Waterstar

License plate readers: A useful tool for police comes with privacy concerns By Allison Klein and Josh White, Published: November 19, 2011 An armed robber burst into a Northeast Washington market, scuffled with the cashier, and then shot him and the clerk’s father, who also owned the store. The killer sped off in a silver Pontiac, but a witness was able to write down the license plate number. Police figured out the name of the suspect very quickly. But locating and arresting him took a little-known investigative tool: a vast system that tracks the comings and goings of anyone driving around the District. Scores of cameras across the city capture 1,800 images a minute and download the information into a rapidly expanding archive that can pinpoint people’s movements all over town. Police entered the suspect’s license plate number into that database and learned that the Pontiac was on a street in Southeast. Police soon arrested Christian Taylor, who had been staying at a friend’s home, and charged him with two counts of first-degree murder. His trial is set for January. More than 250 cameras in the District and its suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers. But the program quietly has expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago. With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles. Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the District, which has more than one plate-reader per square mile, the highest concentration in the nation. Police in the Washington suburbs have dozens of them as well, and local agencies plan to add many more in coming months, creating a comprehensive dragnet that will include all the approaches into the District. “It never stops,” said Capt. Kevin Reardon, who runs Arlington County’s plate reader program. “It just gobbles up tag information. One of the big questions is, what do we do with the information?” Police departments are grappling with how long to store the information and how to balance privacy concerns against the value the data provide to investigators. The data are kept for three years in the District, two years in Alexandria, a year in Prince George’s County and a Maryland state database, and about a month in many other suburban areas. “That’s quite a large database of innocent people’s comings and goings,” said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union’s technology and liberty program. “The government has no business collecting that kind of information on people without a warrant.” But police say the tag readers can give them a critical jump on a child abductor, information about when a vehicle left — or entered — a crime scene, and the ability to quickly identify a suspected terrorist’s vehicle as it speeds down the highway, perhaps to an intended target. Having the technology during the Washington area sniper shootings in 2002 might have stopped the attacks sooner, detectives said, because police could have checked whether any particular car was showing up at each of the shooting sites. “It’s a perfect example of how they’d be useful,” said Lt. T.J. Rogers, who is responsible for the 26 tag readers maintained by the Fairfax County police. “We see a lot of potential in it.” The plate readers are different from red-light or speed cameras, which issue traffic tickets and are tools for deterrence and enforcement. The readers are an investigative tool, capturing a picture of every license plate that passes by and instantly analyzing them against a database filled with cars wanted by police. Police can also plug any license plate number into the database and, as long as it passed a camera, determine where that vehicle has been and when. Detectives also can enter a be-on-the-lookout into the database, and the moment that license plate passes a detector, they get an alert. It’s that precision and the growing ubiquity of the technology that has libertarians worried. In Northern Virginia recently, a man reported his wife missing, prompting police to enter her plate number into the system. They got a hit at an apartment complex, and when they got there, officers spotted her car and a note on her windshield that said, in essence, “Don’t tow, I’m visiting apartment 3C.” Officers knocked on the door of that apartment, and she came out of the bedroom. They advised her to call her husband. A new tool in the arsenal Even though they are relatively new, the tag readers, which cost about $20,000 each, are now as widely used as other high-tech tools police employ to prevent and solve crimes, including surveillance cameras, gunshot recognition sensors and mobile finger­print scanners. License plate readers can capture numbers across four lanes of traffic on cars zooming up to 150 mph. “The new technology makes our job a lot easier and the bad guys’ job a lot harder,” said D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier. The technology first was used by the postal service to sort letters. Units consist of two cameras — one that snaps digital photographs and another that uses an optical infrared sensor to decipher the numbers and letters. The camera captures a color image of the vehicle while the sensor “reads” the license plate and transfers the data to a computer. When stored over time, the collected data can be used instantaneously or can help with complex analysis, such as whether a car appears to have been followed by another car or if cars are traveling in a convoy. Police also have begun using them as a tool to prevent crime. By positioning them in nightclub parking lots, for example, police can collect information about who is there. If members of rival gangs appear at a club, police can send patrol cars there to squelch any flare-ups before they turn violent. After a crime, police can gather a list of potential witnesses in seconds. “It’s such a valuable tool, it’s hard not to jump on it and explore all the things it can do for law enforcement,” said Kevin Davis, assistant chief of police in Prince George’s County. The readers have been used across the country for several years, but the program is far more sophisticated in the Washington region. The District has 73 readers; 38 of them sit stationary and the rest are attached to police cars. D.C. officials say every police car will have one some day. The District’s license plate cameras gather more than a million data points a month, and officers make an average of an arrest a day directly from the plate readers, said Tom Wilkins, executive director of the D.C. police department’s intelligence fusion division, which oversees the plate reader program. Between June and September, police found 51 stolen cars using the technology. Police do not publicly disclose the locations of the readers. And while D.C. law requires that the footage on crime surveillance cameras be deleted after 10 days unless there’s an investigative reason to keep it, there are no laws governing how or when Washington area police can use the tag reader technology. The only rule is that it be used for law enforcement purposes. “That’s typical with any emerging technology,” Wilkins said. “Even though it’s a tool we’ve had for five years, as it becomes more apparent and widely used and more relied upon, people will begin to scrutinize it.” Legal concerns Such scrutiny is happening now at the U.S. Supreme Court with a related technology: GPS surveillance. At issue is whether police can track an individual vehicle with an attached GPS device. Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University who has been closely watching the Supreme Court case, said the license plate technology probably would pass constitutional muster because there is no reasonable expectation of privacy on public streets. But, Kerr said, the technology’s silent expansion has allowed the government to know things it couldn’t possibly know before and that the use of such massive amounts of data needs safeguards. “It’s big brother, and the question is, is it big brother we want, or big brother that we don’t want?” Kerr said. “This technology could be used for good and it could be used for bad. I think we need a conversation about whether and how this technology is used. Who gets the information and when? How long before the information is deleted? All those questions need scrutiny.” Should someone access the database for something other than a criminal investigation, they could track people doing legal but private things. Having a comprehensive database could mean government access to information about who attended a political event, visited a medical clinic, or went to Alcoholics Anonymous or Planned Parenthood. Maryland and Virginia police departments are expanding their tag reader programs and by the end of the year expect to have every major entry and exit point to the District covered. “We’re putting fixed sites up in the capital area,” said Sgt. Julio Valcarcel, who runs the Maryland State Police’s program, which now has 19 mobile units and one fixed unit along a major highway, capturing roughly 27 million reads per year. “Several sites are going online over the winter.” Some jurisdictions store the information in a large networked database; others retain it only in the memory of each individual reader’s computer, then delete it after several weeks as new data overwrite it. A George Mason University study last year found that 37 percent of large police agencies in the United States now use license plate reader technology and that a significant number of other agencies planned to have it by the end of 2011. But the survey found that fewer than 30 percent of the agencies using the tool had researched any legal implications. There also has been scant legal precedent. In Takoma Park, police have two tag readers that they have been using for two years. Police Chief Ronald A. Ricucci said he was amazed at how quickly the units could find stolen cars. When his department first got them, he looked around at other departments to see what kind of rules and regulations they had. “There wasn’t much,” Ricucci said. “A lot of people were using them and didn’t have policies on them yet.” Finding stolen cars faster The technology first came to the Washington region in 2004 as a pilot program. During an early test, members of the Washington Area Vehicle Enforcement Unit recovered eight cars, found 12 stolen license plates and made three arrests in a single shift. Prince George’s police bought several units to help combat the county’s crippling car theft and carjacking problem. It worked. “We recover cars very quickly now. In previous times that was not the case,” said Prince George’s Capt. Edward Davey, who is in charge of the county’s program. “Before, they’d be dumped on the side of the road somewhere for a while.” Now Prince George’s has 45 units and is likely to get more soon. “The more we use them, the more we realize there’s a whole lot more on the investigative end of them,” Davey said. “We are starting to evolve. Investigators are starting to realize how to use them.” Arlington police cars equipped with the readers regularly drive through the parking garage at the Pentagon City mall looking for stolen cars, checking hundreds of them in a matter of minutes as they cruise up and down the aisles. In Prince William County, where there are 12 mobile readers, the units have been used to locate missing people and recover stolen cars. Unlike in the District, in most suburban jurisdictions, the units are only attached to police cars on patrol, and there aren’t enough of them to create a comprehensive net. Virginia State Police have 42 units for the entire state, most of them focused on Northern Virginia, Richmond and the Tidewater area, and as of now have no fixed locations. There is also no central database, so each unit collects information on its own and compares it against a daily download of wanted vehicles from the FBI and the state. But the state police are looking into fixed locations that could capture as many as 100 times more vehicles, 24 hours a day, with the potential to blanket the interstates. “Now, we’re not getting everything — we’re fishing,” said Sgt. Robert Alessi, a 23-year veteran who runs the state police’s program. “Fixed cameras will help us use a net instead of one fishing pole with one line in the water waiting to get a nibble.” Beyond the technology’s ability to track suspects and non-criminals alike, it has expanded beyond police work. Tax collectors in Arlington bought their own units and use the readers to help collect money owed to the county. Chesterfield County, in Virginia, uses a reader it purchased to collect millions of dollars in delinquent car taxes each year, comparing the cars on the road against the tax rolls. Police across the region say that they are careful with the information and that they are entrusted with many pieces of sensitive information about citizens, including arrest records and Social Security numbers. “If you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re not driving a stolen car, you’re not committing a crime,” Alessi said, “then you don’t have anything to worry about.” RELATED NEWS: Graphic: Who has LPR cameras and how long do police hold on to information?

