If You Don’t Know Me By Now

January 5th, 2009

A little treat from my youtube page. Just posted yesterday.

Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes:

The very begining obviously got cut off in the recording, but I didn’t feel like re-recording it. Sorry.

Popularity: 5% [?]



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Call To Investigate Katrina’s Hidden Race War

January 4th, 2009

As shown recently in the Afrosphere Action Alert widget…

…Color of Change is calling for a campaign to force investigation into the racially based vigilantly killing that took place during the aftermath of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina flood. BlackPerspective.net is joining that call.

Here is the request from ColorOfChange:

A new report in The Nation[1] documents what many have claimed for years–for some Black New Orleanians the threat of being killed by White vigilantes in Katrina’s aftermath became a bigger threat than the storm itself.

After the storm, White vigilantes roamed Algiers Point shooting and, according to their own accounts, killing Black men at will–with no threat of a police response. For the last three years, the shootings and the police force’s role in them have been an open secret to many New Orleanians. To date, no one has been charged with a crime and law enforcement officials have refused to investigate.

The report is helpful, but given Lousiana’s horrible record on protecting its Black citizens, justice will only come if we demand it.

I’ve joined ColorOfChange in calling on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Louisiana’s Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, and the U.S. Department of Justice–to conduct a full investigation of these crimes and any police cover-up. Will you join me? It takes only a moment:

www.colorofchange.org/nation/?id=1780-175369

In the two weeks after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, the media created a climate of fear with trumped-up stories of Black lawlessness. Meanwhile an armed group of White vigilantes took over the Algiers Point neighborhood in New Orleans and mercilessly hunted down Black people. “It was great!” said one vigilante. “It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it.”

The Nation’s article tells the story of Donnell Herrington, Marcel Alexander, and Chris Collins–a group of friends who were attacked by shotgun-wielding White men as they entered Algiers Point on September 1, 2005. As they tried to escape, Herrington recalls, their attackers shouted, “Get him! Get that nigger!” He managed to get away. Alexander and Collins were told that they would be allowed to live on the condition that they told other Black folks not to come to Algiers Point. Herrington, shot in the neck, barely survived.

And there’s the story of Henry Glover, who didn’t survive after being shot by an unknown assailant.[2] Glover’s brother flagged down a stranger for help, and the two men brought Glover to a police station. But instead of receiving aid, they were beaten by officers while Henry Glover bled to death in the back seat of the stranger’s car. A police officer drove off in the car soon afterward. Both Glover’s body and the car were found burnt to cinders a week later. It took DNA analysis to identify the body.

These are only a few of the stories of Black folks who were accosted in Algiers Point, and you can read more in The Nation. But unless you speak out, we may never learn the full extent of the violence. Journalists have encountered a wall of silence on the part of the authorities. The coroner had to be sued to turn over autopsy records. When he finally complied, the records were incomplete, with files on several suspicious deaths suddenly empty. The New Orleans police and the District Attorney repeatedly refused to talk to journalists about Algiers Point. And according to The Nation journalist A.C. Thompson, “the city has in nearly every case refused to investigate or prosecute people for assaults and murders committed in the wake of the storm.”

The Nation article is important, but it’s just a start. For more than three years now, these racist criminals have by their own admission gotten away with murder while officials in New Orleans have systematically evaded any kind of accountability. We have to demand it.

Please join me in calling on state and federal officials to investigate these brutal attacks and the conduct of Orleans Parish law enforcement agencies, and please ask your friends and family to do the same.

www.colorofchange.org/nation/?id=1780-175369

Thanks.

——

1. “Katrina’s Hidden Race War,” The Nation, 12-18-2008
www.colorofchange.org/link/?id=1780-175369&cat=nation&link=1

2. “Body of Evidence,” The Nation, 12-18-2008
www.colorofchange.org/link/?id=1780-175369&cat=nation&link=2

Popularity: 7% [?]



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Ghana Has Successful and Peaceful Election

January 3rd, 2009

Amiss all the negativity that is only promoted about Africa, while not ignoring any legitimate happenings that might be negative; we like to also highlight positives in Africa at BlackPerspective.net

Opposition leader wins presidency in Ghana
By FRANCIS KOKUTSE, Associated Press

ACCRA, Ghana – Opposition leader John Atta Mills was declared Ghana’s next president Saturday in a peaceful ballot that secured the West African nation’s place as a beacon of democracy on a volatile continent.

John Atta Mills

The country is one of the few in Africa to successfully transfer power twice from one legitimately elected leader to another, proof that Ghana’s democracy has truly matured after an era of coups and dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s.

But tensions still ran high in what became the closest vote in Ghana’s history, and some feared violence could erupt as it did earlier this year in Kenya — an East African nation that also was a model of stability until a similarly tight 2007 ballot unleashed weeks of tribal bloodshed.

Ghana’s ruling party candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo, had threatened to reject the results, but withdrew his court challenges and conceded peacefully. President John Kufuor appealed on both sides to accept the outcome and his call appeared aimed at his own governing party.

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan — who helped broker peace in Kenya last year — also flew home New Year’s Day and worked behind the scenes to calm tensions, according to Peter Pham, an Africa expert at James Madison University in Virginia.

Though democracy has spread in Africa over the last decade, some countries — like Zimbabwe — are ruled by strongmen whose elections have been shams. In Mauritania in August, the military toppled the first democratically elected president in decades. And in Guinea, the army seized power after the country’s longtime dictator died a few weeks ago.

After Ghana’s Dec. 7 election proved indecisive, Atta Mills won Sunday’s second round ballot by capturing a razor-thin victory with 50.23 percent of the vote to 49.77 percent for Akufo-Addo, according to the country’s Electoral Commission.

“I assure Ghanaians that I will be president for all,” Atta Mills declared, mindful of his thin mandate.

article continues…

Popularity: 8% [?]



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About The Blog

  • D. Yobachi Boswell

  • Yobachi Boswell is creator and publisher of BlackPerspecitve.net. I’m a writer, activist and political watcher based in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve also been know to do some spoken word and MCing in my day.

    I created this site to give new voice to socio-political issues that are in need of thoughtful consideration and redress.

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