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San Francisco Quarterback Colin Kapernick , Not Standing For The National Anthem Got People Upset. If They Think This Disrespect Soldiers, How Many Black Soldiers Have Racially Profiled After Coming Back From Middle East Protecting This Country? Great Black Athletes, Jim Brown ,Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Tommie Smith Support Kapernick .,Tommie Smith Was On CNN ,. Tommie Smith ,John Carlos Had Their Black Gloved Fist Raised In The Air At Their Olympics. Former Football Player, Now Pro Football Reporter, Said Kapernick Was Not Black,Yes He Is. Kapernick Is Biracial .White People Against Kapernick ,Want Everyone One To Have A Million Guns..Colin Kapernick ,Says He Was Speaking About Oppressed People Of Color In This Country.Hitler Trump Said Colin Kapernick Should Find Another Country.I Think Trump Meant Everyone Not White Should Find Another Country.If White People Think He Was Disrespecting The Military, Does That Include The Neo Nazi In The U.S. Military, They Say They Are Training For The Race War.White Police Who Have Been Fired For Being In White Supreamacy Groups, Past 3 Or 4 Years.The U.S. Flag,Star Spangled Banner Does Not Represent Everyone In This Country..

Unlike many if not most "conscious" Black people in the United States, I consider myself an American. Many claim we are not real Americans because of how we are treated or say that we are just Africans IN America and love to use the analogy Malcolm X made about kittens in an oven. I disagree and say we are just as American if not MORE American than even the average White American because our roots go back much deeper in this nation. Not only are we American constitutionally speaking.....but by virtue of being born on this land, having dozens of generations of ancestry in this land, and most of us having some Native American ancestry. I don't think it was a good move for Kaepernick to protest the American flag because not only does it NOT solve the racial problems in America, it actually exacerbates them and angers a lot of non-White and non-Black people around the world as well as inside of the U.S. who see him as ungrateful for the opportunities this nation has given him. Many of these people know that if he would do that in THEIR country he would be imprisoned or even worse. I totally understand where he's coming from and I respect his right to do what he did, but you have to really sit down and think about what you're doing, why you're doing it, and most importantly what results you're trying to achieve. If he intended to piss off a lot of White people....he achieved that. But if he intended to bring attention to the race problem in America.....that wasn't necessary because everyone KNOWS there is a race problem in America. If his intention was to help Black people in some way.....how? Again, not beating up on the brother for what he did because he didn't hurt anyone and he exercised his right.....but how does THIS help in any way? Black people have always known there was a race problem in America so doing this isn't making them more aware than they already are. As far as his Egyptian girlfriend goes......... I'm looking at her and looking at him. He may be mixed but he certainly doesn't look Black, he looks like an Arab. I'm willing to be that she doesn't even see him as a Black man so she probably is dating him because he looks like the Arab Egyptian men she's used to being around. Racism exists in Egypt as intensley as it does in the United States between the native Black Egyptians (Nubians) and the Arabs, Persians, and other Caucasians who invaded that land centuries ago. I wonder does SHE protest her own nation's race problem the way Kaepernick protests his own.....or does she do like most Arabs and deny the anti-Black racism that exists in the Middle East?

I did hear about this story all over talk radio, which I listen to a lot when I drive. Both left and right wing stations were ablaze with this "controversy," which you've summed up quite nicely. This story is utterly and completely uninteresting to me. Sadly for me it was virtually impossible to avoid. Though I don't mind talking to you about it I would not elevate Kaepernick to the level of Tommie Smith and John Carlos. What those Brothers did took actual heart, as well a tremendous athletic ability to put them in the once in a life time situation. But it gives the media something to talk about, meanwhile it is hitting the fan in the middle east as the U.S. and Russia back opposing factions. The U.S. really helped make a mess of things in the middle east, but like little children we are easily distracted by talking about Kaepernick's inconsequential gesture--get back to me when he does something substantive. Now a story that really interests me is the one which suggest the potential for the possibility of the discovery of a hugely advanced alien civilization based upon a signal received! I heard the tail end of a news story about the subject and I could not believe my ears. I have not had a chance to lookup additional coverage yet-but what a story!

I remember some very many years ago, when I worked in Harlem, Grant and I used to chat from time to time, because we are friends. One day he told me an amazing story about what he discovered about grandfather, Leonard Harper. He said that when he was researching about him, It was like finding a vast hidden treasure about black showmanship. The passion for finding more and more about his grandfather grew. He realized for the first time, that his grandfather was one of the greatest entertainer's in Harlem and the world. As the story about his grandfather unfolded, it became clear and evident that he was a leader, pioneer and centerpiece of the " Harlem Renaissance " . It only seemed natural for Dr. Grant Harper Reid to share his personal family treasure chest for the world to enjoy, in his incredible book that he wrote and entitled " Rhythm for Sale " . This book is share genius, as he tells the truth and nothing but the truth. By his grandfathers hand and spirit, he was handed down, entrusted and greatly blessed with a proud heritage of a generations worth of wealth, of ambition, talent and leadership. According to his grandson Grant, he lived for one purpose, and one purpose alone, and that was to please his beloved audiences. In befitting a Great Harlemite, a street was renamed in his Grandfather's honor at 132nd Street and Seventh Avenue. The street is renamed " Leonard Harper Way " . I had the privilege and the distinct honor to be invited by Grant to the street renaming ceremony, unvailing and reception. It was my pleasure to be in the presence of a wonderful family, friends, dignitaries, celebrities and the press. After the unvailing, Grant hosted a reception at " Lorraines Place " where everyone had a ball. In essence, the culmination of this book made the street renaming possible. As we were enjoying some fried chicken, we all shared a toast to " Leonard Harper Way " . Colin Wade

The City College of New York, walking distance from where I live, and the Alma Mater of people like Colin Powell and Jonas Salk was FREE! Today a degree costs $86K (less if you commute) and that is assuming you graduate in four years. On top of that, the school no longer has the reputation it once had, so the value of the education is lower--and still too costly for many in the community to attend, with out going deep into debt. College should not be compulsory, but there should be quality free options available. The society and culture is FAR better off when the citizens are educated.

Congratulations to this year's 5 Under 35 Honorees! The National Book Foundation is proud to announce its 2015 5 Under 35 Honorees: Colin Barrett, Angela Flournoy, Megan Kruse, Tracy O'Neill, and Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi. Supported by a generous grant from Amazon Literary Partnerships, for the past ten years the 5 Under 35 program has recognized five promising young writers annually, each poised to make a tremendous impact on the literary landscape. Discover these five remarkable writers. LeVar Burton to host the 2015 5 Under 35 Ceremony The host of this year's 5 Under 35 ceremony is LeVar Burton, Curator-in-Chief & Host of Reading Rainbow. The Foundation is grateful to work with Burton, recognizing him as devoted activist for reading and literature. The ceremony will be held in Brooklyn on November 16 to kick-off National Book Awards week. Ben Greenman and Rosie Schaap will return as emcee and guest bartender respectively. Learn more about LeVar Burton here. BuzzFeed Books celebrates the 2015 5 Under 35 Honorees For the second year in a row, the National Book Foundation has partnered with BuzzFeed Books to announce the 5 Under 35 Honorees. And for the second year running, BuzzFeed has created trading cards to recognize these talented writers. Read their coverage here. Previous 5 Under 35 Honorees make this year's selections In recognition of the program’s 10 years of honoring promising young writers, we invited five writers previously chosen as 5 Under 35 Honorees to make this year’s selections. Find out more about this year's selectors.

Hi Harry no one, including myself, agrees with all of the Black authors profiled on the website. To ignore a Brother like Ben Carson, would be the same as ignoring Condi Rice, Colin Powell, or Clarence Thomas, simply because we might disagree with them. Harry, Ben Carson does not support white police murdering Black male. Nor would I ascribe most of the ideas you associated to him. There were many Black people who were disliked strongly; both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. where disliked by many Black people in their day. It is so much easier for us to dislike someone because of the, out of content sound bites, substituting for news, that we are bombarded by on social media. I'd never exclude someone from this site because I did not like his politics. In fact there are people on the website that I dislike personally, but I think their work is more important than my personal opinion of them as human beings. That said, I'm sure Ben will not get the Republican nomination for POTUS, so you have nothing to worry about ;-)

As a black woman, I acknowledged how accomplished Condi was because it was so obvious. She may have inspired eye-rolling on the part of sistas but they never aggressively attacked her. I remember modifying my disappointment with her Bush affiliation a few years back, when I read about what a big football fan she was, and that she'd once dated a black NFLer. Her name came up from time to time on this board back during its heyday, and I think Kola Boof defended her in her capacity as a feminist. I'm sure she has appeared on the covers of both Ebony and Essence at least once. I seem to also remember Oprah and Maya Angelou accepting her as a black sista. I wouldn't even be surprised if the NAACP had included her among honorees of the image awards at some point. She was, after all, Secretary of State, and they didn't penalize Colin Powell for his Bush taint. In time, Condoleeza Rice will take her place among distinguished black women because history tends to transcend political partisanship.