The argument that ethnic studies is not good because it divides people up by race and that it creates ethnic "radicals" vs the argument that more than one perspective of history is healthy and necessary. LOL Look at all the slaveholders the superintendent passes in the (board of education) building on his way to the interview.

Judge Lewis Kowal of Tucson remarked: ""Teaching in such a manner promotes social or political activism against the white people, promotes racial resentment, and advocates ethnic solidarity, instead of treating pupils as individuals." Source: democracynow.org An Arizona administrator has ruled that the public school district in Tucson must end its acclaimed Mexican American Studies program for grades K-12, saying it violates a new state law that bans the teaching of any class designed for a particular ethnic group or that "promote resentment toward a race or class of people." But the program’s supporters say the classes push the district’s largely Latino student body to excel academically while teaching them long-neglected perspectives. We speak to Tucson Mexican-American history teacher Lorenzo Lopez and his daughter, Korina, a high school sophomore. Both are plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit to stop the ban from taking effect. We’re also joined by Dr. Rodolfo Acuña, author of "Occupied America: A History of Chicanos," considered the definitive introduction to Chicano history in the United States. Dr. Acuña warns copycat laws are likely to follow in other states as part of a growing campaign against ethnic studies programs, in particular Chicano studies, throughout the country

Source NPR: Gov. Jan Brewer (R-Ariz.) signed into law a ban on classes that are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnicity. The law targets any ethnic studies classes in the state's public school system that "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals (May 24, 2010) Source: Huffington Post: "Shooting the Messenger" On January 18th, NPR aired an interview with John Hupenthal the Superintendent of Arizona Public Instruction and the author of a state law banning ethnic studies programs. According to Hupenthal, the law was conceived, in part, because of the "failure of the Tucson Unified School District to provide a good education to low income Hispanic children..." When encouraged by interviewer Michel Martin to give him an example of the kind of egregious "Marxist" education students were being exposed to and that, allegedly, was having such a deleterious effect on their educational achievement, Hupenthal responded that the teachers were giving "Classroom exercises in which they had students identify and go through these exercises dealing with different times and territorial shifts in the United States." His most pressing assertion, however, was the idea that these classes imposed upon Hispanic students the idea that "they can't get ahead, that they're victims in, you know, a country in which Barack Obama is president." The segment encapsulates and foregrounds the stakes of the debate over ethnic studies in Arizona and across the nation. Mr. Hupenthal is correct when he asserts that the educational system is broken, and further, he is correct when he acknowledges that Hispanic children in the Tucson school district are being underserved by their educational system, but to take those facts and to use them as justification for cutting the entire field of ethnic studies, is to miss the larger point. These same students, and those like them all over the country, are also being failed by their instruction in math and reading from Kindergarten through High School. Does this mean that we should stop teaching them reading? Does this mean that we should stop teaching them math? What Hupenthal and the Arizona legislature have done is to denigrate, through erasure, the contributions of people of color to the social, economic and political fabric of the United States, our United States. And they have done so by perpetuating the long-standing practice of targeting ethnic studies as a scapegoat for larger, persistent social inequalities that have defined, and continue to define, the social reality of the United States. They have, to put it another way, shot the messenger for bearing the bad news. To suggest, as he does, that cutting these programs will help improve the quality of education of struggling students is absurd. It shows a startling lack of understanding about the role these classes play and what they represent. Hupenthal and those who support him have made two critical mistakes in their conceptualization of ethnic studies in education. Underlying their actions is the assumption that these courses are "entitlement" courses that give students of color "something extra," something they don't deserve, something that white students don't get. In this regard their hostility towards ethnic studies is rooted in a hatred for affirmative action. For people like Hupenthal, affirmative action is a crime because it gives students of color special treatment. The problem with this line of thinking, of course, is that it ignores basic facts about our society. While the United States remains, in many ways, a place that offers more freedom and more opportunity than many other places, it has yet to deal honestly and openly with the core issue of its persistent racism and social inequality. Simply put, Race matters in the U.S. Affirmative action is one small but important effort to address the fact that bias, prejudice and outright racism have conspired, over the centuries and well into today, to keep communities of color in lower socio-economic positions. Let me put it this way: If we understand racism and social bias to be the cancer that has slowly and consistently ravaged the body politic of the U.S., then affirmative action is a form of radiation treatment. It is not perfect. It is painful and it will not cure the cancer. But it goes a long way to improving the lives of all us: blacks, indigenous, latinos, and whites who suffer from the debilitating effects of cancerous racism. Until we can find the cure for this cancer, we have to put faith in the treatments we have at our disposal. The second major ideological mistake made by Hupenthal and company, is their idea that Mexican-American courses and programs are for and about Mexican-Americans. This same faulty logic underscores our basic understanding of ethnic studies programs in general. We think they are about people of color. They are not. Yes, they spend significant time detailing the histories of people of color but they are, at heart, courses about us, all of us. They are about how we as a society, and as a nation, have dealt with our diversity. And what makes them so important is that they reveal truths that we have been embarrassed or afraid to face up to: The injection of syphilis on unsuspecting sharecroppers in Tuskegee. The lynchings of blacks and Mexicans throughout the centuries. The disparities in how our legal system punishes white criminals in contrast to minority defendants. The fact that our founding fathers were slave owners. The fact that when the Southwest became part of the U.S. we promised Mexicans their rights as newly-minted U.S. citizens and then systematically robbed them of their land, their social rights and, most importantly, their dignity. Most of these issues and realities go unaddressed in traditional history courses. And so we all, people of color and white students alike, grow up being taught to love our country under false pretenses. The misguided decision taken by Hupenthal and the Arizona legislators to ban ethnic studies turns truth into criminal behavior. It recasts Latinos and communities of color as outsiders, blaming them for their struggles in our flawed educational system. And perhaps most painfully, it robs the students of Arizona, all of them, of the possibility of loving the real America, not the dolled up, sanitized and siliconized version we've been raised on. What Hupenthal fails to realize is that we shouldn't be expected to truly love a lie. Ethnic studies is about seeing and loving the U.S. as it really is with all of its flaws and failures. And loving these United States, in spite of its flaws, with the hope of addressing and fixing our collective shortcomings, is the ultimate act of patriotism and respect. ***** On the side of the proponents of the banning of ethnic studies in Arizona and throughout the United States of America, the rationale is that teaching ethnic studies is "divisive", that it promotes "race obsessiveness" in "ethnic minorities" and encourages them that they were/are "oppressed" and (that it teaches them) to be "angry" about this oppression. On the side of the opponents in the debate about the banning of ethnic studies, the basic reasoning is that this is unfair and that all students should be able to learn about history from more than just one perspective as this can raise esteem in minority students and, in general, broaden the views of all students. What do you think about this debate?

