux, and Hank Jones were arrested in California. Francisco Torres was arrested in Queens, New York. Harold Taylor was arrested in Florida. Two men charged have been held as political prisoners for over 30 years – Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim are both in New York State prisons. A ninth man -- Ronald Stanley Bridgeforth – is still being sought. The men were charged with the murder of Sgt. John Young and conspiracy that encompasses numerous acts between 1968 and 1973.
For updates, news, analysis, and upcomeing events and court dates, please visit this website: http://www.cdhrsupport.org/
A tremendously successful conference focused on building a solid boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israeli Apartheid in North America took place in Toronto last weekend. The final press release from the conference is included below - a report will be coming out shortly.
Members of Tadamon! Montreal participated & mobilized other Montrealers to attend the Toronto conference. Tadamon! also hosted Jamal Juma for a public event & series of meetings in Montreal. Juma is a spokesperson for the Stop the Wall Campaign, based in the occupied West Bank, & was featured as a key-note speaker at the landmark Toronto conference.
Tadamon! Montreal will be actively organizing in Montreal as part of the growing campaign against Israeli Apartheid, through popular education, political action & community organizing. If you are interested in getting involved, please contact us.
Whatever happened to James Blake? He is probably the most famous bus driver ever. And yet when he died at age 89 in March 2002, the few papers that bothered to note his passing in an obituary ran just a few hundred words of wire copy and moved on.
Given that February is Black History Month, it is worth taking a moment to ask how such a crucial figure could be so cruelly forgotten.
Blake was the Montgomery driver who told a row of black passengers: "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats." Rosa Parks was one of those passengers. She made her stand and kept her seat. The rest, as they say, is history.
Well, black history anyway. We know how African-Americans boycotted city transit for 13 months until the segregationists caved in. We know how the boycott launched the career of a previously unheard-of preacher named Martin Luther King Jr. and made Parks an icon. In schools, bookstores and on TV there is an awful lot of talk about them in February. But nary a word about Mr. Blake. That's because so much of Black History Month takes place in the passive voice. Leaders "get assassinated," patrons "are refused" service, women "are ejected" from public transport. So the objects of racism are many but the subjects few. In removing the instigators, the historians remove the agency and, in the final reckoning, the historical responsibility.
There is no month when we get to talk about Blake; no opportunity to learn the fates of J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, who murdered Emmett Till; no time set aside to keep track of Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, whose false accusations of rape against the Scottsboro Boys sent five innocent young black men to jail.
Wouldn't everyone — particularly white people — benefit from becoming better acquainted with these histories? What we need, in short, is a White History Month.
For some this would be one racially themed history month too many. Criticisms of Black History Month from cynics, racists and purists are about as predictable as the arrival of February itself. But for all its obvious shortcomings, Black History Month helps clear a space to relate the truth about the past so we might better understand the present and navigate the future. Setting aside 28 days for African-American history is insufficient, problematic and deserves our support for the same reason that affirmative action is insufficient, problematic and deserves our support. As one means to redress an entrenched imbalance, it gives us the chance to hear narratives that have been forgotten, hidden, distorted or mislaid. Like that of Claudette Colvin, the black Montgomery teenage activist who also refused to give up her seat, nine months before Rosa Parks, but was abandoned by the local civil rights establishment because she became pregnant and came from the wrong side of town.
(Parts of this article originally appeared in the March/April issue of Colorlines Magazine, on newsstands now. Check out Colorlines online at www.colorlines.org, and www.racewire.org)
New Orleans Community Spaces in Crisis By Jordan Flaherty March 7, 2007
Community centers have long been central to New Orleans organizing, serving as a gathering location for people, culture and ideas. One activist recently explained, "organizing here looks like neighborhood get-togethers, potlucks, block parties, and conversations on a neighbor's porch. Its about culture and community." But 18 months after Katrina, many of New Orleans' community spaces, vital resources in the reconstruction of the city, remain shuttered. Traditional sources for support, such as foundations or charities, often miss this aspect of New Orleans' community, and many of these spaces have received little outside assistance.
In a city where many people are still in crisis, most federal support still has not arrived, insurance companies have evaded responsibility, and every repair seems to take longer than expected, a lot of these spaces need help. Few of have received anything close to the funding, resources, or staff they need for their work, and some are working unsustainable hours while living in a still-devastated city. Because New Orleans' education and health care systems have been dismantled, many have either personal or family issues around health or school that they must deal with.
March 15, 16, & 17-- Save the Legacy fundrasier events for Intertribal Friendship House!
Oldest Urban Native American Community Center in the Nation Under Threat! "Save the Legacy" Fundraiser Events Scheduled to Save the Intertribal Friendship House
Oakland, California - The Intertribal Friendship House (IFH), which is recognized as the oldest Urban Native American Community Center in the nation, is under threat of being lost forever. On Friday, March 23 the IFH will be placed on the Alameda County auction block due to unpaid taxes if necessary funds are not raised. Community members are taking action to raise $30,000 to save the center and preserve the legacy of this cultural and historical monument.
It has also served as the meeting place and organizing center for American Indian activism of the 1960s and '70s including the occupation of Alcatraz, the initiation of the Long Walk, and the creation of the AIM for freedom Survival School, among many other events and actions that had far-reaching effects nationally, many of which continue today.
For over fifty years the IFH continues to serve as the heart of the Bay Area Indian Community. It was established in 1955 to respond to the needs of American Indian people of many tribes who had migrated into the area through the Federal relocation program. For Urban Native Peoples IFH has served as the Urban Reservation and Homeland. In many cases it is one of the few places that keeps them connected to their culture and traditions through pow wow dance, drumming, beading classes, and the many social gatherings, cultural events, and ceremonies that are held there.
