An Open Letter to President Obama on the Matter of Assata Shakur

Dear Mr. President,

First of all, let me congratulate you on your massive re election win back in November. I voted for you and am proud to have done so. However, I am troubled by the recent act by your administration of placing Assata Shakur, the former Joanne Chesimard, on the most wanted domestic terrorist list. To be perfectly honest, one of my problems with you, Mr. President, is that I've never felt comfortable trusting you to handle the problems of Black America, and this move against Shakur illustrates my point.

Do you understand that this one act has the effect of retroactively criminalizing the very movement that made your ascent to the White House possible? Do you understand the historic stain that you have allowed your Justice Department to paint all over the Black community?

With one fell swoop you have labeled everyone, from Dr. Martin Luther King on down to me as a domestic terrorist, and proclaimed our demands for equality and freedom from Jim Crow back in the day as nothing more than acts of terrorism against the United States. We're not Terrorists, Mr. President. We are Americans. Americans who have routinely and systematically been excluded from the melting pot that America proclaims itself to be.

The announcement by the Police and Federal officials in New Jersey this week, called the continued hunt for Shakur an open wound dating back some 40 years. Well what about the open wounds inflicted by COINTELPRO on Black people, Mr. President. Shakur is a classic example of what this covert government agency inflicted on my people ( not sure if they're yours) during the 60's, 70's and 80's. There was no mention of governmental complicity during the news conference. Did you think that all of us who might remember had died off or maybe decided to stay quiet since we're older now?

We're older, Mr. President, but we haven't gone away, primarily because despite working our asses off to see you live in the White House, things haven't gotten any better for us in the past few years. Some of that is conservative bigoty, but much of it is you, Mr. President. We're still not living in full economic, non racist harmonic American equality. The American dream has yet to roll down my street. Not even with you in charge of the White House and your designate Eric Holder in control of the Just-us department. No I didn't misspell Justice, Mr. President. Real Black people know that it's always been Justice for them and Just-us for us.

I keep waiting for you to take a stand for Black people, Mr. President. I keep waiting for you to find some empathy for those who look like you look. You tell the world that you're minority. You make jokes about it. You get mad when someone says otherwise. And lord knows you take enough crap from even the minor masters of the universe for appearing to be Black.

Trouble is, Mr. President, you don't even feel Black to me. You've got the cool Black factor working. You do look good in your Ray Bans as you step out of your armored Escalade. But when it comes to deep down understanding, you are seriously lacking in knowledge, passion and feeling for what it is to be a Black man in America. Your election did not come close to making America post racial. How many times does some white guy have to question your intelligence before you get mad enough to realize that.

I just don't get how you and Eric Holder could miss the incredible symbolism attached to making Assata Shakur a domesticc terrorist. You may as well have gone to Angela Davis' house, kicked down her door, and slapped cuffs on her saying double jeopardy is no longer in force. Same difference.

Amid your fight for gays and lesbians and immigrants and Latinos, your administration just told all of Black America that we don't count, and that we never counted. Even if you really feel that way, I personally thought you were smarter than that. Hell, I've been waiting for five years for some sign that you were smarter than you appear. But then again, some of the dumbest people that I know personally are academic geniuses, sporting all the book learning in the world yet not a lick of common sense.

I personally thought that you were strong enough to resist the allure and overwhelming addiction of power that comes with the Oval Office. I was wrong, apparently. You're so into the power that you've chosen to make the power grab retroactive. Our civil liberties are being wiped out. Not by the man who created the law, but by the man, you, who succeeded him.

I keep waiting for you to shed tears for Black America, Mr. President, because it is disappearing before your eyes. I keep waiting for you to choke up over the very visible inequities still written into the social system that controls American lives.

But the act of making Assata Shakur a domestic terrorist most wanted means I'm going to be waiting a long time for real black understanding coming from the White House.

You already know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Well it's a good thing you can't run for a third term, because I can't in all honesty support someone who continues to work against me and my community to its detriment. That is insanity and I'm promise you, I am not crazy. I know when to quit.

And I'm done....

Respectfully yours,

Assata Shakur a Domestic Terrorist? What in Fresh Hell is This!

By definition, Domestic Terrorism is violence committed to cause chaos and death inside your own country against your own people.