U think? lol Cool, enjoy.

The [prophetic] James Baldwin was a guest of honor at The National Press Club in 1986. This clip includes an introduction, speech and question and answer session - which turned out to be the most dynamic part of the evening. Produced by C-SPAN. (As an aside, if he thought that there was trouble here in 1986, I can only imagine what he would think in the year 2012.) James Baldwin on C-SPAN: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYka_Tq_mTI&feature=related

This song is so, so beautiful." The Spirit of Love" by Majek Fashek

Pardon me, Guys. I'm having a moment right now. Wanting to share some of my favorite artists. "Am Not Tired" by Majeodunmi Fasheke aka "Rainmaker" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0lQrSFwWf8&feature=related

So long, too long! Beloved Brother Majek Fashek http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFQIwqxP_Xk&feature=related

Woooooiiiii!! Sista bad, bad, bad! One of my favorite artists, Rachelle Ferrel performing "I Can Explain" live: (oh my GAWD, our sista is BAD)

Check Bro James Brown puttin this 100% real poetry down... Ladies and Gentlemen Fellow Americans Lady Americans This is James Brown I wanna talk to you about one of our Most deadly Killers in the country today I had a dream the other night, and I Was sittin' in my living room Dozed off to sleep So I start to dreamin' I dreamed I walked in a place and I saw a real strange, weird object Standin' up talkin' to the people And I found out it was Heroin That deadly drug that go in your veins He says: I came to this country without a passport Ever since then I've been hunted and sought My little white grains are nothin' but waste Soft and deadly and bitter to taste I'm a world of power and all know it's true Use me once and you'll know it, too I can make a mere schoolboy forget his books I can make a world-famous beauty neglect her looks I can make a good man forsake his wife Send a greedy man to prison for the rest of his life I can make a man forsake his country and flag Make a girl sell her body for a five-dollar bag Some think my adventure's a joy and a thrill But I'll put a gun in your hand and make you kill In cellophane bags I've found my way To heads of state and children at play I'm financed in China, ran in Japan I'm respected in Turkey and I'm legal in Siam I take my addicts and make 'em steal, borrow, beg Then they search for a vein in their arm or their leg So, be you Italian, Jewish, Black or Mex I can make the most virile of men forget their sex So now, no, my man, you must (you know) do your best To keep up your habit until your arrest Now the police have taken you from under my wing Do you think they dare defy me, I who am king? Now, you must lie in that county jail Where I can't get to you by visit or mail So squirm - with discomfort - wiggle and cough (hack!) Six days of madness, hah! You might throw me off Curse me in name! Defy me in speech! But you'd pick me up right no if I were in your reach All through your sentence you've become resolved to your fate Hear now! younng man and woman, I'll be waitin' at the gate Don't be afraid, don't run! I'm not chased Sure my name is Heroin! You'll be back for a taste Behold, you're hooked! Your foot is in the stirrup And make -- haste! Mount the steed! And ride him well For the white horse of heroin Will ride you to Hell! To Hell! Will ride you to Hell! Until you are dead! Dead, brother! Dead! This is a revolution of the mind Get your mind together And get away from drugs! That's the man! Back! Back

Oh I love, love, love Brother Gil. (Love and light upon his soul.) I love this song., this poetry put to music and melody. Winter in America by Gil Scott-Heron... Enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcHOq8i5Pyk&feature=related From the Indians who welcomed the pilgrims And to the buffalo who once ruled the plains Like the vultures circling beneath the dark clouds Looking for the rain Looking for the rain Just like the cities staggered on the coastline Living in a nation that just can't stand much more Like the forest buried beneath the highway Never had a chance to grow Never had a chance to grow And now it's winter Winter in America Yes and all of the healers have been killed Or sent away, yeah But the people know, the people know It's winter Winter in America And ain't nobody fighting 'Cause nobody knows what to save Save your soul, Lord knows From Winter in America The Constitution A noble piece of paper With free society Struggled but it died in vain And now Democracy is ragtime on the corner Hoping for some rain Looks like it's hoping Hoping for some rain And I see the robins Perched in barren treetops Watching last-ditch racists marching across the floor But just like the peace sign that vanished in our dreams Never had a chance to grow Never had a chance to grow And now it's winter It's winter in America And all of the healers have been killed Or betrayed Yeah, but the people know, people know It's winter, Lord knows It's winter in America And ain't nobody fighting Cause nobody knows what to save Save your souls From Winter in America And now it's winter Winter in America And all of the healers done been killed or sent away Yeah, and the people know, people know It's winter Winter in America And ain't nobody fighting Cause nobody knows what to save And ain't nobody fighting Cause nobody knows, nobody knows And ain't nobody fighting Cause nobody knows what to save

Cynique says: "I’m someone who sometimes thinks of herself as a young chick trapped in the body of an old hen" I think that many people see you as you see yourself. This is definitely how you come across to me and without conflict between your youthfulness and your age, too. P.S. That "mounted her like a race horse" was beyond hilarious. haha

"When the Levees Broke" by Spike Lee (can'tyet find reliable source for full version.)

Firsthand account of the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina through the eyes of journalis tMSNBC's Brian Williams... Hurricane Katrina-The Untold Story Much respect to Brian Williams for his journalistic integrity and for this very telling program, but most of all for the human factor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grfW5Ud81_Y&feature=related

My pleasure!