"The Intertribal Friendship House is more than an organization. It is the heart of a vibrant tribal community." said Wilma Mankiller, former Principal Chief, Cherokee Nation. "When we returned to our Oklahoma homelands twenty years later, we took incredible memories of the many people in the Bay Area who helped shape our values and beliefs."
Intertribal Friendship House (IFH) sprang up out of the need for relocated Indians to congregate together, to help each other survive and to forge what became the Urban Indian Community in the San Francisco Bay Area. IFH became the model that other Indian Centers with a specific focus grew out of and replicated.
the weekend of march 17th/18th marks the four year anniversary of the US war on Iraq. In the bay area, several events are taking place. tehre is a large ANSWER march on sunday, march 18th. if we hear of anti-imperialist contingents, we'll post that nformation ehre.
On Monday, March 19th, there are a couple opportunities to take direct action to protest the war.
there is a Protest, Rally, & Nonviolent Direct Action at the Chevron World Headquarters in San Ramon, California, which is 12 miles from the Walnut Creek BART. This will be from 7 am to 11 am.
Also on Monday, March 19, there is a die in in downtown San Francisco, in many of the locations where members of Direct Action to Stop the War paralyzed the city when this war broke out four years ago. Please check out this website for more details. There are four locations for assemly. The heads Up collective has volunteered to coordinate the Spear and market location (which is at the embarcadero MUNI/BARt stop), and we'd be honored if you would join us there, from NOON TO 1 PM.
Outsourcing Walter Reed Philip Mattera March 06, 2007 Philip Mattera heads the Corporate Research Project, an affiliate of Good Jobs First.
Reports of substandard conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center have outraged the country. But that anger should not be directed only at the callous Army officials running the facility.
The full story behind the scandal involves a misguided program to "reinvent government" through outsourcing, a company that botched the delivery of ice to victims of Hurricane Katrina and a giant hedge fund led by a former member of President Bush's cabinet. The private sector has indirectly had a hand in converting the once legendary Walter Reed into a symbol of the shameful treatment of people who have been maimed in the service of their country.
The dismal state of some facilities at Walter Reed cannot be directly attributed to poor performance by a contractor. After all, it has been only a few months since a politically connected firm called IAP Worldwide Services started taking over many of the management functions at the medical center.
Yet a battle over whether to outsource those functions has been going on since early 2000, when the Army commenced a cost-comparison study of support services at the medical center. Such studies—which were being promoted by the Clinton administration's "reinventing government" initiative led by Vice President Al Gore—forced groups of federal workers to compete with potential contractors to figure out which could perform a given function more efficiently.
The process dragged on for several years, and finally it was determined that the bid by federal civilian employees at Walter Reed was the better one. However, that decision was overturned by the Army Audit Agency, which was upheld by the GAO on a technicality. This allowed IAP to get a five-year, $120 million contract.
Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has been gathering evidence that the prospect of outsourcing (and likely job cuts) had a detrimental effect on morale and efficiency at Walter Reed. That idea is not just theory. Last September, Walter Reed Garrison Commander Peter Garibaldi sent an internal memorandum to his superiors warning that substantial numbers of skilled workers were leaving because of the impending takeover by IAP.
It is also possible that managers at Walter Reed were letting things slide, knowing that any problems would soon be dumped in the lap of a contractor. While it may not be possible to quantify, there is every reason to believe that the drawn-out outsourcing process and the controversial reversal of the initial finding in favor of the federal workforce contributed to the deterioration of physical conditions at the medical center.
And all this was to create a new revenue opportunity for IAP. The company is an odd choice to help manage one of the nation's premier military medical facilities. It was founded in 1989 by a South Carolina entrepreneur who enlisted the help of a logistics expert who had recently left the Army. They rode the rising wave of military outsourcing in the 1990s, specializing in supplying electric generators, while also getting federal civilian contracts for prosaic functions such as providing ice in natural disasters (a responsibility it later botched during Hurricane Katrina). Last year IAP got a $103 million contract to handle file management at the IRS but was unable to get up and running by the specified start date.
Management of the company is now in the hands of Al Neffgen and David Swindle, two former executives with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root—one of the giants of military outsourcing and the subject of numerous allegations about overcharging the federal government. Today, IAP's board of directors includes former Vice President Dan Quayle, a former commandant of the Marines and a former vice chief of staff of the Air Force. Such connections have undoubtedly helped the company rise up the ranks of federal contractors. Its volume of business with Uncle Sam has grown from about $222 million in 2000 to some $1.2 billion in 2005.
IAP's growth has also been aided by the fact that it is controlled by the giant hedge fund Cerberus Capital Management, which has taken over dozens of companies and is now more of a conglomerate than an investment fund. Cerberus, like IAP, is no stranger to the revolving door. It is surely no coincidence that the hedge fund chose former Bush Treasury Secretary John Snow as its chairman a few months ago while IAP was intensifying its effort to take over a multi-billion-dollar military logistics contract now held by Halliburton.
The entire situation is a remarkable illustration of how the federal government has become a vehicle for the promotion of private interests. The zeal with which large contracts are awarded to a small universe of companies, with little attention paid to performance, suggests that outsourcing is less an effort to improve efficiency and more a matter of enriching those with the right connections.
But this time the privatization game may have backfired in the face of the Bush administration and its friends in the corporate world. It is one thing to screw workers—unfortunately, that's now considered business as usual—but in the case of Walter Reed the ultimate victims are a much more revered group. The stark evidence that the Bush Administration, for all its rhetoric about supporting the troops, is much more interested in supporting the contractors, could be leading to a political earthquake.