It is directed haphazardly against anonymous targets for the sole purpose of causing mayhem, primarily so the perpetrators can demonstrate their displeasure with the ruling parties in control of the government, (google-Boston Marathon, Oklahoma City Bombing, 1996 Olympic bombings, '93 World Trade Center bombings, 9/11 attacks, attack on the USS Cole).

Prior to Oklahoma City in 1995, the term Domestic Terrorism didn't really exist, because it was assumed by the powers that be, that first, no one inside America was mad enough to attack America, so all terrorism came from outside the country, and secondly, the white men who were killing randomly, acting terroristically, as members of white supremacists/anti abortion groups, were not considered terrorists. Even the Weather Underground and the SDS were not labeled terrorists (google-rich white kids who blew up stuff and robbed banks in the 1960's and '70's). Not until the white guys from the Caucasus blew up the Boston Marathon, did anyone in power begrudgingly admit that white people did terrorism against the US. Until three weeks ago terrorists were brown... Muslims, primarily, or Cubans (five imprisoned now), or Puerto Ricans (Americans but brown and spanish speaking- google FALN).

So now, since everybody, including white people, has to be considered a potential terrorist, the government apparently decided to make the rewritten definition retroactive, thereby changing the label on the historical civil rights protests, and effectively calling Assata Shakur a domestic terrorist.

If Assata Shakur is a domestic terrorist, then so am I and so is every other Black person who ever marched for civil rights in America. Today's placement on the most wanted list and bounty has indicted all of us in one fell swoop, and places us in jeopardy for speaking out against our government in protest.

Assata Shakur, for all of you historically challenged, was a member of the Black Panther Party and a member of the Black Liberation Army, back in the day when the government waged war on Black people for demanding equality.

Shakur, the Panthers the BLA and every other group that fought for civil rights was targeted by a covert government agency called COINTELPRO, which infiltrated, spied on, arrested, convicted and imprisoned Blacks who disagreed with the government, it's Jim Crow policies and institutionalized racism that continues to exist today. When they couldn't take Blacks down quietly, they executed us summarily (google- Fred Hampton).

Shakur, who is the aunt of the late Tupac, was caught up in a bunch of crimes and situations that ended violently. If you believe the police, she was responsible for nearly every bank robbery and cop killing on the east coast from 1971-1973-4.

New Jersey Police official Fuentes lied through his teeth today during the news conference stating the Shakur killed a cop by shooting him twice in the head as he lay on the ground. This was proven to be a lie during her trial, yet it continues to be told by government officials and the Feds. What...don't they have the court transcripts to refer back to?

She was tried several times, and finally convicted and sentenced to life in prison. She escaped from maximum security, finally making it to Cuba in 1984 where she was granted political asylum. She remains there to this day, quietly living, writing and speaking out. The feds have always known where she was.

Yet today, they decide to name her a domestic terrorist. She's not attacking people or building bombs to cause mass destruction. Are they afraid that Black people are going to suddenly become radicalized again in the same way that some Muslims are made radical by the Osamas of the world?

Why? It's not like America has an extradition treaty with Cuba? It's not like we're on good terms with Raul Castro or his brother Fidel, now retired. It's not like Assata is going to give herself up and yearns to come home to the US.

Maybe the feds are trying to work a trade...give us Assata and we will free the Cuban five, currently doing life sentences in an American jail.

Only time will tell..

to be continued..

Another White Guy Rampage in America

Personally, I don't give a rat's ass if the Tsarnaev brothers are white. No one who goes around throwing bombs and killing people for no reason is ever gonna make it into my top ten list of favorite people on this earth, anyway, regardless of their skin color or place of national origin. Killing and mass murder have always been equal opportunity, especially when this special brand of psychopathy as exhibited by the brothers last week unfolds across our television screens.

For some reason as yet unexplained, when guys like this throw a violent temper tantrum in order to right the perceived wrongs levied against them by society, innocents die. What happened last week felt like international terrorism only because an IED(improvised explosive device) was used. However, as the story unfolded it seemed to indicate a different kind of thing, more Columbine than 9/11. Both Columbine and 9/11 are terrorism, but different kinds of terrorism, one recognized as such, the other not so much. In the psyche of Americans, 9/11 is terrorism because of who did it, or I should say, the skin color and religion of who did it. Columbine is still considered boys acting out, read that white boys acting out, like Newtown and a couple of dozen other high school killing incidents during the past decade.

