Twas’ 11 days before Christmas, around 9:38
when 20 beautiful children stormed through heaven's gate.

their smiles were contagious, their laughter filled the air.
they could hardly believe all the beauty they saw there.

they were filled with such joy, they didn't know what to say.

they remembered nothing of what had happened earlier that day.

"where are we?" asked a little girl, as quiet as a mouse.
"this is heaven." declared a small boy. "we're spending Christmas at God's house."

when what to their wondering eyes did appear,
but Jesus, their savior, the children gathered near.

He looked at them and smiled, and they smiled just the same.
then He opened His arms and He called them by name.

and in that moment was joy, that only heaven can bring
those children all flew into the arms of their King

and as they lingered in the warmth of His embrace,
one small girl turned and looked at Jesus' face.

and as if He could read all the questions she had
He gently whispered to her, "I'll take care of mom and dad."

then He looked down on earth, the world far below

He saw all of the hurt, the sorrow, and woe

then He closed His eyes and He outstretched His hand,
"Let My power and presence re-enter this land!"

"may this country be delivered from the hands of fools"
"I'm taking back my nation. I'm taking back my schools!"

then He and the children stood up without a sound.

"come now my children, let me show you around."

excitement filled the space, some skipped and some ran.
all displaying enthusiasm that only a small child can.

and I heard Him proclaim as He walked out of sight,
"in the midst of this darkness, I AM STILL THE LIGHT."

Written by Cameo Smith, Mt. Wolf, PA

PEACE.LOVE.HAPPINESS

 Today, May 6th 2012, marks the 10th anniversary since the remains of Sara “Saartjie” Baartman were returned to her homeland, in the Gamtoos Valley, South Africa.

For those who are unfamiliar with Sara Baartman, she was born in 1789, the year of the French Revolution. By the time she was a young adult she was enticed by a British businessman to sail with him to England, where she could display her body at exhibitions in exchange for a better standard of living. Sara, the “Hottentot Venus,” being a “Hottentot” woman (a derogatory term given), from the Khoisan tribe, had exceptionally large buttocks and genitals. This physical structure was synonymous of the women from that region.

After a few years of such exploitation in the UK she was probably sold to some other businessman, this time in France, where the mockery and abuse started all over again. After the French public got bored with her she was forced into prostitution and alcoholism. By the time she was 25years old she died of a disease associated with that profession. From there she was carved up and had her brains and genitals preserved in bottles by one of Napoleon’s surgeons. These parts, along with her bones were put on display in a museum called Musee de L’homme, for almost 200 years. After public outcry over the years, the artifacts were taken off display and replaced by casts.

When Nelson Mandela came to power in 1994, one of the first things he requested was to have her remains brought back to South Africa for a decent burial.

Out of embarrassment, it wasn’t until May 6th 2002 before the French finally followed up on that request. Sara’s remains were finally buried near a small town called Hankey, on the Eastern Cape three months later.

Because of the touchiness when it comes to race, it was rarely uttered that this whole experience had surpassed the notoriety of the Elephant Man.

To Sara, there is life after death… The ancestors still speak.
PEACE.LOVE.HAPPINESS

The Zong Massacre (1781)
 

Image Ownership: Public Domain
The slave ship, Zong, departed the coast of Africa on 6 September 1781 with 470 slaves. Since this human chattel was such a valuable commodity at that time, many captains took on more slaves than their ships could accommodate in order to maximize profits. The Zong’s captain, Luke Collingwood, overloaded his ship with slaves and by 29 November many of them had begun to die from disease and malnutrition. The Zong then sailed in an area in the mid-Atlantic known as “the Doldrums” because of periods of little or no wind. As the ship sat stranded, sickness caused the deaths of seven of the 17 crew members and over 50 slaves.

Increasingly desperate, Collingwood decided to “jettison” some of the cargo in order to save the ship and provide the ship owners the opportunity to claim for the loss on their insurance. Over the next week the remaining crew members threw 132 slaves who were sick and dying over the side. Another 10 slaves threw themselves overboard in what Collingwood later described as an “Act of Defiance.”

