Afro-Netizen

The fight for social justice without music just ain't just

U.S. Social Forum kicks off in Atlanta

By Richard Muhammad
Afro-Netizen

ATLANTA -- Thousands of people marched through the streets of Atlanta June 27 as the U.S. Social Forum, billed as one of the largest gatherings of progressive groups and activists, kicked off. The march, complete with stilt walkers, giant-headed puppets, drummers, bikers, and everyone from anti-war activists to anti-computer waste advocates finding in a place in a multi-racial throng that started out from the state Capitol Building.

Chants, whistles and shouts punctuated the air as enthusiastic men, women, and children, young and old, Black, White, Latino and Asian, gay and straight offered their picture of democracy to the world. The march went peacefully, winding past government buildings, Georgia State University facilities and Marta stations before ending at the Atlanta Civic Center, ground zero for the conference.

Local police, office workers and everyday Atlantans watched as the lively wave of people flowed down boulevards in the "city too busy to hate."

Conference organizers said Atlanta was a logical and specific choice for the first U.S. Social Forum, modeled after World Social Forums that have grown from 15,000 to more than 150,000 people since the first meeting in Porto Alegre in Brazil in 2001.

Speaking after longtime civil rights leader Joseph Lowery laid a wreath at the tomb of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the late Coretta Scott King, organizers of the U.S. Social Forum talked about King's role and Atlanta's historic place in the struggle for civil and human rights. Other activists felt Atlanta was the right place because of the South's historic struggle for social change and its continued battles against injustice. The wreath laying was the first official conference event.

"The South has seen lots of repression and lots of resistance," said Jerome Scott, a member of the forum's National Planning Committee. Events will include a variety of trainings from organizing to anti-racism to media making at venues near the Civic Center and hotels.

Part of the forum's purpose is to inspire greater activism and to challenge U.S. hegemony and corporate dominance nationally and internationally. The gathering is also about collaboration where activists look for the places where serious issues -- like racism, poverty, violence, corporate wrongdoing,  and environmental abuses  -- intersect and places where groups can combine efforts to challenge these problems.

"Another World is Possible; Another U.S. is Necessary" is the conference theme. In the end, the U.S. Social Forum hopes to inspire less progressive talk and more action. "An interesting thing happens with these social forums around the world. You see it in South America, in Africa, in Asia -- a wave of change and grassroots political engagement follows," said Alice Lovelace, a USSF national lead organizer.

Forum organizers hope to see a similar wave of engagement in the home of the world's greatest democracy.

The U.S. Social Forum will end on Sunday, July 1st.

Should Roberto Clemente's number be retired?

I'm hard-pressed to think of any good reasons why not, but Afro-Netizen will assuredly be open to hearing a range of counter-arguments.

In the meantime, read this piece by writer Willie Perdomo brought to our attention by fellow digital ethnoratista Donna Hernandez of ARC. Thanx, Donna!

RETIRING ROBERTO CLEMENTE'S NUMBER? IT'S A NO-BRAINER
By Willie Perdomo
The New York Post

MLB icon Clemente deserves his props.

Should MLB retire Roberto Clemente's 21 like it did with Jackie Robinson's 42? Vote Now!
June 6, 2007 -- In A RECENT profile of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, one of his closest advisors commented on the in-fighting amongst Latino politicians and said, "We have a propensity, like other minorities, to screw one another."

I've erased the word "minorities" from my vocabulary a long time ago, but the comment made me think about Sharon Robinson (the daughter of the great African American baseball player Jackie Robinson) and her reluctance to endorse the retirement of Roberto Clemente's jersey, No. 21.

Ms. Robinson was quoted in a January 2006 Associated Press article as saying that her father's situation was "very unique and historical. (Roberto) Clemente did an awful lot of good things and was a terrific ballplayer, but I don't think it's the same type of situation as Jackie Robinson."

Ms. Robinson's type of thinking is endemic to the racial divisions that currently plague our major cities. For her to imply that "the situation" was different for the Puerto Rican ball player is to negate the struggle that Clemente endured as a dark-skinned, Spanish-speaking man in this country.

Did he not encounter the same Jim Crow injustices that were experienced by Robinson, Willie Mays and Don Newcombe? Did he not, unlike the aforementioned players, have the courage to speak up about these injustices? Must an argument really be made to retire the number of a baseball player who was called a prince?

A player who consistently got the good wood on a bad pitch and a consummate All-Star who made playing baseball look like modern ballet.

A ball player who hit a cool 3,000 hits, won 12 Gold Gloves in twelve consecutive seasons, four batting titles and virtually ensured the Pittsburgh Pirates a victory in the 1971 World Series by hitting safely in every post-season game for a .421 average.