They have the money, they have access to the guns and they have the perfect hiding place, in plain sight, lost in any number of the neighborhoods inhabited by the masters of the universe. These two were so arrogant that they didn't try to run away until their pictures hit the airwaves. Then it seems they decided to go out in a blaze of glory, calling attention to themselves by killing a cop, hijacking a car, reportedly telling their victim they were the bombers and getting into a gun battle with police, complete with assault weapons right out in the street. The story goes, that little brother actually killed big brother by running over him with the get away car as he lay in the street after being tackled by a police officer, but not before he was able to call his mother and say good bye. How very American of them. Up until they revealed themselves, nobody knew who or where they were. Did they screw up and just panicked? Didn't seem like there was a plan B for these guys.

It sounds like a movie script or a scene straight out of Grand Theft Auto the video game.

What was new about this old scenario is the ease with which the police, Feds and military locked down an American city and kept it that way until they got their men. What we saw was practice implementation of Martial law. What we saw this past week in Boston would have been illegal prior to 9/11. The laws enabling this militaristic mobilization went into effect 34 days after the twin towers fell. 34 days is how long it took for Congress to pass the Patriot Act and for President Bush to sign into law.

 Rather than repeal these attacks on our civil liberties, our new President, Obama, has done everything in his power to strengthen those powers, enabling full White House control of the populace if and when it becomes necessary by using militarized police forces backed up by real military. ( All you second amendment, dooms day preppers, and apocalypse survivalists with your 14-15 assault weapons and big ammo clips....good luck with that when the shit hits the fan and the Feds come for your ass). But I digress....

Little brother crawled away from the gun fight only to be cornered hiding in some guy's boat four blocks away. Wounded, police are now speculating that even though they took him alive, he tried unsuccessfully to shoot himself in the head, before police stormed his hiding place. Jihadist tend to blow themselves up, not swallow a bullet. Swallowing bullets is soooo, well...  so American.

No one really knows what happened with these guys, or where or when they decided killing innocents was the play of the day. But having spent most of their lives living in America, it would be a safe bet to assume that their so called radicalization happened right here in the good old USA and not some mountain region in Eastern Europe.

Same Sex Marriage

Will Clarence Thomas, speak, clear his throat or sit like a lump of coal waiting patiently for Scalia to whisper in his ear....

60% of people recently polled by ABC news say same sex marriage is okay in America. That same poll found that 80% of those under 30 support the idea. Those numbers should make it a done deal, right? Majority rules, right?

Well, not exactly. In the Land of the free, home of the brave, very few decisions are made by majority rule.

Proposition 8 and DOMA are before the United States Supreme Court today and despite the garbage rhetoric coming from FOX News, the Supreme Court is not a liberal court by any stretch of the imagination. If it was we wouldn't be stuck with last year's Citizens United ruling making corporations people.

For those of you who don't know, Prop 8 is the measure in California that revoked same sex marriage. DOMA stands for defense of marriage act. It was passed on the federal level back in 1996 and signed into law by a now repentant Bill Clinton. It says that marriage is only for men and women who marry each other. No boy-boy, or girl on girl unless its pornography for lesbian-loving straight men.

DOMA is like all those old sodomy laws that used to be on the books, outlawing oral or anal sex, but only gays and lesbians were charged and prosecuted. Straight couples doing exactly the same doggie style were never criminalized and cited, ever.

So today, the Supreme Court will hear arguments to overturn both laws. Actually one will be argued today and the other tomorrow. Regardless, it will make for an exciting week at the nation's highest court. Tickets to get inside were at a premium.

However, one ticket was scarfed up by a cousin of Chief Justice Roberts. Seems cuz is a lesbian and wants her big cousin to act like Ohio Senator Rob Portman and support his family. She says she wants to get married legally in the near future.

U.S. Supreme Court

Of course, no one has any idea what Chief Roberts is thinking, nor any of the other Associate Justices for that matter. Insiders will start guessing when they start asking questions during arguments.

Have to admit, I'm curious about how Justice Thomas will vote, especially since his own marriage to a white woman used to be illegal. Wonder if he will throw off his chains of servitude and vote like a proud Black man for a change.

