Category Archives: books

From #AprilSilver: “Rest In Peace, #NikkiGiovanni”

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Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni Jr

June 7, 1943 – December 9, 2024

“My dream was not to publish or to even be a writer: my dream was to discover something no one else had thought of. I guess that’s why I’m a poet. We put things together in ways no one else does.” – Nikki Giovanni
Rest in peace our beloved, dear Nikki Giovanni.
Kevin Powell reached out to me moments ago, in the 11pm hour, to share the sad report that had just broke on national news. I’ve not processed this yet. I’m simply sharing this report because I have no words, no clear headedness right now. A report only: A giant amongst us has left this realm and things are a bit darker now.
ars.

*****

Column: This #Thanksgiving, #PresidentBiden Should Grant Clemency to #LeonardPeltier

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As posted from here: https://www.democracynow.org/2024/11/27/this_thanksgiving_biden_should_grant_clemency

Column

November 27, 2024

Political prisoner Leonard Peltier is the author of the memoir Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance.

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

While many brace for the return of Donald Trump to the White House, let’s remember that until Monday, January 20th, #JoeBiden is still president, with all the power that confers. The Constitution grants the president the “Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States,” to remedy a criminal justice system riddled with faults. One strong candidate for presidential clemency, as recently called for by Amnesty International USA, is 80-year-old Anishinabe-Lakota elder #LeonardPeltier, who has been incarcerated for close to half a century for a crime he maintains he did not commit. This Thanksgiving weekend, when people across the US enjoy a holiday based on the myth of a shared meal between native people of Massachusetts and the English settler-colonists who would later violently displace them, #PresidentBiden should free Leonard Peltier.

The case of Leonard Peltier encapsulates the modern era of indigenous resistance. After centuries of #genocide launched by #ChristopherColumbus and expanded by successive waves of European settlers, by the 1950s most of the surviving indigenous nations in North America had been contained in isolated and impoverished reservations. Hollywood appropriated, caricatured and monetized the vibrant mosaic of indigenous cultures. Many Native people moved to cities seeking economic opportunity but still faced racism and discrimination. Out of this, and amidst the civil rights and other social movements of the 1960s, the #AmericanIndianMovement, or #AIM, was born.

In 1973, AIM went to the #PineRidgeReservation in South Dakota, where a corrupt tribal government was working in league with federal and local authorities to violently suppress a growing movement to restore traditional practices – and to block extractive industries from exploiting traditional lands. More than 50 Lakota people and their allies were murdered there over a three-year period.

On June 26, 1975, Leonard Peltier was present at an AIM camp on the property of a targeted family. The camp was fired upon by unknown assailants, and the AIM members returned fire. In the ensuing minutes, two FBI agents and one young AIM activist were killed.

Two AIM members were later arrested for killing the agents. At trial, the jury agreed that they had fired in self-defense and acquitted them. Leonard Peltier, arrested later, was tried separately and convicted. Peltier’s trial was marked by gross FBI and federal prosecutorial misconduct, with the coercion of witnesses, fabricated testimony, and suppressed exculpatory evidence.

When Peltier was on trial in 1976, Joe Biden, then a young US Senator, was a founding member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The committee was created after the explosive Church Committee hearings that investigated the unconstitutional and criminal conduct of the FBI and its “ #COINTELPRO ” operations against civil rights leaders and organizations, including AIM.

A global movement grew, demanding justice for Leonard Peltier. Human rights icons like South African #PresidentNelsonMandela and #ArchbishopDesmondTutu called for his release, as did one of the federal judges involved, and, years later, one of the prosecutors who tried the case.

#AmnestyInternational has campaigned for Peltier’s release for decades. The group recently sent a letter to President Biden, reiterating their demand.

“Over the decades at Amnesty, we have been calling on administration after administration to do the right thing by Leonard. He was in hospital in June, he was in hospital again in October. It’s time to give him a chance to spend his last days with his family and with his community,” Paul O’Brien, Executive Director of #AmnestyInternationalUSA, said on the Democracy Now! news hour.

In late October, President Biden traveled to the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona to formally apologize for the US government’s treatment of Indigenous children forced into boarding schools.

“All told, hundreds and hundreds of Federal Indian Boarding Schools across the country. Tens of thousands of Native children entered the system. Nearly 1,000 documented Native child deaths, though the real number is likely to be much, much higher; lost generations, culture, and language; lost trust. It’s horribly, horribly wrong. It’s a sin on our soul,” Biden said.