Long time di sufferah dem a tell dem bout war pon drug, is a war pon di ppl dem. Zapitista dem dun tell dem seh is America alone fi win it. We fall for the hype too much. Where have people been for all of these years when pro-American interest oposition forces (in some cases they do not exist so they had to be created as a result of manufactured/imported or exacerbated internal conflict) have been armed by the US, for many wars beside simply "the war on drugs"? I quote subcomadante Marcos, "The U.S. will be the only winner in the Mexican government's war on drugs" (and, might I add, the only winner in many other countries' wars, too.) As for Zimmerman, he sounded like he was chillaxin in da jacuzzi while giving his account of the incident with Trayvon Martin. That relaxed, non-chalant tone stood out to me even moreso than his answers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhvLRaEgL4E&feature=related

Interview with Assata Shakur Paul Davidson Assata Shakur in politcal exile in Cuba Paul Davidson is a veteran Cuba solidarity activist from Britain who has visited Cuba many times with IFCO/Pastors for Peace and with British solidarity brigades. He was recently in Cuba with the 11th Friendshipment Caravan. Friends, This valuable interview was granted to 60 participants of the 11th US-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan (Pastors for Peace) in Havana on Nov 6th last. Assata is one of those unique human beings who is able to articulate, through her own experience in a lifetime of struggle, profound truths about the world we live in. Assata is one of the 80 or so ex- Black Panthers being persecuted by US authorities and given sanctuary by Cuba. As a result of Cuba's noble stand the island has been named a 'terrorist nation' by the US regime, a categorisation they repeatedly use in legislation to entrench the blockade. Thanks to Karen Lee Wald for recording the event and forwarding her transcription. Paul Davidson Assata Shakur addresses Pastors for Peace caravan Instituto Cubano de Amistad a los Pueblos (ICAP) - in Havana on 6th November 2000 (the first few questions are missing due to bad tape). In this first part Assata spoke about how she became a Black Panther in the 1960s and was targeted by the FBI. She spoke of the role of the press in collaborating with this campaign until she and other companeros were finally forced underground. She told how she was captured in 1970 and accused of killing a New Jersey policeman, although medical testimony showed that she had been shot twice -- once with her arms up in the air -- and so could not possibly have shot anyone after that. Nevertheless, she was convicted by an all- white racist jury to a sentence of life +. She spent 6 1/2 years in prison, 2 of them in solitary confinement. Karen Lee Wald Assata: In 1979 I was liberated by some friends, and in 1984 I came to Cuba, where I was united with my daughter and was able to bond with her for the first time. And to begin healing the wounds. Here, I worked, studied, mothered and continued to be an activist. I found that Cuba was much different from the US; its government was genuinely trying to erase racism. But racism had grown out of slavery and exploitation and was very hard to eradicate quickly and completely. Cuba has been undergoing a process to eliminate racism) .. Cuba like every other place has got to struggle against the whole racist ideology that it inherited, the culture, the eurocentric way of viewing the world where Europe is this big (shows with her hands) and Africa and Asia and Latin America are these little microscopic dots on the map. That's a process that has to be helped and contributed to by everybody, because the whole way the world is viewed now, the way that science, literature and history are used, is totally distorted and Eurocentric. In order for the world to be free of racism that is a struggle that has to be waged on all fronts by all people. I think that more than anything, the whole cultural imperialism that is going on today where people, whether they're in Senegal, South Africa, Indonesia, are looking at this USA vision of the world that is totally distorted, totally unreal, that really diminishes and minimalizes the cultural values and wisdom of people all over the world, and sells this kind of McDonald-ized vision of the world that everybody is supposed to aspire to. Cuba is very important in that struggle, because Cuba is not only talking about racism in abstract terms, but connecting it with imperialism, which is the underlying motor of racism today. The underlying reason that racism keeps on being promoted in all of its various forms today. I think anybody who is honestly struggling against racism must struggle against imperialism and vice versa. Q. You could have gone to many countries for asylum. Why did you choose Cuba? A. I decided to come to Cuba for a variety of reasons. One, because it was close to the United States, and I considered it to be a very principled country. It has a long history of supporting victims of political repression, not only of people in the United States, like Huey Newton, Robert Williams, Eldridge Cleaver (a long list of people), but also people who were victims of political repression in other places, like Chile, the apartheid government of South Africa, Namibia, etc. I felt this was a place that held the principle of international very close to heart, so I felt comfortable coming here. It was close, so I wouldn't be separated from my family and friends. And I really wanted to know what happens in a place that is trying to build socialism, that's trying to construct some form of social justice. That's trying to feed people, to make health care and education a right. When I came I had some very silly ideas, to be honest. My fantasy of Cuba was that everybody was going to be going around looking like Fidel, with green uniforms -- and it was very different from my vision of how Cuba was going to be. I found that people had all kinds of levels of consciousness, all kinds of levels of education, but that Cubans in general were very educated politically. I could go sit in a bus and get into a conversation with someone and that person had a wealth of knowledge. And energy! What most impressed me about Cuba was the optimism. There are 11 million people on this island who have an incredibly optimistic vision of the world. My mother put it into words most clearly when she said: "If these people had not won, had not taken power, everybody would think they were insane!" (Laughs). People would think the whole revolutionary process was totally insane. How DARE these 11 million people on this little island think they can change the way that this planet is going? How dare they think they can stand up against the United States? That they can have their own system....But that is the kind of magic of Cuba that people have this optimism, this pride, this belief -- not only in themselves but in other people. That to me has been one of the psychic vitamins that has fed me since I've been here and that has taught me the power of people. I was a member of the Black Panther Party, and we used to say "Power to the People", but here in Cuba is where I've seen that put into practise, where I've seen that internalized by people in such a way that people feel empowered to build this planet and to change it. And to contribute and feel privileged to do that. Feel that when they go to sleep at night that all is not in vain. There is some sense in living on this planet. That there is some beauty in constructing something better and giving to other people. And work is a source of pride, not "Oh, I've gotta go to work in the morning". It's another way of looking at the world and another way of living on this planet. Q. Describe experience of being in Cuba, being exiled here. To what extent have you been able to continue being the political person you were in the United States? A. Well, exile is difficult. Anyone who says it's nothing, that it's easy, is simplifying things. Exile for me was hard. When I came here I spoke very little Spanish. Like two words. I couldn't communicate, and people would talk to me like I was a blooming idiot. Like, how did they know? They'd say, "Hello, how are you?" -- simple things. There was no way I could express my personality in Spanish, tell jokes, be specific, describe anything...It was a hard adaptation process. But I went through it and in some ways I guess continue to go through it. For me personally Cuba has been a healing state. When I first got here I had no sense that I had to heal or anything. When you're struggling for your life and you're in the midst of things, you don't feel all the blows. But after awhile I began to understand that oppressed people --just by being oppressed -- suffer serious wounds. You might go into a store, and somebody might follow you around the store, and you would have a choice of how to react: you could confront them and say "Why are you following me around the store?" or you could say to yourself: "Well, I came here to buy some socks, so let me just concentrate on buying the socks." But you still feel the pain. The obvious racism before had affected me, the prisons, torture...my whole life had created wounds, scars in me that in Cuba I was able to find a space to begin to heal. To begin to think, "Yeah, this happened, and I can look at it and see it for what it was but not be there, not be destroyed by it, not be turned into something bitter and evil by it. And not be like my enemies. Because I think that the greatest betrayal that a revolutionary can participate in is to become like the people you are struggling against. To become like your persecutors. I think that is a betrayal and a sin. I think that people who want to change this planet have to seriously understand that as human beings we have to work to be good. I'm saying that in many ways: good at what we do, better people, better in the way we related to people, that we treat other people. Better in our ability to outreach to people. Better in so many ways. And the wounds that are inflicted on our families, on ourselves, we have to heal. We have to work within our families, within our communities, within our neighborhoods, to make it livable. My experience in the United States was living in a society that was very much at war with itself, that was very alienated. People felt not part of a community, but like isolated units that were afraid of interaction, of contact, that were lonely. People didn't build that sense of community that I found is so rich here. One of the things that I was able to take from this experience was just how lovely it is to live with a sense of community. To live where you can drop in the street and a million people will come and help you. That is to me a wealth that you can't find, you can't buy, you have to build. You have to build it within yourself to be capable of having that attitude about your neighbors, about how you want to live on this planet. Q. Some people have voiced concern that the end of the blockade will bring many negative things from the United States to Cuba. What do you think about the blockade ending? A. I think that it's all positive. I think that any time anybody gets rid of oppression, intervention, exploitation, cruelty -- that's positive. I think that the effects of lifting the blockade are all positive. Now that's another question from the effects of exposure to US consumerism, violence, militaristic culture, greed, institutionalized sexual exploitation, Barby-doll vision of women -- those are different things. One is lifting the blockade; the other is cultural imperialism, materialism, etc. Tourism, for example, has affected Cuba, because tourists come and they bring racist, sexist ideas. They bring a whole vision that there are rich people all over the world and that's the way it should be -- you know? The only way to struggle against that is ideological struggle in terms of values. And also improving the economy. People here being able to say, "You have your vision of the world but we have ours, and we are committed to ours." That's a struggle of ideas, of values. And hopefully not only in Cuba, but all over the world, people are saying that this kind of McDonald's, Barby-doll culture that is being pushed by the United States and other big powers is a very empty, sad, alienating kind of culture, and there are much richer values on this earth. Q. How did you get involved in the struggle (become an activist)? A. Well, basically, it was hard not to. I was fortunate enough to grow up in the 60s -- not to idealize the 60s, but there was a lot of political activism going on. I had dropped out of school and was working at this terrible 9-to-5 drudge clerk-type job. I was miserable and not going anywhere. So I decided to go to school. I was in school like two weeks or something and my whole world changed! First of all I met all of these wonderful people who were doing things and were active and positive. Then I started to learn about myself. I grew up in the United States totally ignorant of the history of African people in the United States. Of the literature. I knew about the music and parts of the culture, but in terms of the history of African people I knew nothing. So all of a sudden I was exposed to these people who were talking about Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, DuBoise -- so many people -- and it was like waking up from a semi-sleep. It was like saying, "Oh, wow! We were there; we struggled, we resisted!" For me as a Black person, it was like coming into touch with the reality of my ancestors, my history. I had grown up at a time when people were being lynched, being attacked with water hoses. Becoming active and learning a different way of viewing my life was a healthy reaction to what I was seeing every day. I actually believed then and still believe that activism is fun! I think that the movement has done more for me as a human being than I will ever be able to do for the movement. Because there's something nice about being able to go to sleep at night saying "You know, tomorrow I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that...." I think that being an activist on this planet is a privilege and a pleasure. Q. Could you talk about the Black Panther program? I know that it influenced other activist groups like the American Indian Movement. How could we use some of those ideas? And could you also tell us about the methodology the FBI used to try to infiltrate and destroy these movements? A. The Black Panther Party had a Ten Point Program and Platform. We talked about the right to control our communities, (inaudible -- a summary from notes follows) to be free from induction into the military, the right to food, housing, clothing, jobs and freedom. The BPP was an anti-imperialist, pro-people party, not a racist party. It participated in all progressive organizations and coalitions, with Puerto Ricans, Asian and other liberation movements all over the world. Because of this the BPP came under siege by the police. The FBI framed people on false charges, murdered people, including murdering them in their beds as they did with Fred Hampton... Q. What advise would you have for activists in the US? A. (Summary) First of all we need to put real democracy on the agency in the US, because there is no real democracy there now. I think we need to treat activism as FUN -- because it is fun. We need to develop a political style that's interesting and fun and personal. To celebrate together. Q. I'd like to sort of pull this back to Cuba....The reasoning behind the debate about whether or not to pass a law allowing the sale of food and medicine to Cuba is because the United States has laws imposing unilateral sanctions against trade with what are defined [by the US government] as "terrorist nations". Cuba is on the list of "terrorist nations", not because it has put bombs on civilian airlines that exploded in mid-air -- that's what has been done TO Cuba; there was the one incident of shooting down the airplane of the Cuban-American terrorist organization that was flying over Cuba. But the most important reason that has been given for a number of years now about why Cuba is on that list, why the US calls it a "terrorist" nation, is because Cuba gives political asylum to individuals who the US calls "terrorists". And the US government has demanded that Assata and others like herself who have been given political asylum be returned to the United States. The question that has been raised often is, Are you worried that Cuba will turn you back over to the US government in order to resolve this problem? And if you don't think that Cuba will do that, what does that mean to you? A. I think first of all, I trust Cuba as a principled country. Cuba's strength is that it has been steadfast in its commitment to the principles of liberation, freedom, of resistance to the kind of institutionalized terrorism that the United States government does every day. The US has