Upon the Zong’s arrival in Jamaica, James Gregson, the ship’s owner, filed an insurance claim for their loss. Gregson argued that the Zong did not have enough water to sustain both crew and the human commodities. The insurance underwriter, Thomas Gilbert, disputed the claim citing that the Zong had 420 gallons of water aboard when she was inventoried in Jamaica. Despite this the Jamaican court found in favour of the owners. The insurers appealed the case and in the process provoked a great deal of public interest and the attention of Great Britain's abolitionists. The leading abolitionist at the time, Granville Sharp, used the deaths of the slaves to increase public awareness about the slave trade and further the anti-slavery cause. It was he who first used the word massacre. A London court found in favour of the insurers and held that the cargo had been poorly managed as the captain should have made a suitable allowance of water for each slave.

Sharp attempted to have criminal charges brought against the Captain, crew, and the owners but was unsuccessful. Great Britain's The Solicitor General, Justice John Lee, however, refused to take up the criminal charges claiming “What is this claim that human people have been thrown overboard? This is a case of chattels or goods. Blacks are goods and property; it is madness to accuse these well-serving honourable men of murder… The case is the same as if wood had been thrown overboard.”

Although those who were responsible for the Zong massacre were never brought to justice, the event itself increased the profile of abolitionists such as Granville Sharp and Olaudah Equiano and brought new converts including Thomas Clarkson and Reverend John Ramsay. They in turn inspired the actions of William Wilberforce who led the successful campaign to have Parliament abolish slavery throughout the British Empire in 1833.



Sources:
National Maritime Museum (Ref: REC/19), Grayson v Gilbert 1783; James Walvin, The Zong A Massacre, the Law and the End of Slavery (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011); Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999).

—

PEACE.LOVE.HAPPINESS

Berlin Conference to Divide Africa, 1884

 

Berlin conference to divide Africa

In 1884 at the request of Porftugal, German Chancellor Otto von Bismark called together the major western powers of the world to negotiate questions and end confusion over the control of Africa. Bismark appreciated the opportunity to expand Germany’s sphere of influence over Africa and desired to force Germany’s rivals to struggle with one another for territory.

The Berlin Conference was Africa’s undoing in more ways than one. The colonial powers superimposed their domains on the African Continent. By the time Africa regained its independence after the late 1950s, the realm had acquired a legacy of political fragmentation that could neither be eliminated nor made to operate satisfactorily. The African politico-geographical map is thus a permanent liability that resulted from the three months of ignorant, greedy acquisitiveness during a period when Europe’s search for minerals and markets had become insatiable.

At the time of the conference, 80% of Africa remained under Native Traditional and local control.

Fourteen countries were represented by a plethora of ambassadors when the conference opened in Berlin on November 15, 1884 by the imperial chancellor and architect of the German Empire, Otto von Bismarck to settle the political partitioning of Africa. Bismarck wanted not only to expand German spheres of influence in Africa but also to play off Germany’s colonial rivals against one another to the Germans’ advantage. The countries represented at the time included Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden-Norway (unified from 1814-1905), Turkey, and the United States of America. Of these fourteen nations, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Portugal were the major players in the conference, controlling most of colonial Africa at the time.

The initial task of the conference was to agree that the Congo River and Niger River mouths and basins would be considered neutral and open to trade. Despite its neutrality, part of the Kongo Basin became a personal Kingdom (private property) for Belgium’s King Leopold II and under his rule, over half of the region’s population died.

At the time of the conference, only the coastal areas of Africa were colonized by the European powers. At the Berlin Conference the European colonial powers scrambled to gain control over the Interior of the Continent. The conference lasted until February 26, 1885 - a three month period where colonial powers haggled over geometric boundaries in the interior of the continent, disregarding the cultural and linguistic boundaries already established by the Native Indigenous African population. What ultimately resulted was a hodgepodge of geometric boundaries that divided Africa into fifty irregular countries. This new map of the continent was superimposed over the one thousand Indigenous cultures and regions of Africa. The new countries lacked rhyme or reason and divided coherent groups of people and merged together disparate groups who really did not get along.