Chris you, everyone really, may find this analysis interesting. The lack of this type of research and analysis is one of the repercussions of not having a Black media. That and our obsession with social media like which is largely based upon the recirculation of a shallow opinions based upon sound bites generated by a media biased against Black people. I'm sure this article will give folks something to thing about. “The Bill Cosby Serial Rape Hoax by the Numbers--The Devil is in the Details” By James C. McIntosh, M.D. I have never been more sure that the Bill Cosby Rape allegations are both a hoax and a pure and simple media lynching as when I read a story today that should have been entitled “2600 people give Cosby a standing ovation in Canada,” but instead bears the title “Bill Cosby jokes woman should be careful drinking near him.” The hit is out and the single rule of the game is that Cosby simply must not win no matter what he does. Dick Gregory used to tell a story about the old southern literacy tests that white folks employed to prevent Blacks from voting. He said that they would give the Black man a reading test on nuclear physics in Russian. If he couldn’t read it, they told him he failed. If he could read it, he still couldn’t vote because they would tell him that if he could read Russian, he must be a communist. These headlines about Cosby’s alleged actions 40 years ago have no more to do with rape or sexual violence any more than the literacy test in Mississippi had to do with the ability to read. If the people running this campaign against Cosby were concerned with rape they would run the headline, Study by the American Medical Association shows that 39.7 percent of the women and 22 percent of the men in the Eastern Region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been the victim of Conflict related sexual violence. Instead there is another story online beginning with the headline “2 New Women Accuse Cosby…” right in line with the Dick Gregory story. When one reads beyond the headline, it turns out that the two women are not new accusers at all, they are previously written about accusers from the original already padded list now simply accusing Cosby of something else. Apparently the press is running out of Cosby rape or assault accusers. However, they are so determined to keep the headlines against Cosby going that they are starting to recycle the old accusers. The two women it turns out are accusing Cosby of defamation because he says their accusations of sexual assault are lies. Just like the literacy test, if Bill Cosby says nothing the press says he must be a rapist. If he says the women are lying, then the press says he is defaming them. The advantage of the defamation suit for the 2 women is that the alleged defamation is current unlike their previously published assault charges which involve allegations of events that are supposed to have happened 44 years ago and 38 years ago respectively. The first woman, L.J.T. who alleges that Cosby picked her up at a place called the Café Figaro, says that Cosby offered her a ride home but took her to the beach instead. He offered her drugs which she refused then he grabbed her chest and rubbed the front of her body. She ran down the beach to escape him and tore her dress in the process. That is it. If every word she said is true, the sexual assault charge is because of the alleged chest grabbing and body rubbing done by Cosby before he apparently realized that just because he had picked her up at the Café Figaro she was not that type of girl. She got back into his car and he bought her a new dress and took her home 44 years ago. She is now suing Cosby for defamation for calling her a liar. He would undoubtedly beat this defamation case if instead of calling her a liar, he had called her a drug trafficker, a fraud, a batterer and an ID thief since these are crimes for which this innocent girl from Café Figaro has already been convicted in what is described in one article as her extensive criminal past. The second, woman TPS says that when she was 19 years old, and Cosby was around 39 years old, Cosby came up behind her in a hotel lobby put his arm around her and asked her to marry him. She smiled and he invited her to come to his show. She did. After the show she went to his dressing room which was crowded with people. She waited until all the people left. Maybe she figured the Justice of the Peace would get there soon. He did not. Instead Cosby offered her two pills which she accepted. One article says he told her they were Quaaludes. She took the Quaaludes from him and put them in her mouth. “She luded out.” Look it up; it’s similar to an alcohol blackout. She says that her next memory was of Cosby having sex with her. When she went home and told her mother about her evening. Her mother with the wisdom perhaps of many woman who like her mother made Las Vegas their home, told her “Maybe he will take care of you.” TPS called Cosby back and continued to see him over the next few weeks, sometimes in a hotel room and would get money from him. Eventually when she told Cosby she thought she was pregnant she says, “He sent me away.” Her alleged rapist who she had been meeting in his hotel room regularly since the dressing room incident, in her own words, had to “send (her) away.” Fast forward 20 years later in 1996 she contacted Cosby to ask for money and she says he got indignant with her. She reminded him that he had promised to give her 500 dollars for every A she got in Nursing School. When she finished that conversation with Cosby she was infuriated at the way he had spoken to her. She said she had made up her mind to never contact him again. However, shortly after that conversation Cosby sent her $10,000 dollars directly and had $5,000 dollars given to her from William Morris Agency. That’s a lot of A’s. 8 years after that generosity, 28 years after the dressing room incident, the suspected pregnancy and being sent away, and shortly after her own divorce, TPS read about Andrea Costand’s law suit in which Costand accused Cosby of digitally penetrating her while she was under the influence of drugs. Costand said he had given her 3 blue pills under the false pretense that they were “an herbal remedy.” A year after that Costand filed a suit. TPS says when she found out about Costand’s accusations she became angry about what had happened to her so many years ago and went to the police in Philadelphia--- 28 years after Cosby had sent her away! 8 years after he had given her a total of$ 15,000 dollars, someone ( perhaps the police) saw similarities in her case and Costand’s. TPS was contacted by Costand’s attorneys and agreed to become Jane Doe witness number 10 in Costand’s civil suit. The suit never got to be adjudicated in court because the parties settled. Fast forward again to 2014 A spate of stories began to appear in the press and on the internet following a Hannibal Burress Comedy routine in which he called Cosby “Smug,” and “a Rapist.” The same press which claimed that this comedy routine went viral began to publish stories in tandem with an ever increasing count of alleged new accusers. Understand that 14 of these accusers in the count were not new at all and came from Costand’s settled law suit. Cosby refused to respond. In one of the stories TPS from the Costand suit was recycled, presented anew as around victim 15 or 16. In that story TPS said she had nothing to gain. However, now in 2015, 39 years after the alleged rape she is charging Cosby with defamation. 500 dollars per A is small potatoes in comparison to what is at stake now. In fact she now has quite a bit to gain. For you see when you are white, Defamation around the issue of rape can be very profitable as is illustrated in the Tawana Brawley Case. In that case the accused white rapist charged Tawana Brawley’s lawyers and advisers of defamation because they had accused him of raping Tawana Brawley. The Court awarded the accused rapist Steven Pagones, $345,000 from them and $185,000 from his alleged victim. That’s right, the woman who as a child accused a man of rape has been ordered to pay her alleged attacker for defaming him when she made that accusation. Brawley, by the way, completed nursing school with no one giving her 500 dollars for every A she received. But that was a Black woman accusing a white man. Cosby can expect no such luck because what happens to the accused or the accuser in America has always been determined by race more than any other factor. In the state of Virginia alone, where Brawley lives, 43 men were legally executed for rape between 1908 and 1963 and not one of them was white. Don’t be surprised if the same American legal system that awarded cash to the accused perpetrator in the Brawley case will do the exact reverse by awarding the accusers money in the Cosby Case. Don’t be surprised if they rule that the accused man has defamed his accusers by saying he is innocent. I do not believe that Cosby raped the two accusers LJT and TPS. Yet their stories are no less believable than the other 20 or so women being presented in a distorted way by the white press to paint Cosby as a serial “rapist.” I could go through the first 22 incidents and in all of them tell why in my opinion they are not credible stories. However, I don’t even believe that any woman who claims she has been raped or sexually assaulted should have her story picked apart in the press. I believe that the facts should be argued in a court in privacy. But in the case of Bill Cosby, the press and the bloggers and some of the alleged victims are presenting these one sided incomplete stories and ripping apart any mainstream journalist who asks the alleged victims difficult or politically incorrect questions. So below I have a chart that summarizes 22 of these cases, my understanding of what is the essence of each accusation against Cosby, plus a sentence or two about potential defenses from Cosby that would invalidate their claims. In one of the cases on this so called list the woman is accusing Cosby because he gave her pills which she took and caused, her in her opinion, to end up in bed with another man. Seriously she’s on the list and not even accusing Cosby of touching her. However, the white media is publishing these unsubstantiated accusations on the internet up to 50 years after these women say these incidents happened as if they are gospel. The sheer numbers are making people say, “How could all 22 women all be lying?” For those who don’t know the answer to that question I refer you to the following book. Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference Held at M.I.T. Cambridge, Ma. Textbook Binding – September, 1995. It’s simply a fact that not only have hundreds of people reported being abducted by aliens and taken on spacecraft. Many of them say the aliens have raped and or fiddled with them sexually. Some even say the aliens impregnated them. I don’t believe them but there are way more than 22 women who claim these things are facts. It’s not that there aren’t enough of them making these accusations against the aliens for me to believe. It’s not that their stories do not coordinate with each other. Their stories are quite similar and their descriptions of the perpetrator (s) are similar. I still don’t believe them. The reason I don’t believe them is because the reality they recount conflicts with reality as I know it. Similarly these women’s accounts do not correlate with the Bill Cosby whose life I have read about. Their stories don’t correlate with the Bill Cosby I saw narrate the documentary “Black History Lost Stolen or Strayed,” or the Bill Cosby who gives money to help elderly and infirm jazz musicians, or the Bill Cosby who funds educational programs for youngsters and donates heavily to institutions of higher learning, or the Bill Cosby who spoke out about AIDS while holding Jack Felder’s Book, on AIDS and US Biological Warfare, or the Bill Cosby who spoke up for Tawana Brawley when it was not popular to do so, or the Bill Cosby who was concerned enough about the Black Image in Media that he tried to buy NBC to improve that image. These 22 women’s statements certainly conflict with the Bill Cosby whose been married to the same Black woman for 50 years a woman who in the face of all these accusations still attests to his good character. Hey if either before or after you look at my chart you still believe these accusations. Take solace that according to the white media nearly everyone else believes as you do. I will take solace in the fact that the 2600 people who gave him a standing Ovation in Canada probably believe more as I do. I am so glad I believed in the Central Park boys’ innocence and spoke out at the time the case happened. They have since been vindicated and proven innocent. Yet I can remember very plainly the strident voices of all the accusers of the young men railroaded in that case. I remember the specific writers who called them “a rolling mass of pus,” “a wolf pack” and a “melanoma.” I remember the full page ad by Donald Trump calling essentially for their lynching. In that Ad Trump referred to non specifically to “roving bands of wild criminals” but there was no doubt about to whom he was referring. In that Ad Trump also expressed his opposition to Ed Koch’s uncharacteristically statesman like call at the time to the people of New York to “remove hate and rancor from our hearts.” Trumps ad said in response to that call, ''I do not think so. I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.'' I remember the boys crying parents and the boys’ wrongful convictions despite the fact that the DNA found on the Jogger matched none of them. I remember their forced confessions when they gave precise though conflicting and totally false reports of exactly who held the jogger down and exactly who hit her with a brick and exactly who was carrying a lead pipe. I actually saw a video of Assistant District Attorney Lederer telling one of the boys who had a history of retardation, that his fists couldn’t have made the injuries suffered by the Jogger, so what did he use? The boy trying desperately to satisfy her, said words to the effect of “a rock, I used a rock.” Although it was known at the time of the boys conviction for rape that there was 1 type of DNA on her sock and in her cervix and that it matched none of the boys, Lederer and the other members of the prosecution led the public to believe that the DNA samples related to the case were inconclusive rather than exculpatory as they in fact, were. In that regard Lederer engineered the boys conviction for a rape they never committed. I remember how these boys lost their youth and were assaulted in prisons in the worst kinds of units children can be put into, only to have it revealed decades later that they were innocent despite all the witnesses, and newspaper articles screaming their guilt. The 41 million dollar settlement awarded by the courts cannot begin to pay for their suffering sparked and fueled by the inflammatory white press’ rush to judgment. In the Cosby case, the white press is again acting like a lynch mob. That’s why any real journalist would refuse to be a part of it. The bottom line is that Cosby is entitled to the presumption of innocence guaranteed to him by law and the benefit of the doubt earned by his years of service to the Black Community. The alleged assault victims should also have the right to be exempt from the current media circus where they are now simply being used as pawns in a rigged game of chess between Cosby and the media big boys. Yet the question remains who is behind this rigged game, this coordinated media lynching of Cosby. Could anyone actually be going through all this just because Cosby wants to own a network. One red herring thrown out in the white press this week centers around Donald Trump’s having fired Keisha Knight Pulliam on his NBC broadcast show, The Apprentice. Trump says she was fired because she would not contact Bill Cosby to ask for money for charity in a team competition on the show. It is true that Cosby recently had nasty words for Trump but it is doubtful that Trump has the capability to trigger a media attack as extensive as the current attack against Cosby. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk5BM_kuMEQ It is also true that Trumps defensive Tweet this week in which he claims the show was filmed before the current attack against Cosby began, lends credence to the notion of his involvement in Cosby’s current woes for some. However, for me, the paraphrased words of Don Corleone apply here. “T---- is a pimp. He never could never outfight (Cosby). But I didn't know until this day that it was Barzini all along.” For Barzini perhaps substitute any name at the power level of Stephen Burke, Jeffrey Zucker or any recent Corporate officer at NBC Universal, NBC News, Comcast or NBC related entity who is actually big enough and mean enough to influence headlines across all media to destroy the legacy of one 77 year old Black Icon with a previously spotless reputation. Here is an excerpt from one Daily News Article originally reported in April 24, 1989 , with several quotes from then, Assistant D. A. Elizabeth Lederer EXCERPT Hints of what she (The jogger) endured were exposed hours earlier in Criminal Court, where the accused youths heard Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Lederer give abbreviated versions of their chilling statements: “Clarence Thomas, 14, of W. 112th St, quoted fellow pack member Steve Lopez, 15, of Harlem’s Schomburg Plaza housing complex, as saying, “Let’s get a female jogger!” In keeping with the theory that the gang left its victim for dead, Thomas told detectives, “I know who did the murder” and said he would testify before a grand jury. “He admitted holding (the woman) down while others raped her,” Lederer said. Yusef Salaam, 15, of Schomburg Plaza and a student at Harlem’s Rice Academy, a Catholic school, “made a statement that he hit her with a pipe and grabbed her breasts.” “He said he did it because ‘It was fun,’” according to Lederer. Karey Wise, 16, a Schomburg resident who is one of two pack members who will be treated as adults, downplayed the charges against him, saying “he only played with the lady’s legs after others knocked her down.” “Wise gave shocking details in terms of the account of where the body was taken, dragged, and left,” Lederer said. Wise’s attorney, Colin Moore, told the judge his client “admitted playing with her underpants.” Raymond Santana, 14, of E. 119th St., a student at Junior High School 117, “grabbed (her) and hit her with a brick. He said he felt her (breasts),” Lederer said. Antron McCray, 15, of W. 111th St., a student at Career Academy Junior High School, said “he mounted the body and kicked the woman: he named Salaam as hitting her with a pipe,” according to the prosecutor. Michael Briscoe, of Madison Ave., who at 17 is the oldest of the suspects and will be treated as an adult, “made plans with several people to go ‘wilding’ … several days before the incident.” The bespectacled Briscoe has a prior juvenile record that was not disclosed. Sources said he was serving a term of five years’ probation. Other defendants said Briscoe “smashed the victim with a rock.” Kevin Richardson, 14, of Schomburg Plaza, admitted chasing the victim and said Lopes, McCray and Santana “pushed her down to the ground,” Lederer said. OBVIOUSLY HISTORY HAS PROVEN ALL OF LEDERER'S ACCUSATIONS AS FALSE AND THE BOYS AS INNOCENT. Below is a chart with summaries of what 22 the accusers in the Cosby case have said happened and potential defenses and evidence against the charge of rape or sexual assault, that Cosby could easily offer. This Link is to an article with full descriptions about the stories of the first 18 accusers. At the site there are also videos of the accusers telling their own stories. At the following Link there is a Daily News Story containing Kathy McKee’s own words and a video of her description of the alleged rape and the aftermath.