attacked countries like Grenada, Panama, Libya....the list of victims of US terrorism is almost infinite. And the US government's participation in torture, whether in El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile....is well-documented and widely known. I believe Cuba's strength has been its denouncing that kind of terrorism, torture. It does this politically not only by [providing asylum for] exiles [from terrorist regimes] but also fighting in the context of the United Nations Organization, in world organizations, in denouncing all kinds of terrorist torture in governmental policies. All of the maneuvers by the US government to keep the blockade alive is a manipulation by the US government because "Cuba poses a threat". The real reason Cuba poses a threat has nothing to do with my being here or anyone else being here. It's because Cuba is an example of a country that is actively fighting against imperialist domination and insists on its own right to self-determination and sovereignty. The US government's most acute fear is that other countries are going to follow the Cuban example. They want everybody to know that if you follow this example we will attack you in every way that we can. That is the reality as I see it about the blockade and why it is being continued. The Miami Mafia (as everybody here calls them) has some input into that, but I believe it is not the money the Miami Mafia contributes to both parties that is making US policy what it is. It is the United States' government's insistence on being able to control the world, to tell all the people how to live, to export their version of "dollarocracy" to everybody else and to make every country in the world subservient to the interests of big business. I think that as long as Cuba continued to be strong, I have nothing whatsoever to fear from the Cuban people. In fact I think I have much, much, much to gain in understanding how a people can unite, how people can be strong, and how people can take a little piece of earth and try to mold that piece of art into a work of art and a work of love. Q. Can you comment on the importance of religion and spirituality? A. I think that spirituality is important for all people to develop. I don't mean there necessarily has to be a religious aspect to spirituality. Some people are spiritual in a religious way, other people are spiritual in their work and in their art and in their treatment of other people. In my case, spirituality has been important to me because at periods in my life there's been very little else that I've had going. I've actually needed to call on, to feel the forces of good in this universe to be able to survive. I've always been a student of different ways of looking at the world, different religions. That's been part of my survival mechanism, and also part of my curiosity as a person, because I believe that some people spell "good" with two o's and some people spell it with one....and there shouldn't be a contradiction between that. In Cuba I was able to broaden my vision of spirituality. Here for the first time I became aware of the African and African-Cuban religions and began to study them and see how people interacted and made very common things -- rocks and leaves and shells -- into things that were very precious. I saw how people respected history, not only in terms of the revolutionary government preserving history--because I think that one of the great things that the Cuban revolution has done is preserve history. I came here and there's a museum called the Museum of the Revolution. I got to one little case and there were these shoes of one of the revolutionary heroes who died before the victory. And as I looked at those shoes, tears began to come out of my eyes, because -- this was someone who gave his life for the Revolution. So the Revolution didn't have a person, but made sure that the person was remembered. And in the African religions, one of the things that was very important to me was that somehow the struggle of so many slaves is remembered. The ancestors remembered. All of my experience of studying religion, studying spirituality, studying natural healing, traditional medicine, has kind of enriched my vision of the world. Not only seeing reality as this moment, but as a culmination of all of the history behind us, and all of the fruit that hopefully we will be able to grow from the seeds that we are trying to plant now, of goodness and peace and beauty and equality. Q. In the movement to free Mumia Abu Jamal, in the US we've seen increasingly repressive tactics against the protestors, jailings and fines against protestors. One of the caravanistas who is usually with us had her passport taken away from her, she cannot be here in Cuba this week because she participated in a protest in support of Mumia last summer. What can you say about where the movement in support of Mumia stands right now? A. Looking at the repression from Cuba is like looking at Martians. Whether it was in Seattle or Washington or at the Conventions, the visual image looks like these space monsters that are attacking people. Because you don't see that here! Nobody here lives that reality. And people in the United States take that reality as normal. The survival of the movement around Mumia is absolutely one of the most important struggles that needs to be waged, that must be waged right now. And it is more and more obvious that the US government is willing to ...I don't know, to set extraordinary bail for acts of civil disobedience. Some of the fines and bails have been out of this world in a so-called "free country". But in spite of that I think that what the government can't do is squash everybody. So what the main thrust needs to be right now is to incorporate as many people as possible into the struggle to save Mumia, and to do whatever is needed to save that man's life. Because Mumia is not just one person. Mumia represents, at this particular time in history, opposition to the United States government. He represents opposition to the prison-industrial complex. The death penalty is used in such a blatantly racist way in the United States. There is no way that can be defended under any kind of definition of justice by anybody. I think that struggling to save Mumia's life will save many other people's lives and in that struggle, we need to have a new definition of what justice is. A new definition of how people are treated in the society. And how people are not some kind of disposable item that you throw away, you destroy. You have a government that is sentencing 20-year-olds to life in prison without parole, for drug offenses. When you're 20 years old and you sell, not even a huge quantity of drugs -- we're not talking about the dons or the godfathers or anybody else -- we're talking about small quantities of drugs. And they write in the newspapers "This is a drug kingpin" and they sentence this person to life without parole. What kind of reality is that creating? What kind of future for the United States is that creating? If these people ever get out, who will they be? After years of watching beatings, tortures, suffering, you know what I'm saying? So I think the struggle around Mumia is important, to defend all of those people who are struggling against this system. I think that the more that people feel they can WIN that struggle, that they can go to their neighbors, that they can have signs on their blocks, that they can do things where they live, and not make it so abstract. Bring it home, take it to work, put a sign where you work. Take it to your church, to make it more and more a people's struggle. I think people's struggles are the only ones that in the long run cannot be defeated. Q. (Inaudible. Probably about media manipulation...) A. (Talking about how absurd it was that the US could convince people Grenada was a danger to its security)....Grenada has about 100,000 people. I remember Ronald Reagan holding up this map, an aerial map of an airport, and saying this was gonna be a military airport that was gonna threaten the people of the United States. And actually they convinced a huge amount of people that Grenada, a LITTLE, TINY ISLAND, that wasn't even the size of Brooklyn, was a threat to the United States government!!! And people really believed it. It was like convincing people to believe in the tooth fairy. (Laughter). So people have to be aware of how the media manipulates the way we think. Because they have really created a situation where all the US government has to do is say that such-and-such a government is terrorist, and they can wipe people off the map! The language that is being used in the media today is incredible. I must have been about 14 years old when I read "1984". It never occurred to me that anyone would name a nuclear missile "Peacekeeper". It never occurred to me that thousands of people would be killed in the name of "peace-keeping". But that is what is happening today. Or that the deaths of 200,000 people is called "collateral damage". How can you justify that? They are making a language that is a callous language of imperialism and we are using it. That doesn't mean we are going along with their language, but that we have not developed our own. The average person living in the US may not even be aware that those are 200,000 women, children, babies that are dead, and they are not even called human beings, they are called "collateral damage". "Friendly fire" -- what the hell is that? It is sickening when you listen to it, but you are inundated by it. Because they've developed these code words, they have been incorporated into the language of politics, and people see that as normal. Just as they see the police dressed up as Martians beating people up as "normal". So the abnormal, the sick, the vicious have become more and more interwoven into the violent culture of the United States. Into the way news is seen, into the way movies are seen. I watched this movie, they had it on tv here, called "Instinct". Black actor Cuba Gooding, very good actor, is playing the psychologist, and his patient is this white anthropologist who has been extradited from some African country for killing three people. And Cuba Gooding is trying to get at the roots of what has made this man "mad". The man has a relationship with gorillas that he's been studying and is beginning to bond with gorillas; he finds that the gorillas have this good gorilla way of living. And this anthropologist becomes like a hero in this movie. And he's talking about what liberation is, how gorillas have achieved a stage of liberation, although you are never clear what he means by that. And because this guy stands up to this system in prison in which the roughest prisoner gets a turn to go out on the exercise yard; they deal out a deck of cards and the one who gets the ace gets to go out. And the one who is the strongest and the most evil takes the ace and always goes out into the yard. So this anthropologist stands up against this strong guy -- who also happens to be black -- and he becomes the hero of the prison. In the end he escapes. And he's like this great white hero who escapes. And nowhere in the whole movie, there is not one word about these three people he killed. All three of them were Africans, and they were poaching on the animals, capturing the gorillas. And this guy kills them because of the gorillas. In the way that this whole history is told, we feel so much for this guy. We begin to love him; he becomes the hero, the symbol of liberty and justice. He and his relationship to the gorillas become principal, and the three Africans that he killed are totally irrelevant. And from the beginning to the end of the movie, that's the way it goes. And I'm looking at this and thinking, "This is incredible! When Malcolm X created 'tricknology' as a word to describe how the mind can be twisted and distorted and manipulated into believing that the enemy is the victim and the victim is the enemy -- the United States is a MASTER of it! You have a bill: "Feed Cuba! Food for Cuba!" that not only tightens the blockade, makes things harder for the Cuban people, and they say "Oh, this is a wonderful thing to open trade with Cuba". And they have people believing it. We're living in a very tricky world, and unless we become analytical and expose the tricknology, people will become sucked into that. It is very easy, it is very, very easy. Q. Cuba has been fighting against [neoliberal] globalization. What do you think the potential for the anti-globalization movement is? A. I think that the movement against the policies of the World Bank, of the IMF, is very important. People are really beginning to see the mechanisms of imperialism. When colonialism existed people could see colonialism. When racial segregation existed in its apartheid form, people could see the "whites only" signs. But it's much more difficult to see the structures of neo-imperialism, neo-colonialism, neo-slavery. I think that the movement against the World Bank, against the globalization process that is happening, is very positive. We need a globalization, a globalization of people who are committed to social justice, to economic justice. We need a globalization of people who are committed to saving this earth, to making sure that the water is drinkable, that the air is breathable. When I was a child, if someone had talked to me about buying water, I would have thought it was a joke. If we are not committed to saving this earth we will be buying designer air filters and gas masks with little Nike swishes on them. (Laughter, applause) The people who are running this planet are insane -- they are literally destroying it. I don't know where they think they're gonna drink water, breathe air....This planet is a wonderful place, but a vulnerable place. And they are making and implementing policies that are destroying the earth in all kinds of ways. The movement against the kind of global assassination that is going on, in terms of whole countries -- because every African country is facing an ecological disaster in terms of becoming deserts, in terms of fuel -- Africa is one of the richest countries in the world and the people are the poorest in the world. A lot of that poverty is directly related to the policies of the IMF and the World Bank. Those policies are very important not only to Cuba but to people all over the world who want to see their children grow up and have access to health care, to live somewhere that is not a desert, where they can drink water, where they can breathe air. So I think that movement is one of the most important, most optimistic struggles that is going on at this moment. Q. In 1965 US President Dwight D. Eisenhower said the Pentagon was planning for 100 years into the future. Most of us don't even plan for 5 years ahead. I don't know how Cuba is coming along with it's planning. But most of us are always REACTING to what the world powers do. What is our pro-active plan for 5 or 10 years from now? A. I wish (laughs) I had those answers. I believe that we have to...the first part of planning is to believe that you can put that plan into practise. And I think that one of the problems that exists in the United States and in many places in the world is that people don't believe that they can make a difference. So a lot of times we're defeated before we even start. We've become consumers of a world vision, of Kentucky Fried Chicken, of McDonalds, and we're convinced that Kentucky Fried Chicken tastes better than any other thing, or that a hamburger made by McDonalds is something special. Other than a piece of greasy meat and some bread. McDonald's are things we've been sold. And we've also consumed the idea of powerlessness, of the idea that "you can't fight City Hall" [you can't win against a powerful establishment -ed. note], of "you can't change things, the government is strong, that's just the way things are". And as long as we continue to have that vision of the world, the planning of a better world is going to be a hard nut to crack. So I think that one of the things as a step towards the phase that WE plan years and years ahead is to actually believe that this world is redeemable, changeable; that we can eradicate poverty, that we can eradicate alienation, that we can eradicate this tremendous consumerism, this disease that we have to buy everything that exists, everything that the television says we have to have. We have to have a vision of the world we want to make in 100 years. And maybe when we have that vision, when we convince enough people that that is a realistic vision, and that the opposite vision is basically that if we don't do something in this 100 years, a hundred years from now this world is gonna be so destroyed, so raped and ravished that we won't HAVE much of a world to save. Internalizing the importance of this century, and how much work we have to do, will give us at least some ways to invent a system of planning. I think it's really hard to plan if you don't believe you can implement those plans.