Nick Tilsen, executive director of the Indigenous-led NDN Collective, responded on #DemocracyNow!, saying,

“What this means for Indian Country is that we hope that this is the beginning of an era of repair between the United States government and the Indigenous people, the First People of this land…He [Peltier] was in the Sisseton Wahpeton boarding school, in South Dakota. Leonard Peltier and many people who became leaders in the American Indian Movement were boarding school survivors. They came out of that era, and then they resisted.”

If President Biden’s apology at Gila River was genuine, he could demonstrate it by commuting the sentence of Leonard Peltier. It would be a long-overdue gesture to Indigenous people across the US, for which we could all give thanks.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Little-Seen, Never-Aired 61-Year-Old (Authorized) Documentary on “Peanuts”

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Wow! The team formed even earlier than I thought! This was before *all* of the films and TV specials!

You can find out about this documentary here.

A Public Mention of #LeonardPeltier Earlier Today

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Nick Tilsen, founder and CEO of the Indigenous-led NDN Collective and a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation.

NICK TILSEN: ….The other thing that we’re calling upon is, you know, America’s longest-living Indigenous political prisoner in American history is a boarding school survivor, and his name is Leonard Peltier. And so, we’re calling upon President Biden for executive clemency for Leonard Peltier….

AMY GOODMAN: So, on the issue of Leonard Peltier, there is also another incredible connection, because Leonard Peltier was a survivor of the residential boarding schools, wasn’t he, Nick?

NICK TILSEN: Absolutely. You know, he was in the boarding schools, in — he was in the Sisseton Wahpeton boarding school, and —

AMY GOODMAN: In North Dakota?

NICK TILSEN: South Dakota. And so, he was in that boarding school, taken from his home. And what a lot of people don’t realize is that Leonard Peltier and many people who became leaders in the American Indian Movement were survivors of boarding school. They came out of that era, and then they resisted. And so, Leonard Peltier is part of that resistance. And so, it’s an incredibly reflective thing to think about, that America’s longest-living Indigenous political prisoner, who is incarcerated right now at the age of 80 years old in maximum-security prison, is actually a boarding school survivor. And so, that’s why, you know, if we want —

AMY GOODMAN: Imprisoned in Florida. I remember asking President Clinton on Election Day 2000 if he would consider granting clemency for Leonard Peltier, which he said he was weighing at the time. That was almost a quarter of a century ago.

NICK TILSEN: Yeah, that was almost a — I mean, and here we are now, you know? And so, we are continuing to push. We’d like to see, you know, executive clemency for Leonard Peltier. And I think that one of the ways that this can happen is that Biden can give executive clemency to Leonard Peltier by humanizing him and recognizing Leonard Peltier is a survivor of boarding schools. And he just apologized for the impact of boarding schools. And the freedom that Leonard Peltier was fighting for was to break free of those things that happened by the impact of boarding schools on Native communities and Indigenous communities. And so, this is a profound opportunity. And it’s a way — it’s a way for President Biden to take action, you know, in a huge issue that would impact throughout Indian Country.

–from today’s #DemocracyNow

#imixwhatilike: re: #TaNehisiCoates: What Is The Message? ft. #ToddStevenBurroughs

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2026 COMMENTS: This was my version of a #KattWilliams interview. 🙂 I cut and pasted comments below I made today, almost two years later.


@IsiahBradley

4 hours ago (edited) Listening to, and laughing about, this almost two years later…..

[2026] UPDATES:

There is now a book on the history of #TheVillageVoice. It’s called “The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture.”

There is a book about Coates’ run on the #MarvelComics character #BlackPanther. It’s called “Writing Black Panther: Ta-Nehisi Coates and Representation Struggles.”

2:02:45: “Freedom Fighter: My Life as a Soldier in the #BlackLiberationArmy,” #AshaBandele‘s collaboration with Black #politicalprisoner#SekouOdinga, is due to be out October 2026, as of this writing.

CORRECTIONS: 14:07 ; 2:01:55: Political prisoner #MaroonShoatz openly said the goal of his 2024 book #IAmMaroon was to get a film deal, a la “#TheHurricane.”

37:41: The James Baldwin essay that pissed #RichardWright off was “Everybody’s Protest Novel.” Baldwin’s obit of Wright was “Alas, Poor Richard.”