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Reader The convergence of several trends leaves the book-buying public out in the cold. by Colin Robinson, co-publisher of OR Books. “TO read a novel is a difficult and complex art,” Virginia Woolf wrote in a 1925 essay, “How to Read a Book.” Today, with our powers of concentration atrophied by the staccato communication of the Internet and attention easily diverted to addictive entertainment on our phones and tablets, book-length reading is harder still. It’s not just more difficult to find the time and focus that a book demands. Longstanding allies of the reader, professionals who have traditionally provided guidance for those picking up a book, are disappearing fast. The broad, inclusive conversation around interesting titles that such experts helped facilitate is likewise dissipating. Reading, always a solitary affair, is increasingly a lonely one. A range of related factors have brought this to a head. Start with the publishing companies: Overall book sales have been anemic in recent years, declining 6 percent in the first half of 2013 alone. But the profits of publishers have remained largely intact; in the same period only one of what were then still the “big six” trade houses reported a decline on its bottom line. This is partly because of the higher margins on e-books. But it has also been achieved by publishers cutting costs, especially for mid-list titles. Read the rest of this article at the NY Times.

What? That he's not being manipulated at all but actually is WITH those who appear to be his political enemies??? Lol, perhaps..... But a man as smart as him would surely realize that it would have been much better for him to have entered his political career as a Republican and establish his reputation as a moderate Republican like Colin Powel. With his intellect and charm, I'm sure he would have not only risen to the Senate but probably would have STILL ended up becoming President as a Black Republican! But this way....claiming to be a Democrat while pushing Republican policies.....he incurs the wrath of Republicans as well as liberal Democrats who are continually baffled by his behavior. Why would a man engage in a deceptive strategy which makes him look like a fool, wimp, and punching bag for his political enemies? Perhaps I may be wrong..... But I still think he WANTS to be a Democrat and WANTS to be....atleast a moderate if not a little left of center. That's what he probably WANTS deep down in his heart...probably...maybe...on a warm spring afternoon, lol. But his desire to please his political enemies and try to calm them and satify them. His desire to MAKE them love him seems to influence so many of his policies. He thinks it's smart to ignore his base because he figures he has them, so he continues to focus on ways to win over his enemies.

Edited by Robert Fleming Robert has been a professional writer longer than most people have been alive. I've been fortunate to have been able to utilize his talents as a frequent AALBC.com Book Reviewer. I rediscovered this book the other day and had the same initial reaction Thumper had over a decade ago who when here viewed it. "I flipped the cover to the table of contents, read the list of authors and got excited. The authors are among the finest ever assembled in one book. Instantly After Hours became a must-read." Check the list of contributors: Charles Johnson, Colin Channer, Cole Riley, Brian Peterson, Kalamu Ya Salaam, Tracy Grant, Earl Sewell, John A. Williams, Kenji Jasper, Eric E. Pete, Alexs D. Pate, Brian Egleston, Clarence Major, Curtis Bunn, Gary Phillips, Brandon Massey, Robert Scott Adams, Jervey Tervalon, Arthur Flowers. Here is a message from Robert about this book From: Robert Fleming Sent: Thu 3/7/2013 9:38 AM "Thanks for the re-appraisal of After Hours. Wow, time flies. I remember taking this idea of all-male anthology of erotic stories to Gary Brozek, then an editor at Penguin. We had worked together under the editorial guidance of Cheryl Woodruff, when she helmed the One World imprint at Ballantine in the 1990s. When I issued the call for submissions, I was surprised by the response of some of the biggest names in AA literature. I'd always wanted to work with some of these guys, namely Charles Johnson, Kalamu Ya Salaam, Arthur Flowers, Gary Phillips, and Jervey Tervalon. However, I've remained friends with some of them over the years, including Clarence Major, Colin Channer, Earl Sewell, and Brandon Massey. It was a honor to befriend John A. Williams, one of my favorite writers, to whom I presented an award at one of the earlier Harlem Book Fair ceremonies. For years, we corresponded until he went into ill health and I miss him terribly. This book, After Hours, was selected by the Black Expressions book club and published in hardcover. It won several awards as well as it made the Erotic Book Club list, which took it to a larger audience. It has a companion piece, Intimacy, which was a collection of leading black male writers penning tales of love, committment, and marriage. That book was also selected by the Black Expressions book club. Both of these books are highpoints in my career, which has lasted from the 1970s and continues today. In fact, I have a new novel, Gift of Faith, which has been selected by the Black Expressions book club." The book is out of print but is still available on Amazon from 3rd party sellers including the hardcover published by Black Expressions.