(Not a new article but informative the same way.) The Fugitive: Why has the FBI placed a million-dollar bounty on Assata Shakur? By Kathleen Cleaver Twenty-eight years ago, in a highly disputed trial, an all-White jury convicted former Black Panther Assata Shakur of the murder of a New Jersey state trooper. In 1979, while serving a life sentence, she escaped from prison and eventually resurfaced in Cuba, where she was granted asylum and has lived ever since. But the U.S. government has continued to pursue Shakur, regularly increasing the bounty on her head and classifying her as a “domestic terrorist.” Last May the Justice Department issued an unprecedented $1,000,000 bounty for the return of Assata Shakur, 58, who continues to maintain her innocence. Kathleen Cleaver, a law professor and former communications secretary for the Black Panther Party, talks about why we all need to know about Assata, and why she must live free: I was startled when I heard about the $1,000,000 bounty for the capture of Assata Shakur. What triggered this renewed interest in Assata? Why spend so much time and money to hunt her down when Osama bin Laden, head of an international terrorist enterprise, remains at large? It turns out that FBI and New Jersey police officials revealed the million-dollar bounty on May 2 of this year, the thirty-second anniversary of the New Jersey Turnpike shootout in which State Trooper Werner Foerster and Black Panther Zayd Shakur were killed. Sundiata Acoli and Assata Shakur were arrested for the murders. Assata was severely wounded, shot while her hands were up. She has always insisted—and expert defense testimony from the trial bears it out—that she did not kill anyone. But in separate trials, Sundiata and Assata were convicted of murdering Werner Foerster. In 1979, while incarcerated for life in the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey, Assata escaped. As the FBI circulated the wanted poster that called for her arrest, all over the New York–New Jersey area her supporters hung posters proclaiming “Assata Shakur is welcome here.” Cuba gave her political asylum several years later on the grounds that she had been subjected to political persecution and had never received a fair trial. Apparently the million-dollar bounty has already been covertly offered by police to a relative of Assata’s for assistance in kidnapping her from Cuba. This bounty evokes the memory of those vicious slave catchers who were paid to capture and torment our runaway slave ancestors and return them dead or alive. This extraordinary bounty on the head of a Black woman inevitably brings to mind Harriet Tubman, that Underground Railroad “conductor” whose ability to organize escapes earned a $12,000 price on her head from the state of Maryland. Outraged slave owners added $40,000. Many freedom fighters I knew and loved, including Eldridge Cleaver, to whom I was married, were arrested and imprisoned because of our membership in the Black Panther Party. Our organization started in response to the gruesome war in Vietnam and the racism and injustice here that drenched our lives in violence. Demonstrations, riots, rampant police brutality and political assassinations marked those years when I witnessed thousands upon thousands of people arrested and hundreds killed. Many turned into fugitives to save their own lives, including my husband, whom I joined in Algeria in May 1969. That was around the same time that Assata, then a bright New York City college student named Joanne Chesimard, joined the Black Panthers. WE had a concrete ten-point program to end racial inequality. The Black Panther Party demanded the power to determine our own destiny. We insisted on decent housing, appropriate education, economic justice, an immediate end to police brutality, and other rights our people had been fighting for since slavery ended. We were not patient, we were not passive, and we were willing to defend our principles with our lives. Since Panthers couldn’t be bought off or scared off, the government made the decision to kill us off. Back in 1968 we became prime targets for law enforcement and intelligence agencies, particularly after J. Edgar Hoover, then FBI director, labeled us the “greatest threat to the internal security” of the United States. We were young and passionately determined to secure the freedom of our people in our lifetime. Joining the Black Panther Party at the height of this assault, Assata saw our leaders imprisoned and killed. Both Black Panther Party founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale faced the death penalty, and Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, leaders of the Illinois chapter, were murdered in a predawn raid while they slept. Assata reported that she was beaten, tortured and denied medical attention after her arrest, then continually threatened by police and prison guards while in their custody. There was no question that she felt her life was in danger. Under international law and Cuban law, Shakur is entitled to the protection and freedom of asylum. There are no legal grounds for her return to the United States because no treaty of extradition exists between the United States and Cuba, which has been subjected to a U.S. blockade and trade embargo for more than 40 years. Despite this, the U.S. government and the state of New Jersey have repeatedly called for her capture. The meaning of this new million-dollar bounty is to encourage and finance what amounts to a kidnapping, one that could end with Assata’s death. Our memories are haunted by stories of fiercely independent Blacks whose dignity and pursuit of freedom won the hatred of enraged White men who sometimes murdered them, riding publicly in lynch mobs that no law restrained. The government has elevated this barbaric conduct to the diplomatic level as a way to reimprison one Black woman who dared fight for our freedom. The FBI and the state of New Jersey must be forced to obey the law. We cannot allow them to engage in lynch-mob diplomacy. Kathleen Neal Cleaver, JD Yale University, 1989, is a Senior Lecturer in African American Studies and a Senior Research Scholar at the Yale Law School.