Following the conference, the give and take continued. By 1914, the conference participants had fully divided Africa among themselves into fifty unnatural and artificial States.
source: http://www.africafederation.net/Berlin_1885.htm

PEACE.LOVE.HAPPINESS

Scottsboro: An American Tragedy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCBV-GhyINY

 
In 1931, two white women stepped from a box car in Paint Rock, Alabama to make a shocking accusation: they had been raped by nine black teenagers on the train. So began one of the most significant legal fights of the twentieth century. The trial of the nine falsely accused teens would draw North and South into their sharpest conflict since the Civil War, yield two momentous Supreme Court decisions and give birth to the Civil Rights Movement. In addition to its historical significance, the Scottsboro story is a riveting drama about the struggles of nine innocent young men for their lives and a cautionary tale about using human beings as fodder for political causes.

PEACE.LOVE.HAPPINESS

Trayvon: How Many Dead Black Kids Does It Take

 

Trayvon: How many dead black kids does it take?

by damali ayo

You can comment on this piece on Facebook.

Q: How many dead black kids does it take for our culture to screw in its metaphoric light bulb and finally see the light?

A: I’m still waiting to find out.

Nine years ago I did an art piece called blacklight. It consisted of a television screen running a loop of racist jokes I had pulled from the internet. They were in Q and A form, and depending on your perspective, either totally gruesome, or completely hilarious. On top of the television I placed a light bulb that illuminated the word USA.

People were appalled. How, why, and for what possible reason would I expose innocent, un-racist people to a litany of racist material that might sow seeds of prejudice within their pure, liberal minds? Clearly these jokes were things of the past and I shouldn’t be putting them back into circulation. I wasn’t in the habit of answering questions about my art at the time, but if I were, I would have said that there’s nothing past-tense about any of this material. I simply culled it from the internet and put it on display. We may not say this stuff, but we believe it. The jokes are a mirror of who we are, right now. This is not in the past, not in some other part of the country, not some evil conservative group in white sheets or red ties. This is all of us, right now. We are responsible for the state of things.

Today as I travel around the country giving a talk called “You Can Fix Racism!” I am sure I will be asked to comment on the Trayvon Martin case. I don’t want to appear cynical or insensitive, but there is a part of me that feels like asking, “Does anyone know how many other black children suffered irreparable harm at the hands of our racist culture but whose lives didn’t generate hourly headlines or go viral as temporary Facebook profile photos of people wearing hoodies?” I expect this question to be met with silence.

I first found out about the case in an article that called Trayvon a modern day Emmett Till. This was a daring assertion, yet accurate in many ways. But it begged the question: Does our culture require a murder and a media frenzy for us to realize the harm that racism does?

Does it really take death and Facebook for us to notice?

There is injustice at our fingertips. Every time I visit a school, I meet young people whose self-images and educations are permanently damaged by the racism of their teachers, institutions, and classmates. When I worked in a women’s prison I met many women serving time whose race and class were undeniable factors in their ending up behind bars. As a life-coach, I counseled women who suffer with debilitating PTSD from the trauma that racism has imposed on their lives. I count myself among two of these groups.

Every day I watch our culture hover along in a comfort zone of racism. As long as it doesn’t have concrete, provable, murderous consequences, and sometimes even when it does, we are content to live with it, even when it is right in our faces. On my way home in Los Angeles today I drove past two billboards flanking me from either side of the street. To my left was and ad for a movie called American Reunion. On the billboard were at least ten white people, and no one else. These ads have been bugging me for weeks. It turns my stomach that we can promote something in 2012 called “American Reunion” and have nothing but white people in the photo. To my right, was an ad for a movie called Think Like a Man. On this much smaller billboard were about seven black people and one white guy.

I thought to myself, and people wonder why kids of color get shot. We can’t even stand to be in the same movie together, let alone share the same neighborhood, schools, food, culture, concerns, money or the idea of what it means to be American.

As long as we fail to notice the every day, obvious indicators that our culture is in dire straits, as long as we forget that we are responsible, it will continue to take gruesome deaths for people to consider the possibility of change, let alone enact it. Sadly, it seems, that even that may not be enough.