Edited by Robert Fleming Robert has been a professional writer longer than most people have been alive. I've been fortunate to have been able to utilize his talents as a frequent AALBC.com Book Reviewer. I rediscovered this book the other day and had the same initial reaction Thumper had over a decade ago who when here viewed it. "I flipped the cover to the table of contents, read the list of authors and got excited. The authors are among the finest ever assembled in one book. Instantly After Hours became a must-read." Check the list of contributors: Charles Johnson, Colin Channer, Cole Riley, Brian Peterson, Kalamu Ya Salaam, Tracy Grant, Earl Sewell, John A. Williams, Kenji Jasper, Eric E. Pete, Alexs D. Pate, Brian Egleston, Clarence Major, Curtis Bunn, Gary Phillips, Brandon Massey, Robert Scott Adams, Jervey Tervalon, Arthur Flowers. Here is a message from Robert about this book From: Robert Fleming Sent: Thu 3/7/2013 9:38 AM "Thanks for the re-appraisal of After Hours. Wow, time flies. I remember taking this idea of all-male anthology of erotic stories to Gary Brozek, then an editor at Penguin. We had worked together under the editorial guidance of Cheryl Woodruff, when she helmed the One World imprint at Ballantine in the 1990s. When I issued the call for submissions, I was surprised by the response of some of the biggest names in AA literature. I'd always wanted to work with some of these guys, namely Charles Johnson, Kalamu Ya Salaam, Arthur Flowers, Gary Phillips, and Jervey Tervalon. However, I've remained friends with some of them over the years, including Clarence Major, Colin Channer, Earl Sewell, and Brandon Massey. It was a honor to befriend John A. Williams, one of my favorite writers, to whom I presented an award at one of the earlier Harlem Book Fair ceremonies. For years, we corresponded until he went into ill health and I miss him terribly. This book, After Hours, was selected by the Black Expressions book club and published in hardcover. It won several awards as well as it made the Erotic Book Club list, which took it to a larger audience. It has a companion piece, Intimacy, which was a collection of leading black male writers penning tales of love, committment, and marriage. That book was also selected by the Black Expressions book club. Both of these books are highpoints in my career, which has lasted from the 1970s and continues today. In fact, I have a new novel, Gift of Faith, which has been selected by the Black Expressions book club." The book is out of print but is still available on Amazon from 3rd party sellers including the hardcover published by Black Expressions.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Special to Feature Editors Contact: Maēshay k. Lewis E-mail: writers@mec.cuny.edu Phone: 718-804-8882 Contact: Clarence V. Reynolds E-mail: Clarenciov@msn.com Phone: 718-804-8883 The Center for Black Literature Hotline: 718-270-4811 The Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College Celebrates Black History Month with Voices from the African Diaspora NATIONAL –In celebration of Black History Month, on Thursday, February 21, 2013, the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College, CUNY, will host Voices from the African Diaspora: A Literary Salon featuring Pamela Newkirk, author of Letters from Black America; novelist and journalist Christopher John Farley; poet Tony Medina, author of An Onion of Wars; and poet Khalil Almustafa. The evening will serve as a kick-off event for the Center for Black Literature’s Tenth Anniversary and the Center will also be celebrating the publication of the Killens Review of Arts & Letters. The evening will also reflect upon the civil rights leader Malcolm X, who was assassinated on this date in 1965. The salon will also feature dramatic readings by Medgar Evers College students. Book signings will follow the event. As part of CBL’s John Oliver Killens Reading Series, the literary salon is a tribute to the late John Oliver Killens, author, activist, social critic, educator and former writer-in-residence at Medgar Evers College. Killens spent four decades writing and working to support black writers and their work. His vision was to host a National Black Writers Conference every year and he was the visionary leader behind the hosting of the Conference at the college. The Killens Review of Arts & Letters, published by the Center for Black Literature, is a journal dedicated to supporting the mission and work of the John Oliver Killens Chair at Medgar Evers College. About the Writers Pamela Newkirk is professor in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications and director of the undergraduate studies program at New York University. She is the author of Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media (2000), which was awarded the National Press Club Award for Media Criticism and editor of A Love No Less: More Than Two Centuries of African American Love Letters (2003). Her most recent book is Letters from Black America: Intimate Portraits of the African American Experience (2009), a collection of letters from a wide variety of African-Americans. Christopher John Farley has worked as a music critic at Time magazine and is currently an editor at The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of two novels, My Favorite War (1996) and Kingston by Starlight (2005). His 2001 book Aaliyah: More Than a Woman was a national best seller. He is the coauthor of Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues, the companion volume to the PBS series. Farley is also the author of Before the Legend: the Rise of Bob Marley, which was named one of best books of 2006 by Black Issues Book Review. His short story is featured in the anthology Kingston Noir (2012), edited by Colin Channer. Kahlil Almustafa, known as the People’s Poet, is the 2002 Nuyorican Grand Slam Champion and the author of four books of poetry and his debut CD CounterIntelligence. His collection of 15 years of poetry, Growing Up Hip-Hop, is used in more than 40 classrooms nationally from the elementary to the university level. In 2009, almustafa completed the “100 Poems for 100 Days” project where he wrote 100 poems in the first 100 days of Barack Obama’s presidency published in a collection of poems entitled From Auction Block to Oval Office. Tony Medina is the author/editor of sixteen books for adults and young readers, including DeShawn Days (Lee & Low Books, 2001), Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam (Random House/Three Rivers Press, 2001), Love to Langston (Lee & Low Books, 2002), Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature & Art (Third World Press, 2002). Medina is the first Professor of Creative Writing at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and his poetry, fiction, and essays appear in more than ninety publications and two CD compilations. His latest books are The President Looks Like Me and Other Poems (Just Us Books, 2013); An Onion of Wars (Third World Press, 2012); I and I, Bob Marley (Lee & Low Books, 2009), and My Old Man Was Always on the Lam (NYQ Books, 2011). About the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College The mission of the Center for Black Literature is to expand, broaden, and enrich the public’s knowledge and aesthetic appreciation of the value of black literature. Through a series of programs that build an audience for the reading, discussion, and critical analysis of contemporary black literature and that serve as a forum for the research and study of black literature, the Center convenes and supports various literary programs and events such as author signings, writing workshops, panel discussions, conferences, and symposia. The Center also collaborates with various organizations including public schools, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Museum, the PEN American Center, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. In order to accomplish its mission and sustain its programming, the Center must raise funds through private and public organizations and foundations. Funding for Center programs has been provided by organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the New York Council on the Humanities, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Poets & Writers, and the Independence Community Foundation. For more information about the Center for Black Literature, visit www.centerforblackliterature.org or call 718-804-8883. ### Medgar Evers College 1650 Bedford Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11225 writers@mec.cuny.edu www.centerforblackliterature.org Brenda M. Greene, Ph.D. Executive Director CBL Advisory Board Myrlie Evers-Williams Honorary Chair Dale Allender Associate Executive Director National Council of Teachers of English Patrick A. Buddington Chief Marketing Officer IMC Communications Group Richard Jones Jr. Executive Dean Accreditation and Quality Assurance and Institutional Effectiveness Medgar Evers College, CUNY Louise Mirrer President and CEO New-York Historical Society Lawrence Schiller President and Co-Founder The Norman Mailer Center Richard Wesley Writer, Goldberg Chair, Department of Dramatic Writing New York University John Edgar Wideman Writer, ASA Messer Professor of African American Studies &English Brown University Marcia White President Personalized Skincare Schawannah Wright Manager of Community Involvement Brooklyn Museum of Art

Cynique, your youth sounds very quite nice. Seems your moniker would be Optimique with that upbringing In stark contrast to your rearing. No one "owned" where the lived, very few had a car, there where no "white" kids, (though one could argue the some of the Puerto Ricans were actually white -- but that is another conversation). The City University, which Colin Powell attended a few years earlier, was free. The neighborhood was clean -- kids couldn't even play on the grass. Crime was low and folks seemed to be pretty content -- at least from the eyes of a child. Beginning in the late 60's the wheels fell off. My neighborhood became the ghetto. Kids I knew, personally, were being murdered, regularly -- kids just like me, wrong place at the wrong time or doing something stupid, but paying a price far too high. Thinking back on it now. I was afraid a lot... (y'all don't tell my mom). By the time I went to college in 1980 the 'hood was a hell hole. Most of my peers did not go to college, in fact more people my age, I'm sure, were incarcerated than in college. But even then the majority of us still graduated from high school. By the later 1980's "Wilding" was a common term and demographers were on the look out for the emergence of the "Super Predator". Several young boys were send to jail on trumped up charges and are known today as the Central Park Five. Today the hood is pretty nice. Fine new restaurants, banks, markets with fresh produce, clean parks, safe streets, and city services, Today there are plenty of white faces pushing strollers down streets that residents, a few years prior, would not venture down after dark. There is plenty of new housing long time residents can't afford. The remaining long term residents, see the writing and the wall know, deep down, their days in Harlem are numbered. The venerable Lenox Lounge closes it's doors this month. A venue I popped in one day and saw Branford Marsalis play. The venue where scenes from Shaft (both of them) and American Gangster were filmed. I believe a sushi bar will replace it. So yeah my perceptions of Cosby in the 1980's and Black love on film today are viewed from a very different perspective. All of the movies and TV shows you cited were comedies -- with Why Did I get Married being a complete farce -- certainly not a film I would use as an example of positive Black on Black love. But in any event the films are the exception not the rule. JeenyWhoa post made me sensitive to issues I'd not considered... So I completely understand if there are Black folks (not saying you fall into the category Cynique) that are perfectly content with how Black people are portrayed in major motion pictures and network TV. They can watch Kerry Washington turn into mush over the white dude on Scandal without their stomachs turning like mine -- indeed they may be riveted by the sight. And judging by some of the commentary I've found on Facebook (which is how i discovered the program), they are. At the end of the day, I only see things getting "worse". So I look for films from independent filmmakers like Ava Duvernay, and Nollywood. Y'all can keep the bullshit Hollywood keeps churning out. I stopped watching network broadcast TV long ago for this very reason. That said, I'm REALLY enjoyed that last Star Trek. Zoe Saldana and Spock did not bother me in the least bit I guess Vulcan's don't count in my racism (where is Tuvok when you need him?)

In the circles I roll in, black women had a higher opinion of Condeleeza than black men, Troy. Condi was smart and articulate and worked her way up to a high position but, insecure "brothers" preferred to ridicule her and portray her as being enamoured of the president. She didn't do a lot of sucking up which is why people like Dick Cheney resented her. "Inside sources" say that "Dubya" depended on her for advice and respected her opinions, and in this capacity, she did wield a degree of power. To me, General Colin Powell was masquerading as a politician. He always seemed to be smirking at the Republicans and winking at the Democrats. He had that teflon facade and black folks don't seemed to have blamed him for the weapons of mass destruction fiasco. Now he's a very popular motivational speaker at black events. Moderate Republicans can make the cut with the black award-bestowers, but if they didn't give Michael Steele his props as the first black Chairman of the Repubican National Committee, I doubt if they'll acknowledge Herman Cain's becoming the CEO of a pizza company. All of the awards handed out by traditionally liberal black organizations do seem to be focused more on celebrity than accomplishment - a testament to their vapidity. boitumelo's view represents the mixed emotions black people experience. Black ministers of today take a lot of heat because they seem so greedy and ineffective but everybody agrees that our race needs spiritual renewal. Black Republicans seem to be more reflective of personal success than black Democrats who appeal to the rank-and-file black folks, but neither party has been able to make a big difference in the plight of America's black population. Barack Obama is a symbol of this impotency.

"Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell have escaped this stigma..." Well Cynique that depends upon the circles you role in -- especially for Condi. "Real humanitarians [sic] and philanthropists don't require trophies and plaques. Their rewards are derived from the satisfaction of helping those in need." This is very true, but because of the way we recognize people, the real humanitarians do not get the resources that they could get. Those funds go to the most popular. So all those awards mean something in that they can help raise the profiles of real humanitarians. But they generally go to celebrities, which is more profitable.

Well, boitumelo, in your repetitioius rants, you generalize too much about black preachers. All of them are not corrupt child molesters, and most black celebrities, although not activists, do contribute money to civil rights causes and charities, if for no other reason than to provide them with tax write-offs. In fact, to polish their images and boost their careers a lot of them establish foundations in their names to create the impression that they are "giving back". Certain activists are, themselves, professionals who earn their living by raising funds for popular causes, a good perentage of these funds going to pay their high salaries. It's all a big sham. Republicans are just "persona non grata" presences in high profile black organizations, because too many of them are preceived as Uncle Toms. Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell have escaped this stigma, but Clarence Thomas and Herman Cain just exude that shuffling quality of sucking up to white people, their attitudes implying that I got mine, now all of you sorry-assed niggas need to find a way to get yours. Real humanitaries and philanthropists don't require trophies and plaques. Their rewards are derived from the satisfaction of helping those in need.

I actually do like Colin and Condi because they are moderates, maybe even Independents masquerading as Republicans. I appreciate your being fair in not judging Black maveriks, Troy. One of the hardest things I find to do is to be objective enough to respect conservative black Republicans; especially the young hot shots who always strike me as striving too hard to "act white".They actually repel me because it's like they are trying to escape their blackness, rather than diversify the Republican party. It's true that at first MLK met with resistance from southern black leaders who didn't want to rock the boat because they were the ones who would be the targets of white retaliation. Up North, we just adored Dr. King from the start because he was so eloquent and on point and most of all because we had the luxury of agreeing with him without participating in his activism. Malcolm X didn't meet with that much resistance among blacks because we liked the way he rubbed white peoples noses in their shit, and because he never advised us to turn the other cheek or embrace nonviolence. The Black Panthers never enjoyed widespread acceptance, because they were too radical. Revolution was great as the subject of fiery rhetoric, but nobody ever really believed that we could overthrow the government, even at local levels. Urban police forces had no trouble with fighting fire with fire and would shoot you down in the street or your bed as was the case with Panther leader, Fred Hampton, all of this with the approval of J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI.

LOL! Waterstar, have you considered that you did not post the 60 minutes idea because it presented a more balanced portray of the man. While 60 Minutes did shy away from the controversy surrounding the man they showed another side of Thomas. A side that Black folks want to ignore. People are very complex. As far as the collage I have no problem with any of the folks in them. Since I've been an adult I have not expected Black people to behave in stereo typical "black" ways. In fact I actually respect Black folks that express and opinion that goes counter to the standard Black position. It takes courage to do this. I don't have to agree with them, but in this regard I do respect them. MLK was vilified by many if not most in the Black community when he started out. Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and other great leaders were also rejected by the majority of Black people. MLK, Malcolm, had courage -- courage that has not been demonstrated by likes of Obama or the vast majority of other politicians. As far as the collage, Armstrong Williams is fine. I added the fictional characters in jest. I not sure we are doing ourselves any favors by casting folks like Condi and Colin as traitors to the race.

I say about the Republicans the same thing I say about the Afro-centric people, revering the motherland and reaching out to it, WTF have you done for me lately? The only thing Republicans did for black folks was to free the slaves then desert them during Reconstruction.. Ol racist, aristocratic, Democrat FDR. pulled black folks along with the rest of the country out of the doldrums of the depression with the National Recovery Act, a program that put my Uncle back to work with the WPA and sent my brother went off to CMTC camp in Ft Riley Kansas an experience he greatly learned from. My parents were the recipient of relief funds that suppied us with oat meal and milk and kept other free food on our table to keep us from starving. I have a copy of a slave narrative that my grandfather who was a freed slave dictated to one of the representatives of the Arts project that was created during the depression era, putting to work people who were dispersed throughout the country to record these documents. Later in life, my parents collected social security pensons. Ol feisty Democrat Harry Truman signed the bill to integrate the arm forces something my air force veteran husband appreciated. Good ol boy Democrat LBJ shoved through congress a massive civil rights bill. Crumbs, I know, but then nobody is this country gets the the whole loaf of bread. A fact of life, in the real world. Yes, we know the old lecher Bill Clinton hurt Lani Guinier's feelings when she wanted to infuse her radical politics into her appointed position, and enacted the "3 strikes you're out" legislation into the judical system. He also balanced the budget and introduced the family leave provisions into the work place and kept us out of war. Unlike Democrat Jimmy Carter, Republican Ronald Reagan was never a friend to black people. Colin Powell co-signed to the Bush-Cheney non-existant weapons of mass destruction deception that ignited the long costly Iraq war. Democrat Obama approved the mission to bring Osama bi Ladin down. I'm not here to canonize the Democrat rascals, but I am here to question the idea that Republicans give a damn about the problems of black people and care whether or not we throw in with them, or if we voted for them, they would reward us. What have the people you pictured done for us except to serve as poster children for oreos. BTW, Condi Rice would be a good running mate for Romney but those conservative Republicans are having a fit about the idea of putting a black woman on the ticket. They also treat MIchael Steele like a step child, and they ousted him from his job when he was head of the RNC because he got too uppity.

Cynique, any rational human being knows that Gawd is republican. As for those who have come from other parts of The Americas, this land is much more their home than is the patriotic settlers. Again, cycles though. Wat a bam bam to come... Also, you often trip me out, but this just took the cake. Cynique said: "Black folks and their point men Cornel and Tavis are also stewing in their collard green juices because Obama hasn’t thrown them any corn bread crumbs." :D People have amnesia like no other, too. I clearly remember how Tavis Smiley was a forreal (Bill) Hillary Clinton supporter. I remember Maya Angelou with her "my girl" commercials about Hillary Clinton. I don't know how long it's going to take people in America to see politicks for what they are, whether the face is white, black, or aything else. As long as the society is one based on profits before people, the politicians, scientists, as well as community "leaders", etc. will reflect that. As for the author of the article, she is not at all in the "Why has Obama da Christ forsaken us" bunch, though (sadly) most truly are. This is an article that she wrote in 2008 and I think that it was a very understandable angle: Two American moments, which one will we extend and sustain? "I know the America on the left. I am so glad to meet the America on the right. I will never forget the historic victory of November 4, 2008." Ezili Dantò I Don't Know this America....But I'm most happy to meet it by Ezili Dantò, Nov. 5, 2008, Haitian Perspectives I grew up with the picture on the left. That's the America that lynched Black soldiers in their uniforms after World War II. It's the America I was taught. It's the America unfortunately I've lived through. It's the America that killed the Dreamer. Yes, I grew up with the picture on the left. I know that America. But yesterday, on November 4, 2008, I was most happy to actually meet the America that chose to make the picture on the right its new dawn.... Honestly, as someone raised in post-Civil Rights America, I don't know this America. I didn't think it was possible. I am most happy to meet this America and I am most thankful for President-elect Barack Obama's unyielding audacity of hope. Most happy to have taken part in it because he envisioned what could be. I am glad to meet this America of new possibilities, this America of November 4, 2008. I want to be part of this America where I don't feel an outsider to Officialdom because I work for human rights, social justice and equality, workers rights, reciprocal trade, respect for Haitian democracy and constitutional rule. I hope that that America won't again turn away from this hope for the poor and disenfranchised all over this planet, and go back to promoting the special interests of the corporate elites, valuing profit over people. Senator Barack Obama's victory has introduced me to the possibility of that America. That's a stunning feat. I hope all of us rise up to meet this America we all took a glimpse of on November 4th. Change would truly have come if we actually ACT to extend the November 4th values and broad, inter-generational coalition, across the races, transcending political party, class and creeds that was forged to elect Barack Obama. And extend it each and everyday of our lives. I didn't believe it existed or could be pulled forth in my lifetime. That I've lived to see it, to know it's there and not just the ephemeral dream; that I have lived to see a Black man, this man of integrity and enormous vision and competence, this son of an African, with an aunt who is still an "illegal alien" about to call home, a White House built by the forced labor of African captives, that this America exists and was pulled forth for the world to see, makes me more thankful than I can say. I pour libation for all the Ancestors who did not live to see that the color line has been crossed. I weep for all the American lives and Iraqi lives in Iraq and elsewhere around the world that paid the ultimate price for this day to come so simply. I pray the children in the Congo will benefit from this new day. I hope this means Haitian lives will also be more valued and a new US-Haiti partnership is on the horizon. I pray that a new dawn of American leadership is at hand and hope that President Barack Obama will work with us as we've outlined in "What Haitian Americans are Asking of the New US President." Four years ago, part of HLLN mission, as articulated in Campaign Six was to help to elect a President that would not extend the tyranny and disenfranchisement of the Black masses that Bush Regime change brought to Haiti in February 2004. We hope to retire that campaign now and have a working relationship with this new Congress and this new President. Yes we can - Wi nou kapab. I thank and am so deeply grateful to all those who worked to get out the vote and so blessed to meet this America I don't know but want to get to know, sustain, belong to and have a relationship with. It's been a long time coming... Marguerite Laurent/Ezili Dantò Founder and President, Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network November 5, 2008 (See Background Essay - The America I Know) *********************************************************************** Forwarded by Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network *********************************************************************** Two American moments, which one will we extend and sustain? Yes, we did it! OBAMA 08’!!! Change Has Come to America - Obama's new website **************************************** Background essay: The America I Know Nothing that I know or have lived, especially after Bush's bloody regime change in Haiti on February 29, 2004, prepared me for the momentous election of a tolerant, compassionate, (seemingly people-over-profit) Black man - who stands for a more equitable world - to the presidency of the United States. The US I knew had disregarded the laws, so at least I thought if Obama won, the election would be stolen or at least there would be some haggling for a week, at the minimum. I was not prepared for the unanimous acceptance of a Black man as president of the United States by 11pm on election night. The America I knew was all about “plausible deniability,” had a shameful legacy of racism, had carried on a pre-emptive war, lied to the American people about weapons of mass destruction, lied to the American people about what they are doing in Haiti, passed the Patriot Act, tortures prisoners at Guantanamo, discriminates against Haitian immigrants... I don’t know the November 4, 2008 America…But I'd like to make it real and have a relationship with it. The US I know: Flaunt their love of justice and liberty and then support Taliban-type regimes and when that goes awry, bomb the heck out of Afghanistan. The America I know: Sponsor elections throughout “the developing” world, and then outfit their own private armies, to “restore order” and reverse said elections whenever the US-sponsored candidate fails to be elected by the populist. Mobutu, Duvalier, the Gerald Latortue Boca Raton Regime, who maintained these? The America I know: Armed and trained thugs and convicted felons, Louis Jodel Chamblain and Guy Philippe in the Dominican Republic to invade Haiti on Feb. 2004 in order to end Haiti’s Constitutional democracy and when these surrogates could not complete the task... The America I know: Sent in US Special forces, with the assistance of French and Canadian soldiers, to kidnap the Constitutionally elected President of Haiti and exiled him to the Central African Republic in order to dominate Haiti, secure the Haitian market for US goods and take by US-sponsored force, once again, Haitian resources – state-owned companies, Haiti’s gold, oil, gas reserves, coltan, et al... and all they couldn't persuade Haitian President Aristide or the Haitian people, to give away. The America I know: Was built on the genocide of the Amerindians, the enslavement of Africans, and then the blood of centuries of lynching with impunity, the razing to the very ground of Black cities like Rosewood and the “Black Wall Street” in Oklahoma, the colonization of Haiti for 19 years as well as the neocolonization of Dominican Republic, Latin America…; built on gunboat diplomacy and US marines bringing (their sort of) “order” to “backwards” Black and Brown countries all over the world. The America I know: Legalized murders and mayhems under Jim Crow for 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation; then after the Civil Rights Movement, denied equal rights to Blacks-Americans through racial profiling, mandatory sentencing, the criminalization of poverty and drug addiction otherwise known as the “war against drugs,” or more aptly, the war against young Black males.” The America I know: Trained death squad soldiers and sent them forth, from Fort Benning, Georgia, unto the Haitian people, onto the people of Latin America.... The America I know: Employed Toto Constant, Haiti's strongman who was the head of the FRAPH death squad that murdered more than 3,000 Haitians from 1991- to 94 and then gave this terrorist asylum in New York while denying fleeing innocent Haitian refugees even a hearing of their asylum claims... The America I know: Incarcerated and indefinitely detained Black children, women and men, whose only crime is that they are poor and from Haiti, at Guantanamo Bay, before they started using it as a place to indefinitely incarcerate and torture Al Qaeda, and other "enemy combatants". The America I know: Has an overwhelming, disproportionately high African American male population (more than 50% of total US prisoners) in jail when we only make up 13% of the population. More than half of death row prisoners in the US are Black males. That's the America I know. That's the America I thought would never make a righteous Black man with the democratic and social justice values of Barack Obama its President. I know the America of the dream that all men are created equal. I was raised in the post-Civil Rights era of the dream, again, deferred for the masses. I was raised in the post-Civil Rights era where America was starting to look like Haiti, with Katrina lifting up for the world to see the huddled and excluded Black US masses left behind and Ophra, Michael Jordan and PDitty representing the few who had successfully made it in an America where overt institutional racism was replaced by the more insidious covert institutional racism and its denial... "Race doesn’t matter" the Neocon chorus went, and most vociferously by the right wing neo-conservative blacks who were universally celebrated as the “good Black” the "objective" and "not angry" Blacks. Like in Haiti, these Black middlemen told white America what their rich white benefactors wanted them too say and what white Neocon-rule America wanted to hear. Who are some of these black "conservatives?" Well, African American folks like Shelby Steele, Ward Connelly, Armstrong Williams, Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas, et al... That's the America I know. Is the nightmare is over? President Barack Obama was born of an African father, a white mother from America, spent his childhood in Asia - America/Africa/Asia - will this internationalist bring US change that will help bring relief to the disenfranchised of the world - to the children in Haiti, Baghdad, Congo, Beirut, Gaza, and all the other places in the crosshairs of the American empire's superpower guns? There is work to be done, and it's up to all of us, not just President Barack Obama. In his victory speech, President-elect Barack Obama, had the vision to place the responsibility for the welfare of the nation in our own hands, us the citizens, where, in a democracy, it truly must rest. We know the odds, but Obama’s victory has taught us not to be led by fear or doubt but faith and hope. He’s taught us that anything is possible. Yes we can - Wi nou kapab. Marguerite Laurent/Ezili Dantò Founder and President, Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network November 5, 2008