Adidas JS Roundhouse Mids LOS ANGELES - Only a few days after revealing a bizarre sneaker online, Adidas has decided to squelch the design that some people have labeled as racist and insensitive to slavery. Adidas posted a Facebook photo of the JS Roundhouse Mids, a shoe that comes with a plastic shackle attached to it. The company tried to market the shoe as a trendy design that it’s wearer would not want to remove. “Got a sneaker game so hot you lock your kicks to your ankles?” Adidas asked on its Facebook post. But the only game some online viewers saw was an unnecessary toying with slavery, which led Adidas to cancel the shoe’s August release. The sneaker’s designer is Jeremy Scott, who has been known for turning his unconventional ideas into unique products. Scott, who is white, has indicated that the design is based on the My Pet Monster series of children's toys. But that has upset some people who view the shackles as a reference to African-American slavery. Others defended Scott and his design and called the outrage unfounded and shortsighted. The Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow PUSH Coalition released a statement condemning Adidas for releasing the design. “The attempt to commercialize and make popular more than 200 years of human degradation, where blacks were considered three-fifths human by our Constitution is offensive, appalling and insensitive. Removing the chains from our ankles and placing them on our shoes is no progress," Jackson said. "For Adidas to promote the athleticism and contributions of a variety of African-American sports legends — especially Olympic heroes Wilma Rudolph and Jesse Owens and boxing great Muhammad Ali — and then allow such a degrading symbol of African-American history to pass through its corporate channels and move toward actual production and advertisement, is insensitive and corporately irresponsible." The social media firestorm led Adidas to pull the shoe Monday night. "The design of the JS Roundhouse Mid is nothing more than the designer Jeremy Scott's outrageous and unique take on fashion and has nothing to do with slavery,” Adidas said in a statement. “Since the shoe debuted on our Facebook page ahead of its market release in August, Adidas has received both favorable and critical feedback. We apologize if people are offended by the design and we are withdrawing our plans to make them available in the marketplace." Read more: http://www.abcaction...y#ixzz1yKfYKpjI (As an aside, I am of the persuasion that if enough of the top or "coolest" celebrities would have had been called on by Adidas to promote these shoes, our young people (and many of the minion-like adults around them) would have been rockin this "cool" shoe. Heck, the majority of schools don't even hardly teach about slavery... It is not illogical to say that some of the younger people would not have even made the connection on their own.)