___

damali ayo is the author of Obamistan! Land without Racism: Your Guide to the New America and How to Rent a Negro (both Lawrence Hill Books). You can hire her to turn on your metaphoric light bulbs at damaliayo.com

damali's 10-point practical guide to fixing racism can be found and downloaded at: http://damaliayo.com/ICFI/ICFI%20home.html

PEACE.LOVE.HAPPINESS

Passing as White: Anita Hemmings 1897 | features | Vassar, the Alumnae/i Quarterly -

Passing as White: Anita Hemmings 1897 | features | Vassar, the Alumnae/i Quarterly -

PEACE.LOVE.HAPPINESS

Little-Known Black History Fact: 9/11 Pilot Leroy Wilton Homer Jr.

Little-Known Black History Fact: 9/11 Pilot Leroy Wilton Homer Jr.

PEACE.LOVE.HAPPINESS

African American, Black American or Just American?

African American, Black American or Just American?

PEACE.LOVE.HAPPINESS

IF ONLY THOSE WHO SEEM TO BE SO MAD AT OBAMA WOULD READ THIS AND REFLECT A MONMET, THEY MIGHT SAY:

IF ONLY THOSE WHO SEEM TO BE SO MAD AT OBAMA WOULD READ THIS AND REFLECT A MONMET, THEY MIGHT SAY:

Hmmmmmmmmmm... YOU MIGHT BE RIGHT!!......... Author Unknown

Now, since Obama's regime, all of a sudden, folks have gotten mad, and want to take America Back...BACK TO WHAT/WHERE is my question?

After The 8 Years Of The Bush/Cheney Disaster, Now You Get Mad?

You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate Energy policy and push us to invade Iraq.

You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

You didn't get mad when we spent over 800 billion (and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn't get mad when Bush borrowed more money from foreign sources than the previous 42 Presidents combined.

You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars in cash just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn't get mad when Bush embraced trade and outsourcing policies that shipped 6 million American jobs out of the country.

You didn't get mad when they didn't catch Bin Laden.

You didn't get mad when Bush ran up 10 trillion dollars in combined budget and current account deficits.

You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn't get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans, drown.

You didn't get mad when we gave people who had more money than they could spend, the 1%, over a trillion dollars in tax breaks.

You didn't get mad with the worst 8 years of job creations in several decades.

You didn't get mad when over 200,000 US Citizens lost their lives because they had no health insurance.

You didn't get mad when lack of oversight and regulations from the Bush Administration caused US Citizens to lose 12 trillion dollars in investments, retirement, and home values.

You finally got mad when a black man was elected President and decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, job losses by the millions, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, and the worst economic disaster since 1929 are all okay with you, but helping fellow Americans who are sick...

PS. This one definitely needs to be circulated just for a reminder sake! IF ONLY

You didn't get mad when Bush borrowed more money from foreign sources than the previous 42 Presidents combined.

PEACE.LOVE.HAPPINESS

I Have Been in Many Places…

I have been in many places, but I've never been in Cahoots.  Apparently, you can't go alone. You have to be in Cahoots with someone.

I've also never been in Cognito. I hear no one recognizes you there.

I have, however, been in Sane. They don't have an airport, you have to be driven there. I have made several trips there, thanks to my friends, family and work.

I would like to go to Conclusions but you have to jump, and my knees can't take it anymore.

I have also been in Doubt. That is a sad place to go, and I try not to visit there too often. I've been in Flexible, but only when it was very important to stand firm.

Sometimes I'm in Capable, and I go there more often as I'm getting older.

One of my favorite places to be is in Suspense! It really gets the adrenalin flowing and pumps up the old heart! At my age I need all the stimuli I can get!

I may have been in Continent, but I can't remember what country I was in.

It's an age thing.

PLEASE DO YOUR PART NOW!

Today is one of the many National Mental Health Days throughout the year. You can do your bit by remembering to send an email to at least one unstable person.

My job is done as I've sent it to you!!

Life is too short for negative drama & petty things. So, laugh insanely, love truly and forgive quickly!

 

From one unstable person to another... I hope everyone is happy in your head - we're all doing pretty well in mine!
PEACE.LOVE.HAPPINESS