http://blackagendareport.com/content/not-voting-obama-were-not-even-buying-voting-ticket-show Not voting for Obama: We’re not even buying a voting ticket to the show by Ezili Danto I speak my heart and mind on this. In 2008, Ezili’s HLLN supported a vote for Obama, not because we entirely believed the Obama fairytale (See, The America I Know, 2008.) We supported a vote for Obama in 2008 for both pragmatic and idealistic reasons. But more so because eight years of Bush and the application of the Wall Street deregulation excesses left over from Bill Clinton and others had reached a crescendo point that was shockingly, brutally horrible and demoralizing for the entire world. But we also campaigned and urged a vote for Obama, despite his apparent selection by one-percenter forces, because the symbolic victory and metaphoric narrative of “The Whitehouse: From Sally Hemings to Michelle Obama” was a powerful and compelling vision we wished to participate in bringing to a reality for the human race. (That sentiment was expressed in this essay - I Don’t Know this America…But I’m Most Happy to Meet It .) So, Ezili’s HLLN actively campaigned for getting rid of the Republicans that had presided over the 1991 and 2004 unconstitutional regime changes in Haiti. We campaigned so that Obama would give Haiti temporary protected status (TPS), end deportations, trade, promote democratic elections in Haiti, value and invest in the Diaspora remittances for reform in Haiti instead of tied-aid to NGOs, end the US occupation of Haiti behind UN guns, provide relief to Main Street in America, universal health care, social justice, stop torture, end the resource wars abroad. (See, Towards A New US-Haiti Partnership: What Haitian Americans Ask of the New US President and Congress.) Instead, for instance, it took the earthquake which ended the lives of 310,000 Haitians before front man, Barack Obama, deigned to give limited TPS and stop deportations. Then less than a year later he re-started deportations even with UN-imported cholera ravages and failed aid to the earthquake victims. But George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton Obama would soon destroy even the tiny scraps of good he brought with TPS by unleashing Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton on Haiti’s head for the duration, not to mention the Bush-Clinton partnership for earthquake “relief”. (Corruption uninterrupted and Haiti’s Hotel Boom: Only for the Rich.) We wrote then our dissent. “Give us a 100 hard right-wing Republicans to face any day. Keep the namby pamby Democrats or progressive left selling their constituents out in the name of some mythical, so-called bipartisanship. They are the worst and most dangerous enablers of neoliberal globalization masturbating on the poor’s imposed pain, poverty and suffering.” (See Obama’s offered HOPE is sweatshop slavery ; Since before the fall of the US-supported Duvalier dictatorships in 1986, the US has been bringing “hope” to Haiti. The newest, profit-over-people sweatshop hoax is Caracol, a sweatshop project masking the foreign appropriation of fertile Haiti lands and deep water ports.) Today, any politician who uses the word “hope” and “change” – as in, “I am the change you’re looking for” – is unable to waste our time with US perverted elections whatsoever. The whole system is corrupt. Integrating with injustice is no longer an option. Obama was the straw that broke the camel’s back for us. Truly, his tenure has hurt our hearts in so many ways. Not least of which is the fact that a Black man has become number one superpower overseer of the profit-over-people paradigm. Ezili’s HLLN will not be supporting Obama’s reelection. We suggest conscious folks nix the political theater of the Republicans and Democrats, concentrate on local self-reliance, local community building, local people empowerment, local building of relevant educational, health care, local food sovereignty, local production, local work and local communication self-sufficiency infrastructures. Don’t count on any government to “save you”. Not happening folks, not with perverted electoral politics, whether you’re in the US or Haiti. The corporations have bought out the politicians and they’re about servicing Wall Street, giving corporate welfare, maintaining their jobs at ALL cost. Obama’s betrayal of core justice values, cuddling Wall Street instead of making it accountable, just to get re-elected cannot sufficiently be offset by general fear of the Republican’s Supreme Court nominations. We must speak truth to power, live without fear. And the Supreme Court has presided over a judiciary that disproportionately favors the wealthy, puts more Black men into the prison system than anywhere else in the world for nonviolent crimes such as being addicted to “inhaling.” Moreover, what has the Supreme Court done for Main Street lately anyhow? Or, to preserve its objectivity, its reputed sacredness? Like the Democratic and Republican members of Congress, the folks at the Supreme Court are a reflection of the times. They have simply become an arm of the global corporatocracy, giving more human rights to corporations than to human beings. Supreme Court appointments are simply not a sufficiently important issue to vote Democrat. The old dog – “vote-for-the-lesser-of-the-two-evils” argument no longer has traction – won’t hunt. People, of all ethnicities, are tired of dealing with evil. Period. If being a “pragmatist” or a “realist” means choosing only amongst evil, count us OUT. The US-Euro pragmatic philosophy has a place, brings lots of comfort, but it is also responsible for the myopic resource wars and prevalent loss of the human soul amongst the schooled peoples worldwide, not to mention the rut and perennial impasse we’re in with perverted US electoral politics. Fact is, the US voting rights our Ancestors fought and died for, are redistricted out of legitimacy at the whim of the more wealthy and more powerful. And that’s LEGAL! I am envisioning another world. Not integrating with injustice. Obama betrayed the American voters who expected he would not gut the US Constitution. But he has. And, some of us here at HLLN are lawyers. This writer herself is a member of two US State bars where the oath I made was to protect the US Constitution. Moreover, as a born-Haitian - with a legacy to reach for - who has spent what seems a lifetime advocating against the US destruction of legitimate elections in Haiti, against the US and the wealthy’s support of apartheid and ethnocide in Haiti, against US destruction of the 1987 Haiti Constitution with illegal US regime changes in Haiti, as an advocate who has had to deal with the poor Haitians’ indiscriminate indefinite detention simply because the US and Haiti’s repugnant undemocratic forces suspect these poor voted and supported Lavalas, I find NOTHING redeeming about the Constitutional lawyer, named Barack Obama. (President Obama Signs Indefinite Detention Into Law ; Activists sue Obama, others over National Defense Authorization Act ; Obama’s abysmal record on civil liberties; Obama re-authorizes the Patriot Act ; Obama Supports – sweeping intelligence surveillance -FISA Legislation ; Obama preserves renditions ; Obama Endorses Bush Secrecy On Torture And Rendition.) It’s simply unforgivable on so many levels that Barack Obama went further than George W. Bush in denying human rights and social justice to US and world peoples, like Haitians. Under the Obama tenure, indefinite military detention of U.S. citizens is lawful in the land of the free and home of the brave and Haitians are saddled with George W. Bush and Bill Clinton to help us become more a democratic and stable Black nation! Susan Rice takes over the role Colin Powell played for the Bushes while Cheryl Mills is out there pushing the Duvalierist agenda in Haiti previously championed by Bill Clinton’s commerce secretary, the late Ron Brown. Yes racism against Obama exist. No doubt. But, Obama ruined his own integrity by betraying the hopeful world who wished respite from empire’s invasions, narcissism, resource wars, denial of social justice and land grabs behind the do-gooder facade. Obama especially betrayed the weary American people who voted for him. Yes, Obama probably will win again over Romney. The powers that be are very satisfied with the pretty Black family mask of US imperialism and Americans, of all ethnicities, are programmed for the fairytale narrative and for suburban amnesia; would rather have comfort to liberty. Obama will most likely win again because denial is easier than the hard reality of Obama’s betrayal of Main Street and championing of corporate welfare for Wall Street. Under Obama, like it was under Bill Clinton, the one-percenters continued their white supremacist and land/resource grabbing invasions and betrayal of Africa, continued the perennial US war in Haiti, against the poor worldwide, against countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, et al… Obama did not bring American soldiers home but started other wars. Both parties are the same. And, in a world of infinite possibilities we choose not between the lesser of two evil. In fact, those of us who are not into denial and work at the human-rights front lines prefer to face the Republican snake head-on than the confused and gutless Democrat chameleon whining about being a progressive when it is NOT. There’s no difference between the two US political parties, except one is more direct in its tyranny against the most vulnerable amongst us. The other hides behind pseudo liberalism and gives us Clintonesque deregulation, NAFTA unfair trade and loss of US jobs, gutting Glass-Steagal to serve the Goldman Sachs cadres, Welfare-to-Work when all work has flown overseas where US superpower might makes sure there’s no minimum wage, no human rights, unions or respect for Black and Brown life. Whoever is in charge of the profit-over-people paradigm, Democrat or Republican, Ezili’s HLLN will be confronting 24/7. Full time. Frankly we prefer watching the Democrats in the opposition to the Republicans opposing EVERYTHING that they sat by and watch OBAMA preside over. There’s much less emotional tie-in for me there. If that means facing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLWnB9FGmWE, and that is some sort of Armageddon, so be it. Bring it on. But there are other choices, like everyone NOT showing up for this theater and nullifying the elections. Envision that. A courageous electorate that stops believing things must stay as they are with the duopoly. Just imagine it. Yes indeed I am a dreamer. Nothing changes without risk. Pragmatism is just a cop-out. Since it doesn’t matter who we vote for, best to make a statement. I think that’s pragmatic. More so than voting for Obama, the servicing U.S.-Euro http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAaQNACwaLw. Share your thoughts with us on this position. With respect, Ezili Dantò May 4, 2012