The intellectual machinations of all the possible rulings in these two cases is mind boggling, so I'm just gonna pop some corn and wait for the outcome. I will say this, I don't see how the Court can frame this so narrowly that it won't take into account just how mobile our society is. In other words how can you make law that applies to one state but not another. I mean, if a couple is legally married in Omaha, they should also be legally married in Ohio, right?

It was like that in the interracial marriage ban, Loving vs Virginia. Once that law was struck down, it was made to apply to the whole country, not just Virginia. The same thing

should logically happen with Prop 8 and DOMA.

I honestly see it falling this way, Alito, Scalia and possibly Thomas will do what they always do. So will Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan and Sotomayer. I see Kennedy and Roberts as swing votes.

Bigotry Saves Life of Ohio Black Woman

Another Moore Family mystery....

While rummaging through some old family papers and pictures with my 83 year old mother, this past weekend, we came across some old Jet Magazines. One of them dated July 23, 1953 has an article about a Black woman who missed a trip on the Titanic.

Yep. That Titanic. The one that sank in April of 1912.

Mrs. Mary Ethel Moore of Marion, Ohio should have been on that ill fated voyage. She told the story to Jet Magazine, this way;

Jet Magazine, July 23, 1953

Mrs. Moore along with her twin sister were in Europe working as maids for a wealthy white family. While there, she studied cosmetology in Paris and in Baden-Baden, Germany, taking advantage of opportunities that were not readily available to Blacks back in the good old Buckeye State of Ohio.

Mrs. Moore decided to return to America when she completed her studies, and rather than wait for her white family to come back with them, she made her own reservations.

Everything went well until she presented herself at the ticket office in London. Back in those days, we weren't Black, we were colored. The clerk at the office took one look at the dusky skinned Mrs. Moore and promptly told her that her reservation and ticket were not in order and that she couldn't get on the boat.

She said, she left the office and “cried bitterly,” for days. She was still crying and waiting to return to America when word came that the boat she had been booked on had hit an iceberg and sank, killing more than 1513 people on board.

                                                               Jet Magazine 7/1953

Mrs. Moore said she got on her knees and thanked God for not allowing her to get on the boat which she now knew from news reports, was named Titanic.

Mrs. Moore, eventually returned to Ohio and opened up a beauty salon with her twin sister, a shop that catered mainly to a white clientele, including the wife of President Warren G. Harding, who was from the area. Harding's wife was not one of the “white” clientele, but that's another story.

Jet Magazine interviewed Mrs. Moore about her experiences when a movie about the Titanic sinking premiered that year. The reporter asked if she intended to see the movie, to which she replied; “she had no desire to see a tragedy in the movies.”

The reporter then asked Mrs. Moore if she felt she might have been one of the lucky survivors of the Titanic sinking, if she had been on the ship, and she said,

“I seriously doubt it. If the company was mean enough to deny me space on their clean new ship because of the color of my skin, I feel that my color would have been sufficient reason for them to keep me out of a life boat.” 

Mary Ethel Moore, Marion, Ohio

Mrs. Moore ended the interview by saying that she wanted to return to Europe one day. I don't know if she ever made it back. But I sure hope so.  

Now, the work for me begins. I've got to figure out which one of my relatives saved this article because we do have kin from the area, and this magazine was kept among the important family papers. It wasn't just a magazine that got saved or missed being thrown out. Just when I think I can't find anything more on my family, I run across something like this...

Rob Portman Comes Out

So today one of my Ohio Senate representatives on Capital Hill is a changed man. Today he favors gay marriage, where yesterday, he was agin it. Yesterday, he voted in favor of amending the Constitution to define marriage as only between a man and a woman, thereby relegating gays and lesbians to permanent second class citizenship. Today, Rob Portman tells CNN, the Columbus Dispatch and everyone else who'll listen that he favors repealing DOMA, that marriage is for everyone, straight or otherwise.

What a difference a day made. Well it's not that it's a different day or even daylight saving time or he had a V-8. No, it's the fact that his Yale attending son, Will, has come carefully out of his velvet-lined closet, to the surprise of his ultra conservative and religious parents. Young Will actually came out two years ago, but it took Dad a while to sort out the possible consequences to his political career.