Sure, Jackie Robinson was the first African-American man to wear a Major League Baseball uniform, but ask the million-plus Puerto Ricans who will be parading up Fifth Avenue on Sunday if Clemente's number should be retired. I guarantee that you will hear a resounding "Claro, que si" and "Hell, yeah!" followed by a "Wepa!" and then a symphonic clanging of cowbells to rally the issue.

If the problem, as W.E.B. Dubois reflected, within our Latino and African-American communities (and I include myself as a member of both) is that we fall prey to the "crabs in the barrel phenomenon" then Sharon Robinson is acting like a queen crab to a man, Roberto Walker Clemente, who died en route to a humanitarian mission to feed the poor in Nicaragua.

A man who, after having reached the top of the barrel, would undoubtedly grab a rope and throw it back down to help lift up some of his fellow crustaceans.

Willie Perdomo is the author of the upcoming children's book "Why They Call Me Clemente" (Henry Holt/BYR). He's also the husband of Tempo Editor Sandra Guzmán.

Bill honoring Emmett Till spurs some bipartisanship

By Brian Beutler
Afro-Netizen

Who says bipartisanship is dead?

Well, actually, a lot of people do. And they’re mainly correct. But every now and then, some animating force—a just cause, a moving story, an unexpected event—will, for better or worse, bring warring political parties into alignment. This week, for the better, that force was Emmett Till.

In 1955, Till, a 14-year-old black kid from Chicago spending a summer with his family in the South, was savagely murdered by two white men who dumped his body into the Mississippi Delta. The crime was reprehensible and the suspects clearly culpable, but nonetheless a jury of 12 white men found them innocent. They also touched off the civil rights movement.

This week, as the House Oversight committee jousted angrily over the guilt or innocence of a Bush appointee and as the Senate sparred over an energy bill, members of the House Judiciary Committee came together to advance a bill that seeks to provide closure to the family members of men like Till, many of whom are still alive and hopeful for justice.

The bill, called the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, is a clean piece of legislation that will do exactly what its official heading says: It will create “an Unsolved Crimes Section in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, and an Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Investigative Office in the Civil Rights Unit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

To do that, it authorizes $10 million annually to federal agencies, which will be tasked with unearthing cold cases from the civil rights era and investigating them fully. Most of the crimes from the aftermath of Till’s death have seen their statutes of limitations elapse. For the most part, the exceptions are murders, many of which took place in Southern states like Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.

Brenda Jones, a spokeswoman for Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.)—one of the bill’s chief sponsors—pointed out that, counter-intuitively, the bill’s greatest merits are not in what it mandates, but in what it does not. “It allows $1.5 million for community relations, so that federal officials collaborate with state and local officials,” she says. “It allows them to turn to engage the federal government for help when [solving] the crimes require greater resources or experience.” Moreover, it provides an additional $2 million a year to local and state authorities—on top of the collaborative assistance—to expand their operations.

There are nearly 100 stale cases that will immediately benefit from the bill’s provisions and hundreds more that could potentially be brought back to life. Rita Schwerner Bender, whose husband Michael was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan for registering black voters in Mississippi, points out that there have been 518 unsolved lynchings in Mississippi since 1955. As evidence has withered and witnesses have all but disappeared, many of those cases desperately require the sort of help that the so-called “Till Bill” will offer once signed into law.

The hearings this week weren’t without moments of politicking. Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) asked one witness whether the bill would help solve cases of black on white violence. The answer is that it will in theory, but that in spirit—and likely in practice—it will not. That low moment was redeemed by Pence himself when, moments later, he recounted the story of his own awakening to the viciousness of that era—of attending a church in the South built by a community of devoutly religious people who had somehow justified to themselves the idea that the same church should be segregated. As he told it, he held back tears.

The bill, first conceived by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), didn’t go anywhere in the 109th Congress. But everybody—congressmen, senators, aides and observers—seems confident that this time around it will sail through.

“The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act is an important step towards finally closing an ugly chapter in American history, a time when crimes against civil rights activists and African-Americans were routinely swept under the rug,” says Caroline Frederickson, ACLU’s Washington director. “This bill upholds the integrity of the judicial system and ensures that those guilty of civil rights crimes will finally be held accountable. We are encouraged that the House and Senate Judiciary Committees voted in favor of the bill, and we strongly urge their colleagues to do the same when it comes to the floor.”

If they do follow suit, then stories like this one might not be so unusual in the months to come.

Brian Beutler, Washington DC Correspondent for The Media Consortium