www.democracynow.org Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man from His Native Land ( 2004) Longtime human rights activist and TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson joins us in our firehouse studios to talk about U.S. foreign policy in Africa and the Caribbean, why he refused an honorary degree from Georgetown after the CIA’s George Tenet spoke there and his latest book "Quitting America" which explains why he left the U.S. to live in St. Kitts-Nevis. [includes transcript] As we have pointed out before on the program, in his state of the union address last month, President Bush did not mention the word Africa once during the entire speech. In last year’s address, Bush’s most prominent mention of Africa was the accusation that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger–an allegation that later turned out to be entirely baseless. Today we are going to take an extensive look at Bush’s policies toward Africa, African-Americans and the Caribbean with one of the most well-known critics of US foreign policy toward these areas of the world: Randall Robinson. He is a longtime human rights activist who founded the organization TransAfrica in 1977 to address U.S. policy toward Africa and the Caribbean. Among his most well-known campaigns [ ] was against the apartheid regime in South Africa and US support for it. In 1994, Robinson made national headlines as he staged a 27-day hunger strike to protest US actions in Haiti. He is one of the people most credited with bringing the issue of reparations for slavery into the mainstream with his book "The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks." Last year He once declined an honorary degree from Georgetown University because George Tenet, the director of the CIA and an ardent supporter of the invasion of Iraq, had been invited the day before to speak at one of Georgetown’s graduation exercises. Three weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, Robinson officially "quit" the US and moved to St. Kitts-Nevis, the small Caribbean island nation where his wife was born. He has just written a new book explaining why he left. It is called "Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man From His Native Land." * Randall Robinson*, founder of TransAfrica and one of the leaders of the movement to change US policy toward the apartheid regime in South Africa. He is well known for hunger strike protests and sit-in demonstrations. His book "The Debt" brought the issue of reparations into the mainstream. His latest book is "Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man from His Native Land." AMY GOODMAN: Why did you quit? Why did you leave America? RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, we were — my wife, Hazel, and I, with our daughter Kalia were going to a place as much as we were leaving this place. St. Kitts-Nevis is a small exquisitely beautiful, democratic, well-run, civil, decent society, where people care about each other and take care of each other. These were qualities I had come to find hopelessly lacking, absent, in American society. I had discovered at this age — I was 60 when we left — that I wanted to live in a society for some time, some portion of my life, where race did not have to be a battlement, that one could get beyond that and not feel it always in one’s craw. And it’s a kind of thing that it used up so much of my energy, and the energy of so many in the United States. But perhaps more importantly, that after the active stage of this great crime against humanity, slavery and de jure discrimination that put together ran for 346 years, America became very satisfied with itself, that it had done all that it was going to do, while the victims of this long-running crime were left wounded in the worst way: families destroyed, chances for healthy socializations gone, prospects nil, and so the main bulk of the black community remained bottom stuck. The civil rights movement helped people like me, people who had come from intact families, whose parents were healthy enough to encourage us to believe that we could do well. And so, it meant that the door was open, if you could walk, perhaps could you get through it, but many could not, and they remained bottom stuck. Black community cleaved into two parts: those who could benefit and those who were too terribly devastated to do so. Nothing has been done for them. So, we find ourselves now in a situation in America with a society in terrible shape, but with that condition, fundamentally ignored by those who rule it. It just does not matter, even as it jeopardizes the whole of society. A poll was done recently that showed that a full half of Americans are afraid to venture more than a mile from their homes at night. The whole society has become a sort of prison. We have one 1/20ths of the world’s population with one-fourth of the world’s prisoners. There’s something wrong with that, 2 million and climbing, half of whom are black, because of the reasons I detailed, in addition to the active discrimination that is ongoing. The chance of a black getting arrested, a young black male, are six times that of his white counterpart, of being incarcerated seven times, and once incarcerated will serve a sentence exactly twice as long as his white counterpart for the same crime. Blacks are half of those on death row, three-quarters when they are added to the Hispanic inmate populations. So, this business of locking up people has become a new thriving industry in America with private prisons, in a democracy, which means that in order to have your stock increase in value in a private prison, you have to get more prisoners. So, states like California are investing much more in prison construction than they are in ground-up construction of new universities. And all of this goes on with the full blessing of not just governments that come and go, Democratic and Republican, but with the full blessing of media, the popular culture, and all of the rest. In our foreign policy, this hyperpower, I think is coming to endanger the entire world, because now it operates willy-nilly without checks and balances. Iraq is just one example of the kind of disaster that is possible when we have a nation so powerful, so full of itself, unwilling to examine itself, self absorbed, and narcissistic in all of what that means, that it will go forward against the grain of the international community unilaterally, to create the disaster that Iraq will be for many generations to come. It won’t work. To think that we now in Iraq have Muslim women becoming prostitutes, servicing American soldiers just feeds the kind of hatred that is growing and felt towards Americans throughout the Islamic world. It’s a very sad thing, and we get to a point that we cannot make America listen anymore to anybody but itself. I — I just — to preserve my sanity, and I think my voice, I thought it best for me to leave. I wanted to see another place, to feel another place, and be inspired and encouraged, and enlivened by it. AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s been quite amazing to watch television over this past week, after David Kay said he couldn’t find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. All of the programs are talking about how could we have gotten it so wrong. They’re interviewing the people who got it so wrong. In the news headlines, we are pointing out that Colin Powell is now saying if he had only known what he knows now. Yet more than half the people in this country were opposed to the bombing of Iraq, did not believe, perhaps, weapons of mass destruction were an imminent threat to the United States. I haven’t seen any of those voices, the people who had said "no" from the beginning. I’m reading your book, Quitting America. Now, this book was just published, but you wrote it last year. You extensively refer to the fact that you didn’t believe there were weapons of mass destruction. Can you talk about the arguments and who put forward these arguments? RANDALL ROBINSON: The Iraq chapters in the book were written in late April, and it was apparent then that Iraq had almost from the beginning of the attack, that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. North Korea has weapons of mass destruction. They told us. We knew it. We didn’t attack North Korea. And we’re not going to attack North Korea. China has weapons of mass destruction. We’re not going to attack China. We’re not going to attack any country with weapons of mass destruction. We are bullies. That’s why we attacked Iraq. We knew they had no weapons of mass destruction. And if anybody now tries to disavow, like Mr. Powell — I know it’s ship-jumping time. Well, the administration has the sword, shopping for someone willing to fall on it, desperate now, perhaps. This administration I’m sure will be recorded in history as the most conspicuous disaster in American presidential history. AMY GOODMAN: Talk about last spring when you turned down this great honor to get an honorary degree from Georgetown University. What happened? RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, I flew up from St. Kitts-Nevis, arrived the night before. It was May, and it was wet and chilly. I stayed at the Georgetown Inn. In the morning I was to go over, they called us. They said they were going to pick me up, to come over. I absently opened the Post to the Metro section, and I saw there, above the fold, a picture of Mr. Tenet and the First Lady. Mr. Tenet had spoken at the School of Foreign Service the day before, and had received an honor, and I was stunned. I wanted so much to call Hazel in St. Kitts-Nevis, but I was uncomfortable about talking about this on the phone, so I had already made my decision, but I wasn’t quite sure how I could do it. I knew I couldn’t accept the degree at that point. What had meant so much to me as an honor, maybe I deserved it for being flattered, the vanity of the whole thing, but from that point on, it meant nothing, and I went to the school and talked to the dean who had made this happen for me. I asked him if I could speak, and I had written what I was prepared to say, and he told me, as is the case with most honorary degrees, you don’t get an opportunity to speak. You simply accept the sash and sit down. And so, I told him if I couldn’t speak, then I had to tell him I couldn’t accept it. And he asked why, and I told him. And then he — I went in to see the dean — I spoke to Tony Lewis, former New York Times columnist, about it, and I gave Tony a copy of what I was prepared to say. He was the commencement speaker. And they took me back to my hotel, and I went back to St. Kitts-Nevis. And although my name was on the program, that day, no mention was made during the exercises of why I did not participate or why I was not — why I was not there. AMY GOODMAN: We have to break for stations to identify themselves. When we come back, maybe you could read that address you didn’t get to give at Georgetown last May. RANDALL ROBINSON: Sure. AMY GOODMAN: This is "Democracy Now!" Our guest is Randall Robinson. He has written a new book. It’s called Quitting America — The Departure of a Black Man from His Native Land. Stay with us. AMY GOODMAN: "Wake up, Everybody" Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes here on "Democracy Now!