In other words, do I tell Mitt that my kid likes boys now that he wants me to be his VP? Portman says he told him, but it had nothing to do with Romney switching horses in mid stream to run with Lyin' Ryan, the pariah from Wisconsin.

So now because Will is queer, the world needs to be made to fit his perception of privilege and equality, or so says his power broker Daddy.

I can just see Portman now, “tradition and religion and the GOP be damned! I'm gonna make this world safe for my homo son! And if he wants to make me a grandfather down the road, I'll pretend to be as happy as a good father can be!”

Whoopie! We the people have been given yet another glimpse into the lives of the rich, famous and white of America. If the world doesn't fit your perception, change it. Trickle down equality works as well as trickle down economics, right?

Well, no it doesn't.

Equality is a right garnered at birth. It is not predicated on the size of your bank account, color of skin, social station or what church you attend. It is a human right to be equal to every other human being on the face of this planet.

This is what the Rob Portmans of the world don't understand. Will's coming out was a personal situation for the Portmans. However, even if he had stayed securely strapped in the closet and “straight-acting” for the comfort of his parents, Rob Portman should have supported equality from jump. He should never have voted in favor of DOMA. He should never have supported Don't Ask, Don't Tell. He should be jumping all over, showing his support for ENDA.

His son's sexual orientation should never have mattered in the first place. It's about doing the right thing, as Christians and conservatives like Rob Portman always claim to do. It's that compassionate conservatism thingey.

So forgive me, if I don't jump up and down and congratulate the junior senator from Ohio for finally doing the right thing. 

All  I can say is, what took you so long?

RUN, HIDE..THE BIG SCARY BLACK MAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE IS GON KILL US ALL!

That's all this drone argument boils down to. The talk and what's happening ain't new. It's American tradition. When a black takes control of anything in this country, be it the White House, the neighborhood, city hall, the police department, the county commission, the courts, white folks, regardless of whether or not they voted for the black, are doing what they've always done...run for the hills. White flight, period. Time to stop laying it solely at the feet of bigoted conservatives.

It's not a republican thing or a democrat thing...it's a white thing. White folks, regardless of their political persuasion, believe that all black people do is destroy everything they touch, so it's best just to leave em to it and run. Only way to keep their families safe from marauding Negroes. Even the so called liberals point to Africa to justify their feelings, ignoring it's post colonial past, while not yet recognizing the new colonial Indian-Asian movement that has taken hold, stealing black sovereignty once again.

The new 21^st century twist on this innate belief, is that silly American negroes, defined as those who think they've made it and fully assimilated into this “post racial” society are also joining this idjit moment. The SAN's have moved on up and out to the suburbs, all the while, not paying attention to fact that the new bastions of pristine Euro-whiteness are the inner cities. You know all those marvelous centuries old brownstones that black folks abandoned in favor of pre-fab heaven in the West Chesters of America, after corporate gods moved all the jobs overseas or barring that, to the suburbs.

Don't think for a moment that I am ignoring the fact that Blacks would not in the first place, be loaned the money for the massive rehabs by the white corporate bank structure needed to resurrect those old brownstones. That's another story and I digress.

Now this drone obsessed rainbow coalition is up in arms because President Obama is using machines to fight the war in Afghanistan instead of boots on the ground. The skittles movement is concerned about the “innocents” and the “US citizens” who are being targeted by big bad Obama and his rain of death from the sky. And, they are speculating that maybe, probably, he is going to target American citizens on American ground for goodness sake.

Obama Derangement Syndrome, still running amok.

Give a man a fish and he will feed himself for a day. Give a Black man power and he will kill all the white folks and declare himself king of the world. Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Yes, drones are being used in Afghanistan. Yes, innocent people are being killed. Yes, at least one American citizen has been targeted, and rightfully so, to my mind. Yes, drones are coming to the skies over America. Truth be told, they are probably already there, and as proof, all you have to do is to tune into Youtube, or Google view, whatever the hell it's called.

Americans are already on candid camera. Killing us from the sky is not a big mental leap. Putting it into practice, however, would take a little more effort. But killing Americans on American soil, anytime soon...not gonna happen.

In the future, maybe. But not now, and certainly not while Obama remains in office.

Drones...Assault weapons, big clip bans...RaHoWa (racial holy war) started by Obama...Terminator/SkyNet justice.....

Obama Derangement Syndrome...nothing more.