I know they were jokes, but as with many jokes, they are often the funniest when the audience can relate. Wow, 50 years. That is a long time. I hope that the presence of your husband is sweet and soft around you and that it holds you especially close when you miss him/need comfort the most.

I definitely feel you on the level of materialism. This really is a profit first media oriented society, so there are constantly images being fed to our minds. Buy, buy, buy. It will make you feel good; it will make you feel important. Low self esteem? No problem, just buy this. Need status? No problem, just buy this. Don't you deserve the good life? Well, it can be yours too for a price...even if you can't afford the good life, just come buy so you can feel good. See Celebriity Goodlife? Come get your version, come buy. (That is not just merely a symbolic picture to make a point that I am sharing. That picture is of the "controversial" shoes that were actually designed by Adidas. They have shackles on them, notice the shackles are "gold". Not cool at all, right? Yet, how true is it? ) I tend to think that Walter was not being illogical nor overly materialistic. He actually sounded like an economist, political scientist or social scientist who was breaking things down in a very simple way. After being asked by Mama about why he speaks so much of money, Walter tells his Mama "because it is life". Mama says that she remembers a time when freedom used to be life. However, let us all be as real with ourselves as we can possibly be, if only for only a minute. I know that a lot of our people love to speak about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but those things were not at all written with our freedom in mind. Many of the writers were slaveholders moaning about being oppressed by the king. Whining about tyranny as human beings in the so called "New World" that they'd hijacked from the indigenous Americans were being bred, sold, and slaughtered like cattle. The inalienable rights (it is unalienable in the more original draft) rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" (oh or was it the synonym here for happiness, property?) Are not these things the very foundation of "The American Dream"? Walter didn't remind specifically remind Mama about how for their ancestors who were victims of slavery, MONEY was their best chance for freedom. If freedom were to be attained, it was to be either bought or taken (yes, one would have to steal him or herself. Imagine that. You are property and your running away for the purpose of the pursuit of "freedom" is considered an act of theft.) So Mama said that freedom used to be life and Walter said, "It was always money, Mama. We just didn't know about it" is a very rational statement. It is a realization that many of us have not yet seem to grasp in terms of economics/politics. Am I condoning the order of the day? Nah, I'm simply reading the menu out loud and noticing that the order of today was the order of yesterday and the days before that. The menu has never changed, just the way in which the dish has been prepared. Also about the generational differences, I don't think that what Walter and Mama are worlds apart in their desires. Mama wants a better life for her family and Walter wants the same. While Mama, having come from a point which is much closer to the boiling pot, might feel that moving to the pot of very hot (but not boiling) water is freedom, Walter is not satisfied with such a move. He doesn't feel that he should have to be satisfied with that, he feels that there is more than the pot of hot water that he is in... He is like a fish in a Ziplock bag within a sea, swimming back and forth in the confines of this little plastic bag as he watches, from his bag, a world of other fish swim freely in the sea. Mama, in her plastic bag remembers a time when the plastic bag was much smaller and was overcrowded by other fish, no room to swim freely and oh how she and all the other fish in that bag just wanted to be able to swim freely. Now that Mama has a plastic bag of her own and her children have plastic bags of their own to be able to swim freely in, she thanks the Lord for that. Meanwhile, Walter swims back and forth in his plastic bag, not at all satisfied with his lot in life. There is more..and he sees it everyday, all in his face, but he cannot touch it. If only he could break that bag, he could be free... Which fish is wrong? I don't know if that either fish is wrong and furthermore, I don't know that the answer is so simple.