–The War and Peace Report." Our guest is Randall Robinson. He is the founder of TransAfrica, based in Washington, D.C., but he left this country three weeks before 9-11, three weeks before September 11, 2001, with his wife and daughter and moved to St. Kitts-Nevis. He has just written a book about why he left America called Quitting America. Randall, if you would read. You have in your book the address that you didn’t get to read at Georgetown, turning down your honorary degree. RANDALL ROBINSON: I wrote this, of course, on the commencement day in May in my hotel room in Longhand just before I was to leave to go over to the school. "I wish to begin by apologizing to all of you if what I am about to say on your day causes you discomfort. I have fought all of my life against social injustice. I have opposed unjust communist regimes and unjust capitalist regimes. I have fought against unjust white regimes and unjust black regimes. I do not live in the United States anymore. I live on the tiny democratic Caribbean island of St. Kitts-Nevis. I only learned this morning that George Tenet, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, was to be the speaker at your School of Foreign Service exercises yesterday. I sincerely believe that in the years ahead, the entire world will come to accept that the United States has committed in Iraq a great crime against humanity, a crime against innocent Iraqi women, children, and men. Indeed, a crime against our own men and women, who have paid and will continue to pay with their lives, for the greed of America’s empire makers. In my view, President Bush, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Powell, and Mr. Tenet are little more than murderers. There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and they knew this. There is no Iraqi connection to 9-11. There was no legal justification for a war in which we have not bothered to count the Iraqi dead. America has committed an awful wrong in the sight of God, and I trust in time, that this will be the prevailing view or verdict of humanity. In any case, you have chosen the wrong person this morning. I should not have come. Indeed, I would not have come had I known before what I learned this morning, when I opened the newspapers. Americans must choose. They must choose between decency, of course, and empire, between morality and murder, between truth and deception. Mr. Tenet has the right to speech protected by our constitution, but that right should not be exercised on a platform so broadly respected as yours. I cannot accept your honor, for in my view, Georgetown University yesterday disqualified itself of the moral authority to bestow one. My candle lights little other than the interior of my own conscience; but for me, for all of my life, that has been enough." And that’s what I didn’t get to say that day. AMY GOODMAN: Randall Robinson, reading the address he would have given at Georgetown University this past May, turning down the honorary degree they wanted to give him. You are well known for taking very strong stands, as you did around the coup in Haiti, as you did when the U.S. government, then led by President Clinton, was turning back Haitian refugees. You fasted until you were getting very ill for a month. You stayed in your office at TransAfrica until Sandy Berger, the then National Security Adviser, came to your hospital bedside to ask what you would accept. He was a classmate of yours in law school? RANDALL ROBINSON: Yes. AMY GOODMAN: What you were demanding? RANDALL ROBINSON: Only that we comply with International Law, and provide sanctuary for those Haitians who were fleeing political persecution with a well-founded fear for their lives, that we behave as other nations are asked to behave, and to comply with international norms. We were rounding up Haitians, and taking them back without examination. And we were accepting Cubans, just as broadly. And the President knew at the time that many of the Haitians that we returned were being killed. And it was just an intolerable situation. President Clinton needed Florida for his re-election, and he made the calculation that Florida wanted Cubans, and they didn’t want Haitians. So, with the knowledge that these people were dying, that he sent back, in violation of international law, he did so until the hunger strike, I think, focused a more public light on his policies. AMY GOODMAN: You had a name, and they didn’t —- we would know -— RANDALL ROBINSON: It was a shameless chapter in American — in American diplomacy, particularly from a president who had gotten so much support from the black community, the black community that didn’t know enough about the full consequence of American policy, which is perhaps what you can say now about the entire American community, about our policy generally. Democracy doesn’t work without an enlightened citizenry. Ours is not very sophisticated about what we do beyond our borders. I think presidents and politicians know how suggestible the American population is, and with that knowledge comes a kind of contempt that you can tell them anything, and that’s what we have done in Iraq. And so, I think before we go to war, we ought to always ask those who support war, "Would the war in Iraq be worth the loss of a single life if that life were yours?" Before you send somebody else’s child, you ought to have to answer that question. Now, I think in World War II, many might have said "Yes," but I don’t think anybody who voted for this war, who supported it, would answer that question, "Yes." Clinton might have been asked the same question with respect to Haiti. It was a terrible thing that he was — that he was doing. AMY GOODMAN: The headlines now in Haiti are very frightening. I’m looking at the Christian Science Monitor, a piece, "New Haitian Exodus–Same Old US Treatment of Refugees. Almost daily, pro- and anti-government demonstrators flood the streets of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, disrupting business and forcing schools to close. Those calling for the departure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide show no sign of backing down. Since September, more than 50 people have died, and scores more have been wounded. Haiti has just celebrated its bicentennial since 1804." You were a close friend of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and you write about him and what’s happening in Haiti in your book Quitting America. RANDALL ROBINSON: I think he is a fine man who has been given little chance to succeed. The Republicans took both houses of the Congress shortly after he was returned to power and immediately began to organize to isolate him in his country. American bilateral assistance was cut off and channeled through NGO Organizations in Haiti that were controlled by wealthy Haitians to create the impression that the wealthy Haitians were benefiting the Haitian people and not the government that had no resources to do so. The U.S. blocked the disbursement of Inter-American bank loans, $146 million for health, water treatment, roads, education, blocked all of those monies, and that move has had disastrous effects. It was approved by the bank, but the disbursement was blocked by the United States. Again, the idea was to strangle the government of Aristide. We haven’t liked Haiti since Toussaint Louverture defeated France. George Washington hated that. Thomas Jefferson said awful things. There’s been no appreciation for Haiti’s role in making the Louisiana Purchase possible. Napoleon sold it after he lost that revolution. Since then, we have done every imaginable thing to Haiti, and are still doing it. Now in Haiti there is a minority movement being led by a Lebanese-American, Andy Apaid, against Aristide. Now, the real issue is not whether I support Aristide or not, or not whether some Haitians do or do not like Aristide. In a constitutional democracy, you must never have allowed the change of government by demonstration. You have a constitution, and you have mechanisms. Aristide wants elections. The opposition, knowing that they can’t win an election, opposes elections. The American Administration says that they will recognize no election that the opposition doesn’t participate in. The opposition says it will not participate. So, Aristide cannot have elections. The Parliament, of course, has lapsed because he cannot have those — those elections unless he wins the consent to participate from a small minority, and the U.S. is supporting this. It is a — it is an obvious, outrageous attempt to deconstruct a new democracy in the Caribbean. AMY GOODMAN: Well, the U.S. has a history of that in Haiti going back to the coup. You write about Emmanuel Constant, the head of FRAP, the paramilitary terror organization in Haiti. It’s interesting from Clinton to Bush. Bush is leading a so-called war on terror. This is a terrorist on U.S. soil. RANDALL ROBINSON: In New York. AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about it? RANDALL ROBINSON: He’s walking about freely. He led the organization in Haiti that terrorized the country when President Aristide was in exile in Washington. Every morning, bodies were found all about Port-au-Prince. The work of Toto Constant’s people: people hacked to death, shot to death, bludgeoned to death, all of that sort of stuff, was well known to us, but he had at the same time a very fast collaboration with the CIA. And so when Warren Christopher said that we cannot have a defensible relationship with a new democratic Haiti unless we return Constant to Haiti, Toto Constant warned that he knew things about the CIA that he would divulge were that the case. So, the U.S. has continued to host him here. AMY GOODMAN: Finally, on U.S. designs on St. Kitts-Nevis, we only have 30 seconds, but you tell a story about St. Kitts-Nevis wanting more support as a tourist economy, and the head of St. Kitts-Nevis meeting with a Republican congress member to talk about the future relationship. RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, that was the ostensible agenda, and the congressman said to Prime Minister Douglas, there’s one other matter. You know, we may have to leave the uh, uh — AMY GOODMAN: Vieques RANDALL ROBINSON: …Vieques, because of the protests and the cancer rates sky-rocketing, because of the exploding of the American ordinance, and all of the exercises that we conduct there. We may have to re-locate our practice ordnance exercises. We wondered if we could blow up your island from time to time… He said it with a straight face. AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for being with us. Randall Robinson is here with us in New York for another day, but he has left the United States and written a book about it, Quitting America, Randall Robinson’s book about the departure of a black man from his native land. That does it for the show.

Ok, breathbooks. Thanks for your input. I would just remind you again that I didn't say I would've preferred Colin Powell, himself, for president. I meant a Colin Powell-type, - someone who was older and projected an image of having wisdom and being in charge. I further maintained that a layman coming up with solutions to the country's problems would be an exercise in futility because, as the law-making branch of the government, Congress is who has to enact reform since this is what its members were elected to do. Or did I bring up the subject of Obama's performance. This thread has gone silent for a long while before Dee got it going again after which others chimed in and had their say. Opinions were exchanged and insults hurled, and so it went. But that's what a discussion forum is all about. So be it.