50:26: I meant ” AMIRI BARAKA’s daughters from Hettie…”

59:41: The #JohnHenrikClarke essay was called “The Alienation of James Baldwin.”

#TaNehisiCoates#ImixwhatIlike#TheMessage#Blackwriting#politicaleconomy#JamesBaldwin#AlexHaley#AmiriBaraka#CornelWest#MayaAngelou#magazinejournalismhistory#Palestine#literaryjournalism

“Tribute to Don Rojas: A True Revolutionary” – October 15, 2024

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Fighting back against MAGA misinformation and disinformation

By Don Rojas

(Editor’s Note: Below are the comments of Don Rojas at the tribute /BWMN fundraising event at Brooklyn’s House of the Lord Church on October 15, 2024.)

Thanks, Bro. Ron.

Good evening, Sisters and brothers, friends and comrades. Revolutionary greetings to all.

First and foremost, giving all praises and glory to God and the Ancestors, I wish to thank everyone for your birthday wishes and for your touching tributes. I am truly humbled and honored.

I wish to express special gratitude to Dr. Ron Daniels for organizing this event and to Prof. Sir Hilary Beckles for his video presentation. These two tireless brothers are giants of our people and an inspiration to activists and reparations advocates around the world.

Many thanks also to the venerable Pastor Herbert Daughtry and his wife Karen and the rest of the Daughtry family for making available their legendary House of the Lord Church, an epicenter of righteousness and activism in the heart of the People’s Republic of Brooklyn in New York City. The Daughtry family continues to be a source of strength and inspiration for me and so many others and its fitting that tonight we send them revolutionary salutations and wish them good health and long life.

To the sisters and brothers in the live audience who have taken time out in the middle of a work week to participate in this evening’s event, please accept my deepest apologies for not being there in the flesh with you this evening for reasons related to my health. I thank you all for your prayers and best wishes as I continue my battle with cancer. I am truly blessed.

We are also gathered this evening to give financial support to the Black World Media Network, a digital media project that I conceived, and we launched during Black History Month two years ago. The network is essentially a 24×7 Internet radio station featuring danceable and inspiring progressive music from Black America, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America along with news, commentaries, podcasts and special features. Via downloadable apps you can listen to the station’s Livestream on your computer, laptop, tablet and even your cell phone, anytime, anywhere in the world.

The network is a non-commercial, non-partisan, truly independent media dedicated to uniting and serving Black and Brown communities and nations across the globe. We depend on your ongoing financial support to pay the bills for streaming and hosting and to modestly compensate the incredible team that keeps it broadcasting.

We are asking for your financial support as well as your promotional support tonight and in the days and weeks ahead. Please donate whatever you can afford and help us spread the word about the Network by sharing it with your family, friends and colleagues. The strategic objective of the network is to assist the process of strengthening Black and Brown solidarity across the world and support the growing global reparations movement.

In addition to providing a healthy mix of entertainment and information, our network is dedicated to combatting the toxic and vile twins of misinformation and disinformation that’s being spread by the orange man and his misguided minions with increasing frequency as we move closer to the Nov. 5 elections in the USA, which will be the most consequential elections in our lifetime with serious implications for the entire Black World.

This disinformation campaign is manifested in a long litany of nasty lies and crazy-ass conspiracy theories, repeated incessantly to the point where millions of people unfortunately believe they are valid and credible. It sounds more and more every day like Hitler’s evil propaganda campaigns that were cooked up by Goebbels and his team of fascist propagandists back in the 1920s and 30s in Germany.

Independent media like ours must push back aggressively on this anti-truth campaign and so, moving forward, I’ll make myself available for counsel and advice to the superb team at the network, to Rennie, Rick, Kyle et al.

This MAGA phenomenon poses an existential threat to Black and Brown people and other people of color, as well as to white people of conscience and good will. MAGA is a dangerous cancer on the body politic that is metastasizing rapidly. The international dimensions of its 2025 agenda poses serious threats to countries in the global south, especially to countries in the Caribbean, Africa and Latin America, a threat that transcends our political, linguistic and geographical boundaries. So, It is imperative that we unite to fight against this threat.

Today’s “Make America Great Again” movement is not the same old right-wing of the capitalist consensus, but a radicalized neo-fascist force that will be present and active, no matter who wins the upcoming elections.

The Orange Man, as Bro. Ron has dubbed him, did not create the MAGA phenomenon. He gave this already existing force a name and like the narcissistic, opportunistic, racist and deranged megalomanic that he is, the Orange Man has bamboozled tens of millions of people (who he disdains and has no affinity with) into supporting his lust for power. The 2025 agenda is designed to protect and defend the white skin color privileges of his rabid supporters who will happily attack Black and Brown people and innocent migrants.

For the MAGA minions, hate is their unifying ideology, and their white identity trumps all other types of identity. They believe that their whiteness affords them more rights and opportunities than people of color.

They offer no uplifting vision of the future for voters. Thier’s is a white supremacist agenda which seeks to turn back the clock of history to the days of American apartheid aka “Jim Crow” and some would want to go even further back to the era of chattel enslavement of African people in the US and in the broader Americas.

They see the demographics of America changing before their eyes and they are panicking, and so they have turned to a fraudulent con man to be their “savior.” They fear that a multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious democracy is emerging in the USA. They are terrified at the “browning of America” and are ready and willing to turn to violence to stop this trend but they are deluded, and they must be resisted.

The manifest failures of neoliberalism are multiplying while the neo-fascist movement threatens to replace a flawed democracy with something fundamentally and frighteningly worse.

We at the Black World Media Network (and IBW) are committed to combating these dangerous tendencies. With your generous support, we can grow the network into an effective Pan-Africanist foil to the MAGA phenomenon.

Your contributions will help us to broadcast news and commentaries in several languages soon, and we invite you to work with us to enhance the interactive capacity of the network so that we create vibrant digital spaces where our people across the world can talk to each other regularly, plan together and share perspectives and stories about their struggles for dignity and respect, for real sovereignty and economic self-determination in a world dominated more and more by the neo-colonial ideology we call neoliberalism.

Sisters and Brothers, I came to the US as a 19-year-old immigrant from the English-speaking Caribbean in 1968, an immigrant who grew up in the Caribbean under British colonialism and with the blood of Africa and of colonial Spain coursing through my veins. And, as an immigrant, my heart aches for our Haitian sisters and brothers in Springfield, Ohio who are under siege by the KKK and for those families who have crossed rivers, jungles and valleys on a long dangerous journey by foot to reach the Southern border of the US seeking entry so that they could pursue the elusive “American Dream”.

These brave, and sometimes desperate, black and brown people do not come from “shithole countries” and are not eaters of cats and dogs. They are not invading forces of aliens. They are flesh and blood human beings like us in search of a better life for themselves and their children. They have hopes and dreams and aspirations just like the rest of us. Let’s stand in solidarity with them.

So, sisters and brothers, friends and comrades, the struggle for a brave new world continues. The struggle for a future of justice and equality moves on. The struggle to build a future of peace and joy is our collective call to action.

Let us continue to coalesce our global family around shared human rights and common cultural and historical values. Let us corral our energies and talents to build a future of optimism over pessimism, joy over despair, creativity over carnage, positivity over negativity, cooperation over discord, justice over exploitation and oppression, peace over war, light over darkness and dystopia.

As I wind down my work activities into a form of semi-retirement, I do not intend to sail off into a beautiful tropical sunset. I’m not quitting the struggle because the spirit of the Grenada Revolution which burns in my soul tells me that I still have a responsibility and a duty to work for human liberation. That is the spirit of resistance and complete independence.

So, I intend to spend more quality time with my grandchildren, catch up on some long-deferred reading, work on my memoirs, continue to be a student of our people’s history and channel whatever energy I have left mostly into the global reparations movement.

I will also advocate for the practice of participatory democracy in Black and Brown countries in the Caribbean, Africa and Latin America; a popular form of democracy that goes beyond the act of voting every 4 or 5 years to active, daily engagement of the masses in governance and in the process of equitable and sustainable development.

Participatory, grassroots democracy as was demonstrated briefly during the years of the Grenada Revolution is a crucial complement to representative, Parliamentary democracy and the most effective and viable alternative to the current political and economic dominance of neoliberalism and its instruments like the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO.

And, moving forward, our Black World Media Network will create programming that encourages regular and consistent mass participation and civic engagement in the democratic processes in countries throughout the Black World.

Finally, my sincere thanks once again to all those participating and witnessing this event for your support and solidarity over the years. Let us stay connected and let us move together into a joyful tomorrow with collective determination to never turn back but to forever move forward.

Peace and Blessings,

One Heart, One Destiny, One Love!! d